Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [54]
For some reason Canon Fenneau made me feel a little uneasy. His voice might be soft, it was also coercive. He had small eyes, a large loose mouth, the lips thick, a somewhat receding chin. The eyes were the main feature. They were unusual eyes, not only almost unnaturally small, but vague, moist, dreamy, the eyes of a medium. His cherubic side, increased by a long slightly uptilted nose, was a little too good to be true, with eyes like that. In the manner in which he gave you all his attention there was a taste for mastery.
‘In those days I was a frightened freshman from an obscure college. I can’t tell you how impressed I was by the august company gathered in Sillery’s room – if I rightly remember the afternoon we met. I didn’t dare open my mouth. There was Mark Members, for instance, whom I noticed you talking with before dinner. I’d never seen a large-as-life poet in the flesh before. How I envied Mark for the fuss Sillers made of him. I remember Sillers pinched his neck. I’d have given the world in those days to have my neck pinched by Sillers. Then there was the famous Bill Truscott. Truscott, already working London, so tall, so distinguished, a figure entirely beyond my purview in the undergraduate world I frequented.’
Fenneau sighed, and smiled. It was hard to believe he had ever been frightened of anybody. I still had no recollection of meeting him, even while he recalled that particular tea-party of Sillery’s; which, for various reasons, had made a strong impression on myself too. Fenneau could easily have been one of several undergraduates present, who were – and remained – unknown to me; though no doubt introduced at the time, Sillery being keen on introductions. Subsequent silence about Fenneau on Sillery’s part would indicate not so much Fenneau’s own pretensions to obscurity – Sillery rather liked to glory in the obscurity of some of his favourites – as cause given that afternoon, or at a later period, for Sillerian disapproval. Fenneau was probably one of the young men passed briskly through the Sillery machine, and found wanting; tried out once, never reprocessed. So far as being speechless went, Sillery did not necessarily mind that. The occasional speechless guest could be a useful foil. Some of his own pupils in that genre were quite often at the tea-parties. They set off more ebullient personalities. I hoped Fenneau would not produce embarrassing reminiscences of my own undergraduate behaviour at Sillery’s, or elsewhere in the University.
‘Did you often go to Sillery’s?’
‘Very few times after the first visit. I was not encouraged to pay too frequent calls. Just the necessary tribute from time to time. Rendering unto Sillers the things which were Sillers’. My claims could not have been less high, even for pennies that bore, so to speak, Sillery’s own image and superscription.’
He smiled again, making, with a morsel of bread, a gesture indicative of extreme humility.
‘Claims on Sillers?’
‘Rather his claims on myself. My late father was an English chaplain on the Riviera. For a number of reasons Sillers found useful a South of France contact of that kind. Besides, my father was a personal friend of the Bishop of Gibraltar, a prelacy to attract the regard of Sillers, owing to the farflung nature of the diocese.’
‘I can see that.’
‘But my manner of talking about Sillers sounds most ungenerous. I would not speak a word against him. He did me, as a poor student, kindnesses on more than one occasion, although he could never reconcile himself to some of my interests.’
‘You mean Sillery did not like you going into the Church?’
Fenneau smiled discreetly.
‘Sillery had no objection to the Church – no objection to any Church – as such. He liked to have friends of all sorts, even clergymen. He did not at all mind my living in an undergraduate underworld, the bas fond of the University. The underworld, too, had its uses for Sillers – witness J. G. Quiggin, who attended that same historic tea-party.’
‘You know Quiggin?’