The Acceptance World - Anthony Powell [3]
I had half expected Uncle Giles to take offence at the words, but, on the contrary, he seemed not at all annoyed or surprised; even appearing rather more resigned than before to Mrs. Erdleigh’s presence. It was almost as if he now knew that the worst was over; that from this moment relations between the three of us would grow easier.
‘Shall I ring for some more tea?’ he asked, without in any way pressing the proposal by tone of voice.
Mrs. Erdleigh shook her head dreamily. She had taken the place beside me on the sofa.
‘I have already had tea,’ she said softly, as if that meal had been for her indeed a wonderful experience.
‘Are you sure?’ asked my uncle, wonderingly; confirming by his manner that such a phenomenon was scarcely credible.
‘Truly.’
‘Well, I won’t, then.’
‘No, please, Captain Jenkins.’
I had the impression that the two of them knew each other pretty well; certainly much better than either was prepared at that moment to admit in front of me. After the first surprise of seeing her, Uncle Giles no longer called Mrs. Erdleigh ‘Myra’, and he now began to utter a disconnected series of conventional remarks, as if to display how formal was in fact their relationship. He explained for the hundredth time how he never took tea as a meal, however much encouraged by those addicted to the habit, commented in desultory phrases on the weather, and sketched in for her information a few of the outward circumstances of my own life and employment.
‘Art books, is it?’ he said. ‘Is that what you told me your firm published?’
That’s it.’
‘He sells art books,’ said Uncle Giles, as if he were explaining to some visitor the strange habits of the aborigines in the land where he had chosen to settle.
‘And other sorts too,’ I added, since he made the publication of art books sound so shameful a calling.
In answering, I addressed myself to Mrs. Erdleigh, rather in the way that a witness, cross-questioned by counsel, replies to the judge. She seemed hardly to take in these trivialities, though she smiled all the while, quietly, almost rapturously, rather as if she were enjoying a warm bath after a trying day’s shopping. I noticed that she wore no wedding ring, carrying in its place on her third finger a large opal, enclosed by a massive gold serpent swallowing its own tail.
‘I see you are wondering about my opal,’ she said, suddenly catching my eye.
‘I was admiring the ring.’
‘Of course I was born in October.’
‘Otherwise it would be unlucky?’
‘But not under the Scales.’
‘I am the Archer.’
I had learned that fact a week or two before from the astrological column of a Sunday newspaper. This seemed a good moment to make use of the knowledge. Mrs. Erdleigh was evidently pleased even with this grain of esoteric apprehension. She took my hand once more, and held the open palm towards the light.
‘You interest me,’ she said.
‘What do you see?”
‘Many things.’
‘Nice ones?’
‘Some good, some less good.’
‘Tell me about them.’
‘Shall I?’
Uncle Giles fidgeted. I thought at first he was bored at being momentarily out of the conversation, because, in his self-contained, unostentatious way, he could never bear to be anything less than the centre of interest; even when that position might possess an unpleasant significance as sometimes happened at family gatherings. However, another matter was on his mind.
‘Why not put the cards out?’ he broke in all at once with forced cheerfulness. ‘That is, if you’re in the mood.’
Mrs. Erdleigh did not reply immediately to this suggestion. She continued to smile, and to investigate the lines of my palm.
‘Shall I?’ she again said softly, almost to herself. ‘Shall I ask the cards about you both?’
I added my request to my uncle’s. To