The Kindly Ones - Anthony Powell [2]
All the same, hauntings were scarcely to be expected in this red-tiled bungalow, which was almost capacious, or so it seemed in those days, on account of its extreme, unnatural elongation. It had been built only thirteen or fourteen years before – about 1900, in fact – by some retired soldier, anxious to preserve in his final seclusion tangible reminder of service in India, at the same time requiring nothing of architecture likely to hint too disturbingly of the exotic splendours of Eastern fable. Stonehurst, it was true, might be thought a trifle menacing in appearance, even ill-omened, but not in the least exotic. Its configuration suggested a long, low Noah’s Ark, come uncomfortably to rest on a heather-grown, coniferous spur of Mount Ararat; a Noah’s Ark, the opened lid of which would reveal myself, my parents, Edith, Albert, Billson, Mercy, several dogs and cats, and, at certain seasons, Bracey and Mrs Gullick.
‘Tell her to give over,’ said Albert, adverting to the subject of Billson and her ‘ghost’. ‘Too much cold pork and pickles. That’s all the matter. Got into trouble with the indigestion merchants, or off her nut, one or the other. She’ll find herself locked up with the loonies if she takes on so.’
‘Billson said she’d give notice if it happened again.’
‘Give notice, I don’t think.’
‘Won’t she, then?’
‘Not while I’m here she won’t give notice. Don’t you believe it.’
Albert shook off one of his ancient bedroom slippers, adjusting the thick black woollen sock at the apex of the foot, where, not over clean, the nail of a big toe protruded from a hole at the end. Albert was an oddity, an exceptional member of the household, not only in himself and his office, but in relation to the whole character of my parents’ establishment. He had started life as hall-boy – later promoted footman – in my mother’s home before her marriage. After my grandmother’s death – the dissolution, as it always seemed in Albert’s reminiscence, of an epoch – he had drifted about from place to place, for the most part unhappily. Sometimes he quarrelled with the butler; sometimes his employers made too heavy demands on his time; sometimes, worst of all, the cook, or one of the maids, fell in love with him. Love, of course, in such cases, meant marriage. Albert was not, I think, at all interested in love affairs of an irregular kind; nor, for that matter, did he in the least wish to take a wife. On that subject, he felt himself chronically persecuted by women, especially by the most determined of his tormentors (given to writing him long, threatening letters), whom he used to call ‘the girl from Bristol’. This preoccupation with the molestations of the opposite sex probably explained his fears that evening of suffragette attack.
In the end, after moving from London to the country, from the country back to London, up to Cumberland, down to Cardigan, Albert had written to my mother – habitually in touch with almost everyone who had ever worked for her – suggesting that, as she was soon to lose a cook, he himself should exchange to that profession, which had always appealed to him, the art of cooking running in his blood through both parents. He was, indeed, known, even in his days as footman, for proficiency in cooking, which had come to him almost by the light of nature. His offer was, therefore, at once accepted, though not without a few privately expressed reservations as to the possibility of Albert’s turning out a ‘handful’. ‘Handful’ to some extent he was. Certainly his cooking was no disappointment. That was soon clear. The question why he should prefer employment with a family who lived on so unpretentious a scale, when he might have found little or no difficulty in obtaining a situation as chef in much grander circumstances, with more money and greater prestige, is not easily resolved. Lack of enterprise, physical indolence, liking for the routine of a small domestic community, all no doubt played a part; as also, perhaps, did the residue from a long-forgotten past, some feudal secretion,