The Soldier's Art - Anthony Powell [77]
“I’m in no particular hurry,” said Farebrother. “I had another appointment in the neighbourhood and thought I would look in on Kenneth. I’ll wait, if I may.”
He accepted a chair. His manner was kindly but cold. He did not recognise me. There was little reason why he should after nearly twenty years, when we had travelled together to London after staying with the Templers. I remembered the taxi piled high with miscellaneous luggage and sporting equipment, as our ways had parted at the station. There had been a gun-case, a cricket bat and a fishing rod; possibly two squash racquets.
“You must come and lunch with me one of these days,” he had said, giving one of his very open smiles.
He was surprisingly unchanged from that moment. A suggestion of grey threaded, here and there, neat light-coloured hair. This faint powdering of silver increased the air of distinction, even of moral superiority, which his outward appearance always conveyed. The response he offered – that he was a person of self-denying, upright life – had nearly been allowed to become tinged with a touch of self-righteousness. Any such outgrowth was kept within bounds by the soldierly spruceness of his bearing. I judged him now to be in his early fifties. Middle-age caused him to look more than ever like one’s conception of Colonel Newcome, though a more sophisticated, enterprising prototype of Thackeray’s old warrior. Sunny Farebrother could never entirely conceal his own shrewdness, however much he tried. He was a Colonel Newcome who, instead of collapsing into bankruptcy, had become, on retirement from the army, a brisk business executive; offered a seat on the East India Company’s Board, rather than mooning round the precincts of the Charterhouse. At the same time, Farebrother would certainly know the right phrase to express appreciation of any such historic buildings or sentimental memories with which he might himself have been associated. One could be sure of that. He was not a player to overlook a useful card. Above all, he bestowed around him a sense of smoothness, ineffable, unstemmable smoothness, like oil flowing ever so gently from the spout of a vessel perfectly regulated by its pourer, soft lubricating fluid, gradually, but irresistibly, spreading; and spreading, let it be said, over an unexpectedly wide, even a vast area.
“What’s your name?”
“Jenkins, sir.”
“Ah, we’ve spoken sometimes together on the telephone.”
Uniform – that of a London Territorial unit of Yeomanry cavalry – hardly changed Farebrother at all, unless to make him seem more appropriately clad. Cap, tunic, trousers, all battered and threadbare as his former civilian suits, had obviously served him well in the previous war. Frayed and shiny with age, they were far from making him look down-at-heel in any inadmissible way, their antiquity according a patina of impoverished nobility – nobility of the spirit rather than class – a gallant disregard for material things. His Sam Browne belt was limp with immemorial polishing. I recalled Peter Templer remarking that Farebrother’s D.S.O. had been “rather a good one”; of the O.B.E. next door to it, Farebrother himself had commented : “told them I should have to wear it on my backside, as the only medal I’ve ever won sitting in a chair.” Whether or not he had in fact said any such thing, except in retrospect, he was well able to look after himself and his business in that unwarlike position, however assured he might also be in combat. It was not surprising Widmerpool hated him. Leaning forward a little, puckering his face, as if even at this moment he found a sedentary attitude unsympathetic, he gazed at me suddenly as if he were dreadfully sorry about something.
“I’ve got some rather bad news for Kenneth, I’m afraid,” he said, “but I expect I’d better keep it till he returns. I’d better tell him personally. He might be hurt otherwise.”
He spoke in a tone almost of misery.