Anthony Powell - The Acceptance World

‘Umfraville a friend of your?’ asked Tolland.

He spoke almost as if condoling with me.

‘I’ve just met him. He said he might be coming tonight.’

Tolland looked at me absently. I thought it might be better to abandon the subject of Umfraville. However, a moment or two later he himself returned to it.

‘I don’t think Umfraville will come tonight,’ he said. ‘I heard he’d just got married.’

It certainly seemed unlikely that even Umfraville would turn up for dinner at this late stage in the meal, though the reason given was unexpected, even scriptural. Tolland now seemed to regret having volunteered the information.

‘Who did he marry?’

This question discomposed him even further. He cleared his throat several times and took a gulp of claret, nearly choking himself.

‘As a matter of fact I believe she is a distant cousin of mine — perhaps not,’ he said. ‘I can never remember that sort of thing — yes, she is, though. Of course she is.’

‘Yes?’

‘One of the Bridgnorth girls — Anne, I think.’

‘Anne Stepney?’

‘Yes, yes. That’s the one. You probably know her.’

‘I do.’

‘Thought you would.’

‘But she is years younger.’

‘She is a bit younger. Yes, she is a bit younger. Quite a bit younger. And he has been married before, of course.’

‘It makes his fourth wife, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, I believe it does. His fourth wife. Pretty sure it does make his fourth.’

Tolland looked at me in absolute despair, I think not so much at the predicament in which Anne Stepney had involved herself, as at the necessity for such enormities to emerge in conversation. The news was certainly unforeseen.

‘What do the Bridgnorths think about it?’

It was perhaps heartless to press him on such a point, but, having been told something so extraordinary as this, I wanted to hear as much as possible about the circumstances. Rather unexpectedly, he seemed relieved to report on that aspect of the marriage.

‘The fellow who told me in the Guards’ Club said they were making the best of it.’

‘There was no announcement?’

‘They were married in Paris,’ said Tolland. ‘So this fellow in the Guards’ Club — or was it Arthur’s? — told me. My brother, Warminster, when he was alive, used to talk about Umfraville. I think he liked him. Perhaps he didn’t. But I think he did.’

‘I was at school with a Tolland.’

‘My nephew. Did you know his brother, Erridge? Erridge has succeeded now. Funny boy.’

Sir Gavin Walpole-Wilson had mentioned a ‘Norah Tolland’ as friend of his daughter, Eleanor. She turned out to be a niece.

‘Warminster had ten children. Big family for these days.’

We rose at that moment to drink the King’s health; and Le Bas’s. Then Le Bas stood up, gripping the table with both hands as if he proposed to overturn it. This was in preparation for the delivery of his accustomed speech, which varied hardly at all year by year. His guttural, carefully enunciated consonants echoed through the room.

‘… cannot fail to be gratifying to see so many of my former pupils here tonight … do not really know what to say to you all … certainly shall not make a long speech … these annual meetings have their importance … encourage a sense of continuity … give perhaps an opportunity of taking stock … friendship … I’ve said to some of you before … needs keeping up … probably remember, most of you, lines quoted by me on earlier occasions …

And I sat by the shelf till I lost myself,

And roamed in a crowded mist,

And heard lost voices and saw lost looks,

As I pored on an old School List.

… verses not, of course, in the modern manner … some of us do not find such appeals to sentiment very sympathetic … typically Victorian in their emphasis … all the.. rather well describe what most of us — well — at least some of us — may — feel — experience — when we meet and talk over our …’

Here Le Bas, as usual, paused; probably from the conviction that the word ‘schooldays’ had accumulated various associations in the minds of his listeners to which he was unwilling to seem to appeal. The use of hackneyed words had always been one of his preoccupations. He was, I think, dimly aware that his own bearing was somewhat clerical, and was accordingly particularly anxious to avoid the appearance of preaching a sermon. He compromised at last with ‘… other times …’ returning, almost immediately, to the poem; as if the increased asperity that the lines now assumed would purge him from the imputation of sentimentality to which he had referred. He cleared his throat harshly.

‘…You will remember how it goes later …

There were several duffers and several bores,

Whose faces I’ve half forgot,

Whom I lived among, when the world was young

And who talked no end of rot;

… of course I do not mean to suggest that there was anyone like that at my house …’

This comment always caused a certain amount of mild laughter and applause. That evening Whitney uttered some sort of a cry reminiscent of the hunting field, while Widmerpool grinned and drummed on the tablecloth with his fork, slightly shaking his head at the same time to indicate that he did not at all concur with Le Bas in supposing his former pupils entirely free from such failings.

‘… certainly nobody of that sort here tonight … but at the same time … no good pretending that all time spent at school was — entirely blissful… certainly not for a housemaster …’

There was more restrained laughter. Le Bas’s voice tailed away. In his accustomed manner he had evidently tried to steer clear of any suggestion that schooldays were the happiest period of a man’s life, but at the same time feared that by tacking too much he might become enmeshed in dangerous admissions from which escape could be difficult. This had always been one of his main anxieties as a schoolmaster. He would go some distance along a path indicated by common sense, but overcome by caution, would stop half-way and behave in an unexpected, illogical manner. Most of the conflicts between himself and individual boys could be traced to these hesitations at the last moment. Now he paused, beginning again in more rapid sentences:

‘… as I have already said … do not intend to make a long, prosy after-dinner speech … nothing more boring … in fact my intention is — as at previous dinners — to ask some of you to say a word or two about your own activities since we last met together … For example, perhaps Fettiplace-Jones might tell us something of what is going forward in the House of Commons …’

Fettiplace-Jones did not need much pressing to oblige in this request. He was on his feet almost before Le Bas had finished speaking. He was a tall, dark, rather good-looking fellow, with a lock of hair that fell from time to time over a high forehead, giving him the appearance of a Victorian statesman in early life. His maiden speech (tearing Ramsay MacDonald into shreds) had made some impression on the House, but since then there had been little if any brilliance about his subsequent parliamentary performances, though he was said to work hard in committee. India’s eventual independence was the subject he chose to tell us about, and he continued for some little time. He was followed by Simson, a keen Territorial, who asked for recruits. Widmerpool broke into Simson’s speech with more than one ‘hear, hear’. I remembered that he had told me he too was a Territorial officer. Whitney had something to say of Tanganyika. Others followed with their appointed piece. At last they came to an end. It seemed that Le Bas had exhausted the number of his former pupils from whom he might hope to extract interesting or improving comment. Stringham was sitting well back in his chair. He had, I think, actually gone to sleep.