Anthony Powell - A Question of Upbringing

Sunny Farebrother gave the impression of being not at all at his ease in the midst of this rough-and-tumble, in which he was to some degree forced to participate. Mr. Templer fell from time to time into fits of moroseness which made his small-talk at best monosyllabic: at worst, drying up all conversation. He treated his son-in-law with as little ceremony as he did Farebrother; evidently regarding the discussion of serious matters with Stripling as waste of time. He was, however, prepared to listen to Farebrother’s views — apparently sensible enough — on how best to handle the difficulties of French reoccupation of the Ruhr (which had taken place earlier in the year), especially in relation to the general question of the shortage of pig-iron on the world market. When on one occasion Farebrother ventured to change the subject and give his opinion regarding professional boxing, Mr. Templer went so far as to say: “Farebrother, you are talking through your hat. When you have watched boxing for forty years, as I have, it will be quite soon enough to start criticising the stewards of the National Sporting.”

Sunny Farebrother showed no sign of resenting this capricious treatment. He would simply nod his head, and chuckle to himself, as if in complete agreement; after a while giving up any attempt to soothe his host, and trying to join in whatever was happening at the other end of the table. It was at such moments that he sometimes became involved in cross-fire between Peter, Lady McReith, and the Striplings. I was not sure how often the Striplings had met Sunny Farebrother in the past. Each seemed to know a good deal about the other, though they remained on distant terms. Stripling making hardly an effort to conceal his dislike. They would sometimes talk about City matters, in which Stripling took an interest that was probably of a rather amateurish sort; for it was clear that Farebrother rarely agreed with his judgment, even when he outwardly concurred. After these mild contradictions, Stripling would raise his eyebrows and make faces at Farebrother behind his back. Farebrother showed no more sign of being troubled by this kind of behaviour than by Mr. Templer’s gruffness; but he sometimes adopted a manner of exaggerated good-fellowship towards Stripling, beginning sentences addressed to him with the words: “Now then, Jimmy —”: and sometimes making a sweeping dive with his fist towards Stripling’s diaphragm, as if in a playful effort to disembowel him. It was not Stripling so much as Lady McReith, and to a lesser degree, Babs, who seemed to make Farebrother uncomfortable. I decided — as it turned out, correctly — that this was a kind of moral disapproval, and that some puritan strain in Farebrother rebelled against Lady McReith especially.

One evening, when Mr. Templer had come suddenly out of one of his gloomy reveries, and nodded curtly to Babs to withdraw the women from the dining-room, Sunny Farebrother jumped up to open the door, and, in the regrouping of seats that took place when we sat down again, placed himself next to me. The Templers, father and son, had begun to discuss with Stripling the jamming of his car’s accelerator Farebrother shifted the port in my direction without pouring himself out a second glass. He said: “Did I understand that your father was at the Peace Conference?”

“For a time.”

“I wonder if he and I were ever in the same show.”

I described to the best of my ability how my father had been wounded in Mesopotamia; and, after a spell of duty in Cairo, had been sent to Paris at the end of the war: adding that I had no very certain idea of the nature of his work. Farebrother seemed disappointed that no details were available on this subject; but he continued to chat quietly of the Conference, and of the people he had run across when he had worked there himself.

“Wonderfully interesting people,” he said. “After a time one thought nothing of lunching with, for example, a former Finance Minister of Rumania, as a matter of fact we reached the stage of my calling him ‘Hilarion’ and he calling me ‘Sunny.’ I met Monsieur Venizelos with him on several occasions.”

I expressed the respect that I certainly felt for an appointment that brought opportunity to enjoy such encounters.

“It was a different world,” said Sunny Farebrother.

He spoke with more vehemence than usual; and I supposed that he intended to imply that hobnobbing with foreign statesmen was greatly preferable to touting for business from Peter’s father. I asked if the work was difficult.

“When they were kind enough to present me with an O.B.E. at the end of it,” said Farebrother, “I told them I should have to wear it on my backside because it was the only medal I had ever won by sitting in a chair.”

I did not know whether it was quite my place either to approve or to deprecate this unconventional hypothesis, daring in its disregard for authority (if “they” were superiors immediately responsible for the conferment of the award) and, at the same time, modest in its assessment of its expositor’s personal merits. Sunny Farebrother had the happy gift of suggesting by his manner that one had known him for a long time; and I began to wonder whether I had not, after all, been right in supposing that his nickname had been acquired from something more than having been named “Sunderland.” There was a suggestion of boyishness — the word “sunny” would certainly be applicable — about his frank manner; but in spite of this manifest desire to get along with everyone on their own terms, there was also something lonely and inaccessible about him. It seemed to me, equally, that I had not been so greatly mistaken in the high-flown estimate of his qualities that I had formed on first hearing his name, and of his distinguished record. However, before any pronouncement became necessary on the subject of the most appropriate region on which to distribute what I imagined to be his many decorations, his voice took on a more serious note, and he went on: “The Conference was, of course, a great change from the previous three and a half years, fighting backwards and forwards over the Somme and God knows where else — and fighting damned hard, too.”

Jimmy Stripling caught the word “Somme,” because his mouth twitched slightly, and he began chopping at a piece of pine-apple rind on his plate: though continuing to listen to his father-in-law’s diagnosis of the internal troubles of the Mercedes.

“Going up to the university?” Farebrother asked, “In October.”

“Take my advice,” he said. “Look about for a good business opening. Don’t be afraid of hard work. That was what I said to myself when the war was over — and here we are.”

He laughed; and I laughed too, though without knowing quite why anything should have been said to cause amusement. Farebrother had the knack, so it seemed to me, of making others feel that they were in some conspiracy with him; though clearly that was not how he was regarded by the Striplings. When Peter had asked the day before: “What do you think of old Sunny?” I had admitted that Farebrother had made a good impression as a man-of-the-world who was at the same time mild and well disposed: though I had not phrased my opinion quite in that way to Peter, in any case never greatly interested in the details of what people thought about each other. Peter had laughed even at the guarded amount of enthusiasm I had revealed.

“He is a downy old bird,” Peter said. “Is he very hard up?”

“I suppose he is doing just about as nicely in the City as anyone could reasonably expect.”

“I thought he looked a bit down at heel?”

“That is all part of Sunny’s line. You need not worry about him. I may be going into the same firm. He is a sort of distant relation, you know, through my mother’s family.”