I told him. That made things easier at once. Direct enquiry of that sort on the part of a former preceptor was much to be preferred to Sillery’s reckless guessing. Confessed ignorance on the point — as on most points — showed a saner attitude towards life. Le Bas had learnt that, if nothing else. He was probably older than Sillery, a few years the wrong side of eighty. Like Sillery, though in a different manner, he too looked well; leathery, saurian; dry as a bone. Taking off the second pair of spectacles, he again rubbed in the old accustomed fashion the deep, painfully inflamed sockets of the eyes. Then he resumed the earlier pair, or perhaps yet a third reserve.
‘What’s your generation, Jenkins?’
This was like coming up for sentence at the Last Judgment. I tried to remember, to speak more exactly, tried to decide how best to put the answer clearly to Le Bas.
‘Fetdplace-Jones was captain of the house when I arrived … my own lot… Stringham… Templer …’
Le Bas glared, as if in frank disbelief. Whether that was because the names conveyed nothing, or my own seemed not to belong amongst them, was only to be surmised. It looked as if he were about to accuse me of being an impostor, to be turned away from the Library forthwith. I lost my head, began to recite names at random as they came into my mind.
‘Simson … Fitzwith … Ghika … Brandreth … Maiden … Bischoffsheim … Whitney … Parkinson … Summers-Miller … Pyefinch … the Calthorpes … Widmerpool…’
At the last name Le Bas suddenly came to life.
‘Widmerpool?’
‘Widmerpool was a year or so senior to me.’
Le Bas seemed to forget that all we were trying to do was approximately to place my own age-group in his mind. He took one of several pens lying on the desk, examined it, chose another one, examined that, then wrote ‘Widmerpool’ on the blotting paper in front of him, drawing a circle round the name. This was an unexpected reaction. It seemed to have nothing whatever to do with myself. Le Bas now sunk into a state of near oblivion. Could it be a form of exorcism against pupils of his whom he had never much liked? Then he offered an explanation.
‘Widmerpool’s down here today. I met him in the street. We had a talk. He told me about a cause he’s interested in. That’s why I made a note. I shall have to try and remember what he said. He’s an MP now. What happened to the others?’
It was like answering enquiries after a match — ’Fettiplace-Jones was out first ball, sir’ …’Parkinson kicked a goal, sir’ … ‘Whitney got his colours, sir’. I tried to recollect some piece of information to be deemed of interest to Le Bas about the sort of boys of whom he could approve, but the only facts that came to mind were neither about these, nor cheerful.
‘Stringham died in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.’
‘Yes, yes — so I heard.’
That awareness was unexpected.
‘Templer was killed on a secret operation.’
‘In the Balkans. Somebody told me. Very sad.’
Once more the cognition was unforeseen. Its acknowledgment was followed by Le Bas taking up the pen again. Underneath Widmerpool’s name he wrote ‘Balkans’, drew another circle round the word, which he attached to the first circle by a line. It looked more than ever like some form of incantation.
‘Now I remember what it was Widmerpool consulted me about. Some society he has organized to encourage good relations with one of the Balkan countries. Now which one? Simson was drowned. Torpedoed in a troopship.’
He mentioned Simson as another relevant fact, not at all as if he did not wish to be outdone in consciousness of widespread human dissolution in time of war.
‘What are you doing yourself, Jenkins?’
‘I’m writing a book on Burton — the Anatomy of Melancholy man.’
Le Bas took two or three seconds to absorb that statement, the aspects, good and bad, implied by such an activity. He had probably heard of Burton. He might easily know more about him than did Sillery. Dons were not necessarily better informed than schoolmasters. When at last he spoke, it was clear Le Bas did know about Burton. He was not wholly approving.
‘Rather a morbid subject.’
He had used just that epithet when he found me, as a schoolboy, reading St John Clarke’s Fields of Amaranth. He may have thought reading or writing books equally morbid, whatever the content. To be fair to Le Bas as a critic, Fields of Amaranth — if you were prepared to use the term critically at all — might reasonably be so described. I now agreed, even if on different grounds. The admission had to be made. Time had been on Le Bas’s side.
We were interrupted at this moment by a very small boy, who had come to stand close by where we were talking. It would be fairer to say we were inhibited by his presence, because no direct interruption took place. Dispelling about him an aura of immense, if not wholly convincing goodness, his intention was evidently to accost Le Bas in due course, at the same time ostentatiously to avoid any implication that he could be so lacking in good manners as to break into a conversation or attempt to overhear it. Le Bas, possibly not unwilling to seek dispensation from further talk about the past, distant or immediate, with all its uncomfortably realistic — Trapnel might prefer, naturalistic — undercurrents, turned in the boy’s direction.
‘What do you want?’
‘I can wait, sir.’
This assurance that his own hopes were wholly unimportant, that Youth was prepared to waste valuable time indefinitely while Age span out its senile conference, did not in the least impress Le Bas, too conversant with the ways of boys not to be for ever on his guard.
‘Can’t you find some book?’
‘Sir — the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.’
‘Brewer’s?’
‘I think so, sir.’
‘You’ve looked on the proper shelf?’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Akworth, sir.
Le Bas rose.
‘It will be the worse for you, Akworth, if Brewer turns out to be on the proper shelf.’
I explained to Le Bas why I had come; that it was time to move on to my appointment.
‘Good, good. Excellent. I’m glad we had a — well, a chat. Most fortunate you reminded me of that society of Widmerpool’s. I don’t know why he should think I am specially interested in the Balkans — though now I come to think of it, Templer’s … makes a kind of link. You know, Jenkins, among my former pupils, I should never have guessed Widmerpool would have entered the House of Commons. Fettiplace-Jones, yes — he was another matter.’
Le Bas paused. He had immediately regretted this implied criticism of Widmerpool’s abilities.
‘Of course, they need all sorts and conditions of men to govern the country. Especially these days. Sad about those fellows who were killed. I sometimes think of the number of pupils of mine who lost their lives. Two wars. It adds up. Come along, Akworth.’
The boy smiled, conveying at once apology for disruption of our talk, and his own certainty that its termination must have come as a relief to me. As he hurried off towards one of the shelves, beside which he had piled up a heap of books, he gave the impression that quite a complicated intellectual programme for ragging Le Bas had been planned. Le Bas himself sighed.
‘Goodbye, Jenkins. I hope the school will have acquired a regular librarian by your next visit.’
It was still wet outside, but, by the time my appointment was at an end, the rain had stopped. A damp earthy smell filled the air. The weather was appreciably colder. In spite of that a man in a mackintosh was sitting on the low wall that ran the length of the further side of the street in front of the archway and chapel. It was Widmerpool. He looked in great dejection. I had not seen him since the night at Trapnel’s flat, when he had, so to speak, expressed his confidence in Pamela’s return. Now that had come about. He had prophesied truly. Isobel, about a month before, soon after the destruction of Profiles in String, had pointed out a paragraph in a newspaper listing guests at some public function. The names ‘Mr Kenneth Widmerpool MP and Mrs Widmerpool’ were included. It was just as predicted. In the Governmental reshuffle at the beginning of October Widmerpool had received minor office. In spite of these two matters, both showing himself undoubtedly in the ascendant, he sat lonely and cheerless. I should have been tempted to try and slip by unnoticed, but he saw me, and shouted something. I crossed the road.