Anthony Powell - The Acceptance World (Dance to the Music of Time 03) (Vol 3)

ANTHONY POWELL

THE ACCEPTANCE WORLD

A NOVEL

Book 3

A Dance to the Music of Time

HEINEMANN : LONDON

ONCE in a way,perhaps as often as every eighteen months, an invitation to Sundayafternoon tea at the Ufford would arrive on a postcard addressed in Uncle Gilessneat, constricted handwriting. This private hotel in Bayswater, where he stayedduring comparatively rare visits to London, occupied two corner houses in alatent, almost impenetrable region west of the Queens Road. Not only thebattleship-grey colour, but also something at once angular and top-heavy aboutthe blocks configuration as a whole, suggested a large vessel moored in thestreet. Even within, at least on the ground floor, the Ufford conveyed somereminder of life at sea, though certainly of no luxuriously equipped liner; atbest one of those superannuated schooners of Conrads novels, perhaps decoratedyears before as a rich mans yacht, now tarnished by the years and reduced toignoble uses like traffic in tourists, pilgrims, or even illegal immigrants;pervadedto borrow an appropriately Conradian mannerismwith uneasy memoriesof the strife of men. That was the feeling the Ufford gave, riding at anchor onthe sluggish Bayswater tides.

To this lastretrospective, and decidedly depressing, aspect of the hotels character, UncleGiles himself had no doubt in a small degree contributed. Certainly he had donenothing to release the place from its air of secret, melancholy guilt. Thepassages seemed catacombs of a hell assigned to the subdued regret of those whohad lacked in life the income to which they felt themselves entitled; this suspicionthat the two houses were an abode of the dead being increased by the fact thatno one was ever to be seen about, even at the reception desk. The floors of theformerly separate buildings, constructed at different levels, were now joinedby unexpected steps and narrow, steeply slanting passages. The hall was alwayswrapped in silence; letters in the green baize board criss-crossed with taperemained yellowing, for ever unclaimed, unread, unchanged.

However, UncleGiles himself was attached to these quarters. The old pub suits me, I hadonce heard him mutter thickly under his breath, high commendation from one sosparing of praise; although of course the Ufford, like every other institutionwith which he came in contact, would fall into disfavour from time to time,usually on account of some incivility offered him by the management or staff.For example, Vera, a waitress, was an old enemy, who would often attempt toexclude him from his favourite table by the door where you could get a breathof air. At least once, in a fit of pique, he had gone to the De Tabley acrossthe road; but sooner or later he was back again, grudgingly admitting that theUfford, although going downhill from the days when he had first known theestablishment, was undoubtedly convenient for the purposes of his aimless,uncomfortable, but in a sense dedicated life.

Dedicated, it mightwell be asked, to what? The question would not be easy to answer. Dedicated,perhaps, to his own egotism; his determination to bewithout adequate moral orintellectual equipmentabsolutely different from everybody else. That mightoffer one explanation of his behaviour. At any rate, he was propelled alongfrom pillar to post by some force that seemed stronger than a mere instinct tokeep himself alive; and the Ufford was the nearest thing he recognised as ahome. He would leave his luggage there for weeks, months, even years on end;complaining afterwards, when he unpacked, that dinner-jackets were not onlycreased but also ravaged by moth, or that oil had been allowed to soak throughthe top of his cane trunk and ruin the tropical clothing within; still worsethoughexact proof was always lackingthat the pieces left in the hotels keeping hadactually been reduced in number by at least one canvas valise, leather hat-box,or uniform-case in black tin.

On most of theoccasions when I visited the Ufford, halls and reception rooms were so utterlydeserted that the interior might almost have been Uncle Giless privateresidence. Had he been a rich bachelor, instead of a poor one, he wouldprobably have lived in a house of just that sort: bare: anonymous:old-fashioned: draughty: with heavy mahogany cabinets and sideboards spaced outat intervals in passages and on landings; nothing that could possibly commithim to any specific opinion, beyond general disapproval of the way the worldwas run.

We always had teain an apartment called the lounge, the back half of a large doubledrawing-room, the inner doors of which were kept permanently closed, thus detachingthe lounge from the writing-room, the half overlooking the street.(Perhaps, like the doors of the Temple of Janus, they were closed only in timeof Peace; because, years later, when I saw the Ufford in war-time theseparticular doors had been thrown wide open.) The lace-curtained windows of thelounge gave on to a well; a bleak outlook, casting the gloom of perpetualnight, or of a sky for ever dark with rain. Even in summer the electric lighthad to be switched on during tea.

The wallpapers intricatefloral design in blue, grey and green ran upwards from a cream-colouredlincrusta dado to a cornice also of cream lincrusta. The pattern of flowers,infinitely faded, closely matched the chintz-covered sofa and armchairs, whichwere roomy and unexpectedly comfortable. A palm in a brass pot with ornamentalhandles stood in one corner: here and there were small tables of Moorish designupon each of which had been placed a heavy white globular ash-tray, equippedwith an attachment upon which to rest a cigar or cigarette. Several circulargilt looking-glasses hung about the walls, but there was only one picture, anengraving placed over the fireplace, of Landseers Bolton Abbey in the OldenTime. Beneath this crowded scene of medieval plentypresenting a painfulcontrast with the Uffords cuisinea clock, so constructed that pendulumand internal works were visible under its glass dome, stood eternally at twentyminutes past five. Two radiators kept the room reasonably warm in winter, andthe coal, surrounded in the fireplace with crinkled pink paper, was neveralight. No sign of active life was apparent in the room except for severalmuch-thumbed copies of The Lady lying in a heap on one of the Moorishtables.

I think we shallhave this place to ourselves, Uncle Giles used invariably to remark, as if wehad come there by chance on a specially lucky day, so that we shall be able totalk over our business without disturbance. Nothing I hate more than havingsome damnd fellow listening to every word I say.

Of late years hisaffairs, in so far as his relations knew anything of them, had become to someextent stabilised, although invitations to tea were inclined to coincide withperiodical efforts to extract slightly more than his agreed share from the Trust.Either his path had grown more tranquil than formerly, or crises were at longerintervals and apparently less violent. This change did not imply that heapproached life itself in a more conciliatory spirit, or had altered hisconviction that worldly success was a matter of influence. The countrysabandonment of the Gold Standard at about this timeand the formation of theNational Governmenthad particularly annoyed him. He propagated contrary, farmore revolutionary, economic theories of his own as to how the Europeanmonetary situation should be regulated.

He was, however, ashade less abrupt in personal dealings. The anxiety of his relations that hemight one day get into a really serious financial tangle, never entirely atrest, had considerably abated in comparison with time past; nor had there beenrecently any of those once recurrent rumours that he was making preparationsfor an unsuitable marriage. He still hovered about the Home Counties, seenintermittently at Reading, Aylesbury, Chelmsford, or Doverand once so farafield as the Channel Islandshis work now connected with the administrationof some charitable organisation which paid a small salary and allowed areasonably high expense account.