Ancestral Vices Read Online Free PDF Page B

Anyway, I’m here at his Lordship’s invitation.’ He rummaged in his pocket for the letter.
    ‘In that case you’ll find him in the private wing to your right,’ said twin-set, ‘though I can’t say I envy him the company he keeps.’
    ‘And I don’t much care for his servants,’ said Yapp and made his way down a long corridor to a green baize door with a sign that said Private. Yapp shoved it open with his foot and stepped inside. Another long corridor, this time carpeted, greeted him and he was about to start down it when a small dapper man appeared from a door to his right and studied him briefly.
    ‘Professor Yapp?’ he enquired, with a deference that was in its own way as insulting as the woman at the door.
    ‘That’s me,’ said Yapp, not to be outdone.
    ‘If you’ll just step this way, sir. I’ll get one of the servants to show you your rooms. His Lordship will be available at six-thirty and doubtless you’ll wish to change.’
    ‘Listen, mate, let’s get things straight. In the world I come from, meaning the real world like, and not Poona in 1897 or the jungle round Timbuktu, the ordinary man doesn’t change for dinner. And I don’t need overfed underpaid butlers showing me where my room is. Just tell me where it is and I’ll find my own way.’
    ‘If you say so, sir,’ said Croxley, restraining himself from the repartee that as far as he knew the ordinary bloke never had changed for dinner and there weren’tany jungles in the neighbourhood of Timbuktu. ‘You’re on the first floor in the King Albert suite. If there’s anything you need you’ll find me here.’
    He went back into the study and left Walden Yapp to wander along the corridor and up a curving staircase to yet another corridor.
*
    Twenty fruitless minutes later he was down again.
    ‘The Prince Albert suite . . .’ he began after opening the door without knocking. Croxley regarded him with palpable disdain.
    ‘The
King
Albert suite, sir,’ he said heading out of the door. ‘King Albert of Belgium stayed here in 1908. We’ve kept it for visitors with progressive views ever since.’
    ‘Progressive views? You’ve got to be joking. The swine was responsible for chopping off the hands of Africans in the Congo and the most appalling atrocities.’
    ‘So I’ve always understood, sir,’ said Croxley. ‘But we ordinary blokes do like to have our little jokes, sir. It’s one of the perks of being a menial.’
    And leaving Yapp to work that one out he went downstairs feeling rather pleased with himself.
    Behind him Yapp surveyed the King Albert suite with disgust, curiosity, and a disquieting sense of having been goaded into a quite unnecessary gaucherie. After all it was the system which was at fault and the dapper little man – and even twin-set, for all her condescension – were only servants and probably had families to support.If over the years they had succumbed to the temptation of, to quote a phrase he frequently used in lectures, ‘deferential ego-identity’, that was hardly to be wondered at and the surprising thing was that they retained any sense of humanity at all. And the little man with his dark suit and waistcoat and highly polished shoes had shown a nice self-awareness in calling himself a menial. Walden Yapp decided to reserve his more flamboyant class origins for Lord Petrefact.
    In the meantime he inspected the room which had once housed the king who had claimed the entire Belgian Congo as his private possession. It was appropriately gross and tasteless, with an enormous bed, a vast dressing-table on which with deliberate defiance Yapp placed his Intourist bag to cover the inlaid crest of monarchy, and a fireplace over which hung a portrait of the King in military array. But it was next door, through what had evidently been the dressing-room, that he came to something that really interested him. As an historian with a particular bias towards the objective, and again to quote him ‘the artefactual