The Fox in the Attic by Richard Hughes

Something hilarious:
"Ostensibly Flemton banquet was an occasion for men only. Only men were invited, sat down at table, delivered speeches and sang songs. But the women cooked and waited, teased and scolded the banqueters, heckled the speeches and encored the songs if they felt like it; and the women certainly enjoyed it all quite as much as the men.

To tell the truth, the men were inclined to be a bit portentous and solemn. Indeed the only really happy and carefree male in the whole Assembly Room seemed to be the fabulous Dr. Brinley the Coroner -- who was eighty-five, and already very drunk, and knew that everybody loved him.

They had tried to steer Dr. Brinley away from sitting next to the bishop, who was new to the mitre and fifty and cold teetotal: "That seat's Mr. Augustine's, Doctor-bach: come you along this way..." But the old man looked round in astonishment: "What! Is the boy actually coming, then?"

It was no good: he read the answer in their faces and sat down without more ado.

Presently the doctor nudged the bishop with his elbow, at the same time pointing dramatically across the table at a certain Alderman Teller. Alderman Teller was trying in vain to settle his huge chins into his unaccustomed high collar.

"Do you keep fowls, my lad?" the doctor asked: "My Lord I should say: forgive an old man, laddie, tongue's taken to slipping."

"Yes, yes," said the bishop: "that is... no: not now, but as a boy..."

Leaving his arm at the point as if he had forgotten it Dr. Brinley turned even more confidentially towards the bishop, breathing at him a blast of whiskey and old age: "Then you're familiar with the spectacle of a very big broody hen trying to get down to work on a clutch of eggs in a bucket that's too narrow for her?" At this the bishop turned on him a face like a politely enquiring hatchet; but the doctor seemed to think he had made his point quite clearly enough.

Opposite, Alderman Teller -- hearing, but also not catching the allusion -- pushed an obstinate fold of jowl into his collar with his finger, then opened his little pink mouth and rolled his eyes solemnly. "Perfect!" shouted Dr. Brinley with a whoop of laughter. "Your health, Alderman Teller dear lad!"

As they clinked glasses the alderman's face broke into a delighted smile as sweet as a child's: "Rhode Islands, Doctor! That's what you ought to have, same as me. But you're right, they do tend to lay away."

However the doctor was no longer listening. He had turned in his seat and was now pointing along the table at the High Steward himself. The High Steward, bashful in his seat of honour, was giving nervous little tugs at the gold chain of office hung round his neck. "Penalty Five Pounds for Improper Use, Tom!" the doctor cried suddenly. "And I doubt the banquet will stop for you, at that!"

This time the bishop's lip did twitch.

"Shut up, Doc," muttered the High Steward, amiably but just a little nettled: "You're bottled." Then he turned round to look at the old man with a wonder not quite free of envy: "Why -- and we haven't even drunk 'The King' yet!"

That was true. The bishop began counting the twenty or more toasts in the toast-list in front of him -- a toast and a song alternately: with such a start, could Dr. Brinley possibly last the course? 'The King'... 'The Immortal Memory of the Founder'... 'The Fallen in the Great War'... Dr. Brinley was down to sing 'Clementine' immediately after 'The Fallen', he saw. And then he noticed further down it was Dr. Brinley who was to propose 'The Lord Bishop'! In his missionary days in Africa he had attended some curious gatherings, but this bid fair... indeed he began to wonder if it had been prudent to accept.

"Glad you came," said the old man suddenly -- apropos of nothing, as if reading his thoughts -- and patted him on the shoulder: "Good lad!... Good Lord" he corrected himself under his breath, and chuckled.

Meanwhile, the banquet continued. The banqueters ate fast and in almost total silence: only Dr. Brinley's sallies kept ringing out in quick succession. "A kind of licensed jester, I suppose," the bishop ruminated. "But really! At his age!"

"My Lord," said Dr. Brinley, breathing whiskey and bad teeth in his face again: "I wonder would you help an old man in his difficulties, eh?" He pushed his face even closer, and waited for an answer, open-mouthed.

"If I can..."

"Then tell me something very naughty you did as a little nipper."

The bishop's indrawn breath was almost a gasp -- for memory had taken him quite unawares. 'A blow below the apron,' the doctor thought, reading his gasp, and chuckled: "No, laddie -- not that one," he said aloud: "Nothing really shaming... just something for a good laugh when I come to speak to your health."

"You must give me time to think," the bishop said evenly. That sudden ancient recollection of real wrongdoing unexpiated had shaken him, and he was too sincere a man to force a smile about it. --But was 'a good laugh' quite...?

"They'll like you all the better for it," the old man cajoled, as if yet again reading his thoughts." (31-33)


Something cute:
"Polly greeted Mr. Wantage warmly but politely (he was Mr. Wantage to her, by her mother's fiat). Once inside the door she sat herself expectantly on the end of a certain long Bokhara rug: for as usual on first getting home she wanted to set out at once for the North Pole drawn on her sledge by a yelping team of Mr. Wantage across the frozen wastes of ballroom parquet." (53)

Something to remember:
"There had never been so much death in any earlier war: nothing comparable.

In the one battle of Passchendaele alone the British alone lost nearly half a million men. But mostly it was war hardly separable into battles -- a killing going on all the time: without apparent military object, although in fact a deliberate military policy called 'attrition'. For while so many men on both sides were still alive between the Alps and the Narrow Seas the generals on both sides had no room for manoeuvre; and in manoeuvre alone (they both thought) lay any hope of a decision.

But so prolific had civilised western man become it proved no easy task, this killing enough in the enemy ranks and your own to make room to move. Even after some four years, when some fourteen million men all told had been killed or maimed or broken in nerve, it had scarcely been achieved. Always there seemed to be new boys in every country growing to manhood to fill the gaps; whereon the gaps had to be made all over again.

Boys of Augustine's age had been children when the war began and as children do they accepted the world into which they had been born, knowing no other: it was normal because it was normal. After a while they could hardly remember back before it began; and it hardly entered their comprehension that one day the war could end.

Merely they knew they were unlikely to live much beyond the age of nineteen; and they accepted this as the natural order of things, just as mankind in general accepts the unlikelihood of living much beyond eighty or so. It was one of those natural differences between boys and girls: girls such as Mary would live out their lives, but not their brothers. So, generation after generation of boys grew big, won their colours, and a few terms later were... mere names, read aloud in chapel once. As list succeeded list the time of other littler boys for the slaughterhouse was drawing nearer; but they scarcely gave it a thought as they in turn grew into big boys, won their football colours.

After all, it is only grown men ever who think of school as a microcosm, a preparation for adult life: to most boys at any time school is life, is itself the cosmos: a rope in the air you will climb, higher and higher, and -- then, quite vanish into somewhere incomprehensible anyhow. Thus in general they seemed quite indifferent. Yet sometimes the death of someone very close -- a brother, or a father perhaps -- would bring home to them momentarily that being killed is radically different from that mere normal disappearing into the grown-up shadow-world: is being no more even a shadow on the earth." (109-110)

(Harper and Brothers, 1961)