Temporary Kings

by Anthony Powell

  ‘Am I right in thinking “kara” has some implication of blackness? The former Serbian royal house, Karageorgevitch, was not that founded by Black George? But ‘‘mazov “? How would that be translated into English?’

  My Russian neighbour laughed. He seemed very willing that a Dostoevskian commentary should move into etymological channels, away from potentially political ones. The idea of giving The Brothers an English surname pleased him.

  ‘I shall consult a colleague.’

  He spoke quickly in his own language across the table. There was a short discussion. He returned to me.

  ‘He says “kara” means “black” in Turkish. There is a Russian adjective “chernomazy” – do you say “swarthy”? Then “maz”, it is “grease”, the verb, to smear or to oil. Would that be “varnish” in English?’

  Dr Brightman, sitting next to the informant on the other side of the table, was not to be left out of a discussion of this nature. She showed interest at once.

  ‘The Brothers Blackvarnish? No, that would hardly do, I think. We must find something better than that.’

  She shook her head, giving the matter her full attention.

  ‘How would The Blacklacquer Brothers be?’

  We discussed the question. While we did so, I reflected how this was all based on Trapnel’s meditation on the meaning of the name, his argument with Bagshaw in that dreary pub came back, Trapnel’s contention that there was no such thing as Naturalism in novel writing, one of his favourite themes.

  ‘Reading novels needs almost as much talent as writing them,’ he used to say.

  The occasion had been just before Bagshaw and I had taken him home, on the way found that Pamela had thrown his manuscript into the Regent Canal. Trapnel had said something else that evening too. Now the words came back, in the way spoken words do, with quite a new meaning.

  ‘Call Hemingway’s impotent good guy naturalistic? Think of what Dostoevsky would have made of him? After all, Dostoevsky did deal with an impotent good guy in love with a bitch.’

  Was that the answer? Was he a good guy? Was he in love? Was the condition only released by Death? The train of thought was interrupted by Dr Brightman offering a new suggestion.

  ‘Simply making use of the connexion with linseed oil – The Linseed Brothers?’

  ‘That omits the element of blackness, of darkness, which obviously broods over the story, and must be conveyed by the name.’

  When it was time to thank for the party, leave, Truscott, who was by then talking with the Ambassador, gave a smile that indicated he had hopes of the very worst for Widmerpool. Coming down the steps of the Embassy, I found myself with the Quiggins. We walked along Kensington Palace Gardens together, moving south towards the High Street. I asked Ada if any progress had been made in deciding what was to be Glober’s last great film.

  ‘Do you mean to say you don’t know? Louis is coming over next month. Everything is arranged.’

  ‘What’s it to be?’

  ‘Match Me Such Marvel, of course. I’m sure it’s going to make a box-office record. I can’t wait.’

  ‘So Trapnel’s off?’

  Ada showed more pity than astonishment.

  ‘Trapnel?’

  ‘Glober was going to do a Trapnel film when we were in Venice. Probably a kind of life of Trapnel, with Pamela Widmerpool in the lead. You’d only just begun to make St John Clarke propaganda with him.’

  ‘He saw at once the St John Clarke novel was a much better idea.’

  ‘Is Pamela equally happy?’

  Quiggin cut in.

  ‘I’m bored to death with this film of Glober’s. I don’t believe we’re really going to make any money out of it, even if he does it. You never know with these people. Set against Ada’s time writing her own novels, or working in the firm, I’ve always doubted whether it’s worth while.’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ said Ada.

  She turned to me again.

  ‘Do you really not know about Louis deciding on another girl for his leading lady, as well as ditching the Trapnel idea? That was all settled months ago.’

  ‘Glober found Pamela too much in the end?’

  ‘He fell for someone else.’

  Quiggin continued to show irritation about the film.

  ‘Do let’s discuss another subject. The food at lunch wasn’t too bad. I’m never sure Caucasian wine suits me. I thought he seemed rather a sulky little man, when I had a word with him through the interpreter.

  ‘Who’s Glober fallen for now?’

  ‘Why, Polly Duport, of course. You must live absolutely out of the world not to know that. He saw her in the Hardy film at the Venice Festival. She turned up there herself. It was an instantaneous click.’

  ‘Didn’t that cause trouble?’

  ‘With Pam?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t think Pam really cared by then, even if she cared much before. She was already mad about that other American, what was he called – Russell Gwinnett. She still is. Haven’t you heard about what happened at the Bagshaws’?’

  ‘I know about that, more or less, but not about Polly Duport.’

  ‘You remember how horrid Pam was to me in Venice, considering what friends we’d been. She’s been ringing me up almost daily lately, trying to find out what’s become of Gwinnett. How should I know? I barely met him. The most I did was to ask for us to be allowed to consider his book on X. Trapnel, when it’s finished.’

  This upset Quiggin again.

  ‘A book on X. Trapnel is never going to sell. Why get us involved in it at all. It would only mean more money down the drain.’

  ‘So any question of Pamela marrying Glober is at an end?’

  ‘Why should she marry Glober?’

  ‘You said he wanted to marry her – not just have an affair with her.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sure I didn’t. Anyway, if I did, I shouldn’t have done so. Forget about it. Of course, it’s all off. How could it be anything else? Louis’s terribly sweet and kind, but you never know what he’s going to do next.’

  ‘That’s just what I’ve already stated,’ said Quiggin.

  ‘All film people go on like that. Never mind. I do think he really is keen on Match Me Such Marvel. Of course it’s not going to be called that. We haven’t decided on the best tide yet. Polly is a marvellous girl too. Not only glamorous, but a real professional.’

  ‘What I can’t believe is Pamela making no row.*

  ‘Even Pam realized she’d never get the part once Louis began taking Polly out to dinner.’

  ‘Did Pamela meet Polly Duport?’

  ‘I didn’t think so. The Widmerpools went back to England halfway through the Film Festival. It was Pam’s thing about Gwinnett, as much as anything else, that caused Louis to give her up. It serves Pam right. I believe she really did think she was going to become famous.*

  ‘Why did Glober object so much? Gwinnett was positively running away from the situation, so far as anything Glober might object to. He still is. Even in the early stages, he only wanted Trapnel information.’

  ‘Louis didn’t think so. Anyway there was Pam. Perhaps it was because he was another American.’

  ‘Is Glober going to marry Polly Duport now?’

  ‘Isn’t she married already, to an actor, though they’re living apart? She was on her own when she came to Venice. Perhaps he will.’

  ‘What does Widmerpool think about it all? His feelings don’t seem to have been considered much, whether Pam leaves him or stays. Your idea was that he would be quite glad to get her taken off his hands. Now, if he goes to prison for spying, she’ll be able to visit him in the Scrubs or Dartmoor, wherever he’s sent – give him additional hell.’

  Quiggin was outraged.

  ‘You think that a matter to joke about?’

  ‘Isn’t that what it looks like?’

  ‘That Parliamentary Question was disgraceful. Our own particular form of Mc
Carthyism. All very gentlemanly, of course, none the less smearingly vindictive.’

  ‘You think he’ll emerge without a stain on his character?’

  Quiggin was prepared to be less severe on that point. ‘Haven’t we all sins to forgive? Sins of over-enthusiasm, I mean. Look, Ada, there’s our bus.’

  5

  Each recriminative decade poses new riddles, how best to live, how best to write. One’s fifties, in principle less acceptable than one’s forties, at least confirm most worst suspicions about life, thereby disposing of an appreciable tract of vain expectation, standardized fantasy, obstructive to writing, as to living. The quinquagenarian may not be master of himself, he is, notwithstanding, master of a passable miscellany of experience on which to draw when forming opinions, distorted or the reverse, at least up to a point his own. After passing the half-century, one unavoidable conclusion is that many things seeming incredible on starting out, are, in fact, by no means to be located in an area beyond belief. The ‘Widmerpool case’ fell into that category. It remained enigmatic so far as the public were concerned. People who liked to regard themselves as ‘in the know’ were not much better off, one rumour contradicting another, what exactly Widmerpool had done to put himself in such an awkward spot remaining undefined. One extraneous item came my own way, which, as purely negative evidence, could have been added to material sifted by whatever official body was undertaking an enquiry. It was expressed in the form of a picture postcard of the Doge’s Palace.

  ‘Have to date heard nothing from your friend about blocks. Weather here good. D. McN. T.’

  That, at least, indicated none of the disaster, threatening Widmerpool on account of Dr Belkin’s absence from the Conference, had resulted in Tokenhouse suffering comparable repercussions. I had intended to ask the Quiggins about the blocks for the Cubist series, when walking with them after luncheon at the Soviet Embassy. More personally engrossing matters had intervened. The blocks remained forgotten. I sent Tokenhouse a postcard of Nelson’s Column, saying (in army parlance) the matter would be looked into, a report forwarded.

  In early summer, Isobel and I went by chance to a musical party organized by Rosie and Odo Stevens. It was a charity affair, our inclusion nothing to do with the meeting in Venice. In fact, the people who brought us knew the Stevenses hardly at all. I make this point to emphasize that guests present at this particular entertainment were not handpicked. No doubt everyone who received an invitation, in the first instance, was an acquaintance of some sort. Beyond such intermediaries stretched a relatively anonymous conflux of persons, whose passport to the house lay only in willingness to buy a ticket. Had things been otherwise, the evening might have turned out differently; possibly not certain other events that followed.

  The Stevens house in Regent’s Park, not large by the standards of Rosie’s parents, though done up inside with a touch of the old Manasch resplendence, had room for a marquee to be built out on to a flat roof at the back to create an improvised auditorium, accommodating a respectable number of persons. Rosie had inherited two or three very acceptable pictures, and pieces of furniture, which Hugo Tolland, speaking from an antique dealer’s point of view, regarded with respect. He had sold her two French commodes from his own shop, so they had not been acquired cheaply. Offering this sort of show for a charitable purpose was, on Rosie’s part, a pious memento of the days when Sir Herbert and Lady Manasch, great patrons of the arts, had mounted similar projects. Stevens himself, claiming musical enthusiasms, as well as a strong taste for parties, may on this occasion have been at least as responsible as his wife. The ‘good cause’ was connected with one or more of the emergent African countries; the piece to be performed, Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dent Serail – the ‘Seraglio’. The price of a ticket included supper after the opera had been performed.

  Like the Soviet luncheon party – some of the same guests – there was a distinctly political flavour about the people collected, before the performance, in the Stevens drawing-room, MPs from both sides of the house, some African diplomatic representatives. This time the musical world, Rosie always maintaining links there, took the place of writers. Many of those present were unknown to myself. I recognized a Tory Cabinet Minister, and a female member of the Labour Shadow Cabinet, from pictures in the press. The music critic, Gossage, and Norman Chandler, who directed now, rather than dancing or acting, had come together. Gossage, a trifle more dried up and toothy than formerly, had exchanged his former pince-nez for rimless spectacles. His little moustache had gone white. Chandler, slightly filled out from the skeletal thinness of his younger days, retained a marionette-like appearance, a marionette now of a certain age. Living in one of the Ted Jeavons flats, Chandler had developed into rather a crony of Jeavons. They used to watch television together.

  ‘Don’t think there’s much fear I’ll be suspected,’ Jeavons said. ‘All the same, you never know what people will say behind your back.’

  On arrival, Isobel had paused to talk with Rosie, who had been a former friend of Molly Jeavons. Moving through the crowd, I came on Audrey Maclintick. She announced the unforeseen fact that Moreland had advised on the Seraglio’s production. Quite apart from his poor health, that was unexpected. Moreland had always set his face against charity performances, although there had been occasions in the past when he had been more or less forced to take part in them. Audrey Maclintick agreed their presence was unlooked for. She added that it was not at all the sort of party she was used to. She had said just the same thing when Mrs Foxe had given a party for Moreland’s Symphony, more than twenty years before. She herself was not much altered from then, even to the extent of still wearing a version, modified into a more contemporary style, of the dress which, at Mrs Foxe’s, had caused Stringham to address her as ‘Little Bo-Peep.’

  ‘Hugh’s name isn’t on the programme?’

  ‘He didn’t want it there. The word “Africa” did it. Moreland’s cracked about Africa. Always has been, always will be, I suppose. Goes off on the quiet to the British Museum to gaze on the African idols there. Mrs Stevens only had to say the money was going to Africa for Moreland to knock off all his other work, and set about the Mozart. Doesn’t matter what worry it causes me. Of course, Moreland knew Mrs Stevens in what he loves to call The Old Days, so The Old Days might have been sufficient anyway, without being clinched by Africa. Whatever I said wasn’t going to make any difference.’

  Moreland, it was true, had always responded strongly to things African, rather as fountainhead of fetish and voodoo, than aspects of the African continent likely to be benefited by funds raised that night. The fascination exercised on his imagination by such incantatory cults was not unlike Bagshaw’s unquenched curiosity about the ritual and dogma of Marxism, neither believers, both enthralled. Once Moreland’s attention had been imaginatively aroused, he would find no difficulty in ignoring the fact that witchdoctors, zombies, cults of the dead, might not greatly profit from his help. Moreland himself came up at that moment Audrey Maclintick did not give him time to speak.

  ‘I expect you’ve seen who’s here tonight – Lady Donners. That was bound to happen. Just her sort of party. I don’t expect she wants to see me, any more than I do her. Well, I’ll leave you two together to have a talk about The Old Days, which I’ve no doubt you’ll start off on at once. Don’t let Moreland have another drink before the curtain goes up. It isn’t good for him. He ought to be in bed in any case, not mooning about at a place like this.’

  She made off. So far as Moreland having another drink, she was probably right. He did not look at all well. Once, he would have been put out by such an injunction from wife, mistress, anyone else, made a great fuss about being treated as if not able to look after himself. Now, he was not at all concerned, taking the admonition as a matter of course, almost a demonstration of affection, which no doubt in a sense it was. Audrey Maclintick was said to look after him well, in what were not always easy circumstances. Moreland, too, showed signs of accepting her view tha
t his own presence in the Stevens house required excuse.

  ‘Never again. Not after what I’ve been through with the Seraglio committee ladies. Valmont’s valet remarked the big difference between persuading a woman to sleep with you, which she really wants to do – though personally I’ve often found to the contrary – and inducing her to agree to something that offers no comparable satisfaction. My God, he was right

  Put me

  To yoking foxes, milking of he-goats,

  Gathering all the leaves fall’n this autumn.

  Drawing farts from dead bodies,

  Mustering of ants and numbering of atoms,

  There is no hell to a lady of fashion.

  I don’t mean Rosie. She’s all right. It was the rest of them. They expected me to do just the very things I’ve mentioned – every one of them.’

  ‘You’ve been saying for years you live beyond the pleasure principle. Why boggle at ladies of fashion? Do they still exist?’

  ‘Believe me they do. Matty’s one now. I’ve just been having a word with her. Almost the first since we were husband and wife, beyond saying hullo, when we saw each other at the Ballet or the Opera. She seems to have supported the death of the Great Industrialist remarkably well.’

  Matilda Donners was standing on the far side of the room. I had the impression Moreland had never managed to fall entirely out of love with her.

  ‘I got her to introduce me to Polly Duport, whom she’s talking to now. I’ve always been rather a fan. What I mean about Matty’s social manner is that, having brought Polly Duport and myself together, she then had to suggest that I do the musical settings for some film Polly Duport’s going to play the lead in. It’s made from a St John Clarke novel, if you can imagine anything more grotesque. I remember my aunt thinking me too young to read Fields of Amaranth, but it isn’t that one, and that isn’t my objection. The producer, an American called Glober, was also pressed on me by Matty. He’s that tall, bald, melodramatic character, talking to her now, looking as if he’s going to play Long John Silver in a Christmas production of Treasure Island.’