Temporary Kings

by Anthony Powell

  Stevens was certainly taken aback, but the spell, as it turned out, was short lasting. Briefly quelled, Pamela recovered herself.

  ‘Then you know?’

  ‘Time yet remains to evade the ghastly cataract.’

  ‘But you know?’

  ‘Knowledge is the treasure of our unsealed fountains.’

  Pamela gave what Stevens, in his flamboyant manner, called a ‘terrible laugh’. Moreland admitted he, too, had found that laugh uncomfortable.

  ‘Then I’ll unseal them – and him.’

  Mrs Erdleigh made some sort of motion with her hand, one of her mystic passes, conceivably no more than an emotional gesture, at which Pamela drew herself away, Moreland said, ‘like a serpent’. Mrs Erdleigh issued her final warning.

  ‘Court at your peril those spirits that dabble lasciviously with primeval matter, horrid substances, sperm of the world, producing monsters and fantastic things, as it is written, so that the toad, this leprous earth, eats up the eagle.’

  Then Pamela began to scream with laughter again, shriller even than before.

  ‘You know, you know, you know. You’re a wonderful old girl. You don’t have to be told Léon-Joseph croaked in bed with me. You know already. You know it’s true, what nobody else quite believes.’

  To what extent that plain statement was at once comprehended by those standing round remains uncertain. Probably the words did not wholly sink in until later. At moment of utterance they could have sounded all part of this extraordinary interchange, at once metaphorical and coarsely earthy. Some doubt existed, it was agreed, as to the exact phrases Pamela used. Whatever they were, positiveness of assertion was in no way diminished. She turned to Widmerpool again.

  ‘You tell them about it. After all, you were there.’

  She pointed at him, now speaking to the others.

  ‘He thought I didn’t spot he was watching through the curtain.’

  Up to this stage of things, it appears, no one except Mrs Erdleigh had attempted to tackle Pamela. Mrs Erdleigh, so far as it went, having done that with success, spoken her warning, withdrew into the shadows. Widmerpool had remained all the time silent. Even now he did not at once answer this imputation on himself. He heard it to the end without speaking. Glober, uncharacteristically at a loss for the inspired wisecrack to ease the situation, was equally mute. After that, from the moment Pamela voiced these revelations, there is difficulty in pinpointing order of events, reliable continuity almost impossible to establish. Accounts given by Moreland and Stevens were at odds with each other. What appears to have taken place is that Pamela, dissatisfied at her words being received with comparative calm, at best so stunning that her bearers lacked reaction, chose another line of attack. It is no less possible she was building up, in any case, to that. Stevens, more at home this time with plain statements, rather than Mrs Erdleigh’s oracular sayings, gave a convincing imitation of Pamela’s hissing denunciation.

  ‘You might think that enough. Watching your wife being screwed. Naturally it wasn’t the first time. It was just the first time with a blubber-lipped Frenchman, who couldn’t do it, then popped off. Of course he had arranged it all with Léon-Joseph beforehand – except the popping off – and in some -ways it made things easier to have two of us to explain to the hotel people that Monsieur Ferrand-Sénéschal had just passed away while we were visiting him. Then there’s a tart called Pauline he has games with. He used to photograph her. I found the photographs. He didn’t guess I’d meet Pauline too.’

  Even then Widmerpool seems to have made no active protest. What really upset him was Pamela’s next item.

  ‘He’s been telling everybody that he hasn’t the slightest idea why they thought he was spying. I can explain that too, all his little under-the-counter Communist games. How he’s got out of his trouble, in spite of their holding an interesting little note in his own handwriting. He’s given the show away as often, and as far, as he dares. Unfortunately, he gave it away to his old pals, the Stalinists. The lot who are in now want to discredit some of those old pals. That’s where Léon-Joseph comes in again. Poor old Ferrand-Sénéschal was playing just the same sort of game – as well as an occasional orgy, when he felt up to it. So what he did was to hand over all the information he possessed about Ferrand-Sénéschal, some of that quite spicy. That’s why he was let off this time with a caution.’

  Stevens, his mind, as I have said, adjusted to secret traffickings, his nature to physical violence, reported Pamela’s words as cut short at Widmerpool seizing her by the throat. Moreland disagreed that anything so forcible had happened, at least immediately. Moreland thought Widmerpool had simply caught her arm, possibly struck her on the arm, attempting to silence his wife. The scene partook, in far more savage temper, of that enacted at the Huntercombes’ ball, when, after Barbara Goring had cut his dance, Widmerpool grasped her wrist. The upshot then had been Barbara pouring sugar over his head. Widmerpool’s onslaught this time might be additionally menacing, stakes of the game, so to speak, immensely higher; the physical protest was the same, final exasperation of nerves kept by a woman too long on edge. Another analogy with this earlier grapple was Pamela, no more daunted at the assault than Barbara by her clutched wrist, dragged herself away, screaming with laughter. The scene was not without its horrifying, morally upsetting, side. Moreland emphasized that; Stevens, too, in his own terms.

  ‘In fact, I thought I was going to be sick,’ Moreland said. ‘Nausea might have been caused by my recent crise. If I had vomited, that would scarcely have added at all to other gruesome aspects.’

  In emerging from this hand-to-hand affray with Pamela, possibly beaten off by her own counter-attack, Widmerpool seems to have stepped back without warning, retreating heavily on to Glober, who may himself have moved forward with an idea of separating husband and wife. Stevens thought Stripling had made some ponderous, ineffectual attempt to intervene. That is to some extent controverted by subsequent evidence. The view of Stevens was that Stripling had tried to catch Widmerpool round the waist, with the idea of restraining him, an act misattributed by Widmerpool to Glober. Both Moreland and Stevens agreed that, in the early stages of the Widmerpools’ clinch, Glober took no special initiative. Perhaps, for once, he felt a certain diffidence, owing to the intricacies of his own position. Possibly, too, he was not unwilling to watch them fight it out on their own. There is some corroboration of Stripling playing a comparatively active part at this stage, but things moving so quickly, it was hard to know what he did, how long remained present.

  What does seem fairly certain is that Widmerpool, stepping backwards, immediately supposed himself to have been in some manner curbed or coerced. Simultaneously, Mrs Erdleigh, foreseeing trouble when Stripling laid a hand on Widmerpool, may at once have spirited Stripling away by more or less occult means. That would to some extent explain why Widmerpool, finding Glober, rather than Stripling, made an angry, presumably derogatory comment. It is possible, of course, Glober had indeed taken hold of him. They faced one another. That was when Glober hit Widmerpool.

  ‘It’s never a KO on these occasions,’ said Stevens. ‘I’ve seen it happen before, though not with men of quite that age. Widmerpool just staggered a bit, and put his hand up to his face. No question of dropping like a sack of potatoes, being out for the count, floored by a straight left, or right hook. That only happens professionally, or in the movies. The chief damage was his spectacles. They were knocked off his nose, and broke, so the midnight match had to be called off.’

  No one watching denied the light had been too bad for the fracas to be critically assessed blow by blow. For this latter stage of the story, Stevens was probably the better equipped reporter. Moreland, his own nervous tensions by this time strongly reacting, not to mention the recent collapse he had suffered, was by now partly repelled by what was happening, partly lost in a fantastic world of his own, in which he seemed to be dreaming, rather than observing. He admitted that. Stevens, more down to earth in affecting to r
egret unachieved refinements of the boxing-ring, seems also to have been a little shocked, a condition vacillatingly induced, in this case, by the age of the antagonists. It is impossible to say how matters would have developed had not interruption taken place from outside. A large car drove jerkily down the terrace, the chauffeur slowing up from time to time, while he looked out of its window to ascertain the number of each house as he passed. He drew up just beside the spot where everyone was standing.

  ‘None of you gentlemen Sir Leonard Short by any chance?’

  Short stepped forward. Until then he had been inactive. He may have withdrawn completely, while the imbroglio was at its worst. Now he entered the limelight.

  ‘Yes. I am Sir Leonard Short. I should like some explanation. I cannot in the least understand why this car should be so late.’

  ‘I am a trifle after time, sir. Sorry about that. Went to the wrong address. There’s a Terrace, and a Place, and a Gate. Very confusing.’

  ‘This unpunctuality is not at all satisfactory. I shall take the matter up.’

  Short opened the door of the car with a consciously angry jerk. He brusquely indicated to Widmerpool that he was to get in, do that quickly. Short was in command. Stevens said one saw what he could be like in the Ministry. Widmerpool, who had already picked up the remains of his spectacles from the pavement, obeyed. Short followed, slamming the door. The car drove slowly down the terrace. Moreland said it was a good, an effective exit.

  ‘When I looked round, the three of us – Audrey, Odo, myself – were alone. It was like a fairy story. The Sorceress was gone, taking off, no doubt, on her broomstick, the tall elderly vintage-car-bore riding pillion. Lady Widmerpool was gone too. That was the most mysterious. I have the impression she made some parting shot to the effect that none of us would see her again. The American tycoon and Polly Duport were almost out of sight, heading for the far end of the terrace. I don’t exactly know how any of them faded away. I was feeling I might pass out again by then. Much relieved when Odo drove us home.’

  6

  Gwinnett wrote me a longish letter about a year later. By then he was living in the south of Spain. He referred only indirectly to the embarrassments (‘to use no harsher term’) suffered during the latter period of his London visit. He said he wrote chiefly to confirm details I had given him in Venice concerning Trapnel’s habits, dress, turns of phrase. The notes he had then made seemed to conflict, in certain minor respects, with other sources of research. Apart from checking this Trapnel information, he just touched on the comparatively smooth manner in which dealings with the police, other persons more or less officially concerned, had passed off, including journalists. The briefness, relatively unsensational nature of the inevitable publicity, had impressed him too.

  Pamela’s name did not occur in the letter. At the same time, Gwinnett’s emphasis on Trapnel, in what he wrote, may have been a formality, something to supply basis for communication, felt to be needed, of necessity delicate to express. The Trapnel enquiries were plainly not urgent. In their connexion, Gwinnett spoke of returning to his critical biography only after sufficient time had elapsed to ensure the dissertation’s approach remained objective, ran no risk of being too much coloured by events that concerned himself, rather than his subject. Characteristically, he added that he still believed in ‘aiming at objectivity, however much that method may be currently under fire’. As well as reducing immediate attention to the Trapnel book – though not his own fundamental interest in Trapnel himself – Gwinnett had abandoned academic life as a formal profession for the time being. He might return to the campus one of these days, he said, at the moment he only wanted to ruminate on that possibility. His new job, also teaching, was of quite a different order. He had become instructor of water-skiing at one of the Mediterranean seaside resorts of the Spanish coast. He said he liked the work pretty well.

  Gwinnett also touched on Glober’s death. The accident (on the Moyenne Corniche) had been one of those reflecting no marked blame on anyone, except that the car had been travelling at an unusually high speed. A friend of Glober’s, a well-known French racing-driver, had been at the wheel. The story received very thorough press coverage. It was the sort of end Glober himself would have approved. Although the last time I saw him – of which I will speak later – he was with Polly Duport, Match Me Such Marvel was soon after abandoned as a project. No one seemed to know how far things had gone between them in personal relationship. The general view was that her profession, rather than love affairs, came first in her life. She may have been well out of the Glober assignment, because, about a month before Glober died, she acquired a good part (not the lead, one in some ways preferable to that) in a big ‘international’ film made by Clarini, Baby Wentworth’s estranged husband.

  I had the impression that Gwinnett and Glober had never much cared for one another. Beyond appreciating the obvious fact of their differing circumstances, I had no well defined comprehension of how they would have mutually reacted in their own country. In his letter, Gwinnett – like Gwinnett in the flesh – remained enigmatic, but he did comment on the way Death (he gave the capital letter) had been in evidence all round. There was nothing in the least obsessive in the manner he treated the subject. He did not, of course, disclose whether he had ‘known’ Pamela’s condition before she came to the hotel. How could he disclose that?

  The fact is, Gwinnett must have known. Otherwise there would have been no point in Pamela making the sacrifice of herself. Her act could only be looked upon as a sacrifice – of herself, to herself. So far as sacrifice went, Gwinnett could accept Pamela’s, as much as Iphigenia’s. The sole matter for doubt, in the light of inhibitions existing, not on one side only, was whether, at such a cost, all had been achieved. One hoped so. I wrote a letter back to Gwinnett. I told him how I had seen Glober, without having opportunity to speak with him, in the autumn of the previous year. I did not mention I had seen Widmerpool too on that occasion. It seemed better not. I always liked Gwinnett. I liked Glober too.

  During the months that remained to Moreland, after the Seraglio party, we often used to talk about the story of Candaules and Gyges. He had never heard of the Jacky Bragadin Tiepolo. The hospital was on the south bank of the River.

  ‘One might really have considered the legend as a theme for opera,’ Moreland said. ‘I mean, if other things had been equal.’

  He lay in bed with an enormous pile of books beside him, books all over the bed too. He would quote from these from time to time. He was very taken with the idea of the comparison Pamela herself had made.

  ‘Candaules can obviously be better paralleled than Gyges. Most men have a bit of Candaules in them. Your friend Widmerpool seems to have quite a lot, if he really liked exhibiting his wife. She was the Queen all right, if she’s to be believed as being put on show. Also, in knowing that, herself intending to kill the King. Not necessarily physical killing, but revenge. Who was Gyges?’

  ‘Hardly Ferrand-Sénéschal. In any case, through no fault of his own, he failed in that role. Others seemed to have enjoyed his Gyges-like privileges without dethroning the King. Candaules-Widmerpool continues to reign.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t really work,’ said Moreland. ‘All the same, it’s a splendid fable of Love and Friendship – what you’re liable to get from both – but the bearings are more general than particular, in spite of certain striking resemblances in this case. You really think she took the overdose, told him, then …’

  ‘What else could have happened?’

  ‘Literally dying for love.’

  ‘Death happened to be the price. The sole price.’

  ‘All other people’s sexual relations are hard to imagine. The more staid the people, the more inconceivable their sexual relations. For some, the orgy is the most natural. On that night after the Seraglio, I was very struck by the goings-on with which Lady Widmerpool taxed her husband. I’ve next to no voyeurist tastes myself. I lack the love of power that makes the true voyeur. When I wa
s in Marseilles, years ago, working on Vieux Port, there was a brothel, where, allegedly unknown to the occupants, you could look through to a room used by other clients. I never felt the smallest urge to buy a ticket. It was Donners’s thing, you know.’

  Moreland reflected a moment on what he had said. While still married to Matilda, he had, rather naturally, always avoided reference to that side of Sir Magnus’s life. This was the first time, to my own knowledge, he had ever brought up the subject.

  ‘Did I ever tell you how the Great Industrialist once confided to me that, when a young man – already doing pretty well financially – the doctors told him he had only a year to live? Of course that now seems the hell of a long time, in the light of one’s own medical adviser’s admonitions – not that I’m greatly concerned about keeping the old hulk afloat for another voyage or two, in the increasingly stormy seas of contemporary life, especially by drastic cutting down of the rum ration, and confining oneself to ship’s biscuit, the regime recommended. That’s by the way. The point is, I now find myself in a stronger position than in those days for vividly imagining what it felt like to be the man in the van Gogh pictures, so to speak Donners-on-the-brink-of-Eternity. Do you know what action Donners took? I’ll tell you in his own words.’

  Moreland adopted the flat lugubrious voice, conventionally used by those who knew Sir Magnus, to imitate – never very effectively, because inimitable – his manner of talking.

  ‘I rented a little cottage in The Weald, gem of a place that brought a lump to the throat by its charm. There I settled down to read the best – only the best – of all literatures, English, French, German, Italian, Scandinavian.’

  Moreland paused.

  ‘I don’t know why Spanish was left out. Perhaps it was included, and I’ve forgotten. Between these injections of the best literature, Donners listened to recordings of the best – only the best – music.’

  ‘Interrupted by meals composed of the best food and the best wine?’