Temporary Kings

by Anthony Powell

  ‘Donners, as you must remember to your cost, like most power maniacs, was not at all interested in food and drink. Although far more in his line, I presume the best sexual sensations were also omitted. That would be not so much because their physical expression might hasten ringing down the curtain, as on account of the apodictic intention. Is “apodictic” the right word? I once used it with effect in an article attacking Honegger. The villeggiatura was very specifically designed to rise above coarser manifestations of the senses.’

  ‘In the end did all this culture bring about a cure?’

  ‘It wasn’t the culture. The medicos made a mistake. They’d got the slides mixed, or the doctrine changed as to whatever Donners was suffering from being fatal. Something of the sort. Anyway they guessed wrong. Everything with Donners was right as rain. After spending a month or two at his dream cottage, he went back to making money, governing the country, achieving all-time records in utterance of conversational clichés, diverting himself in his own odd ways, all the many activities for which we used to know and love him. That went on until he was gathered in at whatever ripe old age he reached – not far short of eighty, so far as I remember.’

  ‘Also, if one may say so, without showing much outward sign of having concentrated on the best literature of half-a-dozen nations.’

  ‘Not the smallest. I was thinking that the other day while reading a translation of I Promessi Sposi. It sounds as if I were modelling myself on Donners, but I’ve got a lot of detective stories too. There was a special reason why I Promessi Sposi made me think of Donners, wonder whether it figured on his list, when he put on that final spurt to become cultured before rigor mortis set in. Like so many romantic novels, the story turns to some extent on the Villain upsetting the Hero by abducting the Heroine, unwilling victim threatened by the former’s lust. That particular theme always misses the main point in the tribulations of Heroes in real life, where the trouble is that the Heroine, once abducted, is likely to be only too anxious to suffer a fate worse than death.’

  ‘You mean Sir Magnus and his girls?’

  For the moment I had not thought of Matilda.

  ‘I meant when he abducted Matty, and married her. Not exactly a precise parallel with Manzoni, I admit, but you’ll see what I mean.’

  I did not know what to answer. This was the first time Moreland had ever spoken in such terms of Matilda leaving him for Sir Magnus Donners. He sighed, then laughed.

  ‘I suppose she liked being married to him. She remained in that state without apparent stress. She knew him, of course, from their first round together. In his odd way, he must have been attached to her too. All the same, I believe her when she said – consistently said – that she herself always refused to play his games, the way some – presumably most – of his girls did. I mean his taste, like your friend Lord Widmerpool’s, for watching other people make love.’

  ‘He was a friend of Donners too, but I don’t think Widmerpool got the habit there. What you say was certainly one of the things alleged. So it was true?’

  ‘Let’s approach the matter in the narrative technique of The Arabian Nights – the world where Donners really belonged – with a story. In fact, two stories. You must be familiar with both, favourite tales of my youth. To tell the truth, I’ve heard neither of them since the war. I’ve no doubt they survive in renovated shape.’

  Moreland sighed again.

  ‘The first yarn is of a man making his way home late one night in London. He finds two ladies whose car has broken down. It is in the small hours, not a soul abroad. The earliest version ever told me represented the two ladies – one young and beautiful, the other older, but very distinguished – as having failed to crank their car with the starting-handle. Thought of this vintage jewel would make the mouths water of those vintage-hounds at the Seraglio, and shows the antiquity of the legend. No doubt the help required was later adapted to more up-to-date mechanics. In yet earlier days, the horses of their phaeton were probably restive, or the carriage immobilized for some other contemporary reason. Anyway, the man gets the engine humming. The ladies are grateful, so much so, they ask him back to their home for a drink. He accepts. After placing the glass to his lips, he remembers no more. He is found the following day, unconscious, in the gutter of some alley in a deserted neighbourhood. He has been castrated.’

  ‘A favourite anecdote of my father’s.’

  ‘Of all that generation. The other story concerns a man – I like to think the same man, before he was so cruelly incapacitated – who is accosted by a beautiful girl, again late at night, no one about. He thinks her a tart, though her manner does not suggest that. She says she wants not money, but love. At first he declines, but is at last persuaded by assurances that something about him attracted her. They adjourn to her flat, conveniently near. The girl leads the way up some stairs into a room, unexpectedly large, hung with dark curtains up to the ceiling. Set in the middle of the floor is a divan or bed. On it, in one form or another, perhaps several, they execute together the sexual act When all is ended, the man, still incredulous, makes attempt to offer payment. The girl again refuses, saying the pleasure was its own reward. The man is so bewildered that, when he leaves, he forgets something – umbrella, hat, overcoat. Whatever it is, he remembers at the foot of the stairs. He remounts them. The door of the curtained room is shut-locked. Within, he can hear the babble of voices. A crowd of people must have emerged from behind the curtains. His sexual activities – possibly deviations – have been object of gratification for a concealed clientele.’

  ‘I’ve heard that one too.’

  ‘We all have. It’s gone the round for years. Just within the bounds of possibility, do you think?’

  ‘Why was the situation complicated by refusal of payment?’

  ‘To make sure he agreed. The appeal to male vanity may have added to the audience’s fun. If he swallowed the declaration that she thought him so attractive, the display would not be over too quickly. Do you suppose Sir Magnus was behind the curtain?’

  ‘He may have watched the castration too.’

  ‘Some of his ladies would have been well qualified as surgeons,’ said Moreland.

  He lay back in the bed. I suppose he meant Matilda. Then he took a book from the stack of works of every sort piled up on the table beside him.

  ‘I always enjoy this title – Cambises, King of Percia: a Lamentable Tragedy mixed full of Pleasant Mirth.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Not particularly exciting, but does summarize life.’

  One day in November, having a lot of things to do in London, before returning to the country that afternoon, I went to see Moreland earlier than usual. It was bleak, rainy weather. When I crossed the River, by Westminster Bridge, two vintage cars were approaching the Houses of Parliament. Another passed before I reached the hospital. Some sort of rally was in progress, for others appeared. I watched them go over the bridge, then went on. Moreland had no one with him. Audrey Maclintick would turn up later in the morning, possibly someone else drop in. Usually these friends were musical acquaintances, unknown to myself. I reported that droves of vintage cars were traversing the Thames in convoy. Moreland reached out for one of the books again.

  ‘I’ve been researching the subject, since quoting to you the Khayyam reference. Keats was an addict too. I found this yesterday.

  Like to a moving vintage down they came,

  Crowned with green leaves, and faces all on flame …

  Within his car, aloft, young Bacchus stood …

  What could be more specific than that? Interesting that you stood upright to drive those early models. One presumes the vintage, where the Grapes of Wrath were stored, was a tradesman’s van of Edwardian date or earlier.’

  He threw the book down, and chose another. He was full of nervous energy. The impression one derived of his state was not a good one.

  ‘I’ve been haunted by the story of Lady Widmerpool. Have you ever read The Dutch Courteza
n? Listen to her song – forgive me quoting so much verse. Things one reads become obsessional, while one lies here.

  The darke is my delight,

  So ’tis the nightingale’s.

  My musicke’s in the night,

  So is the nightingale’s.

  My body is but little,

  So is the nightingale’s.

  I love to sleep next prickle

  So doth the nightingale.

  It makes her sound nice, but she wasn’t really a very nice girl.’

  ‘The Dutch Courtezan, or Pamela Widmerpool?’

  ‘I meant the former. Lady Widmerpool had her failings too, if that evening was anything to go by. Still, it’s impressive what she did. How some men get girls hotted up. No, what I was going to say about the Dutch Courtezan was – if there’d been time to spare – I might have toyed with doing a setting for her song, whatever she was like. One could have brought it into the opera about Candaules and Gyges perhaps. That would have made Gossage sit up.’

  He sighed, more exhaustedly than regretfully, I thought. That morning was the last time I saw Moreland. It was also the last time I had, with anyone, the sort of talk we used to have together. Things drawing to a close, even quite suddenly, was hardly a surprise. The look Moreland had was the one people take on when a stage has been reached quite different from just being ill.

  ‘I’ll have to think about that song,’ he said.

  Drizzle was coming down fairly hard outside. I walked back over the bridge. Vintage cars still penetrated the traffic moving south. They advanced in small groups, separated from each other by a few minutes. More exaggerated in style, some of the period costumes assumed by drivers and passengers recalled the deerstalker cap, check ulster, General Conyers had worn, when, on the eve of the ‘first’ war, he had mastered the hill leading to Stonehurst, in his fabled motor-car. I wondered if the Conyers car had survived, to become a collector’s piece of incalculable value to people like Jimmy Stripling. Here and there, from open hoodless vehicles, protruded an umbrella, sometimes of burlesque size or colour. I paused to watch them by the statue of Boadicea – Budicca, one would name her, if speaking with Dr Brightman – in the chariot. The chariot horses recalled what a squalid part the philosopher, Seneca, with his shady horse-dealing, had played in that affair. Below was inscribed the pay-off for the Romans.

  Regions Caesar never knew

  Thy posterity shall sway.

  Whatever else might be thought of that observation, the Queen was obviously driving the ultimate in British vintage makes. A liability suddenly presented itself, bringing such musings sharply to a close, demanding rapid decisions. Widmerpool, approaching from right angles, was walking along the Embankment in the direction of Parliament. It might have been possible to avoid him by crossing quickly in front, because, as usual when alone, his mind seemed bent on a problem. At that moment something happened to cause the attention of both of us to be concentrated all at once in the same direction. This was the loud, prolonged hooting of one of the vintage cars, which, having crossed Parliament Square, was approaching Westminster Bridge.

  Widmerpool stopped dead. He stared for a second with irritated contempt. Then his face took on a look of enraged surprise. The very sight of the vintage cars appeared to stir in him feelings of the deepest disgust, uncontrollable resentment. That would not be altogether out of character. His deep absorption in whatever he was regarding gave opportunity to avoid him. Instead, I myself tried to trace the screeching noises to their source. They were issuing from the horn, whimsically shaped like a dragon’s head, of a vintage car driven by a man wearing neo-Edwardian outfit, beside whom sat a young woman in normal dress for an outing. The reason for Widmerpool’s outraged expression became clear, even then not immediately. I am not sure I should have recognized Glober, in his near-fancy-dress, had not Polly Duport been there too. My first thought, complacently self-regarding, had been to suppose they had seen me, hooted, if not in a mere friendly gesture, at least to signalize Glober’s own glorious vintage progress. A similar explanation of why the horn had sounded offered itself to Widmerpool. He, too, thought they had hooted at him. He took for granted that Glober was hooting in derision.

  The doubtful taste of such an act – given all the circumstances – had time to strike me, slightly appal me, before I became aware that the imputation was altogether unjust. Glober had noticed neither Widmerpool, nor myself. The crescendo of resonances on the dragon-horn had been prompted by Odo Stevens, with Jimmy Stripling, at that moment passing Glober’s Boadicean machine, in one of similar date, though without a hood. Stevens, clad even more exotically than Glober, was driving; Stripling, wearing a simple cap and mackintosh, holding a large green umbrella over their heads. Widmerpool turned away from contemplation of the scene. He was red with anger. There could be no doubt he supposed himself the object of ridicule. All this had taken a moment or two to absorb. Escape was now out of the question. We were only a few yards apart. He could not fail to see me. I spoke first, as the best form of defence.

  ‘I’m glad I’m not driving a long distance on a day like this in a car liable to break down.’

  That was not a particularly interesting nor profound observation. Nothing better came to mind to bridge the moments before mutation of the traffic lights allowed evasion by crossing the road. Widmerpool accepted this opening by giving an equally flat reply.

  ‘I’m on my way to the House of Lords.’

  The statement carried conviction. The block of flats in which he lived was only a few minutes walk from where we stood. Riverside approach to Parliament would be preferable to the Whitehall route. He showed outward mark of the stresses endured. His body was thinner, the flesh of his face hanging in sallow pouches. So deeply, so all envelopingly, was he dressed in black, that he looked almost ecclesiastical.

  ‘After what I’ve been through, I think it my duty to show I can rise above personal attack – and, I might add, personal misfortune.’

  I made some acknowledgment, one not conspicuously glowing, of these sentiments. Short of turning on one’s heel, which would have been overdramatic, it was still impossible to get away. Widmerpool, for his part, appeared quite pleased at this opportunity for uttering a short address on his own situation, possibly some sort of informal rehearsal of material later to be used in a speech.

  ‘I do not propose for one moment to abandon the cause of genuine internationalism. It has been said that a presumption of innocence is a peculiarity of bourgeois liberal law. My own experience of bourgeois liberal law is the reverse. From the first, in my own case, there was a presumption of culpability. Fortunately, I was in a position to rebut my accusers. In the Upper House, wherever else I am called upon to serve the purposes of political truth, I shall continue to assail the limitations of contemporary empiricism, and expose the bankruptcy of cold-war propagandists.’

  He sounded more than a little unhinged. Widmerpool had not finished. Without altering his tone, he changed the subject.

  ‘The squalor – the squalor of that hotel.’

  Traffic, beginning to slow up at the amber, came at last to a halt at red. Grinding noises provided exemption from need to produce an audible reply. Widmerpool showed no sign of expecting anything of the sort.

  ‘The sheer ingratitude,’ he said.

  ‘I must be getting on. There’s a lot to do. I want to get home before dark.’

  He was never greatly interested in other people’s doings. I added some platitude about the evenings drawing in. Widmerpool did not question the notation of the days. He turned to wait for the other lights to change, enabling him to proceed towards his destination. I crossed Whitehall swiftly. Another burst of vintage cars was advancing towards the bridge.

 

 

 
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