Temporary Kings (16 page)

‘Are
you hopping over to the Lido for a dip this evening, Louis? A bathe will do you
good. Freshen you up. Then I’m going to visit Mrs Erdleigh, the famous
clairvoyante, who’s in Venice. Why don’t you come there too? She’ll tell your
fortune.’

Glober
shook his head glumly at the thought of looking into the future. He showed no
great keenness to bathe either.

‘I’ll
have to think about the Lido. Get my priorities straight.’

Widmerpool
was becoming impatient again.

‘Your
Dr Brightman is talking for a very long time,’ he said. ‘Who is she?’

‘A
very distinguished scholar.’

‘Oh.’

Jacky
Bragadin was as eager to get away from Dr Brightman as Widmerpool to be put in
contact with her. In Jacky Bragadin’s efforts to escape, the two of them
arrived beside us. Dr Brightman swept everyone in.

‘I’ve
been talking to our host about his Foundation. I thought something might be
done for Russell Gwinnett. Where’s he gone?’

‘It
must be on paper,’ said Jacky Bragadin. ‘Always on paper. The name sent to the
Board. They look into such matters.’

He
sounded desperate. Dr Brightman, pausing to explain that I wrote novels,
ignored his misery. The information made Jacky Bragadin horribly uneasy, but at
least resulted in a let-out from further discussion of his Foundation. I told
Dr Brightman that Widmerpool wanted to meet one of the Executive Committee. At
that she began to question Widmerpool too. Without great originality of subject
matter, I spoke to Jacky Bragadin of the beauty of the ceiling.

‘Nice
colour,’ he said, his heart not in the words.

‘We
were discussing the story —’

Jacky
Bragadin’s despair began rapidly to increase again at that. He laid his hand on
my sleeve beseechingly.

‘You
must see the other rooms … They all must …’

He
peered, without much hope, at Baby, still trying to persuade Glober to bathe.
Widmerpool and Dr Brightman went off together, presumably to try and find a
member of the Executive Committee. Most of the other members of the Conference,
including Ada and Shuckerly, had begun to filter into the next room, a small
backwash of Tiepolo enthusiasts from time to time borne back on an incoming
current to take another look. Among these last was Gwinnett. Pamela was no
longer to be seen. Gwinnett seemed by then rather dazed.

‘How
was it? You seemed to be making good going?’

‘Lady
Widmerpool’s agreed to talk about Trapnel.’

‘She
has?’

‘That’s
as I understand it.’

‘Fine.’

‘If
she sticks to that. She’s said some amazing things already.’

‘You
brought off quite a quick bit of work.’

‘Do
you think so?’

He
appeared uncertain.

‘At
least we’re going to meet again,’ he said.

‘What
could be better than that?’

‘Where
do you think she’s arranged to meet?’

‘I
can’t guess.’

‘Try.’

‘Harry’s
Bar?’

Gwinnett
shook his head.

‘St
Mark’s.’

‘In
the Piazza?’

‘In
the Basilica.’

‘Any
particular place in the church?’

‘She
just said she’d be there at a certain time.’

‘On,
on …’ pleaded Jacky Bragadin. ‘On, on…’

Daniel Tokenhouse rang
up the following morning to acknowledge my notification
of arrival in Venice. I was still in bed when he telephoned, though breakfast
had been ordered. In keeping with an instinctive determination to hold the
moral advantage, he made a point of ascertaining that I was not yet up. On the
line, he sounded in tolerably good form, brisk, peremptory, as always. I had
not expected him to be in the least senile, but the sharpness of his manner may
have been amplified by some apprehension, shared by myself, that changes must
have taken place in both of us during the last twenty years, which could prove
mutually disenchanting.

‘How
are you, Dan?’

‘In
rude health. Working hard, as ever. Been up painting since half-past six this
morning. Hate staying in bed. You’ll find developments in my style. I shall be
interested to hear what you think of them.’

Complete
absorption in himself, and his own doings, always characterized Tokenhouse, a
temperament that had served him pretty well in getting through what must have
been, on the whole, rather a solitary life, especially of late years. He had in
no way relaxed this solipsistic standpoint.

‘When
can your works be seen?’

‘I’ve
been thinking about that. Sunday morning would suit
me best. You will not be in conference then, I trust, with your fellow
intellectuals? I hope they are proving themselves worthy of their proud
designation. Come about twelve o’clock midday – half-past eleven, if you
prefer. That will give us more time. Do not fear. I shall not be attending
matins.’

He
gave his high, unamused laugh.

‘How
do I reach you, Dan?’

‘I
live, I am thankful to say, in a spot quite off the beaten track of that
horrible fellow, the tourist. Among the people of Venice. The real people. I
could not remain here an hour otherwise. My flat is in the quarter of the
Arsenal, if you know where that is, a calle off the Via Garibaldi. You take an
accelerato, then a short walk along the Riva Ca Di Dio and Riva Biagio. Let me
explain the exact whereabouts, for it is not at all easy to find.’

He
gave minute instructions, forcibly bringing back the years when I had worked
under him, something establishing a relationship which can never wholly fade.

‘Afterwards,
I thought, we might walk as far as the Biennale together. I have not seen the
latest Exhibition yet. I should like you to lunch with me at the restaurant in
the Giardini.’

‘I’ll
be with you, Dan, between half-past eleven and twelve on Sunday.’

‘You
may not care for the sort of work I am doing now. I warn you of that. Are you
sure you know how to get here? Let me repeat my instructions.’

He
went over the directions with that pedantic attention to detail natural to him,
dilated by army training.

‘Have
you got it? Remember, an accelerato. When you disembark, turn to the right,
walk straight on, then bear left, left again, then right – not left, remember –
then right again. It’s over a greengrocer’s. Walk straight up.’

When
Sunday morning came, the place turned out quite easy to find. It was a
characteristic Tokenhouse abode, which, freedom from sound of traffic apart,
might have been situated in an alley-way of some down-at-heel district of
London, or anywhere else, all architectural and local emphasis as negative as
possible; exceptional only insomuch as to discover – elect to inhabit – so
featureless a location in Venice was in itself a shade impressive. I climbed
the stairs and knocked. The door opened immediately, as if Tokenhouse had been
already gripping the handle, impatiently awaiting someone to arrive.

‘Hullo,
Dan.’

‘Come
in, come in. Through here. This is the room where I paint.’

The
windows faced on to a blank wall. Except for a pile of canvases, none of great
size, stacked in one corner, the room showed no sign of being an artist’s
studio. It was scrupulously neat, suggesting for some perverse reason – possibly
actual by-product of its owner’s intense anti-clericalism – sense of arrival in
the study of an urban vicarage or rectory, including an indefinably churchly
smell.

‘Did
it take you long to get here? No? Not after my detailed instructions, I expect.
They were necessary. How are you? What is your hotel like? I know it by name. I
can’t bear that fashionable end of the Canal. It gets worse every year. I
continue to live in Venice only because I am used to the place by now. At my
age it would be a great business to move. Besides, there are advantages. One
can make oneself useful.’

He
rapped his knuckles together several times, and nodded. In spite of the
parsonic overtones of the sitting-room-studio, Tokenhouse himself did not look
at all like a clergyman; nor even the very reasonably successful publisher of
art books he had been in his time. Acquired erudition, heterodox opinions,
expatriate domicile, none had done anything to alter deep dyed marks of the
military profession, an appearance, one imagined, Tokenhouse would not have chosen.
At the same time, if aware of looking like a retired soldier, even heartily
disliking that, he would have considered dishonest any effort at diminishment
brought about by artificial means, such as wearing relatively unconformist
clothes. His clothes, in one sense, certainly were unconformist, but not at all
with that object in view. Spare, wiry, very upright, he could be thought dried
up, wizened, ascetic; considering his years, not particularly old. His body
seemed made up of gristle, rather than flesh; grey hair, trimmed severely,
almost
en brosse
,
remaining thick. He peered alertly, rather peevishly, through gold-rimmed
spectacles set well forward on a long thin reddish nose. An all-enveloping
chilliness of manner hung about him, sense of being utterly cut off from the
rest of the world, a personality, even physique, no sun could warm. Unlike
Widmerpool, sweltering in his House of Lords suit, the ancient jacket
Tokenhouse wore, good thick serviceable tweed, designed to keep out damp wind
on the moors, his even older flannel trousers punctiliously pressed, seemed
between them garments scarcely substantial enough to prevent him looking blue
with cold, in spite of blazing Venetian sunlight outside.

‘How
are your family? You have children of your own almost grown up now, I believe?
Is that not so?’

He
spoke as if procreation of children were an extraordinary fate to overtake
anyone, consequence of imprudence, if not worse. We talked for a time of things
that had happened since our last meeting.

‘Your
father and I parted on bad terms. There was no other way. He could never see
reason. An entirely unphilosophic mind. Childish view of politics. Now he is
dead. Most of the people I used to know are dead. I don’t find that makes much
difference to me. I have learnt to be self-supporting. It is the only way. No
good thinking about the past. The future is what matters. But you said you
would like to see some of my work. Then we’ll go to the Exhibition. The Gardens
are within walking distance. The pictures aren’t much good this year, I’m told,
but let’s look at my work first, if that is what you would like.’

Moving
jerkily across the room, he returned once more with some of the unframed
canvases, chosen from the pile that lay in the corner. He spread out several of
these, propping them up against chairs.

‘You’ve
certainly changed your style, Dan.’

‘True,
O King.’

That
had always been a favourite expression of Tokenhouse’s, especially when not
best pleased. I tried to think of something to say. The Camden Town Group had been
wholly superseded, utterly swept away, so far as the art of Daniel Tokenhouse
was concerned. What had taken its place was less easy to define; a sort of
neo-primitivism. The light was bad for forming a judgment. So revolutionary was
the transformation that a happy phrase to cover just what had happened did not
come easily to mind. The new Tokenhouse style, in one of its expressions,
suggested frescoes, frescoes on a very small scale; not at all in the manner
of, say, Barnby’s murals once decorating the entrance to the Donners-Brebner
Building. After some minutes, Tokenhouse himself making no comment, I felt
compelled to pronounce a judgment, however insipid.

‘The
garage scene has considerable force. Its colour emotive too, limiting yourself
in that way to an almost regular monochrome, picked out with passages of flat
heavy black.’

‘You
mean this study?’

‘Both
of those. Aren’t they the same group from another angle?’

‘Yes,
this is another shot. Three in all. The subject is
Four priests rigging a miracle
. The rather larger
version here, and its fellow, are less successful, I think. At the same time
both have merit of a sort.’

‘You
always make several studies of the same subject nowadays?’

‘I
find that produces the best results. I work slowly. That comes from lack of
early training. My difficulty is usually to get the values correctly.’

‘The
browns, greys and blacks seem to create an effective recession.’

‘Ah,
you have misunderstood me. Having, so to speak, forged ahead politically
myself, it is easy to forget other people remain content with old notions of
painting, formalists ones. I meant, of course, that it is not always plain
sailing so far as political values are concerned. I am no longer interested in
such purely technical achievements as correct recession, so called, or making a
kind of pattern.’

‘Still,
incorrect recession can surely play havoc – unless, of course, deliberate
distortion is in question. Was your change of technique gradual?’

Tokenhouse
gave a restive intake of breath to show how wildly he had been misunderstood.

‘One
forgets, one forgets. Let me explain. I had begun to feel very impatient with
Formalism, the sort of painting that derived from Impressionists and
Post-Impressionists, not to mention their successors, such as the Surrealists –
as I prefer to call them, Pseudo-Realists. I thought about it all a lot. I long
pondered the phrase read somewhere: “A picture is an act of Socialism.” I don’t
expect you’re familiar with that approach. You may not agree anyway. Your
dissent is immaterial to me. I made up my mind to embark on a fresh start. I
began by taking a bus over the bridge to Mestre, and attempting some
plein air
studies. I set about one of those large
installations there – hydro-electric, or whatever they arc – a suitably functional
conception. Absurd as that may seem, I created the impression of being engaged
on some sort of industrial espionage. Nothing serious happened, but it was all
rather tedious and discouraging. Much more important than the interfering
attitude of the authorities was my own fear that Impressionist errors were
creeping back, just as fallaciously as if I was one of the old ladies sitting
on a camp-stool in front of the Salute. In short, I comprehended I was still
hopelessly aesthetic.’