Temporary Kings (18 page)

Tokenhouse
was quite breathless by the end of his speech, excitement similar to that
displayed by him when expatiating on what painting should be. Glober took in
the situation at once. He grasped that he was dealing with an eccentric, one in
a high class of his category, and roared with laughter. Glober may not have
remembered much about Tokenhouse personally (he had shown no sign when I spoke
of him earlier), but he appreciated that he was in the presence of an oddity,
from whom amusement might, for the moment, be derived. Perhaps the notion of
Tokenhouse buying the Cubists blocks appealed to Glober as, on however
infinitesimal a scale, a touch of his own method, an element of
playboy-tycoonery. That was in spite of Tokenhouse being, on the surface, about
as far from a playboy as you could get, while his former status of tycoon, if
ever to be so called, was an inconceivably modest one. Perhaps that was a misjudgment,
however diluted, the characteristics being present in Tokenhouse too. The
important fact was that, reunited with Glober, he was pleased to see him.

‘Maybe
we were men before our time, Mr Tokenhouse. Too ready to experiment with new
ideas too early. I’m sorry it all ended that way. Not long after we met in
London, I abandoned publishing for motion pictures. When I came back to
publishing for a while, things had greatly changed. That was why I returned to
the Coast.’

‘Yes,
yes.’

Tokenhouse
spoke inattentively, still thinking about the blocks, certainly unapprised of ‘the
Coast’, or why Glober should return there. This talk of publishing must have
struck Ada as a useful opening. She had accepted without the least umbrage lack
of acquaintance with herself as a novelist. The blocks offered as good, if not
better, opportunity for impressing Glober with her own abilities.

‘I
should like to hear more about the Cubist blocks, Mr Tokenhouse. My husband’s
firm would certainly be glad to consider the question of taking them over from
you, should you be interested in an advantageous price. In these days of
steeply mounted production charges, they might find a place in our list.’

Tokenhouse,
never much at ease with women, especially good-looking ones, approached this
proposition with caution, but without open hostility. The incomparable training
of having worked as Sillery’s secretary behind her, Ada had made rather a
speciality of handling the older generation of Quiggin & Craggs authors,
becoming so accomplished in that respect that she might now be indulging in
mere display of that dexterity for its own sake. Whether or not she wanted the
blocks, Tokenhouse accepted the principle of a tender. He began to discuss a
lot of not specially interesting technical particulars. Retirement from
publishing, changed taste in art, revised ideological opinions, had none of
them blunted a keen business sense. Ada showed no less briskness about the
potential deal. Glober looked at his watch.

‘Have
you and Mr Tokenhouse any plans for luncheon? Mrs Quiggin and I – should I say
Miss Leintwardine? – were going to the restaurant here. Why don’t you both join
us?’

Ada
looked for a moment as if she might have preferred to keep Glober to herself, a
natural enough instinct, then changed her mind, welcoming the suggestion.

‘Do
let’s all lunch together – and call me Ada.’

Tokenhouse
also hesitated for a moment at thus entangling himself with forms of social
life against which he had openly declared war, but he had by no means finished
what he had to say about the blocks. Having in any case planned to eat at the
restaurant, refusal was difficult. Even if his reluctance, and Ada’s, had been
more determined, Glober’s pressure to enlarge the party might have surmounted
that too. To deny him would have required a lot of energy. If he had an
ulterior motive, long or short term, nothing of the sort was apparent. As
before in the Palazzo, he seemed to hope for no more than to collect round him
as many persons as available. That was simply because collecting people round
him (creating one of those rudimentary courts adumbrated by Dr Brightman)
brought a sense of confidence in himself. Finally, everyone had by that time
seen as much of the Exhibition as desired, whether to praise or blame. Art was
abandoned. It was agreed the party should lunch together. We strolled across to
the restaurant, finding a table to allow a good view of the water. Glober
enquired about drinks.

‘A
negrone,’ said Ada. ‘With an urgent request for plenty of gin.’

Tokenhouse
declared that he never took more than a single glass of wine in the middle of
the day. Glober would not hear of that. So gently importunate was he about
everyone having an aperitif that in the end Tokenhouse, obstinate in his habits
as a rule, surprisingly gave way, agreeing to begin with a ‘punt è mes’. That
was more of a triumph than Glober knew. He went on to make suggestions about
what we should eat, judicious so far as that went, even if originating in a
wish to impose the will. They were not acceptable to Ada. When Quiggin had
married her, he had still taken pride in being an austere man – like most
persons of that pretension, imposing frugality on his acquaintances, while
making a lot of fuss himself, if food happened not to be absolutely to his own
taste. Ada put an end to all that. Under her sway, Quiggin would now discuss
bad wine, salad dressings, regional dishes, with the best. Such gastronomic
ascendancy behind her, Ada was not likely to accept dictation from Glober.

Tokenhouse
did not join in this chatter about food. He ordered spaghetti for himself, and
sat back in silence. He would probably have liked to continue talking about
blocks, but Ada must have decided nothing more could be settled about the
matter until put before Quiggin. The fact was, Tokenhouse had lost the habit of
this sort of party. In his publishing days he had gone out a good deal,
possessing the reputation of an aggressive talker when the evening was well
advanced, and he had taken a fair amount to drink. Even dead sober, he was
usually prepared to shout down the rest of the party, if there were
disagreements. Now he gave the impression of once more beginning to disapprove,
earlier distrust of such company rearoused in him. He was rather cross when
Glober nodded for a repetition of the drinks, but swallowed the second glass of
vermouth, also took several deep gulps of wine when it arrived. Ada switched
her attention to him, now offering a clue to her own easy acceptance of
breaking up a tête-à-tête with Glober.

‘You
never published any of St John Clarke’s novels, Mr Tokenhouse, did you?’

Tokenhouse,
who had been particularly irritated when St John Clarke failed to produce the
promised
Introduction to The Art of Horace Isbister
, made some non-commital answer about his
firm not dealing in fiction, which Ada must have known already. She pressed the
subject, not, so it appeared, because Tokenhouse was likely to throw light on
St John Clarke, as from some wish of her own to emphasize the almost forgotten
novelist’s unrecognized merits. Then her aim became clearer.

‘Louis
– I shall call you Louis, Mr Glober – has come to Europe to look for a story to
film. Of course, I hoped he would want one of my own novels – in default of one
of yours, Nick – but we’ve been talking together, and he was saying the moment
must have arrived for something nostalgic, something Edwardian. Then I had the
brilliant idea that St John Clarke was the answer.’

This
was rather a different story from Pamela’s statement that Glober was going to
film something by Trapnel. What subject Glober should choose struck me at the
time as a perfectly endurable topic, during luncheon in these fairly idyllic
surroundings, not one to take for a moment seriously. The same applied to
Pamela’s earlier words on the matter, in that case easing the way for Gwinnett.
Commercial deals like selling stories to film companies are more likely to
emerge from tedious negotiation undertaken by agents in prosaic offices. Such
was one’s melancholy conclusion. Glober, if not a producer in the top class,
had been quite a figure in Hollywood; he was therefore tough. No doubt his mood
accorded with this sort of chit-chat. To conclude any true buyer’s interest had
been aroused would be to misconstrue the ways of film tycoons. All the same, to
be too matter-of-fact about such possibilities could be wide of the mark, as to
be too susceptive to pleasing possibilities. With businessmen, you can never
tell; least of all when movies are in question. On Ada’s part, this looked like
declaration of war on Pamela. She sounded very sure of herself.

‘Perhaps
you don’t know, Nick, that we control the St John Clarke rights now. Clapham
got the lot before he died. Just for the sake of tidiness – but I forgot, you
probably do know, because St John Clarke left the royalties to your Warminster
brother-in-law, and of course they came back to Quiggin & Craggs in the
Warminster Trust. JG secured our own interest before Craggs died.’

What
Ada stated made sense. I had not known about the St John Clarke rights; at
least never thought out that aspect. She was undoubtedly going to do her best
to sell a St John Clarke novel to Glober.

‘A
strange man I used to know in the army was devoted to
Match Me Such Marvel
. He’d worked in a
provincial theatre or cinema, so he might be the right pointer for popular success.’

Bithel’s
view, twenty years later, could represent the winning number. Ada was
enthusiastic.

‘
Match
Me Such Marvel
is the one I suggested. There’s a homosexual
undercurrent. Of course, you Americans are so jumpy about homosexuality. It
would be a great pity to leave that sequence out.’

‘Who
says we’re going to leave it out?’ said Glober lazily. ‘We Americans are
getting round to hearing about all sorts of things of that kind these days. You
don’t do us justice. When were you last in the States, Ada?’

They
were a well matched couple when it came to that sort of teasing, as cover for
business negotiation. Tokenhouse, likely to disapprove of such levity, was
ruminating on some matter of his own. Suddenly he joined in.

‘St
John Clarke was a vain fellow. I never cared for such novels of his as I read.
He behaved in a most unsatisfactory manner dealing with my firm. It was only
quite by chance I came across a pamphlet he had written in the latter part of
his life dealing with an interest of my own, that is to say Socialist Realism
in painting. That pamphlet was not without merit.’

Ada
showed herself more than equal to this comment too. Her policy was, I think, to
ventilate in a general way the claims of St John Clarke; get his name
thoroughly into Glober’s head, without bothering too much whether the
impression was good or bad. When St John Clarke had sunk in as a personality,
she would plug the book she wanted to be filmed. She showed warm appreciation
of this new aspect of the novelist.

‘Exactly,
Mr Tokenhouse. St John Clarke is no back-number. His style may seem a little
old-fashioned today, but there is nothing old-fashioned about his thought. He
is full of compassion – compassion of his own sort, sometimes a little crudely
expressed to the modern ear. I am most interested in what you say about his art
criticism. I had missed that. Of course I know about Socialist Realism. I
expect you used to read a magazine called
Fission
, which ran for a couple of years just after
the war, and remember the instructive analysis Len Pugsley wrote there, called
Integral
Foundations of a Fresh Approach to Art for the Masse
.’

Tokenhouse
got out his pencil. Making Ada repeat the tide of Pugsley’s article, he wrote
it on a paper table napkin. I recalled Bagshaw’s editorial irritation at having
to publish the piece.

‘If
we’ve got to print everything written by whoever’s rogering Gypsy, we’ll have
to get a new paper allocation. Even our Commy subscribers don’t want to read
that stuff.’

Bagshaw’s
comment, partially disproved by Tokenhouse’s interest, was borne out to the
extent that Gypsy (retaining her name and style) had gone to live with Pugsley,
when she became a widow. Tokenhouse now found himself assailed by Ada with an
absolute barrage of expertise on his own subject. She began to reel off the
names of what were evidently Socialist Realist painters.

‘Svatogh?
Gaponenko? Toidze? I can only remember a few of the ones Len mentioned. Of
course you’ll be familiar with all their pictures, and lots more. There is so
much in art of which one remains so dreadfully ignorant. I must look into all
that side of painting again, when I have a moment to spare.’

Tokenhouse,
who had certainly begun luncheon in a mood of refusal to truckle to undue
demands on making himself agreeable, could not fail to be impressed. I was
impressed myself. In her days as employee at Quiggin & Craggs, the Left
Wing bias of the firm had naturally demanded a smattering of Marxist
vocabulary, but to retain enough political small talk of that period to meet
Tokenhouse on his own Socialist Realist ground was no small achievement; not
less because Quiggin himself, anyway commercially, had so far abrogated his own
principles as to have lately scored a publishing bull’s eye with the Memoirs of
a Tory ‘elder statesman’. Glober laughed quietly to himself.

‘You
two take me back to the Film Writers’ Guild. Give me two minutes notice to beat
it, before you throw the bomb.’

Seen
closer, over a longer period, he was observable as a little tired, a little
melancholy, amusing himself with mild jaunts such as this one, which made small
demand on valuable reserves. He was husbanding his forces. To suppose that, in
no way implied a state of total exhaustion. You felt there was quite a lot left
for future effort, even if requirement for everything to be played out in
public, in a manner at once striking and elegant, increased need for
exceptional energy. What did not happen in public had no reality for Glober at
all. In spite of the quiet manner, there was no great suggestion of interior life.
What was going on inside remained there only until it could be materially
expressed as soon as possible. The tress of hair had to record the sexual
conquest.