Temporary Kings (35 page)

‘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.’

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 was 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?’

‘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.’