Anthony Powell: Temporary Kings

This last supposition was unconvincing. It was possible to accept Bagshaw’s theory, up to a point, that Widmerpool dreamed of revenging himself on the world; in addition, that his marriage was one of the areas where that mood might seem to some extent justified. The notion that a Life Peerage would impress Pamela was improbable; typical of the unimaginative side of Roddy’s nature. That was one’s first thought. Then, reconsidering the evidence, the view emerged as one Widmerpool himself might easily hold. Pamela was unlikely to be interested, one way or the other, in whatever prestige might be supposed to attach to that transmutation. She had never shown the smallest inclination to reach out towards more considerable aggrandizements for herself. They were reported, according to good authority, to have been on offer from lovers at different times. Her disregard for anything of the kind, provided its active expression remained within not too outrageous bounds, was one of his wife’s few characteristics potentially advantageous to Widmerpool’s public life. He could convincingly point to her behaviour as embodiment of contempt for ‘The Establishment’, an abstraction increasingly belaboured by him in speeches and articles. In fact, considering the Life Peerage in the light of Pamela’s past conduct, so far from its creation — as Cutts put forward — assuring an irreducibly solid foundation for a marriage often rocked by upheaval, the reverse appeared more likely, similar landmarks in her husband’s career having been emphasized in the past by proportionately augmented scandals. A Life Peerage, as an extreme example of Moreland’s conviction that matrimonial discord vibrates on an axis of envy, rather than jealousy, could even portend final severance.

To explain all that, even a small part of it, to Gwinnett, ill hope of enlarging his view of the Widmerpools in relation to Trapnel, was not easy; certainly not within the time allotted for sitting under the Veroneses. Nothing about the Trapnel story was simple. Although Gwinnett was quick to grasp things, nothing about his own personality was simple either. He was an altogether unfamiliar type. He himself seemed almost painfully aware of our mutual difficulties of intercommunication. That made things no easier. There was an innate awkwardness about him. Now, for instance, he stood by the table, unable to make up his mind whether or not to accept Dr Brightman’s invitation to sit with us.

‘What will you drink?’

Without answering, he caught a passing waiter and ordered a citronade. On such a night nothing was more natural than to prefer a cooling soft drink to something stronger, yet again one speculated for some reason about the possibility of an alcoholic past. Something about him suggested rigid control, concealment, an odd way of life. He had the air of punishing himself, possibly for his own supposed social inadequacies. When he sat down, all Dr Brightman’s briskness was required to dispel the threat he brought of damped conversation. He had been carrying a newspaper under his arm, which he laid on the table. It was French, the name folded out of sight.

‘We were talking of courts and harems, Russell,’ said Dr Brightman. ‘Those who need them. I’m sure you must have experienced friends like that’

Gwinnett smiled, but did not comment. The relationship between himself and Dr Brightman appeared good, the best yet, so far as observable. There was none of the coyness that might be suggested by the idea of a distinguished female professor becoming friends with a young academic colleague of the opposite sex. You felt they liked each other, had perhaps learnt from each other, would not for a second hesitate to be tough with each other, if required by circumstance. There was no suggestion of sentimental feelings, a kind of mother/son relationship, just because Dr Brightman had been far from home, Gwinnett something of an oddity in his own surroundings.

‘Talking of harems’, she said, ‘the owner of the Palazzo we’re invited to visit tomorrow bears the famous name of Bragadin, and claims to be descended from Casanova’s patron, though not, of course, in the legitimate line.’

Gwinnett showed no great interest in that. I asked which of the several Bragadin palaces this was. I had not studied the extra-mural programme carefully, preferring these excursions to come as a series of bracing surprises.

‘One never open to the public. Our Conference is greatly favoured. There’s a Tiepolo ceiling there on which I’ve longed to gaze for years. In fact the hint that Conference members might gain access was the chief weapon of Mark’ Members in overcoming any hesitation in agreeing to attend.’

‘It’s the Jacky Bragadin one reads about in gossip columns?’

Dr Brightman nodded.

‘The Palazzo wasn’t inherited. All sorts of people have lived there at one time or another. Jacky Bragadin — though I’ve no right to speak of him in this familiar manner — bought it just after the war.’

Gwinnett, who had been looking about him without paying much apparent attention to what Dr Brightman was saying, joined in at that.

‘Jacky Bragadin’s mother’s was one of the big American fortunes of the last century. She was a Macwatters of Philadelphia. That’s where the funds for the Bragadin Foundation come from.’

‘Which have been of good use to most of us in our time,’ said Dr Brightman. ‘My knowledge of the benefactor, like that of Mr Jenkins, derives chiefly from gossip columns. His well publicized personality remains, all the same, for me an elusive one, beyond an evident taste for entertaining persons as rich as himself. Remarkable that he should have found time enough from that hobby to have given birth to a Foundation.’

‘He’s not married, I think?’

‘Do you imply the Bragadin Foundation is illegitimate too? A case of parthenogenesis, I expect. In any case, I am more concerned with his Tiepolo.’

Tiepolo ranking with Poussin as one of my most admired Masters, I asked the subject of the ceiling, the very existence of which was unknown to me. The bare fact that members of the Conference could visit the Palazzo had been announced, knowledge of its contents no doubt taken for granted in an assembly of intellectuals.

‘One of the painter’s classical scenes — Candaules and Gyges . The subject, thought to have some contemporary reference, caused trouble at the time the ceiling was painted. That’s why the tradition of playing the picture down, keeping it almost a secret, has persisted to the present day. The owner is in any case said to be more than a little neurasthenic in approach to his possessions, and much else too.’

Gwinnett knew about the ceiling.

‘I’ve been told it’s not unlike the Villa Valmarana Iphigenia in composition,’ he said. ‘The owner won’t allow it to be photographed.’

He turned to me.

‘Speaking about the Iphigenia again made me think of what we were talking about at that luncheon.’

He picked up from the table the paper he had brought with him, opened it, folding back a page. It was Détective, Içi Paris , or another of those French periodicals that explore at greater length cases, usually already reported, which through expansion promise more pungent details of crime or scandal. Gwinnett singled out two sheets, the central spread. He was about to hand them over, but Dr Brightman, catching the name under a photograph, intercepted the paper.

‘Good gracious,’ she said. ‘That ugly little man? I should never have thought it.’

I looked over her shoulder. The headline ran along the top of both pages.

L’APRES-MIDI D’UN MONSTRE?

Two large cut-out photographs stretched across the typeface, the story, whatever it was, fitting round their edges. In spite of Dr Brightman’s lack of principle in appropriating the letterpress to herself, and although I was not close enough to read the sub-titles, the likenesses of the two persons portrayed were immediately recognizable. Both photographs had manifestly been taken some years before, ten at least. In fact that of Ferrand-Sénéschal made him look a man in early middle-age. He had been caught on some public occasion, mouth wide open, hands raised above his head in a passionate gesture, almost as if he, too, were singing Funiculì-Funiculà , miming the ascending cable. No doubt he had been snapped addressing a large audience on some political or cultural theme.