Anthony Powell - Temporary Kings

‘Glober did me on the table.’

‘Among the coffee cups?’

‘We broke a couple of liqueur glasses.’

‘You obviously found him attractive.’

‘I believe I’d have run away with him that night, if he’d asked me. I was all right a day or two later, quite recovered. The affair stopped dead there. In any case he was sailing the next day. Some men are like that. Isn’t it funny? One rather odd thing about Glober, he insisted on taking a cutting from my bush — said he always did that after having anyone for the first time. He produced a pair of nail-scissors from a small red leather case. He told me he carried them round with him in case the need arose.’

‘We all of us have our whims.’

Mopsy laughed. So far as Glober was concerned, I do not put her conquest unduly high, though no doubt she was quite a beauty in her way. To exaggerate Glober’s achievement would be mistaken, lacking in a sense of proportion, even though Mopsy was capable of refusal, having turned Barnby down. Barnby made a good story about his failure to please on that occasion, which was one way of dealing with the matter. Such sudden adventures as this one of Glober’s can be misleading, unless considered in their context, time and place (as Moreland always insisted) both playing so vital a part. Nevertheless, this vignette, taken at an early stage of his career, suggests Glober’s vivacity, liberality, wide interests, capacity for attack; Mopsy’s footnote adding a small touch of the unusual, the exotic. These were no doubt the qualities that had carried him advantageously through the years of the Depression; New York to Hollywood, and back again; lots of other places too; until here he was at Jacky Bragadin’s Venetian palace. I enquired about Glober’s background. Gwinnett gave a rather satirical laugh.

‘Why do the British always ask that?’

‘One of our foibles.’

‘That’s not what Americans do.’

‘But we’re not Americans. You must humour our straying from the norm in that respect.’

Gwinnett laughed again.

‘Glober’s people were first generation Jewish emigrants. They were Russian. They took a German name to assimilate quicker, or so I’ve heard. Glober was from the Bronx.’

‘What we’d call the East End?’

‘His father made a sizeable pile in building. Glober himself didn’t begin on the breadline.’

‘You mean there was plenty of money before he started his publishing and film career?’

‘He made plenty more. Lost plenty too. Money is no problem to Glober.’

Gwinnett spoke with conviction. The comment that Glober was a man to whom money-making was no problem recalled Peter Templer having once spoken the same about Bob Duport. Duport, of course, had always been on a smaller scale financially than Glober, also without any claims to newspaper fame. I felt that side of Glober, the newspaper fame, was not without a certain fascination for Gwinnett, even if he hesitated to approve of Glober as an individual. An idea suddenly struck me.

‘Does he write?’

‘Does Glober write?’

‘Yes?’

‘Sure — did he refuse to sign his name to a contract you showed him in London on the grounds he couldn’t write? I’ll bet it wasn’t true, and he can.’

Gwinnett was unbending a little.

‘I meant books. It’s always a temptation (or a publisher to have a go at writing a book. After all, they think, if authors can do that, anybody can.’

‘Glober’s withstood the temptation so far.’

‘What I was leading up to is Glober having something of Trapnel about him — a Trapnel who brought off being a Complete Man. Of course if Glober can’t write, the comparison ceases to be valid, unless you accept as alternative Glober’s experience as entrepreneur in the arts. That might to some extent represent Trapnel’s literary sensibility.’

Gwinnett seemed unprepared for a comparison of that kind.

‘I just can’t imagine Trapnel without his writing,’ he said.

‘Certainly in his own eyes that would be a contradiction in terms. But all the beautiful girls, all the publishing and movie triumphs of one sort or another, all the publicity — yet the implied failure too. Experience of the other side of fortune. Losses, as well as gains, in money. Sadness in love, implicit in the changes of wives. In business, changes of interests. Nothing fails like success. Surely all that’s part of being complete in Trapnel’s eyes? Why shouldn’t Glober be Trapnel’s Complete Man at sixty?’

Gwinnett thought for a moment, but did not answer. The concept, even if it possessed a shred of interest, did not please him. He smiled a little grimly. There was no point in pressing the analogy. In any case, we had now reached the campo, along one side of which stood the palace to be visited; a Renaissance structure of moderate size, its exterior, as Gwinnett had explained on the way, severely restored in the eighteenth century. In the Venetian manner, the more splendid approach was by water, but it had been found more convenient to admit members of the Conference through the pillared entrance opening on to the square.

We passed between massively sententious caryatids towards a staircase carpeted in crimson. Dr Brightman drew level.

‘This Palazzo is not even mentioned in most guide-books,’ she said. ‘I’ve ascertained the whereabouts of the Tiepolo, and will lead you to it. Follow me, after we’ve made our bow.

At the top of the stairs, supported by a retinue of the Conference’s Executive Committee, and civic officials, Jacky Bragadin was receiving the guests. The municipality had helped to promote the Conference, in conjunction with the Biennale Exhibition, which fell that year, as well as the Film Festival. A small nervous man, in his fifties, Jacky Bragadin’s mixed blood had not wholly divested him of that Venetian physiognomy, noticeable as much in the contemporary city as in the canvases of its painters; somewhat as if most Venetians wore Commedia dell’Arte masks fashioned in the Orient, only a guess made at what Europeans look like. Into such features Jacky Bragadin had fused those of his American ancestry. He did not appear greatly at ease, fidgeting a good deal, a scarcely discernible American accent overlaying effects of English schooldays. The more consequential members of the Conference, after shaking hands, paused to have a word, or chat with the entourage, standing about on a landing ornamented with baroque busts of Roman emperors. The rest moved forward into a frescoed gallery beyond.

‘Come along,’ said Dr Brightman. ‘The ceiling is in an ante-room further on, not at all an obvious place. These Luca Giordanos will keep most of them quiet for the time being. We shall have a minute or two to inspect the Tiepolo in peace.’

Gwinnett, preferring to go over the Palazzo at his own speed, strolled away to examine the Roman emperors on their plinths. He may also have had an interest in Luca Giordano. I followed Dr Brightman through the doors leading into the gallery of frescoes. We passed on through further rooms, Dr Brightman expressing hurried comments.

‘These tapestries must be Florentine — look, The Drunkenness of Lot . The daughter on the left greatly resembles a pupil of mine, but we must not tarry, or the mob will be upon us again.’

She also disallowed for inspection a rococo ball-room, white walls, festooned with gold foliage and rams’ heads, making a background for Longhi caricatures, savants and punchinellos with huge spectacles and bulbous noses.

‘How much they resemble our fellow members of the Conference. The ante-room should be at the far end here.’

We entered a small almost square apartment, high ceilinged, with tall windows set in embrasures.

‘Here we are.’

She pointed upward. Miraculous volumes of colour billowed, gleamed, vibrated, above us. Dr Brightman clasped her hands.