Anthony Powell - Temporary Kings

‘She showed up at San Marco.’

‘She did?’

‘Yes.’

Gwinnett’s follow-up took so long to arrive that there were moments when it looked as if these words were all the information he proposed to give about the meeting.

‘Is she likely to produce any usable Trapnel material?’

His silence extorted that. Gwinnett did not answer the question. Instead, he suggested we should leave the restaurant, drink more coffee elsewhere.

‘All right.’

‘Where shall we go?’

‘Florian’s?’

‘OK.’

As soon as we were outside he began about Pamela. What he had to say may have seemed easier to express in comparative darkness of the street, rather than across the table at an over brightly lighted restaurant. Now he sounded thoroughly excited, not at all inert.

‘I’m going to meet her in London.’

‘That sounds all right.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did she suggest that?’

‘Yes — when she saw me in San Marco.’

‘The interview there went off well?’

‘She turned up on time.’

‘That in itself must have been a surprise.’

Gwinnett laughed uneasily. He was evidently making a great effort, no doubt for the sake of his book, to be clear, uncomplicated, unlike how he usually felt, how at least he behaved.

‘You know how dark it is in the Basilica? I was standing by the doors. I didn’t recognize her for a moment, although I was thinking I must be careful not to miss her. She had dressed up all in black, a skirt, dark glasses, a kind of mantilla. She looked — I just don’t know how to put it. I was almost scared. She didn’t say a word. She took me by the hand, down one of those side aisles. It was the darkest part of the church. She stopped behind a pillar, a place she seemed to know already.’

Gwinnett was momentarily prevented from continuing his story by thickening of the crowd, as we approached the Piazza along a narrow street, necessitating our own advance in single file. Two nuns passed. Gwinnett turned back, indicating them.

‘Do you know the first thing Lady Widmerpool said? She asked if the place we were in didn’t make me want to turn to the religious life?’

‘How did you answer that one?’

‘I said it might be a good experience for some people. It wasn’t one I felt drawn to myself. I asked if she herself was thinking of taking the veil.’

‘Good for you.’

‘I said her clothes looked more religious than in the Palazzo.’

‘How did she take that?’

‘She laughed. She said she often felt that way. I wasn’t all that surprised. It fits in.’

The comment showed Gwinnett no beginner in female psychology. He and Pamela might be well matched. This was the first outward indication of a mystic side to her. Gwinnett for the moment had shaken off his own constraint.

‘I began to speak of Trapnel. She listened, but didn’t give much away. The next thing did startle me.’

He gave an embarrassed laugh.

‘She grabbed hold of me,’ he said.

‘You mean — ’

‘Just that.’

‘By the balls?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Literally?’

‘Quite literally. Then she hinted the story about Ferrand-Sénéschal was true.’

Coming out from under the pillars, we entered the Piazza. The square was packed with people. They trailed rhythmically backwards and forwards like the huge chorus of an opera. One of the caffè orchestras was playing selections from The Merry Widow , Widmerpool’s favourite waltz, he had said, just before Barbara Goring poured sugar over his head. The termination of the Pamela story had to be left in Gwinnett’s discretion. It was not to be crudely probed.

‘That was when she told me to call her up when I got to London. I just said I’d do that.’

‘By that time she’d let go — or was she still holding on?’

He laughed. He seemed past embarrassment now.

‘I’d disengaged her — told her to lay off.’

‘How did she take that?’

‘OK. She laughed the way she does. Then she took off.’

‘To contemplate the religious life elsewhere?’

Gwinnett did not offer an opinion on that point.

‘You heard no more from her about Trapnel?’

‘Not a word.’

Most of the tables at Florian’s seemed occupied. People from the Conference were scattered about among multitudes of tourists. Gwinnett and I moved this way or that through the crowded café, trying to find somewhere to sit. Then two chairs were vacated near the band. Making for them, we were about to settle down, when someone from the next table called out. They were a party of four, revealed to be Rosie Manasch — Rosie Stevens now for some years — her husband, Odo Stevens, and an American couple.

‘Switch the chairs round and join us,’ said Stevens. ‘We’ve just finished a Greek cruise, staying in Venice a day or two to get our breath.’

Rosie introduced the Americans, middle-aged to elderly, immensely presentable. I played Gwinnett in return. It was more characteristic of Stevens than his wife that Gwinnett and I should not be allowed to sit by ourselves. Like Glober, he had a taste for forming courts. He was a little piqued, or pretended to be, at hearing about the Conference.

‘Why do I never get asked to these international affairs? Not a grand enough writer, I suppose. Who’s turned up? Mark Members? Quentin Shuckerly? The usual crowd?’

Now in his early forties, Odo Stevens, less unchanged than Rosie, had salvaged a fair amount of the bounce associated with his earlier days; Rosie, for her part, entirely retaining an intrinsic air of plump little queen of the harem. Having decided, possibly on sight, to marry Stevens, she seemed perfectly satisfied now the step was taken. So far as that went, so did Stevens. They had two or three children. There had been ups and downs during the years preceding marriage, but these had been survived, the chief discord when Matilda Donners had shown signs of wanting to capture Stevens for herself. Owing either to Matilda’s tactical inferiority, or loss of interest in the prize, nothing had come of that, Rosie carrying Stevens off in the end. His temporary seizure by Matilda may have been planned more as a foray into her rival’s territory — war considered as a mere extension of foreign policy — a sortie into the enemy’s country, not intended as permanent advance beyond foremost defended localities, already recognized as such. At the time, Rosie took the aggression calmly, in that spirit preparing for withdrawal just as far as necessary, never losing her head. Matilda’s punitive raid was, so to speak, driven off in due course, after admittedly inflicting a certain measure of casualty; both sides afterwards possessing some claim to have achieved their objective. During this little campaign, explosive while it lasted, Stevens was rumoured to have gone with Matilda to Ischia.

The battle over Stevens could claim a certain continuity from the past, Matilda and Rosie not only rivals at giving parties, but Rosie’s first husband, Jock Udall, having belonged to a newspaper-owning family traditionally opposed to Sir Magnus Donners and all his works. Some thought the pivot of the Ischia incident Stevens himself, bringing pressure on Rosie to force marriage. If so, the manoeuvre was successful. When his body was finally recovered from the battlefield, marriage took place, although only after a decent interval, to purge his contempt. The story that Stevens had given Rosie a black eye during these troubled times was never corroborated. After marriage, a greater docility was, on the contrary, evident in Stevens. He hovered about on the outskirts of the literary world, writing an occasional article, reviewing an occasional book. It was generally supposed he might have liked some regular occupation, but Rosie would not allow that, imposing idleness on her husband as a kind of eternal punishment for the brief scamper with Matilda. Stevens had never repeated the success of Sad Majors , a work distinguished, in its way, among examples of what its author called ‘that dicey art-form, the war reminiscence’. The often promised book of verse — ‘verse, not poetry’, Stevens always insisted — had never appeared. I had heard it suggested that Stevens worked part-time for the Secret Service. War record, general abilities, way of life, none of them controverted that possibility, though equally the suggestion may have been quite groundless. When Rosie, and the two Americans, began to talk to Gwinnett, Stevens swivelled his chair round in my direction.