Anthony Powell - Temporary Kings

‘I went to see her. She told me some facts.’

‘Such as?’

‘What some of her clients like.’

‘Anything out of the usual run?’

‘Not much, I guess.’

‘I’d have thought Trapnel pretty normal.’

‘She said he was.’

Gwinnett changed the subject. I thought he had abandoned it. I was wrong. He was choosing another conversational angle, one of his habits, at times effected in a manner a little disconcerting.

‘Did Lindsay Bagshaw say there’d been some trouble at his place?’

‘I haven’t seen him, but I heard something of the sort. I knew you’d left.’

‘You heard Lady Widmerpool kicked up a racket there?’

‘Her name was mentioned.’

‘As raising hell?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘If you run across Lady Widmerpool, do you mind not telling her my address?’

‘OK.’

‘You heard about Lord Widmerpool being denounced on the radio as a British agent? Lindsay Bagshaw talked his head off about it. I’m not that interested in politics, though I couldn’t but be interested in such a thing happening. Just because of all the Trapnel tie-up with her. What do you think?’

‘He might be in deep water. Hard to say, at this stage.’

Gwinnett hesitated, seeming, as he sometimes did, uncertain of the exact ground he wanted to occupy.

‘Lady Widmerpool — Pamela — I wouldn’t be in her husband’s shoes, if she’s left to decide his fate.’

‘She’s got it in for him?’

‘That’s how it looks.’

‘You’re avoiding her for the time being?’

That was a reasonable question in the circumstances. Gwinnett did not answer it. At the same time he accepted its inferences.

‘Just to duck back to Pauline for a spell — she had dealings with Lord Widmerpool.’

‘Professional ones, you mean?’

‘Sure.’

‘He picked her up somewhere? Answered an ad?’

‘When his wife was living with Trapnel, Widmerpool had her shadowed. As a former girl friend of Trapnel’s, whom he saw once in a while, Pauline’s name was given to Widmerpool.’

‘And he went to see her?’

‘They met somehow.’

‘Continued to meet?’

‘It seems arrangements were made satisfactory to both sides. Pauline later figured at several parties attended by Widmerpool — and the Frenchman, too, who died all that sudden, when Pamela was around.’

‘Pauline told you that?’

Gwinnett nodded. He had a way with him when he sought information. At least information was what he acquired.

‘Was Pamela herself included in these Pauline jaunts?’

‘I don’t know for certain. I don’t believe so.’

Thought of Pamela seemed to depress Gwinnett He fell into one of his glooms. Their relationship was an enigma. Perhaps he was in love with her, in spite of everything. We parted on good terms, the best. Gwinnett spoke as if we were likely to talk together again as a matter of course, do that quite soon. At the same time he parried any suggestion of coming to see us; even arranging another meeting in London. This determination that initiative should remain in his hands was a reminder of Trapnel methods. Possibly it was one of the ways in which Gwinnett was growing to resemble Trapnel.

During the next month or so, Gwinnett’s problems receded in my mind as a matter of immediate interest, Widmerpool’s too. Fresh information about the second of those came from two rather unexpected sources. These followed each other in quick succession, although quite unconnected.

For several years after the war, I had attended reunion dinners of one of the branches of the army in which I had served, usually deciding to do so at the last moment, even then never quite knowing what brought me there. Friends made in a military connexion were, on the whole, to be seen more conveniently, infinitely more agreeably, in settings of a less deliberate character, where former brother officers, now restored to civilian life in multitudinous shapes, had often passed into spheres with which it was hard to make conversational contact. Intermittent transaction in the past of forgotten military business provided only a frail link. All the same, when something momentous like a war has taken place, all existence turned upside down, personal life discarded, every relationship reorganized, there is a temptation, after all is over, to return to what remains of the machine, examine such paraphernalia as came one’s way, pick about among the bent and rusting composite parts, assess merits and defects. Reunion dinners, to the point of morbidity, gave the chance of indulging in such reminiscent scrutinies. Not far from a vice, like most vices they began sooner or later to pall. Even the first revealed the gap, instantaneously come into being on demobilization, between what was; what, only a moment before, had been. On each subsequent occasion that hiatus widened perceptibly, moving in the direction of an all but impassable abyss.

There were, of course, windfalls. One evening, at such an assemblage, my former Divisional Commander, General Liddament (by then promoted to the Army Council) turned up as guest of honour, making a lively speech about the country’s military commitments ‘round the map’, ending with a recommendation that everyone present should read Trollope. That was an exceptional piece of luck. In the same way, an old colleague would sometimes appear; Hewetson, who had looked after the Belgians, now senior partner in a firm of solicitors: Slade, Pennistone’s second-string with the Poles, headmaster of a school in the Midlands: Dempster, retired from selling timber, settled in Norway, still telling his aunt’s anecdotes about Ibsen. Finn, Commanding Officer of the Section, was dead. At the end of the war he had gone back briefly to his cosmetic business in Paris, soon after left, to end his days in contemplation of his past life and his VC, near Perpignan. Pennistone (married to a French girl, said to have taken an energetic part in the Resistance) had stepped into Finn’s place in the firm. His letters reported good sales. He rarely came to England, spare time from the office taken up with writing a book on the philosophical ideas of Cyrano de Bergerac.

Usually there was less on offer, fewer, still fewer, even known by sight. That was especially true when the thinned ranks of branches, originally designed to be reunited on this particular occasion, were augmented by other elements. These, if remotely related in duties, had once been regarded with a certain professional suspicion, but their attendance too dwindled through death and inanition, requiring, as we did, bolstered numbers to make the party worth while. In short, feeling increasingly isolated, I lost the habit of attending these dinners. Then, a son likely to become liable for military service, it seemed wise to re-establish bearings in a current army world, find out what was happening, pick up anything to be known. I put down my name again, without much hope of seeing anyone with whom closer bonds were likely to be evoked than shared memory of whether or not some weapon, piece of equipment, had ‘come off the security list’ for release to the Allies, or by swopping stories about the shortcomings, as an officer and a man, of the unpopular brigadier.

That year the dinner was held on the premises of a club or association of vaguely patriotic intent, unfamiliar to myself both in membership and situation. The dining-room was decorated in a manner sober to the point of becoming sepulchral, drinks obtainable from a bar at one end. No one standing about there was an acquaintance. At the table assigned to my former Section, faces were equally unknown. Mutual introductions took place. My righthand neighbour, Lintot, fair, bald, running to fat, had looked after some of the Neutrals — a ‘dismal crowd’, he said — before Finn commanded, later posted to Censorship in the Middle East. He worked in a travel agency. We talked of the best places to take an autumn holiday abroad.