Anthony Powell - Temporary Kings

‘I know about that, more or less, but not about Polly Duport.’

‘You remember how horrid Pam was to me in Venice, considering what friends we’d been. She’s been ringing me up almost daily lately, trying to find out what’s become of Gwinnett. How should I know? I barely met him. The most I did was to ask for us to be allowed to consider his book on X. Trapnel, when it’s finished.’

This upset Quiggin again.

‘A book on X. Trapnel is never going to sell. Why get us involved in it at all. It would only mean more money down the drain.’

‘So any question of Pamela marrying Glober is at an end?’

‘Why should she marry Glober?’

‘You said he wanted to marry her — not just have an affair with her.’

‘I did?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sure I didn’t. Anyway, if I did, I shouldn’t have done so. Forget about it. Of course, it’s all off. How could it be anything else? Louis’s terribly sweet and kind, but you never know what he’s going to do next.’

‘That’s just what I’ve already stated,’ said Quiggin.

‘All film people go on like that. Never mind. I do think he really is keen on Match Me Such Marvel . Of course it’s not going to be called that. We haven’t decided on the best tide yet. Polly is a marvellous girl too. Not only glamorous, but a real professional.’

‘What I can’t believe is Pamela making no row.*

‘Even Pam realized she’d never get the part once Louis began taking Polly out to dinner.’

‘Did Pamela meet Polly Duport?’

‘I didn’t think so. The Widmerpools went back to England halfway through the Film Festival. It was Pam’s thing about Gwinnett, as much as anything else, that caused Louis to give her up. It serves Pam right. I believe she really did think she was going to become famous.*

‘Why did Glober object so much? Gwinnett was positively running away from the situation, so far as anything Glober might object to. He still is. Even in the early stages, he only wanted Trapnel information.’

‘Louis didn’t think so. Anyway there was Pam. Perhaps it was because he was another American.’

‘Is Glober going to marry Polly Duport now?’

‘Isn’t she married already, to an actor, though they’re living apart? She was on her own when she came to Venice. Perhaps he will.’

‘What does Widmerpool think about it all? His feelings don’t seem to have been considered much, whether Pam leaves him or stays. Your idea was that he would be quite glad to get her taken off his hands. Now, if he goes to prison for spying, she’ll be able to visit him in the Scrubs or Dartmoor, wherever he’s sent — give him additional hell.’

Quiggin was outraged.

‘You think that a matter to joke about?’

‘Isn’t that what it looks like?’

‘That Parliamentary Question was disgraceful. Our own particular form of McCarthyism. All very gentlemanly, of course, none the less smearingly vindictive.’

‘You think he’ll emerge without a stain on his character?’

Quiggin was prepared to be less severe on that point. ‘Haven’t we all sins to forgive? Sins of over-enthusiasm, I mean. Look, Ada, there’s our bus.’

Each recriminative decade poses new riddles, how best to live, how best to write. One’s fifties, in principle less acceptable than one’s forties, at least confirm most worst suspicions about life, thereby disposing of an appreciable tract of vain expectation, standardized fantasy, obstructive to writing, as to living. The quinquagenarian may not be master of himself, he is, notwithstanding, master of a passable miscellany of experience on which to draw when forming opinions, distorted or the reverse, at least up to a point his own. After passing the half-century, one unavoidable conclusion is that many things seeming incredible on starting out, are, in fact, by no means to be located in an area beyond belief. The ‘Widmerpool case’ fell into that category. It remained enigmatic so far as the public were concerned. People who liked to regard themselves as ‘in the know’ were not much better off, one rumour contradicting another, what exactly Widmerpool had done to put himself in such an awkward spot remaining undefined. One extraneous item came my own way, which, as purely negative evidence, could have been added to material sifted by whatever official body was undertaking an enquiry. It was expressed in the form of a picture postcard of the Doge’s Palace.

‘Have to date heard nothing from your friend about blocks. Weather here good. D. McN. T.’

That, at least, indicated none of the disaster, threatening Widmerpool on account of Dr Belkin’s absence from the Conference, had resulted in Tokenhouse suffering comparable repercussions. I had intended to ask the Quiggins about the blocks for the Cubist series, when walking with them after luncheon at the Soviet Embassy. More personally engrossing matters had intervened. The blocks remained forgotten. I sent Tokenhouse a postcard of Nelson’s Column, saying (in army parlance) the matter would be looked into, a report forwarded.

In early summer, Isobel and I went by chance to a musical party organized by Rosie and Odo Stevens. It was a charity affair, our inclusion nothing to do with the meeting in Venice. In fact, the people who brought us knew the Stevenses hardly at all. I make this point to emphasize that guests present at this particular entertainment were not handpicked. No doubt everyone who received an invitation, in the first instance, was an acquaintance of some sort. Beyond such intermediaries stretched a relatively anonymous conflux of persons, whose passport to the house lay only in willingness to buy a ticket. Had things been otherwise, the evening might have turned out differently; possibly not certain other events that followed.

The Stevens house in Regent’s Park, not large by the standards of Rosie’s parents, though done up inside with a touch of the old Manasch resplendence, had room for a marquee to be built out on to a flat roof at the back to create an improvised auditorium, accommodating a respectable number of persons. Rosie had inherited two or three very acceptable pictures, and pieces of furniture, which Hugo Tolland, speaking from an antique dealer’s point of view, regarded with respect. He had sold her two French commodes from his own shop, so they had not been acquired cheaply. Offering this sort of show for a charitable purpose was, on Rosie’s part, a pious memento of the days when Sir Herbert and Lady Manasch, great patrons of the arts, had mounted similar projects. Stevens himself, claiming musical enthusiasms, as well as a strong taste for parties, may on this occasion have been at least as responsible as his wife. The ‘good cause’ was connected with one or more of the emergent African countries; the piece to be performed, Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dent Serail — the ‘ Seraglio ’. The price of a ticket included supper after the opera had been performed.

Like the Soviet luncheon party — some of the same guests — there was a distinctly political flavour about the people collected, before the performance, in the Stevens drawing-room, MPs from both sides of the house, some African diplomatic representatives. This time the musical world, Rosie always maintaining links there, took the place of writers. Many of those present were unknown to myself. I recognized a Tory Cabinet Minister, and a female member of the Labour Shadow Cabinet, from pictures in the press. The music critic, Gossage, and Norman Chandler, who directed now, rather than dancing or acting, had come together. Gossage, a trifle more dried up and toothy than formerly, had exchanged his former pince-nez for rimless spectacles. His little moustache had gone white. Chandler, slightly filled out from the skeletal thinness of his younger days, retained a marionette-like appearance, a marionette now of a certain age. Living in one of the Ted Jeavons flats, Chandler had developed into rather a crony of Jeavons. They used to watch television together.