Anthony Powell - Temporary Kings

Pamela’s name did not occur in the letter. At the same time, Gwinnett’s emphasis on Trapnel, in what he wrote, may have been a formality, something to supply basis for communication, felt to be needed, of necessity delicate to express. The Trapnel enquiries were plainly not urgent. In their connexion, Gwinnett spoke of returning to his critical biography only after sufficient time had elapsed to ensure the dissertation’s approach remained objective, ran no risk of being too much coloured by events that concerned himself, rather than his subject. Characteristically, he added that he still believed in ‘aiming at objectivity, however much that method may be currently under fire’. As well as reducing immediate attention to the Trapnel book — though not his own fundamental interest in Trapnel himself — Gwinnett had abandoned academic life as a formal profession for the time being. He might return to the campus one of these days, he said, at the moment he only wanted to ruminate on that possibility. His new job, also teaching, was of quite a different order. He had become instructor of water-skiing at one of the Mediterranean seaside resorts of the Spanish coast. He said he liked the work pretty well.

Gwinnett also touched on Glober’s death. The accident (on the Moyenne Corniche) had been one of those reflecting no marked blame on anyone, except that the car had been travelling at an unusually high speed. A friend of Glober’s, a well-known French racing-driver, had been at the wheel. The story received very thorough press coverage. It was the sort of end Glober himself would have approved. Although the last time I saw him — of which I will speak later — he was with Polly Duport, Match Me Such Marvel was soon after abandoned as a project. No one seemed to know how far things had gone between them in personal relationship. The general view was that her profession, rather than love affairs, came first in her life. She may have been well out of the Glober assignment, because, about a month before Glober died, she acquired a good part (not the lead, one in some ways preferable to that) in a big ‘international’ film made by Clarini, Baby Wentworth’s estranged husband.

I had the impression that Gwinnett and Glober had never much cared for one another. Beyond appreciating the obvious fact of their differing circumstances, I had no well defined comprehension of how they would have mutually reacted in their own country. In his letter, Gwinnett — like Gwinnett in the flesh — remained enigmatic, but he did comment on the way Death (he gave the capital letter) had been in evidence all round. There was nothing in the least obsessive in the manner he treated the subject. He did not, of course, disclose whether he had ‘known’ Pamela’s condition before she came to the hotel. How could he disclose that?

The fact is, Gwinnett must have known. Otherwise there would have been no point in Pamela making the sacrifice of herself. Her act could only be looked upon as a sacrifice — of herself, to herself. So far as sacrifice went, Gwinnett could accept Pamela’s, as much as Iphigenia ’s. The sole matter for doubt, in the light of inhibitions existing, not on one side only, was whether, at such a cost, all had been achieved. One hoped so. I wrote a letter back to Gwinnett. I told him how I had seen Glober, without having opportunity to speak with him, in the autumn of the previous year. I did not mention I had seen Widmerpool too on that occasion. It seemed better not. I always liked Gwinnett. I liked Glober too.

During the months that remained to Moreland, after the Seraglio party, we often used to talk about the story of Candaules and Gyges . He had never heard of the Jacky Bragadin Tiepolo. The hospital was on the south bank of the River.

‘One might really have considered the legend as a theme for opera,’ Moreland said. ‘I mean, if other things had been equal.’

He lay in bed with an enormous pile of books beside him, books all over the bed too. He would quote from these from time to time. He was very taken with the idea of the comparison Pamela herself had made.

‘Candaules can obviously be better paralleled than Gyges. Most men have a bit of Candaules in them. Your friend Widmerpool seems to have quite a lot, if he really liked exhibiting his wife. She was the Queen all right, if she’s to be believed as being put on show. Also, in knowing that, herself intending to kill the King. Not necessarily physical killing, but revenge. Who was Gyges?’

‘Hardly Ferrand-Sénéschal. In any case, through no fault of his own, he failed in that role. Others seemed to have enjoyed his Gyges-like privileges without dethroning the King. Candaules-Widmerpool continues to reign.’

‘No, it doesn’t really work,’ said Moreland. ‘All the same, it’s a splendid fable of Love and Friendship — what you’re liable to get from both — but the bearings are more general than particular, in spite of certain striking resemblances in this case. You really think she took the overdose, told him, then …’

‘What else could have happened?’

‘Literally dying for love.’

‘Death happened to be the price. The sole price.’

‘All other people’s sexual relations are hard to imagine. The more staid the people, the more inconceivable their sexual relations. For some, the orgy is the most natural. On that night after the Seraglio , I was very struck by the goings-on with which Lady Widmerpool taxed her husband. I’ve next to no voyeurist tastes myself. I lack the love of power that makes the true voyeur. When I was in Marseilles, years ago, working on Vieux Port , there was a brothel, where, allegedly unknown to the occupants, you could look through to a room used by other clients. I never felt the smallest urge to buy a ticket. It was Donners’s thing, you know.’

Moreland reflected a moment on what he had said. While still married to Matilda, he had, rather naturally, always avoided reference to that side of Sir Magnus’s life. This was the first time, to my own knowledge, he had ever brought up the subject.

‘Did I ever tell you how the Great Industrialist once confided to me that, when a young man — already doing pretty well financially — the doctors told him he had only a year to live? Of course that now seems the hell of a long time, in the light of one’s own medical adviser’s admonitions — not that I’m greatly concerned about keeping the old hulk afloat for another voyage or two, in the increasingly stormy seas of contemporary life, especially by drastic cutting down of the rum ration, and confining oneself to ship’s biscuit, the regime recommended. That’s by the way. The point is, I now find myself in a stronger position than in those days for vividly imagining what it felt like to be the man in the van Gogh pictures, so to speak Donners-on-the-brink-of-Eternity. Do you know what action Donners took? I’ll tell you in his own words.’

Moreland adopted the flat lugubrious voice, conventionally used by those who knew Sir Magnus, to imitate — never very effectively, because inimitable — his manner of talking.

‘I rented a little cottage in The Weald, gem of a place that brought a lump to the throat by its charm. There I settled down to read the best — only the best — of all literatures, English, French, German, Italian, Scandinavian.’

Moreland paused.

‘I don’t know why Spanish was left out. Perhaps it was included, and I’ve forgotten. Between these injections of the best literature, Donners listened to recordings of the best — only the best — music.’

‘Interrupted by meals composed of the best food and the best wine?’

‘Donners, as you must remember to your cost, like most power maniacs, was not at all interested in food and drink. Although far more in his line, I presume the best sexual sensations were also omitted. That would be not so much because their physical expression might hasten ringing down the curtain, as on account of the apodictic intention. Is “apodictic” the right word? I once used it with effect in an article attacking Honegger. The villeggiatura was very specifically designed to rise above coarser manifestations of the senses.’