Temporary Kings (2 page)

That’s what the
Venice Conference will amount to. I shall put your name down.’

‘Who else is going?’

‘Quentin Shuckerly,
Ada Leintwardine. They’re certain. Not Alaric Kydd, which is just as well. The
new Shuckerly,
Athlete’s
Footman
, is the best queer novel since
Sea
Urchins
. You ought to have a look at it, if you’ve got time. You
won’t regret the decision to go to Venice. I’m
désolé
at not being
able to attend myself. Unfortunately one can’t be in two places at once, and I
have a duty to make myself available elsewhere. There will be a lot of
international figures there, some of them quite distinguished. Ferrand-Sénéschal,
Kotecke, Santos, Pritak. With any luck you’ll find a very talented crowd. I’d
hoped to hear Ferrand-Sénéschal on the subject of Pasternak and the Nobel
Prize. His objections – he will certainly demur at the possibility – will be
worth listening to.’

In suggesting that
the international fame of several foreign writers liable to attend the
Conference was not to be entirely disregarded in assessing its attractions,
Members was speaking reasonably enough. To meet some of these, merely to set
eyes on them, would be to connect together a few additional pieces in the
complex jigsaw making up the world’s literary scene; a game never completed,
though sometimes garishly illuminated, when two or three unexpected fragments
were all at once coherently aligned in place. To addicts of this pastime, the
physical appearance of a given writer can add to his work an incisive
postscript, physical traits being only inadequately assessable from
photographs. Ferrand-Sénéschal, one of the minor celebrities invoked by
Members, was a case in point. His thick lips, closely set eyes, ruminatively
brutal expression, were familiar enough from newspaper pictures or publishers’
catalogues, the man himself never quite defined by them. I had no great desire
to meet Ferrand-Sénéschal – on balance would almost prefer to be absolved from
the effort of having to talk with him – but I was none the less curious to see
what he looked like in person, know how he carried himself among his fellow
nomads of the intellect, Bedouin of the cultural waste, for ever folding and
unfolding their tents in its oases.

There was another
reason, when Members picked Ferrand-Sénéschal’s name out of the hat as a
potential prize for attending the Conference, why a different, a stronger
reaction was summoned up than by such names as Santos, Pritak, Kotecke. During
the war, staff-officers, whose work required rough-and-ready familiarity with
conditions of morale relating to certain bodies of troops or operational areas
– the whole world being, in one sense, at that moment an operational area – were
from time to time given opportunity to glance through excerpts, collected
together from a wide range of correspondence, inspected by the Censorship
Department. This symposium, of no very high security grading, was put together
for practical purposes, of course, though not with complete disregard for light
relief. The anonymous anthologist would sometimes show appreciation of a letter’s
comic or ironic bearing. Ferrand-Sénéschal was a case in point. Scrutinizing
the file, my eye twice caught his name, familiar to anyone whose dealings with
contemporary literature took them even a short way beyond the Channel. Ferrand-Sénéschal’s
letters were dispatched from the United States, where, lecturing at the
outbreak of war, he had remained throughout hostilities. Always a Man of the
Left (much in evidence as such at the time of the Spanish Civil War, when his
name had sometimes appeared in company with St John Clarke’s), he had shown
rather exceptional agility in sitting on the fence that divided conflicting
attitudes of the Vichy Administration from French elements, in France and
elsewhere, engaged in active opposition to Germany.

Cited merely to
illustrate the current view of a relatively well-known French author domiciled
abroad through the exigencies of war, Ferrand-Sénéschal’s couple of
contributions to the Censor’s digest deftly indicated the deviousness of their
writer’s allegiance. No doubt, in one sense, the phrases were intended
precisely to achieve that, naturally implying nothing to be construed as even
covertly antagonistic to the Allied cause. Whatever else he might be, Ferrand-Sénéschal
was no fool. Indeed, it was his own appreciation of the fact that his letters
might be of interest to the Censor – any censor – which provoked a smile at the
skill shown in excerpting so neatly the carefully chosen sentences. In
addition, personal letters, even when deliberately composed with an eye to
examination, official or unofficial, by someone other than their final
recipient, give a unique sense of the writer’s personality, often lacking in
books by the same hand. They are possibly the most revealing of all, like
physical touchings-up of personal appearance to make some exceptional effect.
In the case of Ferrand-Sénéschal, as with his portraits in the press, the
personality conveyed, not to be underrated as a force, was equally not a
specially attractive one.

Avoidance, during
this expatriate period, of all outward participation, even
parti
pris
, in relation to the issues about which people were fighting
so fiercely, turned out no handicap to Ferrand-Sénéschal’s subsequent career.
Not only did he physically survive those years, something he might easily have
failed to do had he remained in Europe, but he returned to France unembarrassed
by any of the inevitable typifications attached to active combatants of one
sort or another. Some of these had, of course, acquired distinction, military
or otherwise, which Ferrand-Sénéschal could not claim, but, in this process,
few had escaped comparatively damaging sectarian labels. In fact, Ferrand-Sénéschal,
who had worked hard during his exile in literary and academic spheres in both
American continents, found himself in an improved position, with a wider
public, in a greatly changed world. He now abandoned a policy of non-intervention,
publicly announcing his adherence to the more extreme end of his former
political standpoint, one from which he never subsequently deviated. From this
vantage point he played a fairly prominent rô1e in the immediately post-war
period of re-adjustment in France; then, when a few years later cultural
congresses settled down into their swing, became – as emphasized by Members – a
conspicuous figure in their lively polemics.

Remembrance of these
censored letters had revived when I was ‘doing the books’ on
Fission
.
A work by Ferrand-Sénéschal turned up for review. Quiggin & Craggs had
undertaken a translation of one of his philosophico-economic studies. Although
the magazine was, in theory, a separate venture from the publishing house
producing it, the firm – Quiggin especially – was apt to take amiss too
frequent disregard of their own imprint in the critical pages of
Fission
.
I should in any case have consulted Bagshaw, as editor, as to whether or not a
Quiggin & Craggs book might be safely ignored. Bagshaw’s preoccupations
with all forms of Marxism, orthodox or the reverse, being what they were, he
was likely to hold views on this one. He did. He was at once animated by
Ferrand-Sénéschal’s name.

‘An interesting
sub-species of fellow-traveller. I’d like to have a look myself. Ferrand-Sénéschal’s
been exceedingly useful to the Party at one time or another, in spite of his
heresies. There’s always a little bit of Communist propaganda in whatever he
writes, however trivial. He also has odd sexual tastes. Political adversaries like
to dwell on that. In America, they allege some sort of scandal was hushed up.’

Bagshaw turned the
pages of Ferrand-Sénéschal’s book. He had accepted it as something for the
expert, sitting down to make a closer examination.

‘You won’t find
anything about his sexual tastes there. I’ve glanced through it.’

‘I’ll take it home,
and consider the question of a reviewer. I might have a good idea.’

By the following week
Bagshaw had a good idea. It was a very good one.

‘We’ll give Ferrand-Sénéschal
to Kenneth Widmerpool for his routine piece in the mag. It’s not unlike his own
sort of stuff.’

That was Bagshaw at
his best. His editor’s instinct, eccentric, unguarded, often obscure of intent,
was rarely to be set aside as thoughtless or absurd. He reported Widmerpool as
being at first unwilling to wrestle with the Ferrand-Sénéschal translation
(having scarcely heard of its author), but, on reading some of the book,
changing his mind. The article appeared in the next issue of
Fission
.
Widmerpool himself was delighted with it.

‘One of my most
successful efforts, I think I can safely aver. Ferrand-Sénéschal is a man to
watch. He and I have something in common, both of us intellectuals in the world
of action. In drawing analogy between our shared processes of thought, I refer
to a common denominator of resolution to break ruthlessly with old social
methods and outlooks. In short, we are both realists. I should like to meet
this Frenchman. I shall arrange to do so.’

The consequences of
the Ferrand-Sénéschal article were, in their way, far reaching. Ferrand-Sénéschal,
who visited London fairly often in the course of business – cultural business –
was without difficulty brought into touch with Widmerpool on one of these
trips. Some sort of a fellow-feeling seems to have sprung up immediately
between the two of them, possibly a certain facial resemblance contributing to
that, people who look like one another sometimes finding additional affinities.
In the army, for example, tall cadaverous generals would choose tall cadaverous
soldier-servants or drivers; short choleric generals prefer short choleric
officers on their staff. Whatever it was, Widmerpool and Ferrand-Sénéschal took
to each other on sight. As a member of some caucus within the Labour Party,
Widmerpool invited Ferrand-Sénéschal to meet his associates at a House of
Commons luncheon. This must have gone well, because in due course Ferrand-Sénéschal
returned the compliment by entertaining Widmerpool, when passing through Paris
on his way back from Eastern Europe, touring there under the banner of a
society to encourage friendship with one of the People’s Republics.

This night-out in
Paris with Ferrand-Sénéschal had also been an unqualified success. That was
almost an understatement of the gratification it had given Widmerpool,
according to himself. Either by chance or design, his comments on the subject
had come straight back to the
Fission
office. That
was the period when Widmerpool, deserted by his wife, was keeping away from the
magazine. Not unreasonably, he may have hoped, by deliberately building up a
legend of high-jinks with Ferrand-Sénéschal, to avoid seeming an abandoned
husband, unable to amuse himself, while Pamela lived somewhere in secret with
X. Trapnel. That could have been the motive for spreading broadcast the tidings
of going on the Parisian spree; otherwise, it might be thought, an incident
wiser to keep private. Certainly highly coloured rumours about their carousal
were in circulation months after its celebration. Apart from other
considerations, such behaviour, anyway such brazenness, was in complete
contrast with the tone in which Widmerpool himself used to deplore the
louche
reputation of Sir Magnus Donners.

This censure could,
of course, have been a double-bluff. When we had met at a large party given for
the Election Night of 1955 – the last time I had seen him – Widmerpool
deliberately dragged in a reference to the weeks spent together trying to learn
French at La Grenadière, adding that it was ‘lucky for our morals Madame Leroy’s
house had not been in Paris’, words that seemed to bear out, on his part,
desire to confirm a reputation for being a dog. That was early in the evening,
before Pamela’s incivility had greatly offended our hostess, or Widmerpool
himself heard (towards morning, after Isobel and I had gone home) that he had
lost his seat in the House. In
Fission
days, Bagshaw
had been sceptical about the Paris story, without dismissing it entirely.

‘I suppose some
jolly-up may have taken place. The brothels are closed nowadays officially, but
that wouldn’t make any difference to someone in the know. I’m not sure what
Ferrand-Sénéschal is himself supposed to like – being chained to a crucifix,
while a green light’s played on him – little girls – two-way mirrors – I’ve
been told, but I can’t remember. He may have given Kenneth a few ideas. I shall
develop sadistic tendencies myself, if that new secretary doesn’t improve. She’s
muddled those proofs of the ads again. I say, Nicholas, we’ve still too much
space to spare. Just cast your eye over these, and see if you’ve any
suggestions. You’ll bring a fresh mind to the advertisement problem. It’s a
blow too we’re not going to get any more Trapnel pieces. Editing this mag is
driving me off my rocker.’

In the light of what
I knew of Widmerpool, the tale of visiting a brothel with Ferrand-Sénéschal was
to be accepted with caution, although true that he had more than once in the
past adopted a rather gloating tone when speaking of tarts, an attitude dating
back to our earliest London days. Moreland used to say, ‘Maclintick doesn’t
like women, he likes tarts – indeed he once actually fell in love with a tart,
who led him an awful dance.’ That taste could be true of Widmerpool too;
perhaps a habit become so engrained as to develop into a preference,
handicapping less circumscribed sexual intimacies. Such routines might go some
way to explain the fiasco with Mrs Haycock, even the relationship – whatever
that might be – with Pamela. That Ferrand-Sénéschal, as Bagshaw suggested, had
been the medium for introduction, in middle-age, to hitherto unknown
satisfactions, new, unusual forms of self-release, was not out of the question.
By all accounts, far more unlikely things happened in the sphere of late sexual
development. Bagshaw was, of course, prejudiced. By that time he had decided
that Widmerpool was not only bent on ejecting him from the editorship of
Fission
, but was also a fellow-traveller.