Temporary Kings (30 page)

‘Hugh’s
name isn’t on the programme?’

‘He
didn’t want it there. The word “Africa” did it. Moreland’s cracked about
Africa. Always has been, always will be, I suppose. Goes off on the quiet to
the British Museum to gaze on the African idols there. Mrs Stevens only had to
say the money was going to Africa for Moreland to knock off all his other work,
and set about the Mozart. Doesn’t matter what worry it causes me. Of course,
Moreland knew Mrs Stevens in what he loves to call The Old Days, so The Old
Days might have been sufficient anyway, without being clinched by Africa.
Whatever I said wasn’t going to make any difference.’

Moreland,
it was true, had always responded strongly to things African, rather as
fountainhead of fetish and voodoo, than aspects of the African continent likely
to be benefited by funds raised that night. The fascination exercised on his
imagination by such incantatory cults was not unlike Bagshaw’s unquenched
curiosity about the ritual and dogma of Marxism, neither believers, both
enthralled. Once Moreland’s attention had been imaginatively aroused, he would
find no difficulty in ignoring the fact that witchdoctors, zombies, cults of
the dead, might not greatly profit from his help. Moreland himself came up at
that moment Audrey Maclintick did not give him time to speak.

‘I
expect you’ve seen who’s here tonight – Lady Donners. That was bound to happen.
Just her sort of party. I don’t expect she wants to see me, any more than I do
her. Well, I’ll leave you two together to have a talk about The Old Days, which
I’ve no doubt you’ll start off on at once. Don’t let Moreland have another
drink before the curtain goes up. It isn’t good for him. He ought to be in bed
in any case, not mooning about at a place like this.’

She
made off. So far as Moreland having another drink, she was probably right. He
did not look at all well. Once, he would have been put out by such an injunction
from wife, mistress, anyone else, made a great fuss about being treated as if
not able to look after himself. Now, he was not at all concerned, taking the
admonition as a matter of course, almost a demonstration of affection, which no
doubt in a sense it was. Audrey Maclintick was said to look after him well, in
what were not always easy circumstances. Moreland, too, showed signs of
accepting her view that his own presence in the Stevens house required excuse.

‘Never
again. Not after what I’ve been through with the
Seraglio
committee ladies. Valmont’s valet remarked the big difference between
persuading a woman to sleep with you, which she really wants to do – though
personally I’ve often found to the contrary – and inducing her to agree to
something that offers no comparable satisfaction. My God, he was right

Put
me
To yoking foxes, milking of he-goats,
Gathering all the leaves fall’n this autumn.
Drawing farts from dead bodies,
Mustering of ants and numbering of atoms,
There is no hell to a lady of fashion.

I
don’t mean Rosie. She’s all right. It was the rest of them. They expected me to
do just the very things I’ve mentioned – every one of them.’

‘You’ve
been saying for years you live beyond the pleasure principle. Why boggle at
ladies of fashion? Do they still exist?’

‘Believe
me they do. Matty’s one now. I’ve just been having a word with her. Almost the
first since we were husband and wife, beyond saying hullo, when we saw each
other at the Ballet or the Opera. She seems to have supported the death of the
Great Industrialist remarkably well.’

Matilda
Donners was standing on the far side of the room. I had the impression Moreland
had never managed to fall entirely out of love with her.

‘I
got her to introduce me to Polly Duport, whom she’s talking to now. I’ve always
been rather a fan. What I mean about Matty’s social manner is that, having
brought Polly Duport and myself together, she then had to suggest that I do the
musical settings for some film Polly Duport’s going to play the lead in. It’s
made from a St John Clarke novel, if you can imagine anything more grotesque. I
remember my aunt thinking me too young to read
Fields of Amaranth
, but it isn’t that one, and that isn’t
my objection. The producer, an American called Glober, was also pressed on me by
Matty. He’s that tall, bald, melodramatic character, talking to her now,
looking as if he’s going to play Long John Silver in a Christmas production of
Treasure Island
.’

‘You’ve
met Glober before.’

I
recalled to Moreland the Mopsy Pontner dinner party. The effect was almost
startling. The blood came rushing into his face as if he were about to have
apoplexy. He began to laugh uncontrollably, quite in the old manner. Then, with
an effort, he stopped. He was almost breathless, coughing hard. At the end of this
near paroxysm he looked less ill, more exhausted. The information had greatly
cheered him.

‘No,
really, that’s too much. Am I to be suffocated by nostalgia? Will that be my
end? I should not be at all surprised. I can see the headline:

musician
dies of nostalgia

They’d
put someone like Gossage on to the obit. “Mr Hugh Moreland – probably just Hugh
Moreland these days – (writes our Music Critic), at a fashionable gathering
last night – I’m sure Gossage still talks about fashionable gatherings – succumbed
to an acute attack of nostalgia, a malady to which he had been a martyr for
years. His best known works, etc, etc…” Are you aware, quite apart from Matty
turning up here tonight, there hangs on the stairs of this very house Barnby’s
drawing – in his naturalistic manner, I’m glad to say – of Norma, that little
waitress at Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant? All this, and Mopsy Pontner too. I
can’t bear it. I shall mount the stage, and announce that, instead of Mozart
tonight, I am myself going to entertain the company with a potpourri of
nostalgic melodies.’

Moreland
paused. He stepped back, clasping his hands, intoned gently:

‘Dearest,
our day is over,
Ended the dream divine.
You must go back to your life,
I must go back to mine.

Nothing
short of some such outward expression of my own nostalgic feelings would be at
all adequate. You shouldn’t have told me about Mopsy Pontner. It wasn’t the act
of a friend.’

Although
still laughing, Moreland, as before sometimes in such moods, had stirred
himself emotionally by his own irony, his eyes filling with tears. Stevens came
up to us.

‘Look,
Hugh, the curtain isn’t going to rise absolutely on time. A substitute Violin
was a minute or two late. The regular player went down with flu at the last
moment, and a substitute had to be found at short notice. We’ve been assured he’s
all right. He’s upstairs peeing at the moment, but he’ll be along when he’s
finished, and start fiddling away. Don’t get worked up about the delay.’

‘You
speak as if I was a temperamental impresario about to throw a scene. It’s no
affair of mine when the curtain goes up. I’d much rather have another drink,
which the delay gives me the right to do, whatever Audrey says.’

It
was remarkable he should admit to being defiant about what she said. Moreland
went off. There was no means of putting a veto on drink into operation. He
moved as if his joints were rather stiff these days. Stevens laughed.

‘Isn’t
Hugh splendid? Rosie thought he wasn’t well, but he seems perfectly all right
to me. I say, who do you think have turned up tonight? The Widmerpools. I
suppose he’s celebrating.’

‘What’s
he got to celebrate about? I thought he was going to be sent to the Tower,
hanged, drawn and quartered.’

‘Not
now. It’s been found “not in the public interest” to proceed with the case. I
was hearing about it earlier in the day. A journalist I know told me some quite
interesting things. Widmerpool was damned lucky. You can take it from me he was
in a tight corner. I suppose he thought this a good opportunity to show himself
in public. You can’t exactly say with an untarnished reputation, but at least
not serving twenty-five years for espionage.’

‘Did
he apply to you for a ticket, as a once close friend of his wife’s?’

‘The
Widmerpools, old cock, were brought by a friend of Rosie’s, Sir Leonard Short,
a civil servant with musical leanings, who used to frequent her parents’ house.
As luck will have it, Tompsitt’s here too, our ambassador in the place where
Widmerpool was having his trouble. They’ll be able to dish it up together. All very
respectable.’

‘Is
the large grim lady Tompsitt’s wife?’

‘She’s
rather rich. Schweizer Deutsch. Been married before. Ah, things are moving
quicker now. I see Rosie is making signs. Do you and Isobel know where your
seats are? I want to talk to Isobel. I haven’t seen her for ages.’

He
obviously had no idea how much Isobel disliked him. We all passed into the
marquee. The Widmerpools, with Short (knighted at the last Birthday Honours),
were several rows in front. Short, although his prim buttoned-up exterior
allowed few inner doubts to be observed, looked less happy than the occasion
seemed to demand, if what Stevens reported about Widmerpool were true. Pressure
had perhaps been put on him to arrange this public appearance signalizing
exculpation. Less dramatically than that, Widmerpool could simply have wished
to hear the opera performed because he hoped to be identified with this
particular charity. Love of music was unlikely to have brought him, whatever
other reason. He, too, was looking more aggrieved than triumphant. Short’s
apparent uneasiness – Widmerpool’s too, for that matter – may have been due to
discovering that Pamela was far from popular with her hostess. If it came to
that, Short was not at all well disposed to Pamela himself. She sat beside him,
a look of utter contempt on her face, at the same time, rare with her, smiling faintly.
She had got herself up in her smartest manner. Only those who knew her
reputation might have reflected that, in another, more perverse mood, she might
easily have turned up to watch the
Seraglio
wearing an old pair of jeans.

Rosie,
Stevens, the Tory Cabinet Minister, his wife, Matilda Donners (who seemed to
have brought the last two), were all sitting rather to the side of the front
row. Their group, which included Polly Duport and Glober, had probably dined
together. Behind the Widmerpools sat the Tompsitts, whom I had noticed on
arrival. I had not set eyes on Tompsitt since hearing him, at the close of some
inter-service committee, deplore, with Widmerpool, the Poles’ lack of
circumspection in making representations about Katyn to the International Red
Cross. The air of disorder, marking out Tompsitt in his early days as a young
diplomatist free from the conventionality ascribed to his kind, had settled
down to a middle-aged unkemptness, implying chronic irritability, as much as a
free spirit. The exceptionally peevish expression on his face at that moment
could be attributed to Widmerpool himself, who, leaning back in a manner
threatening to repeat his wife’s chair-breaking incident at the French Embassy,
showed no sign of ceasing to talk, in deference to the opening notes of the
Overture. Finally, Tompsitt’s wife raised her programme menacingly. Widmerpool,
bowing to force, turned away from them. The curtain rose revealing the Pasha’s
palace.

During
the first interval, on the way out of the marquee, we came on Glober. He was
holding Polly Duport lightly by the arm.

‘Why,
hullo, Nick. Fancy meeting you here. What a hell of a good time we all had in
Venice. I’m not going to forget your Major Tokenhouse in years. I had that
picture of his packaged, and sent back to the States, where it’s to become one
of the treasures of the Glober collection of twentieth-century primitives. Why
didn’t you stop over for the Film Festival, and meet Polly here?’

In
saying all this Glober managed also to convey an odd sense of added remoteness,
not only in speaking of our Venetian meeting, also somehow in relation to
himself. He was not in the least unfriendly, absolutely the reverse, still enormously
cordial, at the same time in a manner that set him at a distance, put a cordon
round him, entrenched his position. It was a little like the rays people seem
to emit when they have promised a job, promotion, invitation, satisfaction of
one sort or another, then withdrawn the offer. He continued to speak for a
minute or two about the Tokenhouse picture, imprisoning all around him within
the net of his own social technique, moving on to the Film Festival, then the
St John Clarke novel. He was not quite prepared for Isobel’s knowledge (in
certain areas rivalling Trapnel’s) of obscure or forgotten fiction.

‘How
will you handle the scene where Phyllida and Prosper get lost in the mist on
the glacier at Schwarenbach?’

While
Glober dealt with that question, I reminded Polly Duport of our drive back from
the St Paul’s service, with her mother and stepfather. Undeniably a beauty,
less remarkably so off the stage, she had now, I thought, come to resemble
Duport more than Jean. She had her father’s cool, wary scepticism, as well as
Jean’s figure and grey eyes. In her thirties, already well known, she had in
the film at Venice somehow achieved this additional prestige, a flowering which
had instinctively caught Glober’s fancy, aroused his untiring interest in the
immediate.

‘I
remember an English officer joining us. So that was you? I suppose you were
keeping an eye on my stepfather, making sure he behaved properly in church?’

The
comment recalled her mother.

‘How
is Colonel Flores?’

‘Very
well indeed. He’s a general now, but more or less retired from the army, and in
politics.’

‘And
your mother?’

‘She’s
all right. Fine, in fact. Carlos’s new job suits her. You see, he’s head of the
Government.’

‘I
didn’t know that.’