Temporary Kings (34 page)

‘Quite
a lot of people have loved Louis.’

‘They
couldn’t help it,’ said Polly Duport.

Pamela
laughed softy.

‘I
expect you know,’ she said. ‘Louis’s stuffed a charming little cushion with
hair snipped from the pussies of ladies he’s had?’

Stevens
said afterwards that he ‘recognized that enquiry as signal for trouble starting’.
Both he and Moreland, in whatever other respects their stories differed, stood
shoulder to shoulder as regards those precise words of Pamela’s. Where they
disagreed was as to the manner in which Polly Duport took them. Stevens thought
her outraged. Moreland’s view was of her merely raising an eyebrow, so to
speak, at the crudeness of phrasing. She was not in the least disconcerted by
the eccentricity of the practice. Moreland was absolutely firm on that.

‘Miss
Duport showed not the slightest sign of wilting.’

He
agreed with Stevens that she made no comment. No one else made any comment
either. They just stood, ‘as if hypnotized’, Moreland said. Pamela laughed quietly
to herself, giving the impression that thought of Glober’s whim amused her. She
turned towards him.

‘You
have, haven’t you, Louis?’

‘Have
what, honey?’

Glober
was absolutely relaxed. Stevens, again fancying other people as scandalized as
himself, supposed him taken aback a moment before. If so, Glober was now
completely recovered.

‘Stuffed
a cushion?’

‘Sure.’

‘As
well as the ladies themselves?’

‘Correct.’

Glober
remained unrattled. Pamela laughed this time shrilly. She was working herself
up to a climax, possibly a sexual one. Stevens said her behaviour reminded him
of a scene made at a black-market night-club during the war, when she had
started a sudden row, calling out to the people at the next table that he was
impotent. Stevens never minded telling that sort of story about himself. It was
one of his good points. In any case, even if at one time or another he had
failed to satisfy Pamela, the charge was hard to substantiate, in her case not
a specially damaging one. As Barnby used to say in that connexion, ‘There’s a
boomerang aspect.’ Glober remained equally undisturbed. His conversational tone
matched Pamela’s.

‘I
thought Miss Duport would just like to know what’s expected. Perhaps you’ve
been at work with the nail-scissors already, Louis? Anyway, it’s a cheaper
hobby than his.’

She
pointed at Widmerpool. At this stage of the proceedings, Mrs Erdleigh seems to
have taken charge. One imagines that, in her own incorporeal manner, she
floated from the exterior of the group to its moral centre, wherever that might
be. She appears to have laid a hand on Pamela’s arm, a movement to suggest
restraint. This was the interlude Moreland most enjoyed describing, what he
called ‘the Sorceress in the ascendant, Lady Widmerpool afflicted’. He said
that Pamela, at contact of Mrs Erdleigh’s fingers, shot out a look of intense
malevolence, hesitating for a second in whatever she was about to say.

‘My
dear, beware. You are near the abyss. You stand at its utmost edge. Do not forget
the warning I gave when you showed me your palm on that dread night.’

Stevens
took the line later that neither second-sight nor magical powers were required
to foretell the way things were moving. He may have been right. At the same
time, however obscurely phrased, Mrs Erdleigh’s presentiments were near the
mark.

‘The
vessels of Saturn must not be shed to their dregs.’

Stevens,
incapable himself of reproducing cabalistic dialectic, was no less impressed
than Moreland, in whose repetition such specialized language lost none of its
singularity. The unwonted nature of Mrs Erdleigh’s invocations did not so much
in themselves bewilder Stevens as in their practical effect on Pamela.

‘The
extraordinary thing was Pam more or less understood the stuff. That was how it
looked. At least she stopped in her tracks for a second or two. I’ve never seen
anything like it.’

Stevens
was certainly taken aback, but the spell, as it turned out, was short lasting.
Briefly quelled, Pamela recovered herself.

‘Then
you know?’

‘Time
yet remains to evade the ghastly cataract.’

‘But
you know?’

‘Knowledge
is the treasure of our unsealed fountains.’

Pamela
gave what Stevens, in his flamboyant manner, called
a ‘terrible laugh’. Moreland admitted he, too, had found
that laugh uncomfortable.

‘Then
I’ll unseal them – and him.’

Mrs
Erdleigh made some sort of motion with her hand, one of her mystic passes,
conceivably no more than an emotional gesture, at which Pamela drew herself
away, Moreland said, ‘like a serpent’. Mrs Erdleigh issued her final warning.

‘Court
at your peril those spirits that dabble lasciviously with primeval matter,
horrid substances, sperm of the world, producing monsters and fantastic things,
as it is written, so that the toad, this leprous earth, eats up the eagle.’

Then
Pamela began to scream with laughter again, shriller even than before.

‘You
know, you know, you know. You’re a wonderful old girl. You don’t have to be
told Léon-Joseph croaked in bed with me. You know already. You know it’s true,
what nobody else quite believes.’

To
what extent that plain statement was at once comprehended by those standing
round remains uncertain. Probably the words did not wholly sink in until later.
At moment of utterance they could have sounded all part of this extraordinary
interchange, at once metaphorical and coarsely earthy. Some doubt existed, it
was agreed, as to the exact phrases Pamela used. Whatever they were, positiveness
of assertion was in no way diminished. She turned to Widmerpool again.

‘You
tell them about it. After all, you were there.’

She
pointed at him, now speaking to the others.

‘He
thought I didn’t spot he was watching through the curtain.’

Up
to this stage of things, it appears, no one except Mrs Erdleigh had attempted
to tackle Pamela. Mrs Erdleigh, so far as it went, having done that with
success, spoken her warning, withdrew into the shadows. Widmerpool had remained
all the time silent. Even now he did not at once answer this imputation on
himself. He heard it to the end without speaking. Glober, uncharacteristically
at a loss for the inspired wisecrack to ease the situation, was equally mute.
After that, from the moment Pamela voiced these revelations, there is
difficulty in pinpointing order of events, reliable continuity almost
impossible to establish. Accounts given by Moreland and Stevens were at odds
with each other. What appears to have taken place is that Pamela, dissatisfied
at her words being received with comparative calm, at best so stunning that her
bearers lacked reaction, chose another line of attack. It is no less possible
she was building up, in any case, to that. Stevens, more at home this time with
plain statements, rather than Mrs Erdleigh’s oracular sayings, gave a
convincing imitation of Pamela’s hissing
denunciation.

‘You
might think that enough. Watching your wife being screwed. Naturally it wasn’t
the first time. It was just the first time with a blubber-lipped Frenchman, who
couldn’t do it, then popped off. Of course he had arranged it all with Léon-Joseph
beforehand – except the popping off – and in some -ways it made things easier
to have two of us to explain to the hotel people that Monsieur Ferrand-Sénéschal
had just passed away while we were visiting him. Then there’s a tart called
Pauline he has games with. He used to photograph her. I found the photographs.
He didn’t guess I’d meet Pauline too.’

Even
then Widmerpool seems to have made no active protest. What really upset him was
Pamela’s next item.

‘He’s
been telling everybody that he hasn’t the slightest idea why they thought he was
spying. I can explain that too, all his little under-the-counter Communist
games. How he’s got out of his trouble, in spite of their holding an
interesting little note in his own handwriting. He’s given the show away as
often, and as far, as he dares. Unfortunately, he gave it away to his old pals,
the Stalinists. The lot who are in now want to discredit some of those old
pals. That’s where Léon-Joseph comes in again. Poor old
Ferrand-Sénéschal was playing just the same sort of game
– as well as an occasional orgy, when he felt up to it. So what he did was to
hand over all the information he possessed about Ferrand-Sénéschal, some of
that quite spicy. That’s why he was let off this time with a caution.’

Stevens,
his mind, as I have said, adjusted to secret traffickings, his nature to
physical violence, reported Pamela’s words as cut short at Widmerpool seizing
her by the throat. Moreland disagreed that anything so forcible had happened,
at least immediately. Moreland thought Widmerpool had simply caught her arm,
possibly struck her on the arm, attempting to silence his wife. The scene
partook, in far more savage temper, of that enacted at the Huntercombes’ ball,
when, after Barbara Goring had cut his dance, Widmerpool grasped her wrist. The
upshot then had been Barbara pouring sugar over his head. Widmerpool’s
onslaught this time might be additionally menacing, stakes of the game, so to
speak, immensely higher; the physical protest was the same, final exasperation
of nerves kept by a woman too long on edge. Another analogy with this earlier
grapple was Pamela, no more daunted at the assault than Barbara by her clutched
wrist, dragged herself away, screaming with laughter. The scene was not without
its horrifying, morally upsetting, side. Moreland emphasized that; Stevens,
too, in his own terms.

‘In
fact, I thought I was going to be sick,’ Moreland said. ‘Nausea might have been
caused by my recent
crise
.
If I had vomited, that would scarcely have added at all to other gruesome
aspects.’

In
emerging from this hand-to-hand affray with Pamela, possibly beaten off by her
own counter-attack, Widmerpool seems to have stepped back without warning,
retreating heavily on to Glober, who may himself have moved forward with an
idea of separating husband and wife. Stevens thought Stripling had made some
ponderous, ineffectual attempt to intervene. That is to some extent
controverted by subsequent evidence. The view of Stevens was that Stripling had
tried to catch Widmerpool round the waist, with the idea of restraining him, an
act misattributed by Widmerpool to Glober. Both Moreland and Stevens agreed
that, in the early stages of the Widmerpools’ clinch, Glober took no special
initiative. Perhaps, for once, he felt a certain diffidence, owing to the
intricacies of his own position. Possibly, too, he was not unwilling to watch
them fight it out on their own. There is some corroboration of Stripling
playing a comparatively active part at this stage, but things moving so
quickly, it was hard to know what he did, how long remained present.

What
does seem fairly certain is that Widmerpool, stepping backwards, immediately
supposed himself to have been in some manner curbed or coerced. Simultaneously,
Mrs Erdleigh, foreseeing trouble when Stripling laid a hand on Widmerpool, may
at once have spirited Stripling away by more or less occult means. That would
to some extent explain why Widmerpool, finding Glober, rather than Stripling,
made an angry, presumably derogatory comment. It is possible, of course, Glober
had indeed taken hold of him. They faced one another. That was when Glober hit
Widmerpool.

‘It’s
never a KO on these occasions,’ said Stevens. ‘I’ve seen it happen before,
though not with men of quite that age. Widmerpool just staggered a bit, and put
his hand up to his face. No question of dropping like a sack of potatoes, being
out for the count, floored by a straight left, or right hook. That only happens
professionally, or in the movies. The chief damage was his spectacles. They
were knocked off his nose, and broke, so the midnight match had to be called
off.’

No
one watching denied the light had been too bad for the fracas to be critically
assessed blow by blow. For this latter stage of the story, Stevens was probably
the better equipped reporter. Moreland, his own nervous tensions by this time
strongly reacting, not to mention the recent collapse he had suffered, was by
now partly repelled by what was happening, partly lost in a fantastic world of
his own, in which he seemed to be dreaming, rather than observing. He admitted
that. Stevens, more down to earth in affecting to regret unachieved refinements
of the boxing-ring, seems also to have been a little shocked, a condition
vacillatingly induced, in this case, by the age of the antagonists. It is
impossible to say how matters would have developed had not interruption taken
place from outside. A large car drove jerkily down the terrace, the chauffeur
slowing up from time to time, while he looked out of its window to ascertain
the number of each house as he passed. He drew up just beside the spot where
everyone was standing.

‘None
of you gentlemen Sir Leonard Short by any chance?’

Short
stepped forward. Until then he had been inactive. He may have withdrawn
completely, while the imbroglio was at its worst. Now he entered the limelight.

‘Yes.
I am Sir Leonard Short. I should like some explanation. I cannot in the least
understand why this car should be so late.’

‘I
am a trifle after time, sir. Sorry about that. Went to the wrong address. There’s
a Terrace, and a Place, and a Gate. Very confusing.’

‘This
unpunctuality is not at all satisfactory. I shall take the matter up.’

Short
opened the door of the car with a consciously angry jerk. He brusquely
indicated to Widmerpool that he was to get in, do that quickly. Short was in
command. Stevens said one saw what he could be like in the Ministry.
Widmerpool, who had already picked up the remains of his spectacles from the
pavement, obeyed. Short followed, slamming the door. The car drove slowly down
the terrace. Moreland said it was a good, an effective exit.