Temporary Kings (6 page)

‘My wife loves
travel,’ said Widmerpool. ‘She likes seeing how other people live.’

No convincing answer
had been offered to the question why she did not leave him for one of her many,
if soon disillusioned lovers; nor why Widmerpool himself never chose his moment
to divorce her. For some reason the
status quo
seemed to
suit both. Trapnel, alleging the Widmerpool marriage to exclude sexual
relationship (scarcely even tried out), had also spoken in a few tortured
sentences of the frustration, agony, alienation, inspired in himself – though
he loved her – by Pamela’s blend of frigidity with insatiable desire. People
who went in for more precise ascriptions m such matters, especially far-fetched
or eccentric ones, explained this matrimonial paradox by the theory that
Widmerpool actually took pleasure in his wife’s infidelities, derived
masochistic satisfaction, at the very least felt flattered, by the agitation
she inspired. Pamela too, so these amateurs of psychology concluded, on her own
side luxuriated no less in enjoyment of a recurrent thrill at being unfaithful.
Another husband, less tolerant, could prove less satisfactory. Such hypotheses,
if not widely accepted, remained comparatively unchallenged by more convincing
speculation. At least they attempted to make sense of an otherwise inexplicable
situation. They even offered a dim outline of a genuine, if macabre, bond of
union; one very different from Trapnel’s enslavement. Even Dicky Umfraville’s
comment had a certain force.

‘Anyway they’ve
remained married. Took me five attempts, even if I placed the right bet in the
end.’

Loss of his seat in
the Commons did not prevent Widmerpool from remaining a fairly prominent figure
in public affairs, though there was some surprise when (a few weeks before the
Conference opened in Venice) he was created a Life Peer. This advancement,
proceeding through the medium of a Conservative Government, must undoubtedly
have been conferred after consultation with Labour sources of authority, then
in Opposition. Roddy Cutts, who held a minor post in the Tory administration,
agreed that Widmerpool’s elevation to the Lords had aroused adverse comment on
both sides of the House. At the same time, Cutts was sure the recommendation
must have been cleared with the Leader of the Opposition, in spite of his
reputed dislike for Widmerpool himself. Cutts was inclined to dismiss talk,
such as Bagshaw’s, of Widmerpool’s fellow-travelling.

‘After all, if you’re
on the Left, you have to take a Leftward line in public. That doesn’t
necessarily mean you’re a Communist. Widmerpool may have had leanings in that
direction once – certainly his own side thought so – but after all he’s not the
only one. Personally I’m inclined to think all that’s over and done with. There
was a story about his being mixed up with Maclean and Burgess. I can’t remember
which. It was even said he lent a hand in tipping them off. Somebody did, but I’m
sure it wasn’t Widmerpool. Besides, I don’t believe the man’s a bugger for a
moment. Labour peers had to be created. It wasn’t at all easy to settle on
suitable names. Not everyone wants to be kicked upstairs to the Lords.
Widmerpool lost his seat. He’d made himself very useful on the financial side
at one time or another, no matter what the talk about fellow-travelling. Yes, I
mean contribution to Party funds. Why not? The money’s got to come from
somewhere. Probably undisclosed inner workings of the Labour Party machine
played a role too. Patronage? Might be. These things happen. No different to
ourselves in that respect. A political party has to be operated. The PM would
never have gone over Hugh’s head. When Widmerpool arrived in the House I found
him abrasive about marginal issues. Latterly we’ve got on pretty well. We may
be opponents, that’s no reason why one should doubt his sincerity. What is true
– probably played a part in the peerage – is the active manner Widmerpool’s
promoted East/West trade, naturally a sphere where some community of political
thought, anyway outward acceptance of the other fellow’s point of view, is
likely to oil the wheels. Whatever he did in that direction had, of course, the
blessing of the Board of Trade. He must have made a packet too. Do you ever
drink that wine from round the Black Sea? We don’t at all despise it at home.
Tastes a bit sultry at times, but has the merit of being cheap. Kenneth
Widmerpool’s got to do something to bring the pennies in with a wife like that.
I daresay he wanted the peerage to induce her to stay.’

This last supposition
was unconvincing. It was possible to accept Bagshaw’s theory, up to a point,
that Widmerpool dreamed of revenging himself on the world; in addition, that
his marriage was one of the areas where that mood might seem to some extent
justified. The notion that a Life Peerage would impress Pamela was improbable; typical
of the unimaginative side of Roddy’s nature. That was one’s first thought.
Then, reconsidering the evidence, the view emerged as one Widmerpool himself
might easily hold. Pamela was unlikely to be interested, one way or the other,
in whatever prestige might be supposed to attach to that transmutation. She had
never shown the smallest inclination to reach out towards more considerable
aggrandizements for herself. They were reported, according to good authority,
to have been on offer from lovers at different times. Her disregard for
anything of the kind, provided its active expression remained within not too
outrageous bounds, was one of his wife’s few characteristics potentially
advantageous to Widmerpool’s public life. He could convincingly point to her
behaviour as embodiment of contempt for ‘The Establishment’, an abstraction
increasingly belaboured by him in speeches and articles. In fact, considering
the Life Peerage in the light of Pamela’s past conduct, so far from its
creation – as Cutts put forward – assuring an irreducibly solid foundation for
a marriage often rocked by upheaval, the reverse appeared more likely, similar
landmarks in her husband’s career having been emphasized in the past by
proportionately augmented scandals. A Life Peerage, as an extreme example of
Moreland’s conviction that matrimonial discord vibrates on an axis of envy,
rather than jealousy, could even portend final severance.

To explain all that,
even a small part of it, to Gwinnett, ill hope of enlarging his view of the Widmerpools
in relation to Trapnel, was not easy; certainly not within the time allotted
for sitting under the Veroneses. Nothing about the Trapnel story was simple.
Although Gwinnett was quick to grasp things, nothing about his own personality
was simple either. He was an altogether unfamiliar type. He himself seemed
almost painfully aware of our mutual difficulties of intercommunication. That
made things no easier. There was an innate awkwardness about him. Now, for
instance, he stood by the table, unable to make up his mind whether or not to
accept Dr Brightman’s invitation to sit with us.

‘What will you drink?’

Without answering, he
caught a passing waiter and ordered a citronade. On such a night nothing was
more natural than to prefer a cooling soft drink to something stronger, yet
again one speculated for some reason about the possibility of an alcoholic
past. Something about him suggested rigid control, concealment, an odd way of
life. He had the air of punishing himself, possibly for his own supposed social
inadequacies. When he sat down, all Dr Brightman’s briskness was required to
dispel the threat he brought of damped conversation. He had been carrying a
newspaper under his arm, which he laid on the table. It was French, the name
folded out of sight.

‘We were talking of
courts and harems, Russell,’ said Dr Brightman. ‘Those who need them. I’m sure
you must have experienced friends like that’

Gwinnett smiled, but
did not comment. The relationship between himself and Dr Brightman appeared
good, the best yet, so far as observable. There was none of the coyness that
might be suggested by the idea of a distinguished female professor becoming
friends with a young academic colleague of the opposite sex. You felt they
liked each other, had perhaps learnt from each other, would not for a second
hesitate to be tough with each other, if required by circumstance. There was no
suggestion of sentimental feelings, a kind of mother/son relationship, just
because Dr Brightman had been far from home, Gwinnett something of an oddity in
his own surroundings.

‘Talking of harems’,
she said, ‘the owner of the Palazzo we’re invited to visit tomorrow bears the
famous name of Bragadin, and claims to be descended from Casanova’s patron,
though not, of course, in the legitimate line.’

Gwinnett showed no
great interest in that. I asked which of the several Bragadin palaces this was.
I had not studied the extra-mural programme carefully, preferring these
excursions to come as a series of bracing surprises.

‘One never open to
the public. Our Conference is greatly favoured. There’s a Tiepolo ceiling there
on which I’ve longed to gaze for years. In fact the hint that Conference
members might gain access was the chief weapon of Mark’ Members in overcoming
any hesitation in agreeing to attend.’

‘It’s the Jacky
Bragadin one reads about in gossip columns?’

Dr Brightman nodded.

‘The Palazzo wasn’t
inherited. All sorts of people have lived there at one time or another. Jacky
Bragadin – though I’ve no right to speak of him in this familiar manner – bought
it just after the war.’

Gwinnett, who had
been looking about him without paying much apparent attention to what Dr
Brightman was saying, joined in at that.

‘Jacky Bragadin’s
mother’s was one of the big American fortunes of the last century. She was a
Macwatters of Philadelphia. That’s where the funds for the Bragadin Foundation
come from.’

‘Which have been of
good use to most of us in our time,’ said Dr Brightman. ‘My knowledge of the
benefactor, like that of Mr Jenkins, derives chiefly from gossip columns. His
well publicized personality remains, all the same, for me an elusive one,
beyond an evident taste for entertaining persons as rich as himself. Remarkable
that he should have found time enough from that hobby to have given birth to a
Foundation.’

‘He’s not married, I
think?’

‘Do you imply the
Bragadin Foundation is illegitimate too? A case of parthenogenesis, I expect.
In any case, I am more concerned with his Tiepolo.’

Tiepolo ranking with
Poussin as one of my most admired Masters, I asked the subject of the ceiling,
the very existence of which was unknown to me. The bare fact that members of
the Conference could visit the Palazzo had been announced, knowledge of its
contents no doubt taken for granted in an assembly of intellectuals.

‘One of the painter’s
classical scenes –
Candaules and Gyges
. The subject, thought to have some contemporary
reference, caused trouble at the time the ceiling was painted. That’s why the
tradition of playing the picture down, keeping it almost a secret, has persisted
to the present day. The owner is in any case said to be more than a little
neurasthenic in approach to his possessions, and much else too.’

Gwinnett knew about
the ceiling.

‘I’ve been told it’s
not unlike the Villa Valmarana
Iphigenia
in composition,’
he said. ‘The owner won’t allow it to be photographed.’

He turned to me.

‘Speaking about the
Iphigenia
again made me think of what we were talking about at
that luncheon.’

He picked up from the
table the paper he had brought with him, opened it, folding back a page. It was
Détective,
Içi Paris
, or another of
those French periodicals that explore at greater length cases, usually already
reported, which through expansion promise more pungent details of crime or scandal.
Gwinnett singled out two sheets, the central spread. He was about to hand them
over, but Dr Brightman, catching the name under a photograph, intercepted the
paper.

‘Good gracious,’ she
said. ‘That ugly little man? I should never have thought it.’

I looked over her
shoulder. The headline ran along the top of both pages.

L’APRES-MIDI D’UN MONSTRE?

Two large cut-out
photographs stretched across the typeface, the story, whatever it was, fitting
round their edges. In spite of Dr Brightman’s lack of principle in
appropriating the letterpress to herself, and although I was not close enough
to read the sub-titles, the likenesses of the two persons portrayed were
immediately recognizable. Both photographs had manifestly been taken some years
before, ten at least. In fact that of Ferrand-Sénéschal made him look a man in
early middle-age. He had been caught on some public occasion, mouth wide open,
hands raised above his head in a passionate gesture, almost as if he, too, were
singing
Funiculì-Funiculà
, miming the ascending cable. No doubt he had
been snapped addressing a large audience on some political or cultural theme.

The other photograph,
also far from recent, though less time-expired than Ferrand-Sénéschal’s, was
more interesting. It was of Pamela Widmerpool. Her hair-do suggested the end of
the war, or not long after. The picture could have dated from the year of her
marriage to Widmerpool, possibly even taken at the moment of emergence from the
ceremony. In spite of heavy touching-up on the part of the blockmaker, the
expression was resentful enough for that. This touching-up had added a
decidedly French air to her appearance. That could have been acquired not only
from the cupid’s bow mouth, brutally superimposed on her own, but, more
universally, from the manner in which photographic portraiture in the press
automatically assumes the national characteristics of whatever country has
processed the blocks, fabricated their ‘screen’; an extension of the law that
makes the photographer impose his personal view of them on individuals
photographed. Dr Brightman scrutinized carefully both pictures.