Temporary Kings

5

Each recriminative decade poses new riddles, how best to live, how best to write. One’s fifties, in principle less acceptable than one’s forties, at least confirm most worst suspicions about life, thereby disposing of an appreciable tract of vain expectation, standardized fantasy, obstructive to writing, as to living. The quinquagenarian may not be master of himself, he is, notwithstanding, master of a passable miscellany of experience on which to draw when forming opinions, distorted or the reverse, at least up to a point his own. After passing the half-century, one unavoidable conclusion is that many things seeming incredible on starting out, are, in fact, by no means to be located in an area beyond belief. The ‘Widmerpool case’ fell into that category. It remained enigmatic so far as the public were concerned. People who liked to regard themselves as ‘in the know’ were not much better off, one rumour contradicting another, what exactly Widmerpool had done to put himself in such an awkward spot remaining undefined. One extraneous item came my own way, which, as purely negative evidence, could have been added to material sifted by whatever official body was undertaking an enquiry. It was expressed in the form of a picture postcard of the Doge’s Palace.

‘Have to date heard nothing from your friend about blocks. Weather here good. D. McN. T.’

That, at least, indicated none of the disaster, threatening Widmerpool on account of Dr Belkin’s absence from the Conference, had resulted in Tokenhouse suffering comparable repercussions. I had intended to ask the Quiggins about the blocks for the Cubist series, when walking with them after luncheon at the Soviet Embassy. More personally engrossing matters had intervened. The blocks remained forgotten. I sent Tokenhouse a postcard of Nelson’s Column, saying (in army parlance) the matter would be looked into, a report forwarded.

In early summer, Isobel and I went by chance to a musical party organized by Rosie and Odo Stevens. It was a charity affair, our inclusion nothing to do with the meeting in Venice. In fact, the people who brought us knew the Stevenses hardly at all. I make this point to emphasize that guests present at this particular entertainment were not handpicked. No doubt everyone who received an invitation, in the first instance, was an acquaintance of some sort. Beyond such intermediaries stretched a relatively anonymous conflux of persons, whose passport to the house lay only in willingness to buy a ticket. Had things been otherwise, the evening might have turned out differently; possibly not certain other events that followed.

The Stevens house in Regent’s Park, not large by the standards of Rosie’s parents, though done up inside with a touch of the old Manasch resplendence, had room for a marquee to be built out on to a flat roof at the back to create an improvised auditorium, accommodating a respectable number of persons. Rosie had inherited two or three very acceptable pictures, and pieces of furniture, which Hugo Tolland, speaking from an antique dealer’s point of view, regarded with respect. He had sold her two French commodes from his own shop, so they had not been acquired cheaply. Offering this sort of show for a charitable purpose was, on Rosie’s part, a pious memento of the days when Sir Herbert and Lady Manasch, great patrons of the arts, had mounted similar projects. Stevens himself, claiming musical enthusiasms, as well as a strong taste for parties, may on this occasion have been at least as responsible as his wife. The ‘good cause’ was connected with one or more of the emergent African countries; the piece to be performed, Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dent Serail — the ‘Seraglio’. The price of a ticket included supper after the opera had been performed.

Like the Soviet luncheon party — some of the same guests — there was a distinctly political flavour about the people collected, before the performance, in the Stevens drawing-room, MPs from both sides of the house, some African diplomatic representatives. This time the musical world, Rosie always maintaining links there, took the place of writers. Many of those present were unknown to myself. I recognized a Tory Cabinet Minister, and a female member of the Labour Shadow Cabinet, from pictures in the press. The music critic, Gossage, and Norman Chandler, who directed now, rather than dancing or acting, had come together. Gossage, a trifle more dried up and toothy than formerly, had exchanged his former pince-nez for rimless spectacles. His little moustache had gone white. Chandler, slightly filled out from the skeletal thinness of his younger days, retained a marionette-like appearance, a marionette now of a certain age. Living in one of the Ted Jeavons flats, Chandler had developed into rather a crony of Jeavons. They used to watch television together.

‘Don’t think there’s much fear I’ll be suspected,’ Jeavons said. ‘All the same, you never know what people will say behind your back.’

On arrival, Isobel had paused to talk with Rosie, who had been a former friend of Molly Jeavons. Moving through the crowd, I came on Audrey Maclintick. She announced the unforeseen fact that Moreland had advised on the Seraglio’s production. Quite apart from his poor health, that was unexpected. Moreland had always set his face against charity performances, although there had been occasions in the past when he had been more or less forced to take part in them. Audrey Maclintick agreed their presence was unlooked for. She added that it was not at all the sort of party she was used to. She had said just the same thing when Mrs Foxe had given a party for Moreland’s Symphony, more than twenty years before. She herself was not much altered from then, even to the extent of still wearing a version, modified into a more contemporary style, of the dress which, at Mrs Foxe’s, had caused Stringham to address her as ‘Little Bo-Peep.’

‘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.’

‘For a year now.’

‘Dictator?’

‘We don’t call it that.’

‘Your mother must enjoy being Dictatress — Dictatrix, more correctly.’

Polly Duport laughed. She was charming, in spite of resemblance to her father, much ‘nicer’, one felt, than her mother, but without, so far as I was myself concerned, any of her mother’s former bowling-over endowments. Glober must have felt the reverse. Her professionalism of the Theatre, a seriousness her mother could never have achieved, in the Theatre, or any other of the arts, possibly exerting some of that effect on him.

‘I think Mama would certainly rather do the job herself.’

‘And your father?’

‘Do you know him too? You are well up in our family. Papa’s in the crude still.’

‘The crude?’

This seemed an enormously suitable calling, whatever it was, for Duport to follow, but one could not in the least imagine financial or administrative shape taken by such employment.

‘Crude oil. That’s how it’s known in the trade. His business is mixed up with importing into Canada for processing. He doesn’t do too badly. That’s his life. Has been for quite a long time now. He’s rather crotchety these days. Trouble with his inside. He never really recovered from that upset in the war. Still, Papa has his moments.’

The way she said that recalled Jean again. Glober, who had been explaining to Isobel how he was going to shoot Match Me Such Marvel in Spain, returned to holding Polly Duport’s arm.

‘More Mozart now. We’ll see you at the next intermission.’

The Widmerpools, Tompsitts, and Short, were standing not far away, the men discussing something in an undertone. Mrs Tompsitt, no beauty, looked less than pleased. As Stevens remarked, she had the air of being rich. She and Pamela were not talking together. Pamela’s eye was on us. She was still smiling a little to herself. Glober glanced in her direction, raising his hand slightly in greeting. From the gesture, they appeared not to have met earlier that evening. Pamela made no sign in return, not altering her faint smile. If Glober felt himself in a delicate position, he gave no outward evidence of that. As he strolled away, hand on Polly Duport’s elbow, he was perfectly at ease.

‘That was the American who planned to run away with Lady Widmerpool, but is to do so no longer?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘She’s looking rather frightening tonight.’

Isobel’s comment, although it could not possibly have been heard by Pamela at that range, appeared in some manner to react on her. As we approached the marquee again, she broke off from the Tompsitt group, and came towards us. We said good evening.

‘I’ve just this afternoon found where Gwinnett’s staying.’

Pamela spoke that like a comment on something we had already discussed together.

‘You have?’

‘He’s been in hiding.’

She laughed. The laugh sounded a little mad.

‘You’ll never guess who gave me the address.’

‘I’m sure I can’t.’

‘A tart.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Does it surprise you, him knowing a tart?’

‘I’ll have to think about the answer to that.’

‘Perhaps you know her too?’

‘I’ve no reason to suppose so.’

‘She’s called Pauline.’

‘As it happens, I never met her.’

‘A girl of X’s.’

‘Of course.’

‘So it’s all above board, so far as Gwinnett’s concerned.’

‘I agree.’

The music began. She laughed again, and turned away. We found our seats. The Second Act took place, the drunken scenes, the setting to rest of fears that the girls might join the Pasha’s harem. When we came out for the second interval, Moreland reappeared. Gossage and Chandler came up.

‘I’m always fond of the English maid, Blonde,’ Moreland said. ‘Unlike the Pasha’s gardener, I find that vixenish touch sympathetic.’

‘I’m mad about Osmin,’ said Chandler.

Gossage giggled nervously, a giggle unaltered by increased age. He brought conversation back to more serious criticism.

‘The man’s more of a baritone than a bass. Some cardinal appoggiaturas went west in the last Act, I’m afraid. No harm in subordinating virtuosity to dramatic expression once in a way. Not least in a work of this kind. We can’t deny a lyrical tenderness, can we? I expect you agree with that, Mrs …”

Hesitating to call her ‘Mrs Maclintick’, after all these years of living with Moreland, at the same time, never having graduated to addressing her as ‘Audrey’, Gossage’s voice trailed gently away. Audrey Maclintick took no notice of him. She spoke quietly, but there was a rasp in her tone.

‘Have you seen the substitute Violin, Moreland?’

Moreland guessed from her manner of speaking trouble was on the way. He was plainly without a clue what form that might take, why she had asked the question.

‘Has he arrived tight, or something? I’ve conducted unshaved myself before now. One mustn’t be too critical. This one’s a substitute for the regular man, who’s ill. The orchestra wasn’t too bad. Allowing for Gossage’s just strictures on the subject of appoggiaturas.’

‘You haven’t noticed one of the Violins, Moreland?’

‘No, should I? Has he got two heads, or a forked tail emerging from the seat of his trousers?’

Moreland said that in a conciliatory manner, one he used often to employ with Matilda. Audrey Maclintick brought out the answer through her teeth.

‘It’s Carolo.’

Moreland was not at all prepared for that. It was not a contingency anyone was likely to foretell; at the same time, the musical world being what it was, one not in the least unheard of in the circumstances. At first Moreland looked dreadfully upset. Then, seeing the matter in clearer proportion, his face cleared. There were signs that he was going to laugh. He successfully managed not to do so, his mouth trembling so much in the effort that it looked for a second as if he might burst into an almost hysterical peal, similar to that brought on by news of Glober’s identity. Audrey Maclintick, for her part, showed no sign of seeing anything funny in the presence of her former lover — the man for whom she had left Maclintick — turning up in the Seraglio orchestra. Her demeanour almost suggested suspicion that Moreland himself had deliberately engineered transposition of violinists, just to disturb her own feelings. Seeing she was thoroughly agitated about what seemed to himself merely comic — another nostalgic enrichment of the Stevens party — he pulled himself together, plainly with an effort, and spoke soothingly.

‘Is this really true? Are you sure it’s Carolo? Musical types often resemble each other facially, especially violinists. I’ve noticed when conducting.’

Audrey Maclintick would have none of that.

‘I lived with the man for three years, didn’t I? Why should I say he was substitute Violin, if he wasn’t I got to know him by sight, even if he didn’t spend much time in the house.

Her fluster about the matter was unforeseen. On the whole, one would have been much more prepared for complete indifference. Objecting to the presence of Matilda was another matter. The intensity of feeling that bound Audrey Maclintick to Moreland was all at once momentarily revealed. Moreland made a face in my direction. He must have been wondering whether Matilda — actually married to Carolo for a short period in her early life — had also noticed the presence of her former husband. All this talk caused Gossage to suffer one of his most severe conjunctions of embarrassment. Like a man playing an invisible piano, he made wriggling movements in the air with fingers of both hands, while he mused aloud in a kind of aside.

‘I did hear Carolo was not so very prosperous some years ago. No reason why he shouldn’t have substituted tonight, prosperous or not. Did it to oblige, I expect.’

Chandler disagreed.

‘Who ever heard of Carolo being obliging, since the days when he was fiddling away at Vieuxtemps, in a black velvet suit and lace collar? He’s not dressed like that tonight, is he? Now that we’re none of us so young, I’m wearing quieter clothes myself.’

That gave Moreland a chance to deflect the conversation.

‘Nonsense, Norman, you’re known as London’s most eminent Teddy Boy.’

The measure was successful so far as putting an end to further discussion about Carolo, until time to return to the marquee. On the way there, Gossage was still muttering to himself.

‘They’ve got polish. Vivacity.’

That was safely to relegate Carolo to a collective group. The orchestra could not be seen from where we sat. So far as I know, direct contact was never made during the further course of the evening between Carolo and his former ladies, but, at the termination of the opera, expression was given to a kind of apotheosis of the situation. This juncture, brief but striking, to be appreciated only by those conversant with Carolo’s earlier fame, was too dramatic, too trite, to be altogether good art. Nevertheless, it had its certain splendour, however banal. This happened when, praise of the Pasha’s renunciation of revenge chanted to a close, the curtain fell to much applause; then rose again for the reappearance of the cast. The audience was enthusiastic. The curtain rose, fell again, several times. The cast bowed their way off. It was the turn of the orchestral players. They trooped on to the stage.

‘Which is Carolo?’ whispered Isobel.

I was not sure I should have recognized him among the Violins without prompting. That was not because Carolo’s appearance had become in any manner less picturesque than when younger. On the contrary, the romantic raven locks, now snow white, had been allowed to grow comparatively long, in the manner of Liszt, to whom Carolo bore some slight resemblance. His whole being continued to proclaim the sufferings of the artist, just as in days gone by, in the basement dining-room of the Maclinticks. He bowed repeatedly (without the warmth of the old singer in Venice) to the charity-performance guests, with his colleagues, the general acknowledgment of the orchestra.

Then the orchestral players turned, in unison, towards the side of the auditorium, where Rosie and Stevens sat, together with Matilda, the Cabinet Minister and his wife. To these, as begetters of the show, Carolo and his fellows now made a personal tribute, Matilda, of necessity, included in this profound obeisance. The faint smile she gave, while she clapped, was not, I think, illusory. It marked her recognition that rôles had changed since Carolo, young and promising musician, had picked up, married, a little girl from the provinces, just managing to keep afloat as an actress. Matilda’s attitude, more philosophic than Audrey Maclintick’s, had not been of the temperament to remain married to Moreland. A few minutes later, illustration was provided of unlikely ties that can, on the other hand, keep a couple together, without marriage, probably without sexual relationship. This took place on the way to the supper-room. Odo Stevens came up with two people for whom he wanted to find a place.

‘Do you remember, when you and I lived in that block of flats during the war — just before I went off with my Partisans? Of course you do. Here’s Myra Erdleigh, who was there too, and this is Mr Stripling. Jimmy Stripling is teaching me a lot about my new passion I was talking about in Venice, vintage cars. Let’s find a table.’

Age — goodness knows how old she was — had exalted Mrs Erdleigh’s unsubstantially. She looked very old indeed, yet old in an intangible, rather than corporeal sense. Lighter than air, disembodied from a material world, the swirl of capes, hoods, stoles, scarves, veils, as usual encompassed her from head to foot, all seeming of so light a texture that, far from bringing an impression of accretion, their blurring of hard outlines produced a positively spectral effect, a Whistlerian nocturne in portraiture, sage greens, sombre blues, almost frivolous greys, sprinkled with gold.

Jimmy Stripling, certainly a lot younger than Mrs Erdleigh, had become old in a different, more conventional genre. Tall, shambling, what remained of his hair grey, rather greasy, his bulky figure, which took up more room than ever, was shapeless and bent. Even so, he seemed in certain respects less broken down, morally speaking, than in his middle period. To be old suited him better, gave excuse to a bemused demeanour, pulled it together. Stevens was delighted with both of them.

‘Myra and I met again in Venice. That was after you’d left. We talked a lot about those wartime flats, and the people who lived there. All those Belgians. Myra told my fortune then. She predicted a belle guerre for me. I didn’t have too bad a one, so she prophesied right.’

Mrs Erdleigh took my hand. As in the past, her touch brought a sense of intercommunication, one conveyed by vibrations that imposed themselves almost more by not-being, than by being. They emphasized the inexistence of the flesh, rather than, by direct contact, extending its pressures and undercurrents.

‘We have not met since that night of dangers.’

She smiled her otherworldly smile, misted hazel eyes roaming over past and future, apportioning to each their substance and shadow, elements to herself one and indivisible. I asked if she had been staying at the Bragadin palace. She shook her head in a faraway manner.

‘I went only a few times to see Baby Clarini. She is a very old friend. Under Scorpio, like that other lady at the Palazzo, who is here tonight. Baby has had a sad life. She has never delved down to those eternal foundations, of which Thomas Vaughan speaks — Eugenius Philalethes, as we know him — that transform the hard stubborn flints of the world into chrysolites and jasper.’

She did not seem at all surprised when I told her Dr Brightman had also, speaking of Borage and Hellebore, invoked the name of Thomas Vaughan in Venice.

‘His spirit was moving there. The Lion of St Mark could symbolize that green lion he calls the body, the magical entity that must clip the wings of the eagle. Do you remember planchette on that dark afternoon in the country? It was Baby’s planchette that had been borrowed.’

I had forgotten that fact. The occasion, in any case, was not one desirable for resurrection at that moment. Better reminiscence should stop there. Mrs Erdleigh, who had perhaps been teasing, allowed that view to prevail. I followed up her astrological connotation of Baby Clarini by drawing attention to Isobel’s horoscope.

‘My wife is under Pisces. She rebels against that.’

Isobel made some complaint about the trials to which Piscians are subject. Mrs Erdleigh turned on to her a soothsayer’s gaze, friendly but all-seeing.

‘Remember always The Fishes are ruled by Jupiter — give no credence to Neptune. There is the safeguard. When first I put out the cards for your husband, I told him you two would meet, and all would be well.’

If my acknowledgment fell short of absolute agreement that Mrs Erdleigh had seen so far ahead, it also fell much farther short of truthful denial that she had said anything of the sort. Sorceresses, more than most, are safer allowed their professional amour propre. Stripling leant across the table. He had sat down opposite, next to Stevens. He was probably under permanent orders to remain directly within Mrs Erdleigh’s eye.

‘Are you one of these musical people? I expect so. I don’t know a thing about Mozart opera, or anyone else’s, but Myra wanted to come. Myra and I have been friends for years. I have to do what she wants. She’s such a wonderful person. What she knows is uncanny, far more than that. No, it is, Myra, I mean it.’

Mrs Erdleigh had made no attempt to deny omniscience, but Stripling may have felt the whole speech necessary to establish his own standing. I attempted some remark about having met him at the Templers’ years before.

‘Of course, of course. Poor old Peter.’

Stripling did not seem very capable of taking in chronological bearings about people any longer, only motor-cars, as it turned out a moment later, when I told him about seeing Sunny Farebrother some months before. Farebrother, too, then a butt of Stripling’s derision, had been at the Templer house when we first met.

‘Sunny Farebrother? Do you know I was thinking of Sunny the other day. He used to own an old Ford car years ago — thirty or forty, old even then — so much so, people like me ragged him about it. No hope he’s kept it, I suppose? He’s always been a very economical man, but I don’t expect there’s any hope of that. I’d give a lot to possess that car. Cars are the only things I know about. Are you interested in cars?’

‘I possess one, so I have to be to that extent.’

Stripling shook his head. That was not enough.

‘I’ve loved cars all my life. Love’s the only word. Passionate love. Some feel like that about them. Probably why my marriage wasn’t a success. I loved cars over well. I’m too old to race them now, but I study them, and collect them. Not a rally, not a concours d’élégance, I miss. You know Odo’s got very keen on vintage cars too.’

When people speak of a subject close to them, they can look transformed. Almost as mystically absorbed in car lore as Mrs Erdleigh in a transcendental vision, Stripling suddenly changed from his dreamy state to one of intense excitement. He had just thought of something he could not wait to communicate to Stevens, something of paramount importance to both of them.

‘I say, Odo, do you know there’s an American at this party who’s keen on vintage cars? A fellow called Glober. Told me quite by chance a minute before the opera started. It’s just come back to me. I’d mentioned I owned two Armstrong Siddeleys, ’26 and ’27, which both still go like smoke. Powerful as dreadnoughts, the pair of them. He was as keen as mustard at once. They’re 14 h.p., o.h.v., four-cylinder, sparely raked windscreens, both absolute treasures the way they pound along. What do you think Glober told me? He owns a litre supercharged ’31 Bentley, which he’s got here tonight. Only bought her last week. Of course, he wanted to see the Armstrong Siddeleys, when he’s got a chance to let up on the film he’s making — he’s a film producer — and he’s going to show me the Bentley when we leave. He’s pondering a Bugatti 35.’

Stevens took charge of Stripling at this stage.

‘Of course I know Louis Glober’s in the vintage market, Jimmy. What are you thinking about? But, look here, tell me again what you were saying the other day about the 1902, 5 h.p., Renault Voiturette. It’s the big stuff I’m getting interested in now. There was also a 1903 Panhard et Levassor, 10 h.p. tonneau, I wanted to discuss.’

They settled down to the subject.

‘Though many desire these treasures, none enter but he who knows the key and how to use it.’

For a moment, Mrs Erdleigh sounded as if he she, too, had embarked on the subject of vintage cars, but occult practices were still her theme.

‘I remember Dr Trelawney saying much the same not long before he — ’

I stopped just in time, at the last minute remembering no one, least of all a mage like Dr Trelawney, should be disparaged by the statement that Death had overtaken him.

Providential suspension on my lips of that misnomer was barely accepted by Mrs Erdleigh. She had already begun to shake her head at such a near lapse, congenital lack of insight, all but openly displayed.

‘You mean not long before he achieved the Eighth Sphere to which Trismegistus refers?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Where, as again Vaughan writes, the liberated soul ascends, looking at the sunset towards the west wind, and hearing secret harmonies. He calls this world, where we are now, an outdoor theatre, in whose wings the Dead wait their cue for return to the stage — an image from the opéra bouffe we have just witnessed. In a short space now, I too shall leave for the wings. Perhaps before the drama is played out, of which the opening Act was in the Bragadin palace. The rumble of wheels sounds. Once set in motion, the chariot of the soul does not long linger.’

‘What was begun at Jacky Bragadin’s?’

‘Much to disorder the hierarchy of being. Elsewhere too. Pluto disports himself in the Eighth House.’

I should have liked to continue, try to persuade Mrs Erdleigh to show herself a little more explicit, but her attention was distracted by a young Labour MP, politely sceptical, also anxious to enquire into his own astrological nativity. Mrs Erdleigh’s engagement in this, other similar interrogations, took up the rest of supper. After we had moved away from the table, further opportunity came to talk to Stevens, who had for the moment renounced vintage cars, about Widmerpool, what had taken place to extricate him from his embarrassments. Stevens himself was greatly preoccupied with this question.

‘It’s been suggested he wrote an indiscreet letter. Realised he’d gone too far, then tried to withdraw. That might have been in office hours, or when he was being cultured in Eastern Europe. You can’t tell. It’s not denied now he’s a close sympathizer. Even so, he didn’t want to get in trouble with his own security authorities. A spot of blackmail seems to have been the result. I know the form. One of my own mob found himself in a tangle that way. Thought it all in the interests of “international goodwill” to hand over one or two quite important little items. They asked for more, he stalled — got cold feet — they gave him away to us.’

‘Somebody said there was a defection on their side.’

Stevens gave a sharp look.

‘Perhaps there was. Whatever happened, he’s got away with it.’

Stevens moved at ease through the world of secret traffickings of this kind. He was about to continue an exposition of what happened to such suspects, when — when not — convenient to prosecute, but was interrupted by Rosie. She came up in a state of some disquiet. Her little black eyes were popping out of her head with agitation.

‘Odo, come at once. Something rather worrying has happened.’

Stevens went off with her. Rosie’s anxiety might have any cause, the house on fire, an undesired invitation she wanted help in refusing, one of the children been sick, the degree of seriousness could not be estimated. Stevens’s comments had interest. What dreams of power, practical or phantasmic had long tantalized Widmerpool’s heart, what plans meditated to put them into effect? Stevens had spoken ironically of betrayals in the interest of ‘international goodwill’; Bagshaw, speculating on less highflown motives, satisfaction of a taste for wholesale destruction, vicarious individual revenge against society. Neither Bagshaw nor Stevens spoke without experience. Perhaps, in Widmerpool’s case, he managed to coalesce in himself both aspects. Chandler and Gossage passed. They said goodnight.

‘A nice turn of power in the middle notes, didn’t you think?’ said Gossage.’ A fine sensibility of phrase?’

‘Hugh didn’t look too well,’ said Chandler. ‘I hope he’s all right. I hadn’t seen him for an age.’

They passed on. It was time to leave. I began to look about for Isobel. Before I found her, Stevens returned to the room. I took this opportunity of saying goodbye, as he seemed on his way somewhere. He confirmed, as it were, the words spoken a minute before by Chandler.

‘Hugh Moreland’s not very well. He’s gone to lie down in the study. I’m on my way to get the car. I can run them home.’

Stevens, many of his characteristics uncommendable, was good at taking charge when certain kinds of awkward situation arose.

‘Is Hugh bad?’

‘Doesn’t look too good. He had a blackout, and fell. He’s all right now, all right in the sense that he doesn’t want to leave, because he says there are a lot of things about the Seraglio he still wants to discuss. We’ve persuaded him to take it easy for the moment. He’ll be better when he gets to bed.’

‘Can one see him?’

‘Yes, do go up. Might keep him quiet. Don’t bring a crowd with you. The room’s the little study on the second floor, to the left.’

I found Isobel, and we both went upstairs. Moreland was lying on a small sofa, Rosie and Audrey Maclintick standing over him. The sofa was not big enough to contain his body comfortably at full length. He was drinking a glass of water, something I had never before seen him do, except after a heavy evening the night before. As Chandler had said, he did not look at all well. He was refusing to compromise with his own situation further than agreement to be driven home, when Stevens returned. Audrey Maclintick was trying to persuade him to rest quietly, until the car was announced as at the front door. When he saw us, he began to laugh in his old way.

‘I told you nostalgia would get me. It did. Absolutely spun me over like a ninepin. It was Carolo put the finishing touch. I can’t take it as I used. They say you lose your head for nostalgia, as you get older. That’s also the time when waves of it come sweeping down without warning. You have to ration yourself, or a sudden dose knocks you out, as it did me.’

‘You stop talking so much, and take it easy,’ said Audrey Maclintick. ‘I’m going to get that precious doctor of yours round as soon as you’re in bed, no matter what the time is, and how much he’s had to drink, if he hasn’t passed out cold. Even he told you to be careful, the last time he looked you over. You’re going to stay in bed for a week or two now, if I have anything to do with it.’

Moreland did not listen. In spite of Rosie’s added protest that he would be wiser to remain quiet, he continued to insist he would be perfectly recovered the following day. He also kept on returning to what had been happening that evening.

‘There were a lot of people near me talking about vintage cars. There’s nostalgia, if you like.

For some we loved, the loveliest and the best,

That from his vintage rolling Time hath pressed.

That’s a striking image. I remember, years ago, a man who kept on quoting Omar at that party of Mrs Foxe’s, after my Symphony. I’ve only just grasped that the verse refers to a car. Life’s vintage car, in which we’re all travelling. Better than Trapnel’s Camel, more Hegelian too. Then you’re suddenly told to get out and walk — pressed to, as the poet truly says.’

There was nothing to be done until Stevens returned.

Staying with Moreland was only to encourage running on like this, tiring himself, so Isobel and I spoke a word or two, then said goodnight. It was not quite clear what sort of a fall he had suffered. He seemed to have lost his senses for a minute or so, afterwards felt no worse than a little dazed.

‘I was pretty normal when I got up from the floor. If one could ever truthfully say that about oneself.’

A large proportion of the guests had already left when we arrived downstairs again.

‘Poor Hugh,’ said Isobel. ‘He didn’t look at all well to me.’

‘Nor me.’

Outside, the night was dark. There was no moon. A breeze, fresh, almost country-scented, blew in from the Park’s tall clusters of trees. We were aiming to cut through from the terrace, where the Stevens house stood, making for a street beyond, which ran parallel, where a taxi could be picked up. A few doors away from the Stevens entrance, two or three persons, standing against the railings, were having some sort of argument. Having attended the party, they seemed now to be squabbling. Numbers and sex were not at first distinguishable in the gloom, but turned out as a woman, two men, in fact the Widmerpools and Short. Widmerpool was giving Short a dressing-down. He was very angry. Short was defending himself mildly, but with bureaucratic obstinacy. He could be heard maintaining that administrative breakdowns were from time to time unavoidable.

‘I’ve already told you, Kenneth, that I quite plainly instructed the car to be outside waiting. The driver must have mistaken the address. If so, he will be along in a minute or two.’

As we went by, Widmerpool recognized us.

‘Have you by any chance got a car? Our hired vehicle hasn’t turned up. Leonard has made some sort of muddle. I suppose you couldn’t give us a lift?’

‘We’re on our way to pick up a taxi.’

‘Oh.’

‘Why not do the same? They come down fairly frequently in the street behind here.’

‘Pam doesn’t want to walk that far. Oh, hell and blast. Why must this have happened?’

Widmerpool was not merely cross, put out by the car not being on time, but wrought up to an extent almost resembling drunkenness. Drink, which he hardly touched as a rule, was unlikely to have played any part in this highly strung state, unless, quite exceptionally, he had felt the Seraglio an occasion to swallow a few glasses, more to impress others with his own improved situation than because he enjoyed their effect. Apart from threat of prosecution, he could have been suffering more than usual domestic strain, Pamela’s design to leave him — if all alleged about Glober were true — now suddenly put into reverse gear. Even if Widmerpool did not know the reason, her change of plans, involvement with Gwinnett, might well have caused more than usually uncomfortable repercussions at home. The fact that she would not walk the few yards necessary to find a taxi showed her mood. Widmerpool stamped his feet. Short addressed us in a more temperate manner.

‘If you should see anything looking like a hired car waiting round the corner, please ask the chauffeur if he’s booked in the name of Sir Leonard Short, will you? He may have mistaken the address. If so, just send him along here.’

We said we would do that.

‘Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’

The only answer was Short’s.

‘I told you Lady Widmerpool was looking frightening,’ said Isobel.

‘Will they wait there all night?’

‘I think she’s planning something. That was how she looked to me.’

By that time we had reached the main road. A taxi cruised by. So far as we were both concerned, that closed the Seraglio evening.

As with stories of Trapnel’s last hours, others in connexion with Gwinnett’s decampment from the Bagshaws’, what followed, outside the Stevens house in Regent’s Park, appeared afterwards in various versions. One hears about life, all the time, from different people, with very different narrative gifts. Accordingly, not only are many episodes, in which you may even have played a part yourself, hard enough to assess; a lot more must be judged from haphazard accounts given by others. Even if reported in good faith, some choose one aspect on which to concentrate, some another. This truth, obvious enough, was particularly applicable to the events following the Seraglio party. Even so, essential facts were scarcely in question. My own informants were Moreland and Stevens.

There was no irreplaceable divergence between these two accounts, although, when it came to telling a story in which veracity had to be measured against picturesque detail, neither could be called pedantically veracious; Moreland, in this respect the more reliable, being, if the more imaginative, the one who also best appreciated the graphic power of fact. Moreland talked about the scene right up to the end. He never tired of it. There can be no doubt it cheered his last months, added, as he himself said, to the richness of his own experience. His powerful gift of creative imagery led him, over and over again, to reconstruct the incidents, whenever anyone came to visit him.

Stevens, in principle to be thought of as a type used to violent scenes, was in a sense more taken by surprise, worse shocked, than Moreland. Marriage may have enervated Stevens, accustomed him by then to sedate, well-behaved routines. The rational, utilitarian, unruffled point of view, tempered with toughness, that directed most of his life — had so directed it in the past — could mislead, as well as stimulate. Like many persons who had enjoyed a comparatively adventurous career, knocked about the world a good deal, he retained a strain of naivety, naivety penetrating just the areas of the mind which, in Moreland’s case, were quite free from any such inhibition. Indeed, Moreland used to complain himself that ‘naivety in short supply’ could be a disadvantage in practising the arts, where it is often necessary to see one thing only, that particular thing with supreme clarity. In fact, when it came to giving a convincing description of what took place that night, the details Stevens produced, except for a few useful appendices, were little more than confirmation of Moreland’s epic account. Stevens himself excused the scrappiness of his own narration.

‘It was so bloody dark, and I was worrying all the time about getting Hugh home, before he had another fit, or whatever it was.’

The Stevens garage was in a mews behind the house. When Stevens drove the car back towards his own front door, he noticed figures talking together a few yards up the terrace. He did not identify them, merely supposing they were guests having a final musical dispute before parting on their separate ways. Moreland, Audrey Maclintick, several others, were by then chatting with Rosie in the hall, Moreland having become so restless lying on the sofa that it seemed best to come downstairs to wait for the car. There they found Mrs Erdleigh, Stripling, Glober, Polly Duport, all about to leave. Moreland at once recognized the potentialities of Mrs Erdleigh, whom he had not met earlier that evening. Within a matter of minutes — as he himself admitted — they were discussing together the magical writings of Cornelius Agrippa. Moreland and Mrs Erdleigh had already reached the book of Abramelin the Mage, spells for surrounding an enemy with a vision of trellis-work, others for causing the Pope to fall in love with you, when Stevens came up the steps. Meanwhile Glober and Stripling had returned to vintage cars.

‘Now we’ll take a look at the Bentley, Mr Stripling. My automobile’s parked at the end of the block.’

Stripling must already have obtained permission from Mrs Erdleigh to inspect the Bentley before restoring her to whatever witch’s lair she inhabited, but there is some uncertainty as to how exactly the outgoing party came on the Widmerpools and Short, still hanging about in the terrace, waiting for their car. It seems possible that Moreland refused to enter the Stevens car before he had finished his occult conversation with Mrs Erdleigh. Alternatively, his interest by now aroused in vintage cars, he too could have wanted to inspect Glober’s vehicle. Moreland seems to have been strolling with Mrs Erdleigh; Stevens and Audrey Maclintick behind; Stripling, Glober, Polly Duport, a short way ahead. The talk of cars may have been carried to the ears of Short, who (having made contact with Glober at supper on the subject of the French political situation vis-à-vis Algeria) now repeated a request for a ‘lift’. Polly Duport was alleged to have thrown back a comment to the effect that the ’31 Bentley was the ‘size of a bus’, thereby raising Short’s hopes. Another possibility is that Pamela had intended that something of this sort should happen. She had been waiting for a chance that had not arisen at the party. She could hardly have foreseen the lateness of the hired car, but might have grasped that Glober, still in the Stevens house, was bound sooner or later to pass that way. Short, having no reason to connect Glober with the Widmerpools, stepped forward, and made a little speech.

‘If your car is really so commodious, Mr Glober, I wonder whether you could include in it a party of three — for our own hired vehicle does not seem to have turned up. It would be too kind were you able to manage that good office. We all live in the Westminster direction, if you happened to be going that way. It ill becomes a native of this country to seek transport from a transatlantic visitor, guest to our shores, but, not for the first time in recent years, we must needs throw ourselves upon the goodwill of American resources.’

Uncertainty prevails whether or not, at this stage, Glober immediately grasped that the other applicants for help were the Widmerpools. On the whole, it seems likely he did not. In the dark, there was no reason why he should recognize them. At the same time, Glober, out of sheer love of living dangerously, may have accepted this as a challenge. Moreland was ignorant of Glober’s former affiliations with Pamela, of whom he knew little or nothing at that time. Stevens, too, had not kept up with Pamela’s ever varying situation, by then of no particular interest to him, provided his own married life was not embarrassed by it. In Venice, he had no doubt thought of the Widmerpools as guests of Jacky Bragadin, rather than connecting either of them with Glober; Pamela’s own references to Glober giving no reason to convey the comparative seriousness of her relationship with him.

‘I’d just love to give you all a ride in my new automobile. Come with us.’

Only after Glober had made that statement, so it appears, did Widmerpool join the group. Pamela still remained a little apart.

‘This is very kind,’ said Widmerpool. ‘We have not seen each other since Venice.’

That indicated he and Glober had exchanged no word at the party. Glober bowed.

‘You’re welcome.’

Glober then introduced Mrs Erdleigh, Jimmy Stripling, Moreland, and Audrey Maclintick. If Widmerpool was to make a convenience of his car, Glober was determined to have some amusement too. Audrey Maclintick, of course, wanted to get Moreland into the Stevens car — and home — but for once does not seem to have succeeded in making her voice heard. Moreland, telling the story, emphasized the formality of Glober’s introductions. That was the moment when Pamela joined the group. She came towards them hesitantly, as if she wanted to be introduced too. Her arrival impressed Moreland, not on account of any foreseeable disharmony that might include Glober, but because of the look given her by Mrs Erdleigh, more precisely rays of mystic disapproval trajected with force noticeable even in the dark. That perception was characteristic of Moreland. Mrs Erdleigh had made a deep impression on him.

‘The Sorceress seemed to know Lady Widmerpool already. At least she gave her extraordinary smile — one I would rather not have played on myself.’

Pamela had smiled in return. She took no other notice of Mrs Erdleigh, nor the rest of them. The person to whom she addressed herself was Polly Duport. Pamela did not come close, but it was plain to whom she was speaking.

‘I hear you’re going to be the star in Louis’s new film.’

Pamela said that very gently, barely audibly. Her tone almost suggested she was shy of mentioning the matter at all, though beyond words delighted at hearing such a rumour. All she wanted was to have the good news confirmed. Both Moreland and Stevens agreed there was not the smallest hint of unfriendliness in Pamela’s voice. At the same time, Stevens, knowing Pamela to the extent of having lived with her for at least a few weeks, had no doubt something ominous was brewing. Moreland, it seemed, had not bothered to categorize Pamela at all; so far as he was concerned, another ‘lady of fashion’, full of every sort of nonsense about music, to be avoided at all costs. He admitted to having been struck by her looks, when he came to examine her.

Polly Duport, whether she knew much or little about Pamela, can have had few illusions as to friendliness. She could hardly have failed to hear of Glober’s comparatively recent intention to cast Pamela for the lead she herself — anyway for the moment — was intended by him to play. Beyond that knowledge, of a purely business sort, the extent of her awareness of Pamela’s character, even nature of relationship with Glober, could well be over-estimated. The segregated life of the Theatre, separated by its nature from so much going on round about, might easily have prevented her from hearing more than essential; so to speak, her own cue in taking Pamela’s place. Polly Duport herself may not have been, over and above that, at all interested. She would know that Pamela, not a professional actress, had been in the running as ‘star’ of Glober’s film, had probably experienced some sort of love affair with him. That was not necessarily significant. There was no reason for her to guess Glober had planned to marry Pamela.

Polly Duport, replying to Pamela’s question, seems to have let fall a scrap of stylized stage banter adapted to such an enquiry, one of those conventional sets of phrase, existing in every professional world, in this case designed for use in counteracting another player, complimentary, spiteful, a mixture of both; clichés probably often in demand throughout the give-and-take of life in the Theatre. Moreland could not remember the actual comeback employed. He suggested several known to himself from his own backstage undertakings. Whatever form Polly Duport’s answer presented was amicably accepted by Pamela, but she did not abandon the subject.

‘I’m sure you’ll like working with Louis.’

‘Who could doubt that?’ said Polly Duport.

She spoke lightly, of course. Pamela was behaving as if so pleased about the whole arrangement, that she was even a little anxious that it might not all go as well as deserved.

‘You mean because all women love Louis?’

‘All the world, surely?’

That was a neat reply. Pamela recognized it as such. She smiled, rather sadly, even though the idea seemed to please her. There was an instant’s pause. Moreland said this was the point when the atmosphere became very highly charged. One of the elements causing him to notice that was Stripling suddenly ceasing to reel off names and dates of vintage cars, which, until this tenseness made itself felt, he had, up to the last possible moment, continued to recite to Glober. Pamela spoke again, this time reflectively.

‘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.

‘When I looked round, the three of us — Audrey, Odo, myself — were alone. It was like a fairy story. The Sorceress was gone, taking off, no doubt, on her broomstick, the tall elderly vintage-car-bore riding pillion. Lady Widmerpool was gone too. That was the most mysterious. I have the impression she made some parting shot to the effect that none of us would see her again. The American tycoon and Polly Duport were almost out of sight, heading for the far end of the terrace. I don’t exactly know how any of them faded away. I was feeling I might pass out again by then. Much relieved when Odo drove us home.’