‘Had this got to happen?’
Pamela halted behind the chair of the male American. He was unaware of her presence there.
‘Have you seen Louis?’
‘Glober?’
‘No, Louis the Fourteenth.’
‘I haven’t seen either since lunch.’
‘Did you lunch with Louis?’
‘Yes, Glober – not the Roi Soleil.’
‘I thought he was giving lunch to that old cow Ada. Do you know she put round a story that I left a picador in Spain because I found a basket-ball player twice his size?’
‘Ada was there too.’
‘Where?’
‘The restaurant in the Giardini.’
‘Did he take Ada back to screw her – if he can still manage that, or can’t she face a man any longer?’
‘So far as I know Glober left for the Gritti Palace to meet a business acquaintance, and Ada returned to the Lido to work on a speech she’s going to make at the Conference.’
‘Louis’s been seen at Cipriani’s since he was at the Gritti.’
‘Then I can’t help.’
‘I want some dope from him.’
Although the word might be reasonably used for any entity too much trouble to particularize, Pamela spoke as if she meant a drug, rather than, say, schedule of airflights to London, programme of tomorrow’s sightseeing, name of a recommended restaurant. She sounded as if she felt a capricious desire for a narcotic Glober could supply, no breathless despairing longing, just what she wished at the moment. The possibility was not to be wholly dismissed as an aspect of Glober’s courtship. The men of the party had risen, standing awkwardly beside their chairs, while this conversation proceeded, waiting for her to move on.
‘How are you, Pam?’ asked Stevens.
He still sounded nervous. She glanced at him, but gave no sign of having seen him before. Stevens himself may have hoped matters would rest there, that Pamela, failing to obtain the information she sought, would continue on her way without further acknowledgment. She remained, not speaking, looking coldly round, regarding Gwinnett with as chilly an eye as the rest. There was no suggestion they had met, far less touched on the religious life, shared some sort of physically sexual brush. Gwinnett himself was hardly more forthcoming. Absolutely poker-faced, his expression was that of a man determined not to fall below the standard of politeness required by convention towards an unknown woman pausing by the table at which he had been sitting, at the same time not unwilling that she should move on as quickly as possible to enable him to resume his seat. Pamela had no intention of moving on.
‘I’m not going to drag the canals for Glober. I’ll get the stuff from him tomorrow.’
She stepped forward to occupy the chair temporarily vacated by the American husband, thereby putting an end to any hope that she was not going to stay. The American managed to find another chair, then good-naturedly asked what she wanted to drink.
‘A cappuccino.’
Stevens was forced into mumbling some sort of general introduction. Rosie, of course, knew perfectly well who Pamela was, but either the two of them, by some chance, had never met, or it suited the mood of both to pretend that. Gwinnett, without emphasis, allowed recognition of previous acquaintanceship of some sort by making a backward jerk of the head. Rosie, undoubtedly angry at Pamela imposing herself in this manner, was at the same time, unlike Stevens, quite unruffled in outward appearance.
‘We heard you and your husband were staying with Jacky,’ she said. ‘How is he? Free from that catarrh of his, I hope?’
She expertly eyed Pamela’s turn-out, letting the assessment pause for a second on what appeared to be a wine-stain, at closer range revealed, on the white trousers, which Pamela, in spite of other signs of grubbiness, had not bothered to change. Rosie also contemplated for a moment the crocodile-skin bag. Its heavy chain of gold looked rather an expensive item. This was all very cool on both sides, the sense of tension – though neither glanced at the other – between Pamela and Gwinnett, rather than Pamela and Rosie. When the cappuccino arrived, Pamela did not touch it. She sat there quietly, taking no notice of anyone. Then she seemed to decide to answer Rosie’s question.
‘Jacky’s no worse than usual. Only worried about having a couple like us staying with him.’
‘You and your husband?’
‘Yes.’
Rosie laughed lightly. ‘Why should he be worried by that?’
‘One accused of murder, the other of spying.’
‘Oh, really. Which of you did which?’
Still smiling, Rosie spoke quite evenly. Pamela allowed herself a faint smile too.
‘The French papers are hinting I murdered Ferrand-Sénéschal.’
‘The French writer?’
Rosie’s tone suggested that to have murdered Ferrand-Sénéschal was an act, however thoughtless, anyone might easily have committed.
‘They haven’t said in so many words I did it yet.’
‘Oh, good – and the spying?’
Pamela laughed.
‘Only those in the know, like Jacky, are fussing about that at present.’
‘I see.’
‘Jacky thinks he’ll get in wrong with one lot, or the other, through us. Jacky’s got quite a lot of Communist chums, movie people, publishers, other rich people like himself. Some of them are Stalinists, and quarrelling with the new crowd. Jacky doesn’t want a stink. It looks as if a stink’s just what he’s going to get. He didn’t bargain for that when he said we could come and stay, though he wasn’t too keen in the first place. I had to turn the heat on. He thought I’d keep an American called Louis Glober quiet, and we might both be useful in other ways. Now he wants to get rid of us. That may not be so easy.’
She laughed again. The joke had to be admitted as rather a good one, even if grimmish for Jacky Bragadin. Rosie smiled tolerantly. She did not pursue further inflexions of the story by asking more questions. She picked up the bag resting on the table, its long chain still looped round Pamela’s shoulder.
‘How pretty.’
‘Do you think so? I hate the thing. This man Glober gave it me. He keeps saying he’ll change it. He’ll only get something worse, and I can’t be bothered to spend hours in a shop with him.’
‘Is Mr Glober over for the Film Festival?’ asked one of the Americans.
‘That’s what he’s put out. He probably wants to pick up some hints from the German film about the blackmailing whore.’
‘I rather wish we were staying for the Film Festival,’ said Rosie.’ I’d like to see Polly Duport in the Hardy picture. We know her. She’s so nice, as well as being such a good actress.’
There was a lull in conversation. Stevens remarked that his new interest was in vintage cars. The Americans said they would have to be thinking of returning to their hotel soon. Rosie confirmed the view that it had been a tiring day. Stevens looked as if he might have liked to linger at Florian’s, but any such intractability would clearly be inadvisable, if matrimonial routines were to operate harmoniously. He did not openly dissent. Within the limits of making no pretence she found the presence of Pamela welcome, Rosie had been perfectly polite. Stevens could count himself lucky the situation had not hardened into open discord. Retirement from the scene had something to offer. Pamela appeared indifferent to whether they stayed or went. Goodbyes were said. She nodded an almost imperceptible farewell and dismissal. The Stevens party withdrew. They were enclosed almost immediately by the shadows of the Piazza. We sat for a minute or two in silence. The orchestra sawed away at Tales of Hoffmann.
‘What a shit Odo is,’ said Pamela.
‘Rosie is nice.’
It seemed best to make that statement right away, declare one’s views on the subject, rather than wait for attack. That would be preferable to a follow-up defending Rosie, as a friend. Rather surprisingly, Pamela agreed.
‘Yes, she’s all right. I suppose she gets a kick out of keeping that little ponce.’
; ‘You must admit his war record was good.’
‘What’s that to me?’
To stay longer at the table would be not only to prejudice Gwinnett’s opportunity for further pursuit of Trapnel investigations, but also, if Pamela had taken a fancy to him, risk being told in uncompromising terms to leave them à deux.
‘I’m off too.’
Pamela herself rose at that.
‘I’ve had enough of this place,’ she said.
That remark had all the appearance of being Gwinnett’s cue, a chance not to be missed to take her elsewhere, get out of her whatever he wanted. Florian’s could reasonably be regarded as a distracting spot for serious discussion. Gwinnett himself stood up, but without putting forward any alternative proposal. There was a pause. As a matter of form, I offered to see Pamela back to the Bragadin palace. If Gwinnett did not want to settle immediately on another port of call, he could easily suggest the duty of taking her home should fall to him. He said nothing. Pamela herself categorically refused escort.
‘Where’s your hotel?’
I named it.
‘Both of you?’
‘Yes.’
She turned to Gwinnett.
‘Are you going back too?’
‘That was my intention.’
Pamela fully accepted the implication that he did not propose to take her on at that moment. She showed no resentment.
‘I’ll walk as far as your hotel, then decide what I want to do. I like wandering about Venice at night.’
Gwinnett was certainly showing himself capable of handling Pamela in his own manner. He seemed, at worst, to have accomplished a transformation of roles, in which she stalked him, rather than he her. That might produce equally hazardous consequences, not least because Pamela herself showed positive taste for the readjustment. The hunter’s pursuit was no doubt familiar to her from past experience, only exceptional, in this case, to the extent that Gwinnett was already in her power from need to acquire Trapnel material.
‘OK,’ he said.
The three of us set off together. Nothing much was said until we were quite close to the hotel. Then, on a little humped bridge crossing a narrow waterway, Pamela stopped. She went to the parapet of the bridge, leant over it, looking down towards the canal. Gwinnett and I stopped too. She stared at the water for some time without saying anything. Then she spoke in her low unaccentuated manner.
‘I’ve thought of nothing but X since I’ve been in Venice. I see that manuscript of his floating away on every canal. You know Louis Glober wants to do it as a film, with that ending. It might have happened here. This place just below.’
Gwinnett seemed almost to have been waiting for her to make that speech.
‘Why did you do it?’
He asked that quite bluntly.
‘You think it was just to be bitchy.’
‘I never said so.’
‘But you think it.’
He did not answer. Pamela left the parapet of the bridge. She moved slowly towards him.
‘I threw the book away because it wasn’t worthy of X.’
‘Then why do you want Glober to make a picture of something not worthy?’
‘Because the best parts can be preserved in a film.’
I supposed by that she meant her own part, in whatever Trapnel had written, could be recorded that way; at least her version of it. Then Gwinnett played a trump. Considering contacts already made, he had shown characteristic self-control in withholding the information until now.
‘Trapnel preserved the outline himself in his Commonplace Book.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Something you don’t know about.’
‘Where is it?’
‘I’ve got it.’
‘He says there what he said in Profiles in String?’
‘Some of it.’
‘I’ll destroy that too – if it isn’t worthy of him.’
Gwinnett did not answer.
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘I entirely believe you, Lady Widmerpool, but you don’t have the Commonplace Book.’
In another mood she would certainly have shown contemptuous amusement for Gwinnett’s prim formality of manner. Now she was working herself up into one of her rages.
‘You won’t take my word – that I threw the manuscript into the Canal because it wasn’t good enough?’
‘I take your word unreservedly, Lady Widmerpool.’
Gwinnett himself might have been quite angry by then. It was impossible to tell. As usual he spoke, like Pamela herself, in a low unemphatic tone.
‘X himself knew it was a necessary sacrifice. He said so after. He liked to talk about that sort of thing. It was one side of him.’
What she stated about Trapnel was not at all untrue, if strange she had appreciated that aspect of him. She was an ideal instance of Barnby’s pronouncement that, for a woman, being in love with a man does not necessarily imply behaving well to him. Some comment of Trapnel’s about the destruction of the manuscript must have come to her ears later.
‘That was why he threw away his swordstick too.’
This settled the fact of someone having given her an account of the incident. Not myself, unlikely to have been Bagshaw, the story had just travelled round.
‘You knew that?’
She was insistent.
‘I’d been told,’ Gwinnett admitted.
He was stonewalling obstinately.
‘You don’t know what sacrifice is.’
Gwinnett gave an odd smile at that.
‘What makes you think so?’
If Pamela were an uncomfortable person, so was he. The way he asked that question was dreadfully tortured. If she noticed that fact – as time went on one suspected she did not miss much – she gave no sign.
‘I’ll show you.’
She slipped from off her shoulder the bag Glober had given her, wound the chain quickly about it, forming a rough knot. Then, holding the shortened links of gold, whirled round the bundle in the air, like a sort of prayer-wheel, and tossed it over the side of the bridge. There was the gentlest of splashes. The crocodile-skin (returned to its natural element) bobbed about for a second or two on the surface of the water, the moonlight glinting on metal clasps, a moment later, weighed down by the weight of its chain, sinking into the dark currents of the little canal. Gwinnett still did not speak. Pamela returned from the parapet from which she had watched the bag disappear.
‘That shows you what X did with something he valued.’
She had evidently intended to play out for Gwinnett’s benefit a figurative representation of the offering up of both manuscript and swordstick. Gwinnett did not propose to allow that. He showed himself prepared for a tussle.
‘You said just a short while back you didn’t think all that of the purse.’
He stood there openly unimpressed. For the moment it looked as if Pamela were going to hit him in the face, register one of those backhand swings she had dealt Stevens in the past. She may have contemplated doing so, thought better of it. Instead, she took hold of his right arm with her left hand, and hammered on his chest with her fist. She must have hit him quite hard. He retreated a step or two from the force of the onset, laughing a little, still not speaking. Pamela ceasing to pound Gwinnett at last, stood back. She gave him a long searching look. Then she turned, and walked quickly away in the direction from which we had come. Gwinnett did nothing for a minute or two. Either a lot of breath had been knocked out of him, and he was recovering, or he remained lost in contemplation of the whole strange incident; probably both. Then at last he shook his head.
‘I’d best go see what she’s after.’
He too set off into the night. He did that at a more moderate speed than Pamela’s. I left them to make whatever mutual coordination between them, physical or intellectual, seemed best in the light of whatever each required from the other. Even in the interests of getting a biography written about Trapnel, it was not for a third party t
o intervene further. Gwinnett had certainly entered the true Trapnel world in a manner no aspiring biographer could discount. It was like a supernatural story, a myth. If he wanted to avoid becoming the victim of sorcery, being himself turned into a toad, or something of that kind – in moral terms his dissertation follow Profiles in String into the waters of the Styx – he would have to find the magic talisman, and do that pretty quickly. It might already be too late.
Dr Brightman was in the hall of the hotel. She too had just come in. The evening with Ada had been a great success.
‘What a nice girl she is. I hear you both met at the Biennale. Russell Gwinnett suggested we should go there together. I must speak to him about it.’
‘Russell Gwinnett’s just been beaten up by Lady Widmerpool.’
Dr Brightman showed keen interest in the story of what had been happening. At the end she gave her verdict.
‘Lady Widmerpool may be what Russell is looking for.’
‘At least she could hardly be called a mother-substitute.’
‘Mothers vary.’
‘You called him gothic?’
‘To avoid the word decadent, so dear to the American heart, especially when European failings are in question. It is rarely used with precision here either. Of course there were the Decadents, so designated by themselves, but think of the habits of Alexander the Great, or Julius Caesar, neither of whom can be regarded as exactly decadent personalities.’
‘Are you implying sexual ambivalence in Gwinnett?’
‘I think not. His life might have been easier had that been so. Of course he remains essentially American in believing all questions have answers, that there is an ideal life against which everyday life can be measured – but measured only in everyday terms, so that the ideal life would be another sort of everyday life. It is somewhere at that point Russell’s difficulties lie.’
We said goodnight. I slept badly. Tokenhouse rang up early again the following morning. He brushed aside reference to the visit to his studio. He was, in his own terms, back to normal, comparative gaieties of the Glober luncheon obliterated entirely.
Temporary Kings Page 17
