Temporary Kings (3 page)

‘He probably learnt a
lot from Ferrand-Sénéschal politically, the latter being a much older hand at
the game.’

‘But what has
Widmerpool to gain from being a crypto?’

Bagshaw laughed
loudly. He thought that a very silly question. Political standpoints of the
extreme Left being where his heart lay, where, so to speak, he had lost his
virginity, the enquiry was like asking Umfraville why he should be interested
in one horse moving faster than another, a football fan the significance of
kicking an inflated bladder between two posts. At first Bagshaw was unable to
find words simple enough to enlighten so uninstructed a mind. Then a lively
parallel occurred to him.

‘Apart from anything
else, it’s one of those secret pleasures, like drawing a moustache on the face
of a pretty girl on a poster, spitting over the stairs – you know, from a great
height on to the people below. You see several heads, possibly a bald one. They
don’t know where the saliva comes from. It gives an enormous sense of power.
Like the days when I used to throw marbles under the hooves of mounted
policemen’s horses. Think of the same sort of fun when you’re an MP, or
respected civil servant, giving the whole show away on the quiet, when
everybody thinks you’re a pillar of society.’

‘Isn’t that a rather
frivolous view? What about deep convictions, all the complicated ideologies you’re
always talking about?’

‘Not really
frivolous. Such spitting itself is an active form of revolt – undermining
society as we know it, spreading alarm and despondency among the bourgeoisie.
Besides, spitting apart, you stand quite a good chance of coming to power
yourself one day. Giving them all hell. The bourgeoisie, and everyone else.
Being a member of a Communist
apparat
would suit our
friend very well politically.’

‘But Widmerpool’s the
greatest bourgeois who ever lived.’

‘Of course he is.
That’s what makes it such fun for him. Besides, he isn’t a bourgeois in his own
eyes. He’s a man in a life-and-death grapple with the decadent society round
him. Either he wins, or it does.’

‘That doesn’t sound
very rational.’

‘Marxism isn’t
rational, Nicholas. Get that into your head. The more intelligent sort of
Marxist tells you so. He stresses the point, as one of its highest merits,
that, like religion, Marxism requires faith in the last resort. Besides, my old
friend Max Stirner covers Kenneth – “Because I am by nature a man I have equal
rights to the enjoyment of all goods, says Babeuf. Must he not also say:
because I am ‘by nature’ a first-born prince I have a right to a throne?” That’s
just what Kenneth Widmerpool does say – not out aloud, but it’s what he thinks.’

Bagshaw had begun on
his favourite political philosopher. I was not in the mood at that moment. To
return instead to sorting the
Fission
books was not
to deny there might be some truth in the exposition: that Widmerpool,
conventional enough at one level of his life – conventional latterly in his own
condemnation of conventionality – might at the same time nurture within himself
quite another state of mind to that shown on the surface; not only desire to
reshape the world according to some doctrinaire pattern, but also to be
revenged on a world that had found himself insufficiently splendid in doing so.
Had not General Conyers, years ago, diagnosed a ‘typical intuitive extrovert’;
coldblooded, keen on a thing for the moment, never satisfied, always wanting to
get on to something else? In one sense, of course, the world, from a material
assessment, had treated Widmerpool pretty well, even at the time when Bagshaw
was talking. On the other hand, people rarely take the view that they have been
rewarded according to their desserts, those most rewarded often the very ones
keenest to be revenged. Possibly Ferrand-Sénéschal was just such another.

Whatever Ferrand-Sénéschal’s
inner feelings, the meeting with him in Venice was not to be. Not even a
glimpse on the platform. His death took place in London only a few days before
the Conference opened. He suffered a stroke in his Kensington hotel. The
decease of a French author of international standing would in any case have
rated a modest headline in the papers. The season of the year a thin one for
news, more attention was given to Ferrand-Sénéschal than might have been
expected. It was revealed, for example, that he had seen a doctor only a day or
two before, who had warned him against excessive strain. Accordingly no inquest
took place. Death had come – as Evadne Clapham remarked, ‘like the book’ – in
the afternoon. Later that evening, so the papers said, Ferrand-Sénéschal had
been invited to ‘look in on’ Lady Donners after dinner – ’not a party, just a
few friends’, she had explained to the reporters – where he would have found
himself, so it appeared, among an assortment of politicians and writers,
including Mr and Mrs Mark Members. Social engagements of this kind, together
with a stream of acquaintances and journalists passing in and out of his suite
at the hotel, had evidently proved too much for a state of health already
impaired.

The London obituaries
put Leon-Joseph Ferrand-Sénéschal in his sixtieth year. They mentioned only two
or three of his better known books, selected from an enormous miscellany of
novels, plays, philosophic and economic studies, political tracts, and
(according to Bernard Shernmaker) an early volume, later suppressed by the
author, of verse in the manner of Verl?ine. This involuntary withdrawal would
make little difference to the Conference. Well known intellectuals were always
an uncertain quantity when it came to turning up, even if they did not suddenly
succumb. Pritak, Santos, Kotecke, might equally well find something better to
do, though not necessarily meet an unlooked-for end. I made up my mind to ask
Dr Brightman, when opportunity arose, whether she had ever encountered Ferrand-Sénéschal;
if so, what she thought of him.

The youngest and
best-looking of the troupe, the one Dr Brightman had called the Soubrette, took
a plate round for the collection. The rest burst
en masse
into
Santa
Lucia
. The programme came to an end. Preparations began for
moving on to another hotel. Before they got under way, the old singer, in
participation with the Soubrette, surreptitiously examined the takings, both
gesticulating a good deal, whether with satisfaction or irony at the extent of
the offering was uncertain.

‘To sing Neapolitan
songs in Venice is rather like a Scotch ballad in Bath,’ said Dr Brightman. ‘Naples
is unique. Even her popular music doesn’t export as far north as this. A taste
for Naples is one of the divisions between people. You love the place, or
loathe it. The character of the traveller seems to have no bearing on the
instinctive choice. Personally I am devoted to the Parthenopean shore, although
once victim of a most unseemly episode at Pompeii when younger. It was outside
the lupanar, from which in those days ladies were excluded. I should have been
affronted far less within that haunt of archaic vice, where I later found little
to shock the most demure, except the spartan hardness of the double-decker
marble bunks. I chased the fellow away with my parasol, an action no doubt
deplored in these more enlightened days, as risking irreparable damage to the
responses of one of those all too frequent cases of organ inferiority.’

She briskly shook the
crop of short white curls cut close to her head. They looked like a battery of
coiled wire (like the Dark Lady’s) galvanizing an immensely powerful dynamo.
The bearing of the anecdote brought Ferrand-Sénéschal’s name to mind again. I
asked if she had ever met him.

‘Yes, I once was
introduced to Ferrand-Sénéschal in the not very inviting flesh. He told me he
despised “good writing”. I praised his French logic in that respect. As you doubtless
know, his early books are ridiculously stilted, his later ones grossly
slipshod. I was at once hustled away by his court of toadies. Certain persons
require a court. Others prefer a harem. That is not quite the same thing.’

‘Some like both.’

‘Naturally the one
can merge with the other – why, hullo, Russell.’

The young American
who had come up to our table seemed to be the only one of his countrymen at the
Conference. He was called Russell Gwinnett. We had sat next to each other at
luncheon the day before. He had explained that he taught English at a
well-known American college for women, where Dr Brightman herself had spent a
year as exchange professor, so that they had known one another before meeting
again at the Conference.

‘How are you making
out, Russell? Have you met Mr Nicholas Jenkins? This is Mr Russell Gwinnett, an
old friend from my transatlantic days. You have? Come and join us, Russell.’

The serious business
of the Conference, intellectuals from all over the world addressing each other
on their favourite topics, took place at morning and afternoon sessions on the
island of San Giorgio Maggiore. To reanimate enthusiasms imperilled by
prolonged exposure to the assiduities of congress life, extension of the
syllabus to include an official luncheon or dinner was listed for almost every
day of our stay. These banquets were usually linked with some national
treasure, or place of historic interest, occasions to some extent justifying
the promise of Members that we should ‘live like kings’. They gave at the same
time opportunity to ‘get to know’ other members of the Conference. Through the
medium of one of these jaunts, which took place at a villa on the Brenta,
famous for its frescoes by Veronese, Gwinnett and I had met.

He was in his early
thirties, slight in figure, with a small black moustache that showed a narrow
strip of skin along the upper lip above and below its length. That he was
American scarcely appeared on the surface at first, then something about the
thin bone formations of arms and legs, the sallowness and texture of the skin,
suggested the nationality. The movements of the body, supple, not without
athletic promise, also implied an American, rather than European, nervous
tension; an extreme one. He wore spectacles lightly tinted with blue. His air,
in general unconformist, did not strongly indicate any recognizable alignment.

I had not sat next to
him long the previous day before unorthodoxy was confirmed. Having invoked the
name of Dr Brightman, Gwinnett (like herself) created the usually advantageous
foundation of good understanding between writers – one by no means always
available – by showing well-disposed knowledge of my own works. That was an
excellent start. He turned out to hold another ace up his sleeve, but did not
play that card at once. In showing control, he began as he went on. After the
gratifying, if subjective, offering made in the direction of my own writing, he
became less easy. In fact he was almost impossible to engage, drying up
entirely, altogether lacking in that reserve of light, reasonably well-informed
social equipment, on the whole more characteristic of American than British
academic life. This lapse into a torpid, almost surly reluctance to cooperate
conversationally suggested an American version of the least flexible type of
British don, that quiet egotism, self-applauding narrowness of vision,
sometimes less than acceptable, even when buttressed with verified references
and forward-looking views. If Gwinnett showed signs almost of burlesquing a
stock academic figure, he was himself not necessarily lacking in interest on
that account, if only as a campus specimen hitherto unsampled; especially as he
seemed oddly young to have developed such traits. Even at the outset I was
prepared for this diagnosis to be wide of the mark. There was also something
not at all self-satisfied about him, an impression of anxiety, a never ceasing
awareness of impending disaster.

At table he had
messed about the food on his plate, a common enough form of expressing
maladjustment, though disconcerting, since the dishes happened to be notably
good. He refused wine. It might be that he was a reprieved alcoholic. He had
some of that sad, worn, preoccupied air that suggests unquiet memories of more
uproarious days. Above all there was a sense of loneliness. I talked for a time
with the Belgian writer on my other side. Then the Belgian became engaged with
his neighbour beyond, leaving Gwinnett and myself back on each other’s hands.
Before I could think of anything new to say, he put an unexpected question.
This was towards the end of the meal, the first sign of loosening up.

‘How does the
Veronese at Dogdene compare with the ones on the wall here?’

That was a surprise.

‘You mean the one
Lord Sleaford’s just sold? I’ve never been to Dogdene, so I haven’t ever seen
it in anything but reproduction. I only know the house itself from the
Constable in the National Gallery.’

The Sleaford Veronese
had recently realized at auction what was then regarded as a very large sum.
The picture had always been a great preoccupation of Chips Lovell, who used
often to grumble about his Sleaford relations never recognizing their luck in
ownership of a work by so great a master. Lovell, who agreed with Smethyck (now
head of a gallery), and with General Conyers, that the picture ought to be
cleaned, was also in the habit of complaining that the public did not have
sufficient opportunity to inspect its beauties. In those days admission to
Dogdene was about three days a week throughout the summer. After the war, in common
with many other mansions of its kind, the house was thrown open, at a charge,
all the year round. Even so, the Veronese had to be sold to pay for the basic
upkeep of the place. In spite of the publicity given at the time of the sale, I
was impressed that Gwinnett had heard of it.

‘I’ve been told it’s
not Veronese at his best –
Iphigenia
, isn’t it?’

That had been Lovell’s
view in moods of denigration or humility. Gwinnett seemed more interested in
the subject of the picture than whether or not Veronese had been on form.