Temporary Kings - Anthony Powell [102]
‘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