Temporary Kings - Anthony Powell [112]
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.