Temporary Kings - Anthony Powell [118]
‘Interrupted by meals composed of the best food and the best wine?’
‘Donners, as you must remember to your cost, like most power maniacs, was not at all interested in food and drink. Although far more in his line, I presume the best sexual sensations were also omitted. That would be not so much because their physical expression might hasten ringing down the curtain, as on account of the apodictic intention. Is “apodictic” the right word? I once used it with effect in an article attacking Honegger. The villeggiatura was very specifically designed to rise above coarser manifestations of the senses.’
‘In the end did all this culture bring about a cure?’
‘It wasn’t the culture. The medicos made a mistake. They’d got the slides mixed, or the doctrine changed as to whatever Donners was suffering from being fatal. Something of the sort. Anyway they guessed wrong. Everything with Donners was right as rain. After spending a month or two at his dream cottage, he went back to making money, governing the country, achieving all-time records in utterance of conversational clichés, diverting himself in his own odd ways, all the many activities for which we used to know and love him. That went on until he was gathered in at whatever ripe old age he reached – not far short of eighty, so far as I remember.’
‘Also, if one may say so, without showing much outward sign of having concentrated on the best literature of half-a-dozen nations.’
‘Not the smallest. I was thinking that the other day while reading a translation of I Promessi Sposi. It sounds as if I were modelling myself on Donners, but I’ve got a lot of detective stories too. There was a special reason why I Promessi Sposi made me think of Donners, wonder whether it figured on his list, when he put on that final spurt to become cultured before rigor mortis set in. Like so many romantic novels, the story turns to some extent on the Villain upsetting the Hero by abducting the Heroine, unwilling victim threatened by the former’s lust. That particular theme always misses the main point in the tribulations of Heroes in real life, where the trouble is that the Heroine, once abducted, is likely to be only too anxious to suffer a fate worse than death.’
‘You mean Sir Magnus and his girls?’
For the moment I had not thought of Matilda.
‘I meant when he abducted Matty, and married her. Not exactly a precise parallel with Manzoni, I admit, but you’ll see what I mean.’
I did not know what to answer. This was the first time Moreland had ever spoken in such terms of Matilda leaving him for Sir Magnus Donners. He sighed, then laughed.
‘I suppose she liked being married to him. She remained in that state without apparent stress. She knew him, of course, from their first round together. In his odd way, he must have been attached to her too. All the same, I believe her when she said – consistently said – that she herself always refused to play his games, the way some – presumably most – of his girls did. I mean his taste, like your friend Lord Widmerpool’s, for watching other people make love.’
‘He was a friend of Donners too, but I don’t think Widmerpool got the habit there. What you say was certainly one of the things alleged. So it was true?’
‘Let’s approach the matter in the narrative technique of The Arabian Nights – the world where Donners really belonged – with a story. In fact, two stories. You must be familiar with both, favourite tales of my youth. To tell the truth, I’ve heard neither of them since the war. I’ve no doubt they survive in renovated shape.’
Moreland sighed again.
‘The first yarn is of a man making his way home late one night in London. He finds two ladies whose car has broken down. It is in the small hours, not a soul abroad. The earliest version ever told me represented the two ladies – one young and beautiful, the other older, but very distinguished – as having failed to crank their car with the starting-handle. Thought of this vintage jewel would make the mouths water of those vintage-hounds at the Seraglio, and shows the