Temporary Kings - Anthony Powell [35]
‘Jacky didn’t mention you were staying. I suppose you arrived in that ghastly middle-of-the-night plane. Who’s the old girl? One of Jacky’s dykes?’
That was about the furthest I had ever heard Pamela go in the way of taking conversational initiative, for that matter, in showing interest in other people’s doings. I explained that neither Dr Brightman nor myself was the latest addition to the Bragadin house-party; for fun, subjoining a word about Dr Brightman’s academic celebrity. Pamela did not answer. She had the gift of making silence as vindictive as speech. Dr Brightman continued to examine the ceiling, while at the same time she moved discreetly in our direction. When she was near enough I introduced them. Dr Brightman’s manner was courteously firm, Pamela in no way uncivil, though she did not attempt to name the man with her. He, also risen from the flat of his back, had now manifestly put himself into an attitude preparatory for meeting strangers. Evidently he was familiar with Pamela’s distaste for social convention of any kind, in any case well able to look after himself. After giving her a statutory moment or two to make his identity known, he announced himself without her help. The intonation, deep and pleasant, was American.
‘Louis Glober.’
He held out a large white hand, much manicured. The voice came back over the years, the tone just the same, quiet in pitch, masterful, friendly, full of hope. Otherwise hardly a trace remained of the smooth dominating young man who had interviewed Tokenhouse about the Cubist series, given the dinner-party for the John drawing, ‘done’ Mopsy Pontner on the dinner-table in the private suite of that defunct Mayfair hotel. He was still tall, of course, no less full of assurance, though that assurance took rather a different form. It was in one sense less flowing – less like, say, Sunny Farebrother’s determination to charm – in another, tougher, more outwardly ruthless. What Glober had lost, physically speaking (a good deal, including, naturally enough, all essentially youthful adjuncts), was to a certain extent counterbalanced by transmutation into a different type of distinguished appearance. The young Byzantine emperor had become an old one; Herod the Tetrarch was perhaps nearer the mark than Byzantine emperor; anyway a ruler with a touch of exoticism in his behaviour and tastes. What was left of Glober’s hair, scarcely more than a suggestion he once had owned some, was still black – possibly from treatment artificial as Pamela’s – his handsome, sallow pouchy face become richly senatorial. Never particularly ‘American’ in aspect (not, at least, American as pictured by Europeans), now he might have come from Spain, Italy, any of the Slav countries. A certain glassiness about the eyes recalled Sir Magnus Donners, though Glober was, in general, quite another type of tycoon. Before I could reintroduce myself to him, Dr Brightman went into attack with Pamela.
‘Tell me, do tell me, Lady Widmerpool, where did you get those quite delectable sandals?’
Pamela accepted the tribute. They went into the question together. I explained to Glober how we had met before.
‘Do you remember – the Augustus John drawing?’
He thought for a moment, then began to laugh loudly. Putting a hand on my shoulder, he continued to laugh.
‘This warms me like news from home. Is it really thirty years? I just don’t believe