Temporary Kings - Anthony Powell [73]
‘Had this got to happen?’
Pamela halted behind the chair of the male American. He was unaware of her presence there.
‘Have you seen Louis?’
‘Glober?’
‘No, Louis the Fourteenth.’
‘I haven’t seen either since lunch.’
‘Did you lunch with Louis?’
‘Yes, Glober – not the Roi Soleil.’
‘I thought he was giving lunch to that old cow Ada. Do you know she put round a story that I left a picador in Spain because I found a basket-ball player twice his size?’
‘Ada was there too.’
‘Where?’
‘The restaurant in the Giardini.’
‘Did he take Ada back to screw her – if he can still manage that, or can’t she face a man any longer?’
‘So far as I know Glober left for the Gritti Palace to meet a business acquaintance, and Ada returned to the Lido to work on a speech she’s going to make at the Conference.’
‘Louis’s been seen at Cipriani’s since he was at the Gritti.’
‘Then I can’t help.’
‘I want some dope from him.’
Although the word might be reasonably used for any entity too much trouble to particularize, Pamela spoke as if she meant a drug, rather than, say, schedule of airflights to London, programme of tomorrow’s sightseeing, name of a recommended restaurant. She sounded as if she felt a capricious desire for a narcotic Glober could supply, no breathless despairing longing, just what she wished at the moment. The possibility was not to be wholly dismissed as an aspect of Glober’s courtship. The men of the party had risen, standing awkwardly beside their chairs, while this conversation proceeded, waiting for her to move on.
‘How are you, Pam?’ asked Stevens.
He still sounded nervous. She glanced at him, but gave no sign of having seen him before. Stevens himself may have hoped matters would rest there, that Pamela, failing to obtain the information she sought, would continue on her way without further acknowledgment. She remained, not speaking, looking coldly round, regarding Gwinnett with as chilly an eye as the rest. There was no suggestion they had met, far less touched on the religious life, shared some sort of physically sexual brush. Gwinnett himself was hardly more forthcoming. Absolutely poker-faced, his expression was that of a man determined not to fall below the standard of politeness required by convention towards an unknown woman pausing by the table at which he had been sitting, at the same time not unwilling that she should move on as quickly as possible to enable him to resume his seat. Pamela had no intention of moving on.
‘I’m not going to drag the canals for Glober. I’ll get the stuff from him tomorrow.’
She stepped forward to occupy the chair temporarily vacated by the American husband, thereby putting an end to any hope that she was not going to stay. The American managed to find another chair, then good-naturedly asked what she wanted to drink.
‘A cappuccino.’
Stevens was forced into mumbling some sort of general introduction. Rosie, of course, knew perfectly well who Pamela was, but either the two of them, by some chance, had never met, or it suited the mood of both to pretend that. Gwinnett, without emphasis, allowed recognition of previous acquaintanceship of some sort by making a backward jerk of the head. Rosie, undoubtedly angry at Pamela imposing herself in this manner, was at the same time, unlike Stevens, quite unruffled in outward appearance.
‘We heard you and your husband were staying with Jacky,’ she said. ‘How is he? Free from that catarrh of his, I hope?’
She expertly eyed Pamela’s turn-out, letting the assessment pause for a second on what appeared to