Temporary Kings - Anthony Powell [86]
Bagshaw could not swear to the exact phrase. It had something to do with ‘dead woman’ or ‘death wish’. He also asserted that Gwinnett, while staying in the house, had spoken more than once of Pamela’s conjunction with Ferrand-Sénéschal, bearing out Dr Brightman’s theory that Gwinnett himself was more than a little taken up with mortality. Bagshaw gave other instances. At the time, naturally, emphasis immediately afterwards was laid on the question why Pamela had been wandering about without any clothes. Reflecting on similar instances in my own experience, there was the time (actually not witnessed) when the parlourmaid, Billson, had walked naked into the drawing-room at Stonehurst; more tangibly, when the front door of her flat had been opened to myself by Jean Duport in the same condition. Unlike Candaules’s queen, these two had deliberately chosen to appear in that state, not, as the Queen – anyway vis-à-vis Gyges – involuntarily nude. Perhaps the Tiepolo picture had done something to disturb the balance of Pamela’s mind, in the light of her reported behaviour at the Bragadin dinner party. The situation – just what had really caused the doings at the Bagshaws’ – remained, at the end of that year, still obscure. Most people who took any interest in the matter simply assumed Pamela and Gwinnett had been ‘having an affair’, some row taken place, notable only for Pamela’s incalculable manner of handling things.
About January or February, Gwinnett himself sent a line saying he would like to meet. He wished the Commonplace Book returned to him, unless I particularly needed to keep it longer. We arranged to lunch together on a day I was coming to London. Gwinnett had not remained unaffected by the months spent in England. Whether the change was due to odd experiences undergone, or simply because he felt a sense of release in making a start on his book, was impossible to say. The transformation itself was not easy to define. Not exactly loosened up, he gave at the same time an impression of being on better terms with himself. Here in London he looked more ‘American’ than in Venice. He still wore his light blue lenses, only just observably tinted against the sun. It was not the effect of these. The spectacles, thin filament of moustache, secretive manner, implied quite other origins. One thought, for some reason, of the Near East, though he was not in the least oriental. Perhaps his air was Mexican. The Americanism had something to do with the intense whiteness of his shirt, cut low in the neck, the light shade of the heavily welted rubber-soled shoes, almost yellow in colour. The shoes were the first thing you noticed about him. Ignorant still of just what had happened at the Bagshaws’, I had no way of rationalizing to myself the slight, but apparent alteration. The Commonplace Book was handed over. Gwinnett mentioned that he had stayed with the Bagshaws, then decided he would work more easily in another of Trapnel’s hotels.
‘How much of the book have you done?’
‘I might have roughed out the first quarter.’
He spoke of some of his discoveries. From various sources, he had unearthed material about Trapnel’s early life in Egypt. Perhaps concentrating on Egypt had given Gwinnett the Near East look. He could list, among other things, racehorses Trapnel’s father had ridden, and their owners. There were striking facts about the schools Trapnel had attended, which were many and various. Gwinnett had worked hard.
‘Have you traced any of the girls?’
‘I have.’
Tessa, who had immediately preceded Pamela as object of Trapnel’s love, was doing extremely well. She was secretary, evidently a high-powered one, to the chairman of a noted firm of merchant bankers. Tessa had been helpful to Gwinnett in a straightforward way, giving him a clear, unvarnished account of Trapnel’s daily life, its interior economy, seen from the point of view of an intelligent, capable mistress, who wanted her lover to become