The Kindly Ones - Anthony Powell [46]
‘Look, the castle,’ said Isobel. ‘Nobody warned me it was made of cardboard.’
Cardboard was certainly the material of which walls and keep seemed to be built, as we rounded the final sweep of the drive, coming within sight of a large castellated pile, standing with absurd unreality against a background of oaks, tortured by their antiquity into elephantine and grotesque shapes. From the higher ground at the back, grass, close-cropped by sheep, rolled down towards the greenish pools of the moat. All was veiled in the faint haze of autumn.
‘I told you it was Wagnerian,’ said Moreland.
‘When we wind the horn at the gate, will a sullen dwarf usher us in,’ said Isobel, ‘like Beckford’s at Fonthill or the Castle of Joyous Gard in the Morte d’Arthur?’
‘A female dwarf, perhaps,’ said Moreland, rather maliciously.
‘Don’t miss the black swans,’ said Matilda, disregarding him.
‘An anachronism, I fear,’ said Moreland. ‘Sir Magnus admitted as much to me in an unguarded moment. They come from Australia. Doesn’t it all look as if the safety curtain would descend any moment amid bursts of applause?’
Stourwater was certainly dramatic; yet how unhaunted, how much less ghost-ridden than Stonehurst; though perhaps Sir Magnus himself might leave a spectre behind him. In my memory, the place had been larger, more forbidding, not so elaborately restored. In fact, I was far less impressed than formerly, even experiencing a certain feeling of disappointment. Memory, imagination, time, all building up on that brief visit, had left a magician’s castle (brought into being by some loftier Dr Trelawney), weird and prodigious, peopled by beings impossible to relate to everyday life. Now, Stourwater seemed nearer to being an architectural abortion, a piece of monumental vulgarity, a house where something had gone very seriously wrong. We crossed the glittering water by a causeway, drove under the portcullis and through the outer courtyard, entering the inner court, where a fountain stood in the centre of a sunken garden surrounded by a stone balustrade. Here, in the days when he had been first ingratiating himself with Sir Magnus, Widmerpool had backed his car into one of the ornamental urns filled with flowers.
‘Is Kenneth Widmerpool staying in the house?’ I asked, thinking of that incident.
‘Just driving over after dinner,’ said Templer. ‘Some sort of business to clear up. I’m involved to a small extent, because it’s about my ex-brother-in-law, Bob Duport. Between you and me, I think I’ve been asked partly because Magnus wants me to know what is going on for his own purposes.’
‘What are his own purposes?’
‘I don’t know for certain. Perhaps he wants this particular scheme given a little discreet publicity.’
We had drawn up by the wing of the castle that was used for residence. The girls and Moreland had left the car by then, and were making their way up the steps to the front door. Templer had paused for a moment to fiddle with one of the knobs of the dashboard which for some reason seemed to dissatisfy him. This seemed a good opportunity for learning privately what had happened to Jean; for although by then I no longer thought about her, there is always a morbid interest in following the subsequent career of a woman with whom one has once been in love. That I should have been in this position vis-à-vis his sister, Templer himself, I felt pretty sure, had no idea.
‘Duport is an ex-brother-in-law now?’
‘Jean finally got a divorce from him. They lived apart for quite a time when Bob was running round with Bijou Ardglass. Then they joined up again and went to South America together. However, it didn’t last. You never really knew Jean, did you?’
‘I met her when I stayed with your family years ago-a few times later. What’s happened to her now?’
‘She married a South American – an army officer.’
‘And Bob Duport?’
‘There is some question of his going to Turkey for Magnus. Kenneth has been fixing it.’
‘On business?’
‘Magnus is interested in chromite.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Used for hardening