The Kindly Ones - Anthony Powell [53]
‘By all means let us take some photographs after dinner,’ he said. ‘What a good idea.’
Highlights showed on his greenish eyes. No doubt he saw escape from dishing up ‘Munich’ for the thousandth time, not only with Anne Umfraville, but also with a handful of guests whose views he could not reasonably be expected to take seriously. Like so many men who have made a successful career through the will, it was hard to guess how much, or how little, Sir Magnus took in of what was going on immediately round him. Did he know that his own sexual habits were a source of constant speculation and jocularity; that Moreland was tortured by the thought of Matilda’s former status in the house; that Betty Templer made the party a very uncomfortable one; or was he indifferent to these things, and many others as well? It was impossible to say. Perhaps Sir Magnus, through his antennae, was even more keenly apprised of surrounding circumstances than the rest of us; perhaps, on the other hand, he was able to dismiss them completely from his consciousness as absolutely unessential elements in his own tranquil progress through life.
‘Let’s pose some tableaux,’ said Matilda. ‘Donners can photograph us in groups.’
‘Historical events or something of that sort,’ said Anne Umfraville. ‘The history of the castle? We could use some of the armour. Ladies watching a tournament?’
Moreland had shown signs of being dreadfully bored until that moment, expressing his own lack of enjoyment by yawns and occasional tart remarks. Now he began to cheer up. The latest proposal not only pointed to the kind of evening he liked, it also opened up new possibilities of teasing Sir Magnus, a project certainly uppermost at that moment in his mind. Anne Umfraville seemed to some extent to share this wish to torment her host.
‘Let’s do scenes from the career of Sir Magnus,’ said Moreland. ‘His eventual rise to being dictator of the world.’
‘No, no,’ said Sir Magnus, laughing. ‘That I cannot allow. It would have a bad effect on my photography. You must remember I am only a beginner. Myself as a subject would make me nervous.’
‘Hitler and Chamberlain at Godesberg?’ suggested Templer.
That proposal, certainly banal enough, was at once dismissed, not only as introducing too sinister, too depressing a note, but also as a scene devoid of attractive and colourful characters of both sexes.
‘What about some mythological incident?’ said Moreland. ‘Andromeda chained to her rock, or the flaying of Marsyas?’
‘Or famous pictures?’ said Anne Umfraville. ‘A man once told me I looked like Mona Lisa. I admit he’d drunk a lot of Martinis. We want something that will bring everyone in ‘
‘Rubens’s Rape of the Sabine Women,’ said Moreland ‘or The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch We might even be highbrows, while we’re about it, and do Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. What’s against a little practical cubism?’
Sir Magnus nodded approvingly.
‘We girls don’t want to die of cold,’ said Anne Umfraville. ‘Nothing too rough, either. I’m not feeling particularly cubistic tonight.’
‘Or too highbrow,’ said Templer. ‘Nick will get out of hand. I know him of old. Let’s stick to good straightforward stuff, don’t you agree, Magnus – Anne doing a strip-tease, for instance.’
‘Nothing sordid,’ said Anne Umfraville, her attention distinctly engaged by this last suggestion. ‘It must all be at a high intellectual level, or I shan’t play.’
‘Well-known verses, then,’ said Moreland,
I was a king in Babylon,
And you were a Christian slave… .
— not that I can ever see how the couple in question managed to be those utterly disparate things at the same moment in history – or, to change the mood entirely:
Now all strange hours and all strange loves are over,
Dreams and desires and sombre songs and sweet …
There is good material in both of those. The last would be convenient for including everyone.