‘If it’s any consolation, Widmerpool’s become very odd himself now.’
‘You know that already? I was coming on to that. He’s gone round the bend. Nothing less.’
‘You’ve seen him?’
‘I was looking at some timber — woodland off my usual beat — and was told an extraordinary story by the johnny I was dealing with. Widmerpool — it must be the same bugger, from what he said — runs a kind of — well, I don’t know what the hell to call it — sort of colony for odds and sods, not far away from the property I was inspecting. Widmerpool’s place has been going for a year or two — a kind of rest-home for layabouts — but lately things have considerably hotted up, my client said. A new lot had arrived who wore even stranger togs, and went in for even gaudier monkey-tricks. This chap talked of Widmerpool as having made himself a sort of Holy Man. Not bad going after starting as a DAAG.’
Greening, unable to paraphrase the narrative of the owner of the woodland, could produce no revelation beyond that. Nevertheless the account of Widmerpool had evidently made a strong impression on him. I don’t think the possibility of the new arrivals being Murtlock’s adherents occurred to me at the time. If that had been at all conveyed, the conclusion would have been that Murtlock had been absorbed into Widmerpool’s larger organization. In short, what Greening spoke of seemed little more than what had been initially outlined some time before by Delavacquerie’s son. Greening began to collect his parcels.
‘Well, I must go on my way rejoicing. Nice to have had a chin-wag. Best for the Festive Season. I’m determined not to eat too much plum pudding this year.’
When, Christmas over, I next saw Delavacquerie, it was well into the New Year. He gave news of Gwinnett being in London again.
‘I thought him rather standoffish when he was over here before. This time he got in touch with me at once. In his own remote way he was very friendly.’
‘Has he returned to that gruesome dump in St Pancras?’
‘I picked him up there the other day, and we lunched at the buffet at King’s Cross Station.’
‘How’s he getting on with Gothic Symbols, etc?’
‘I think it will be rather good. The Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists happen to be a subject of mine too. In fact I was able to assist in a minor way by taking him to a Jacobean play that’s rarely staged. It’s ascribed to Fletcher. The Humorous Lieutenant, not particularly gothic, nor full of mortality, but Gwinnett seemed glad to have an opportunity to see it.’
Without reading the notices very carefully, I had grasped that a play of that name was being given a limited run of a few weeks at a theatre where such productions once in a way found a home. An energetic young director (more influential in that line than Norman Chandler) had been responsible for the revival of this decidedly obscure comedy, interest in it, so Delavacquerie now said, having been to to some extent aroused by himself.
‘I once toyed with the idea of calling my own collected war poems The Humorous Lieutenant, from this play. Then I thought the title would be misunderstood, even ironically.’
‘Why was he humorous?’
‘He wasn’t, in the modern sense, not a jokey subaltern, but moody and melancholy in the Elizabethan meaning of humorous — one of your Robert Burton types. The Lieutenant had reason to be. He was suffering from a go of the pox. Having a dose made him unusually brave, fighting being less of a strain than sitting about in camp feeling like hell. One sees the point. When he was cured all the Lieutenant’s courage left him.’
‘How did you persuade them to put the play on?’
‘I infiltrated the idea through Polly Duport, who is rather a friend of mine. She thought she’d like to play Celia, though a bit old for the part of a young girl.’
This was Delavacquerie’s first mention of Polly Duport. There was some parallel with the way in which Moreland had first produced Matilda, when she had been playing in The Duchess of Malfi. I was quite unable to tell whether this casual method of introducing the name was deliberate, or Delavacquerie supposed I had always known about the association. Clinging to privacy was characteristic of both of them. Apparent secrecy might be partly explained by the shut-in nature of Polly Duport’s life of the Theatre, scarcely at all cutting across Delavacquerie’s two-fold existence, divided between poetry and public relations.
‘I believe you’ve met Polly?’
‘I haven’t seen her for ages. I used to know her parents — who are divorced of course.’
I did not add that, when we were young, I had been in love with Polly Duport’s mother. There seemed no moral obligation to reveal that, in the light of Delavacquerie having kept quiet for so long about her daughter; an example of the limitations, mentioned before, set round about the friendships of later life.
‘You knew both Polly’s parents? It is almost unprecedented to have met the two of them. I myself have never seen either, though Polly spends a lot of time looking after her father, who has been very ill. She’s marvellously good about him. He never sounds very agreeable. Her mother — as you probably know — was married to that South American political figure who was murdered by terrorists the other day.’
‘Poor Colonel Flores? Was he murdered?’
‘Wasn’t he a general? He was machine-gunned from behind an advertisement hoarding, so Polly told me. It wasn’t given much space in the English papers. I didn’t see it reported myself. He was retired by then. It was bad luck.’
I felt sorry about Colonel Flores, a master of charm, even if other qualities may have played a part in his rise to power. Delavacquerie returned to the subject of Gwinnett and the play.
‘He seemed to enjoy it a great deal. I had never seen Gwinnett like that before. He became quite talkative afterwards, when we all had supper together.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘A King falls in love with his son’s girlfriend — that’s Celia, played by Polly — while the son himself is away at the wars. When the son returns, his father says the girl is dead. The King has really hidden Celia, and is trying to seduce her. As he has no success, he decides to administer a love potion. Unfortunately the love potion is drunk by the Humorous Lieutenant. In consequence the Lieutenant falls in love with the King, instead of Celia doing so.’
‘Did the Lieutenant’s exaggerated sense of humour cause him to drink the love philtre?’
‘It was accidental. He had been knocked out in a fight, and someone, thinking a bowl of wine was lying handy, gave him the love philtre as a pick-me-up. The incident is quite funny, but really has nothing to do with the play — like so many things that happen to oneself. As a neurotic figure, the Lieutenant is perhaps not altogether unlike Gwinnett.’
‘Possibly Gwinnett too should drink a love philtre?’
‘Gwinnett is going to risk much stronger treatment than that. Do you remember that Lord Widmerpool, after making that speech at the Magnus Donners, asked Gwinnett to come and see him? Widmerpool has returned to the charge, as to a visit, and Gwinnett is going to go.’
‘That sounds a little grisly.’
‘Precisely why Gwinnett is going to do it He wishes to have the experience. Widmerpool’s situation has recently become more than ever extraordinary. From being, in a comparatively quiet way, an encourager of dissidents and dropouts, the recent addition to his community of Scorpio Murtlock, the young man we talked about some little time ago, has greatly developed its potential. Murtlock provides a charismatic element, and apparently Widmerpool thinks there are immense power possibilities in the cult. He’s got enough money to back it, anyway for the moment.’