This censure could, of course, have been a double-bluff. When we had met at a large party given for the Election Night of 1955 — the last time I had seen him — Widmerpool deliberately dragged in a reference to the weeks spent together trying to learn French at La Grenadière, adding that it was ‘lucky for our morals Madame Leroy’s house had not been in Paris’, words that seemed to bear out, on his part, desire to confirm a reputation for being a dog. That was early in the evening, before Pamela’s incivility had greatly offended our hostess, or Widmerpool himself heard (towards morning, after Isobel and I had gone home) that he had lost his seat in the House. In Fission days, Bagshaw had been sceptical about the Paris story, without dismissing it entirely.
‘I suppose some jolly-up may have taken place. The brothels are closed nowadays officially, but that wouldn’t make any difference to someone in the know. I’m not sure what Ferrand-Sénéschal is himself supposed to like — being chained to a crucifix, while a green light’s played on him — little girls — two-way mirrors — I’ve been told, but I can’t remember. He may have given Kenneth a few ideas. I shall develop sadistic tendencies myself, if that new secretary doesn’t improve. She’s muddled those proofs of the ads again. I say, Nicholas, we’ve still too much space to spare. Just cast your eye over these, and see if you’ve any suggestions. You’ll bring a fresh mind to the advertisement problem. It’s a blow too we’re not going to get any more Trapnel pieces. Editing this mag is driving me off my rocker.’
In the light of what I knew of Widmerpool, the tale of visiting a brothel with Ferrand-Sénéschal was to be accepted with caution, although true that he had more than once in the past adopted a rather gloating tone when speaking of tarts, an attitude dating back to our earliest London days. Moreland used to say, ‘Maclintick doesn’t like women, he likes tarts — indeed he once actually fell in love with a tart, who led him an awful dance.’ That taste could be true of Widmerpool too; perhaps a habit become so engrained as to develop into a preference, handicapping less circumscribed sexual intimacies. Such routines might go some way to explain the fiasco with Mrs Haycock, even the relationship — whatever that might be — with Pamela. That Ferrand-Sénéschal, as Bagshaw suggested, had been the medium for introduction, in middle-age, to hitherto unknown satisfactions, new, unusual forms of self-release, was not out of the question. By all accounts, far more unlikely things happened in the sphere of late sexual development. Bagshaw was, of course, prejudiced. By that time he had decided that Widmerpool was not only bent on ejecting him from the editorship of Fission, but was also a fellow-traveller.
‘He probably learnt a lot from Ferrand-Sénéschal politically, the latter being a much older hand at the game.’
‘But what has Widmerpool to gain from being a crypto?’
Bagshaw laughed loudly. He thought that a very silly question. Political standpoints of the extreme Left being where his heart lay, where, so to speak, he had lost his virginity, the enquiry was like asking Umfraville why he should be interested in one horse moving faster than another, a football fan the significance of kicking an inflated bladder between two posts. At first Bagshaw was unable to find words simple enough to enlighten so uninstructed a mind. Then a lively parallel occurred to him.
‘Apart from anything else, it’s one of those secret pleasures, like drawing a moustache on the face of a pretty girl on a poster, spitting over the stairs — you know, from a great height on to the people below. You see several heads, possibly a bald one. They don’t know where the saliva comes from. It gives an enormous sense of power. Like the days when I used to throw marbles under the hooves of mounted policemen’s horses. Think of the same sort of fun when you’re an MP, or respected civil servant, giving the whole show away on the quiet, when everybody thinks you’re a pillar of society.’
‘Isn’t that a rather frivolous view? What about deep convictions, all the complicated ideologies you’re always talking about?’
‘Not really frivolous. Such spitting itself is an active form of revolt — undermining society as we know it, spreading alarm and despondency among the bourgeoisie. Besides, spitting apart, you stand quite a good chance of coming to power yourself one day. Giving them all hell. The bourgeoisie, and everyone else. Being a member of a Communist apparat would suit our friend very well politically.’
‘But Widmerpool’s the greatest bourgeois who ever lived.’
‘Of course he is. That’s what makes it such fun for him. Besides, he isn’t a bourgeois in his own eyes. He’s a man in a life-and-death grapple with the decadent society round him. Either he wins, or it does.’
‘That doesn’t sound very rational.’
‘Marxism isn’t rational, Nicholas. Get that into your head. The more intelligent sort of Marxist tells you so. He stresses the point, as one of its highest merits, that, like religion, Marxism requires faith in the last resort. Besides, my old friend Max Stirner covers Kenneth — “Because I am by nature a man I have equal rights to the enjoyment of all goods, says Babeuf. Must he not also say: because I am ‘by nature’ a first-born prince I have a right to a throne?” That’s just what Kenneth Widmerpool does say — not out aloud, but it’s what he thinks.’
Bagshaw had begun on his favourite political philosopher. I was not in the mood at that moment. To return instead to sorting the Fission books was not to deny there might be some truth in the exposition: that Widmerpool, conventional enough at one level of his life — conventional latterly in his own condemnation of conventionality — might at the same time nurture within himself quite another state of mind to that shown on the surface; not only desire to reshape the world according to some doctrinaire pattern, but also to be revenged on a world that had found himself insufficiently splendid in doing so. Had not General Conyers, years ago, diagnosed a ‘typical intuitive extrovert’; coldblooded, keen on a thing for the moment, never satisfied, always wanting to get on to something else? In one sense, of course, the world, from a material assessment, had treated Widmerpool pretty well, even at the time when Bagshaw was talking. On the other hand, people rarely take the view that they have been rewarded according to their desserts, those most rewarded often the very ones keenest to be revenged. Possibly Ferrand-Sénéschal was just such another.
Whatever Ferrand-Sénéschal’s inner feelings, the meeting with him in Venice was not to be. Not even a glimpse on the platform. His death took place in London only a few days before the Conference opened. He suffered a stroke in his Kensington hotel. The decease of a French author of international standing would in any case have rated a modest headline in the papers. The season of the year a thin one for news, more attention was given to Ferrand-Sénéschal than might have been expected. It was revealed, for example, that he had seen a doctor only a day or two before, who had warned him against excessive strain. Accordingly no inquest took place. Death had come — as Evadne Clapham remarked, ‘like the book’ — in the afternoon. Later that evening, so the papers said, Ferrand-Sénéschal had been invited to ‘look in on’ Lady Donners after dinner — ’not a party, just a few friends’, she had explained to the reporters — where he would have found himself, so it appeared, among an assortment of politicians and writers, including Mr and Mrs Mark Members. Social engagements of this kind, together with a stream of acquaintances and journalists passing in and out of his suite at the hotel, had evidently proved too much for a state of health already impaired.
The London obituaries put Leon-Joseph Ferrand-Sénéschal in his sixtieth year. They mentioned only two or three of his better known books, selected from an enormous miscellany of novels, plays, philosophic and economic studies, political tracts, and (according to Bernard Shernmaker) an early volume, later suppressed by the author, of verse in the manner of Verl?ine. This involuntary withdrawal would make little difference to the Conference. Well known intellectuals were always an uncertain quantity when it came to turning up, even if they did not suddenly succumb. Pritak, Santos, Kotecke, might equally well find something better to do, though not necessarily meet an unlooked-for end. I made up my mind to ask Dr Brightman, when opportunity arose, whether she had ever encountered Ferrand-Sénéschal; if so, what she thought of him.