‘The extraordinary thing was Pam more or less understood the stuff. That was how it looked. At least she stopped in her tracks for a second or two. I’ve never seen anything like it.’
Stevens was certainly taken aback, but the spell, as it turned out, was short lasting. Briefly quelled, Pamela recovered herself.
‘Then you know?’
‘Time yet remains to evade the ghastly cataract.’
‘But you know?’
‘Knowledge is the treasure of our unsealed fountains.’
Pamela gave what Stevens, in his flamboyant manner, called a ‘terrible laugh’. Moreland admitted he, too, had found that laugh uncomfortable.
‘Then I’ll unseal them — and him.’
Mrs Erdleigh made some sort of motion with her hand, one of her mystic passes, conceivably no more than an emotional gesture, at which Pamela drew herself away, Moreland said, ‘like a serpent’. Mrs Erdleigh issued her final warning.
‘Court at your peril those spirits that dabble lasciviously with primeval matter, horrid substances, sperm of the world, producing monsters and fantastic things, as it is written, so that the toad, this leprous earth, eats up the eagle.’
Then Pamela began to scream with laughter again, shriller even than before.
‘You know, you know, you know. You’re a wonderful old girl. You don’t have to be told Léon-Joseph croaked in bed with me. You know already. You know it’s true, what nobody else quite believes.’
To what extent that plain statement was at once comprehended by those standing round remains uncertain. Probably the words did not wholly sink in until later. At moment of utterance they could have sounded all part of this extraordinary interchange, at once metaphorical and coarsely earthy. Some doubt existed, it was agreed, as to the exact phrases Pamela used. Whatever they were, positiveness of assertion was in no way diminished. She turned to Widmerpool again.
‘You tell them about it. After all, you were there.’
She pointed at him, now speaking to the others.
‘He thought I didn’t spot he was watching through the curtain.’
Up to this stage of things, it appears, no one except Mrs Erdleigh had attempted to tackle Pamela. Mrs Erdleigh, so far as it went, having done that with success, spoken her warning, withdrew into the shadows. Widmerpool had remained all the time silent. Even now he did not at once answer this imputation on himself. He heard it to the end without speaking. Glober, uncharacteristically at a loss for the inspired wisecrack to ease the situation, was equally mute. After that, from the moment Pamela voiced these revelations, there is difficulty in pinpointing order of events, reliable continuity almost impossible to establish. Accounts given by Moreland and Stevens were at odds with each other. What appears to have taken place is that Pamela, dissatisfied at her words being received with comparative calm, at best so stunning that her bearers lacked reaction, chose another line of attack. It is no less possible she was building up, in any case, to that. Stevens, more at home this time with plain statements, rather than Mrs Erdleigh’s oracular sayings, gave a convincing imitation of Pamela’s hissing denunciation.
‘You might think that enough. Watching your wife being screwed. Naturally it wasn’t the first time. It was just the first time with a blubber-lipped Frenchman, who couldn’t do it, then popped off. Of course he had arranged it all with Léon-Joseph beforehand — except the popping off — and in some — ways it made things easier to have two of us to explain to the hotel people that Monsieur Ferrand-Sénéschal had just passed away while we were visiting him. Then there’s a tart called Pauline he has games with. He used to photograph her. I found the photographs. He didn’t guess I’d meet Pauline too.’
Even then Widmerpool seems to have made no active protest. What really upset him was Pamela’s next item.
‘He’s been telling everybody that he hasn’t the slightest idea why they thought he was spying. I can explain that too, all his little under-the-counter Communist games. How he’s got out of his trouble, in spite of their holding an interesting little note in his own handwriting. He’s given the show away as often, and as far, as he dares. Unfortunately, he gave it away to his old pals, the Stalinists. The lot who are in now want to discredit some of those old pals. That’s where Léon-Joseph comes in again. Poor old Ferrand-Sénéschal was playing just the same sort of game — as well as an occasional orgy, when he felt up to it. So what he did was to hand over all the information he possessed about Ferrand-Sénéschal, some of that quite spicy. That’s why he was let off this time with a caution.’
Stevens, his mind, as I have said, adjusted to secret traffickings, his nature to physical violence, reported Pamela’s words as cut short at Widmerpool seizing her by the throat. Moreland disagreed that anything so forcible had happened, at least immediately. Moreland thought Widmerpool had simply caught her arm, possibly struck her on the arm, attempting to silence his wife. The scene partook, in far more savage temper, of that enacted at the Huntercombes’ ball, when, after Barbara Goring had cut his dance, Widmerpool grasped her wrist. The upshot then had been Barbara pouring sugar over his head. Widmerpool’s onslaught this time might be additionally menacing, stakes of the game, so to speak, immensely higher; the physical protest was the same, final exasperation of nerves kept by a woman too long on edge. Another analogy with this earlier grapple was Pamela, no more daunted at the assault than Barbara by her clutched wrist, dragged herself away, screaming with laughter. The scene was not without its horrifying, morally upsetting, side. Moreland emphasized that; Stevens, too, in his own terms.
‘In fact, I thought I was going to be sick,’ Moreland said. ‘Nausea might have been caused by my recent crise. If I had vomited, that would scarcely have added at all to other gruesome aspects.’
In emerging from this hand-to-hand affray with Pamela, possibly beaten off by her own counter-attack, Widmerpool seems to have stepped back without warning, retreating heavily on to Glober, who may himself have moved forward with an idea of separating husband and wife. Stevens thought Stripling had made some ponderous, ineffectual attempt to intervene. That is to some extent controverted by subsequent evidence. The view of Stevens was that Stripling had tried to catch Widmerpool round the waist, with the idea of restraining him, an act misattributed by Widmerpool to Glober. Both Moreland and Stevens agreed that, in the early stages of the Widmerpools’ clinch, Glober took no special initiative. Perhaps, for once, he felt a certain diffidence, owing to the intricacies of his own position. Possibly, too, he was not unwilling to watch them fight it out on their own. There is some corroboration of Stripling playing a comparatively active part at this stage, but things moving so quickly, it was hard to know what he did, how long remained present.
What does seem fairly certain is that Widmerpool, stepping backwards, immediately supposed himself to have been in some manner curbed or coerced. Simultaneously, Mrs Erdleigh, foreseeing trouble when Stripling laid a hand on Widmerpool, may at once have spirited Stripling away by more or less occult means. That would to some extent explain why Widmerpool, finding Glober, rather than Stripling, made an angry, presumably derogatory comment. It is possible, of course, Glober had indeed taken hold of him. They faced one another. That was when Glober hit Widmerpool.
‘It’s never a KO on these occasions,’ said Stevens. ‘I’ve seen it happen before, though not with men of quite that age. Widmerpool just staggered a bit, and put his hand up to his face. No question of dropping like a sack of potatoes, being out for the count, floored by a straight left, or right hook. That only happens professionally, or in the movies. The chief damage was his spectacles. They were knocked off his nose, and broke, so the midnight match had to be called off.’