“The Doctor is heroic in her application to the bottle. But somehow I don’t think she has what Americans call a Drinking Problem. She likes it and she holds a lot. Simple.”
“You won’t join me?”
“I’m afraid I’m drinking too much, and I haven’t got the splendid head of you and the Doctor. I’ll just have some bubbly water.”
“Are things getting to be too much for you, Simon?”
“This opera is worrying me, in a way that is quite absurd, because it’s really none of my business. If you and Arthur want to spend hundreds of thousands on it, the money is yours. You’re doing it for Powell, of course?”
“No, not of course, though it must look like that. He has certainly rushed us into the whole thing. I mean, we simply thought we would put up some money so that Schnak could do a job on the Hoffmann manuscripts, in so far as they exist. But Powell suggested that the opera might be presented, and was so full of enthusiasm and Welsh rhetoric that he infected Arthur, and you remember how Arthur went overboard about the whole idea. So here we are, up to our necks in something we don’t understand.”
“I suppose Powell understands it.”
“Yes, but the mixture of Arthur’s idealism and Powell’s opportunism doesn’t please me at all. The person who is going to come out on top of the heap, if the thing isn’t a horrible failure, is Geraint Powell. I suppose Schnak might benefit, though how I can’t pretend to see; but Powell, as the force behind the whole affair, is bound to get a lot of attention, which is what he wants.”
“Why are you willing that Schnak should benefit, and so hostile to Powell?”
“He’s using Arthur, and consequently he’s using me. He’s a climber. He’s been a pretty successful actor, but he understands the limitations of that, so he wants to be a director. Because he’s really very good at music, he wants to be a director of opera, and on the highest level. There’s nothing wrong with any of that. He talks as if Arthur rushed everybody into this affair, but it’s the other way around. He’s the whirlwind. I feel he really looks on Arthur and me simply as a ladder toward his own success.”
“Maria, you’d better get things straight in your head about what a patron is. I know a lot about patronage because I’ve seen it in the university. Either you exploit, or you are exploited. Either you demand the biggest slice of the pie for yourself, and get a gallery, or a theatre, or whatever it may be, named after you, and insist that people put up your portrait in the foyer, and toady to you, and listen to whatever you have to say with bated breath, or else you are simply the moneybags. And when you’re dealing with artists of any kind you are dealing with the people who have the most gall and the most outrageous self-esteem in the world. So you’ve got to be tough, and insist on being first in everything, or you’ve got to do it for the love of the art. Don’t complain about being used. Got to be magnanimous, in fact. Magnanimity, I needn’t remind you, is as rare as it is splendid.”
“I’m perfectly willing to be magnanimous, but I’m jealous for Arthur—Simon, I hate, and detest, and loathe and abhor the alternative title of this God-damned opera: The Magnanimous Cuckold. I feel that Arthur is being screwed.”
“Cuckolds aren’t screwed; they are deceived.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“Arthur is most at fault, if that’s what’s happening to him.”
“Simon, I wouldn’t say this to anybody in the world but you. You understand what I mean when I say that Arthur has a truly noble nature. But noble isn’t a word that’s used any more. Elitist, I suppose. But there’s no other word for Arthur. He’s generous and open in a way that is marvellous. But it also exposes him to terrible abuse.”
“He’s very fond of Powell. He asked him to be best man at your wedding, as I needn’t remind you.”
“Yes, and I’d never heard of Powell till he turned up then, all elegance and eloquence—full of piss and vinegar like a barber’s cat, to use the old expression.”
“You’re getting heated, and your heat makes me thirsty. I will have that drink, after all.”
“Do. I want your best advice, Simon. I’m worried, and I don’t know why I’m worried.”
“Yes you do. You think Arthur is too fond of Powell. Isn’t that it?”
“Not in the way you mean.”
“Tell me what I mean.”
“I think you mean some homosexual thing. Not a bit of that in Arthur.”
“Maria, for a very brilliant woman you are surprisingly naive. If you think homosexuality means no more than rough stuff in Turkish baths, and what Hamlet calls a pair of reechy kisses and paddling in necks with damned fingers in some seedy motel bedroom, you are right off your trolley. As you say, and as I believe, Arthur has a noble nature, and that isn’t his style at all. Nor, to be just, do I think it’s Powell’s. But an obsessive admiration for a man who has qualities he envies, and for whom he is ready to give great gifts and take great risks, without grudging—that’s homosexuality too, when the wind is right. Nobility isn’t cautious, you know. Arthur is really Arthurian: he seeks something extraordinary—a Quest, a great adventure—and Powell seems to offer it and is, therefore, irresistible.”
“Powell is a self-seeking bastard.”
“And just possibly a great man—or a great artist, which is by no means the same thing. Like Richard Wagner, another self-seeking bastard. Remember how he exploited and horn-swoggled poor King Ludwig?”
“Ludwig was a crazy weakling.”
“And his craziness has endowed us all with some magnificent opera. Not to speak of that totally insane fairy-tale castle of Neuschwanstein, which cost the people of Bavaria what was literally a king’s ransom, and has recovered them the money a dozen times over, simply as a tourist sight.”
“You’re appealing to a piece of dead history, and a messy scandal, which has nothing to do with what we’re talking about.”
“History is never dead, because it keeps on repeating itself, though never in quite the same words or on quite the same scale. Remember what we said the other night at that Arthurian dinner, about the wax and the stamp? The wax of human experience is always the same. It is we who put our own stamp on it. These shared obsessions between patron and artist are as old as the hills, and I don’t think you are going to be able to change that. Have you talked to Arthur?”
“You don’t know Arthur. When I bring it up he just tells me to be patient, and that omelettes aren’t made without breaking eggs, and all that sort of calm, uncomprehending thing.”
“Have you told him he’s in love with Powell?”
“Simon! What do you think I am?”
“I think you’re a jealous woman, among other things.”
“Jealous of Powell? I hate Powell!”
“Oh, Maria, haven’t you learned anything in your university years?”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that hatred is notoriously near to love, and both are obsessions. Passions when they are pushed too far sometimes flop over into their opposites.”
“What I feel about Arthur isn’t going to flop over into its opposite.”
“Bravely said. And what is it you feel about Arthur?”
“Doesn’t it show? Devotion.”
“An expensive devotion. As devotion always is, of course.”
“A devotion that has enlarged my life more than I can say.”
“A devotion that seems to have cost you what meant most to you in the world before you married.”
“So?”
“Yes, so. How much work have you done on your edition of that unpublished Rabelais manuscript that was found in Francis Cornish’s papers? I remember your raptures when it was turned up—thanks to that monster Parlabane—and how Hollier said it would make your reputation as a scholar. Well—that’s something like eighteen months ago. How’s it getting on? Arthur gave it to you as a wedding present, as I recall. Now there’s something significant: bridegroom gives bride a gift that will demand the best of her energies and understanding. Something that might mean more to her than her marriage. That would almost certainly mean reputation and scholarly fame of a special kind. A dangerous gift, certainly, but Arthur risked it. So what have you been doing?”