Temporary Kings - Anthony Powell [18]
‘Talking of harems’, she said, ‘the owner of the Palazzo we’re invited to visit tomorrow bears the famous name of Bragadin, and claims to be descended from Casanova’s patron, though not, of course, in the legitimate line.’
Gwinnett showed no great interest in that. I asked which of the several Bragadin palaces this was. I had not studied the extra-mural programme carefully, preferring these excursions to come as a series of bracing surprises.
‘One never open to the public. Our Conference is greatly favoured. There’s a Tiepolo ceiling there on which I’ve longed to gaze for years. In fact the hint that Conference members might gain access was the chief weapon of Mark’ Members in overcoming any hesitation in agreeing to attend.’
‘It’s the Jacky Bragadin one reads about in gossip columns?’
Dr Brightman nodded.
‘The Palazzo wasn’t inherited. All sorts of people have lived there at one time or another. Jacky Bragadin – though I’ve no right to speak of him in this familiar manner – bought it just after the war.’
Gwinnett, who had been looking about him without paying much apparent attention to what Dr Brightman was saying, joined in at that.
‘Jacky Bragadin’s mother’s was one of the big American fortunes of the last century. She was a Macwatters of Philadelphia. That’s where the funds for the Bragadin Foundation come from.’
‘Which have been of good use to most of us in our time,’ said Dr Brightman. ‘My knowledge of the benefactor, like that of Mr Jenkins, derives chiefly from gossip columns. His well publicized personality remains, all the same, for me an elusive one, beyond an evident taste for entertaining persons as rich as himself. Remarkable that he should have found time enough from that hobby to have given birth to a Foundation.’
‘He’s not married, I think?’
‘Do you imply the Bragadin Foundation is illegitimate too? A case of parthenogenesis, I expect. In any case, I am more concerned with his Tiepolo.’
Tiepolo ranking with Poussin as one of my most admired Masters, I asked the subject of the ceiling, the very existence of which was unknown to me. The bare fact that members of the Conference could visit the Palazzo had been announced, knowledge of its contents no doubt taken for granted in an assembly of intellectuals.
‘One of the painter’s classical scenes – Candaules and Gyges. The subject, thought to have some contemporary reference, caused trouble at the time the ceiling was painted. That’s why the tradition of playing the picture down, keeping it almost a secret, has persisted to the present day. The owner is in any case said to be more than a little neurasthenic in approach to his possessions, and much else too.’
Gwinnett knew about the ceiling.
‘I’ve been told it’s not unlike the Villa Valmarana Iphigenia in composition,’ he said. ‘The owner won’t allow it to be photographed.’
He turned to me.
‘Speaking about the Iphigenia again made me think of what we were talking about at that luncheon.’
He picked up from the table the paper he had brought with him, opened it, folding back a page. It was Détective, Içi Paris, or another of those French periodicals that explore at greater length cases, usually already reported, which through expansion promise more pungent details of crime or scandal. Gwinnett singled out two sheets, the central spread. He was about to hand them over, but Dr Brightman, catching the name under a photograph, intercepted the paper.
‘Good gracious,’ she said. ‘That ugly little man? I should never have thought it.’
I looked over her shoulder. The headline ran along the top of both pages.
L’APRES-MIDI D’UN MONSTRE?
Two large cut-out photographs stretched across the typeface, the story, whatever it was, fitting round their edges. In spite of Dr Brightman’s lack of principle in appropriating the letterpress to herself, and although I was not close enough to read the sub-titles, the likenesses of the two persons portrayed were immediately recognizable. Both photographs had manifestly been taken some years before, ten at least. In fact that of Ferrand-Sénéschal made him look a man in early middle-age. He had been caught on some public occasion, mouth wide open, hands raised above his head in a passionate gesture, almost as if he, too, were singing Funicul