Temporary Kings by Anthony Powell

had gone home. Glober, it seemed, had been more attractive to her, far more
attractive, than outwardly revealed by her demeanour at dinner. In admitting
that, she went so far as to declare that she had greatly approved of him at
sight, as soon as she entered the room where we were to dine. Glober must have
felt the same. The natural ease of his manner concealed such feelings, like
Mopsy’s exterior reserve. Later that night mutual approval took physical
expression.
    ‘Glober
did me on the table.’
    ‘Among
the coffee cups?’
    ‘We
broke a couple of liqueur glasses.’
    ‘You
obviously found him attractive.’
    ‘I
believe I’d have run away with him that night, if he’d asked me. I was all
right a day or two later, quite recovered. The affair stopped dead there. In
any case he was sailing the next day. Some men are like that. Isn’t it funny?
One rather odd thing about Glober, he insisted on taking a cutting from my bush
– said he always did that after having anyone for the first time. He produced a
pair of nail-scissors from a small red leather case. He told me he carried them
round with him in case the need arose.’
    ‘We
all of us have our whims.’
    Mopsy
laughed. So far as Glober was concerned, I do not put her conquest unduly high,
though no doubt she was quite a beauty in her way. To exaggerate Glober’s
achievement would be mistaken, lacking in a sense
of proportion, even though Mopsy was capable of
refusal, having turned Barnby down. Barnby made a good story about
his failure to please on that occasion, which was
one way of dealing with the
matter. Such sudden adventures as this one of Glober’s can be misleading,
unless considered in their context, time and place (as Moreland always
insisted) both playing so vital a
part. Nevertheless, this vignette, taken at an early stage of his career,
suggests Glober’s vivacity, liberality, wide interests, capacity for attack;
Mopsy’s footnote adding a small
touch of the unusual, the exotic. These were
no doubt the qualities that had carried him
advantageously through the years of the Depression;
New York to Hollywood, and
back again; lots of other places too; until here he was at Jacky Bragadin’s
Venetian palace. I enquired about Glober’s background. Gwinnett gave a rather
satirical laugh.
    ‘Why
do the British always ask that?’
    ‘One
of our foibles.’
    ‘That’s
not what Americans do.’
    ‘But
we’re not Americans. You must humour our straying from the norm in that
respect.’
    Gwinnett
laughed again.
    ‘Glober’s
people were first generation Jewish emigrants. They were Russian. They took a
German name to assimilate quicker, or so I’ve heard. Glober was from the Bronx.’
    ‘What
we’d call the East End?’
    ‘His
father made a sizeable pile in building. Glober himself didn’t begin on the
breadline.’
    ‘You
mean there was plenty of money before he started his publishing and film
career?’
    ‘He
made plenty more. Lost plenty too. Money is no problem to Glober.’
    Gwinnett
spoke with conviction. The comment that Glober was a man to whom money-making
was no problem recalled Peter Templer having once spoken the same about Bob
Duport. Duport, of course, had always been on a
smaller scale financially than Glober, also without any claims to newspaper
fame. I felt that side of Glober, the newspaper fame, was not without a certain
fascination for Gwinnett, even if he hesitated to approve of Glober as an
individual. An idea suddenly struck me.
    ‘Does
he write?’
    ‘Does
Glober write?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Sure
– did he refuse to sign his name to a contract you showed him in London on the
grounds he couldn’t write? I’ll bet it wasn’t true, and he can.’
    Gwinnett
was unbending a little.
    ‘I
meant books. It’s always a temptation (or a publisher to have a go at writing a
book. After all, they think, if authors can do that, anybody can.’
    ‘Glober’s