Books Do Furnish a Room (25 page)

‘Odo isn’t very interested in
politics, is he?’

‘Not in a way, but he’s very
obstinate.’

I left them still in a flutter
about the parody. There was not much Widmerpool could do. It would increase his
opposition to Bagshaw, but Bagshaw probably had a contract of some sort. At the
end of that, if the magazine survived, Widmerpool was likely to try and get him
sacked anyway. It was a typical Bagshaw situation. Meanwhile, he showed no sign
of returning to the office. The message came that his flu was no better. Some
evenings later there was a telephone call at home. A female voice asked for me.

‘Speaking.’

‘It’s Pamela Widmerpool.’

‘Oh, yes?’

She must have known I was
answering, but for some reason of her own preferred to go through the process
of making absolutely sure.

‘X is not well.’

‘ I’m very sorry —’

‘I want you to come and see
him. He needs some books and things.’

‘But — ’

‘It’s really the only way – for
you to come yourself.’

She spoke the last sentence
irritably, as if the question of my bringing Trapnel aid in person had already
arisen in the past, and, rather contemptibly, I had raised objections to making
myself available. Now, it seemed, I was looking for a similar excuse again. She
offered no explanation or apology for thus emerging as representative of the
Trapnel, rather than Widmerpool, ménage. In taking on the former position there
was not the smallest trace of self-consciousness.

‘This man Bagshaw has flu
still. I can’t get any sense out of the half-witted girl left in charge at the
Fission
office. That’s why you must come.’

‘I was only going to say that I
don’t know where you – where X is living.’

‘Of course you don’t. No one
does. I’m about to tell you. Do you know the Canal at Maida Vale?’

‘Yes.’

‘We’re a bit north of there.’

She gave the name of a street
and number of the house. I wrote them down.

‘The ground-floor flat. Don’t
be put off by the look of the place outside. It’s inhabited all right, though
you might not think so. When can you come? Tonight?’

She added further instructions
about getting there.

‘What’s wrong with X?’

‘He’s just feeling like hell.’

‘Has he seen a doctor?’

‘He won’t.’

‘Wouldn’t it be wiser to make
him?’

‘He’ll be all right in a day or
two. He’s got quite a store of his pills. He just wants to talk to somebody. We
don’t see anybody as a rule. You just happen to know both of us. That’s why you
must come. Have you got a book to bring? Something for him to review?’

I had taken some review copies
from the
Fission
shelves to look through at home. L. O. Salvidge’s collection of essays,
Paper Wine
, might do for Trapnel. I told Pamela I would
produce something. She rang off without comment.

‘Don’t get robbed and murdered,’
said Isobel.

To visit Trapnel in one of his
lairs was a rare experience at the best of times. Once we had both been allowed
to have a drink with him at a flat in Notting Hill, within range of the
Portobello Road, where he liked to wander among the second-hand stalls. He was
then living with a girl called Sally. The invitation had been quite
exceptional, possibly intended to establish some sort of an alibi for reasons
never revealed. The present expedition was more adventurous. The Paddington
area, and north of it, supplied one of the traditional Trapnel areas of
bivouac. It was surprising that he and Pamela were to be found no farther
afield. Their total disappearance suggested withdrawal from such ground to less
established streets. It was of course true to say that, even when not
specifically retired to the outer suburbs, one rarely knew for certain where
Trapnel was living. The absence of news about him from pub sources indicated
experiment with hitherto unfrequented taverns. Such investigation would not be
unwelcome; by no means out of character. A fresh round of saloon bars would
hold out promise of new disciples, new eccentrics, new bores, new
near-criminals. Pamela herself might well have objected to a really radical
retreat from the approaches to central London. The part she played was hard to
imagine.

At this period the environs of
the Canal had not yet developed into something of a
quartier chic
, as later incarnated. Before the war, the
indigenous population, time-honoured landladies, inveterate lodgers, immemorial
whores, long undisturbed in surrounding premises, had already begun to give
place to young married couples, but buildings already tumbledown had now been
further reduced by bombing. The neighbourhood looked anything but flourishing.
Leaving Edgware Road, I walked along the north bank of the Canal. On either
side of the water gaps among the houses marked where direct hits had reduced
Regency villas to rubble. The street Pamela had described was beyond this
stucco colony. It was not at all easy to find. When traced, the exterior bore
out the description of looking uninhabited.

The architecture here had
little pretension to elegance. Several steps led up to the front door. No name was quoted above the bell of the ground floor flat. I rang, and waited. The
door was opened by Pamela. She was in slacks. I
said good-evening. She did not smile.

‘Come in.’

Lighted only by a ray from the
flat doorway left open, the hall, so far as could be seen in the gloom,
accorded with the derelict exterior of the house; peeling wallpaper, bare
boards, a smell of damp, cigarette smoke, stale food. The atmosphere recalled
Maclintick’s place in Pimlico, when Moreland and I had visited him not long
before his suicide. By contrast, the fairly large room into which I followed Pamela
conveyed, chiefly on account of the appalling mess of things that filled it, an
impression of rough comfort, almost of plenty. There were only a few sticks of
furniture, a table, two kitchen chairs, a vast and hideous wardrobe, but
several pieces of luggage lay about – including two newish suitcases evidently
belonging to Pamela – clothes, books, cups, glasses, empty Algerian wine
bottles. The pictures consisted of a couple of large photographs of Pamela
herself, taken by well-known photographers, and, over the mantelpiece, the
Modigliani drawing. Trapnel lay on a divan under some brown army blankets.

‘Look here, it’s awfully good
of you to come, Nick.’

One wondered, at this austere
period for acquiring any sort of clothing to be regarded as of unusual design,
where he had bought the dirty white pyjamas patterned with large red spots. The
circumstances were in general a shade more sordid than pictured. Trapnel had
been reading a detective story, which he now threw on the floor. A lot of other
books lay about over the bedclothes, among them
Oblomov, The Thin Man, Adolphe
, in a French edition, all
copies worn to shreds. Trapnel looked pale, rather dazed, otherwise no worse
than usual. Before I could speak, Pamela made a request.

‘Have you a shilling? The fire’s
going out.’

She took the coin and slipped
it into the slot, reviving the dying flame, just going blue. As the gas flared
up again, its hiss for some inexplicable reason suggested an explanation of why
Pamela had married Widmerpool. She had done it, so to speak, in order to run
away with Trapnel. I do not mean she had thought that out in precise terms – a
vivid imagination would be required to predict the advent of Trapnel into
Widmerpool’s life – but the violent antithesis presented by their contrasted
forms of existence, two unique specimens as it were brought into collision,
promised anarchic extremities of feeling of the kind at which she aimed; in
which she was principally at home. She liked – to borrow
a phrase from St. John Clarke – to ‘try conclusions with the maelstrom’. One of
the consequences of her presence was to displace Trapnel’s tendency to play a part
during the first few minutes of any meeting. That could well have been knocked
out of him by ill health, as much as by Pamela. He spoke now as if he were
merely a little embarrassed.

‘There were one or two things I
wanted to talk about. You know I don’t much like having to explain things on
the telephone, though I often have to do that. Anyway, it’s cut off here, the
instrument was removed bodily yesterday, and I’m not supposed to go outside for
the moment, owing to this malaise I’ve got. You and I haven’t seen each other
for some time, Nick. Such a lot’s happened. As I’m a bit off colour I thought
you wouldn’t mind coming to our flat. It seemed easier. Pam was sure you’d
come.’

He gave her one of those ‘adoring
looks’, which Lermontov says mean so little to women. Pamela stared back at him
with an expression of complete detachment. I thought of King Cophetua and the
Beggar Maid, though Pamela was far from a pre-raphaelite type or a maid, and,
socially speaking, the boot was, if anything, on the other foot. No
doubt it was Trapnel’s beard. He had also allowed his hair to grow longer than
usual. All the same, he sitting up
on the divan, she standing above him, they somehow called up the picture.

‘I brought some essays by L. O.
Salvidge.’

‘
Paper Wine
?’

Trapnel, by some mysterious
agency, always knew about all books before they were published. It was as if
the information came to him instinctively. He laughed. The thought of reviewing
Salvidge’s essays must have made him feel better. One had the impression that
he had been locked up with Pamela for weeks, like the Spanish honeymoon couples
Borrit used to describe, when we were in the War Office together. To get back
to the world of reviewing seemed to offer a magical cure for whatever Trapnel
suffered. It really cheered him up.

‘Just what I need – have we got
anything to drink, darling?’

‘A bottle of Algerian’s open.
Some dregs left, I think.’

‘I don’t want anything at the
moment, thanks very much.’

Trapnel lay back on the divan.

‘To begin with, that bloody
parody of mine.’

‘I mistook it at first for the
real thing.’

That amused Trapnel. Pamela
continued to stand by without comment or change of expression.

‘I’m glad you did that. What’s
happened about it? Any reactions?’

‘None I’ve heard about. There
was some trepidation at the
Fission
office that trouble might arise from the obvious quarter. Books is away with
flu.’

‘What a bloody fool he is. I
wrote the thing quite a long time ago at his suggestion. He said he’d have to
talk to the others about it. I hadn’t contemplated present circumstances then.’

‘Nor did anyone else.’

‘What about Books?’

‘The evidence is that he didn’t
know.’

‘Will Widmerpool believe that?’

‘What can he do?’ asked Pamela.
‘He ought to be flattered.’

Even when she made this comment
the tone suggested she was no more on Trapnel’s side than Widmerpool’s. She was
assessing the situation objectively.

‘That’s what Books told Evadne
Clapham,’ said Trapnel. ‘On that occasion I hadn’t also run away with her
husband. I suppose everything combined means I won’t be able to write for
Fission
any longer. That’s a blow, because it was one of my main sources of income, and
I liked the magazine.’

‘JG didn’t seem unduly worried.
He’s got the
Sweetskin
prosecution
on hand, and there’s some trouble about Odo Stevens’s book.’

‘I don’t want my publishing
connexions messed up too. Quiggin & Craggs have their failings, but they
aren’t doing too badly with
Bin Ends
. I’m
not under contract for the next novel. I’m getting near the end now. I don’t
want to have to hawk it round.’

At one moment Trapnel would
give the impression that he was under contract with Quiggin & Craggs, and
wanted to get rid of them; at the next, that he was not under contract, and
wanted to stay. That was like him. He pointed to a respectably thick pile of
foolscap covered with cuneiform handwriting. Although able to type, to use a
typewriter was against Trapnel’s principles. The books had to be written by his
own hand. This talk about the novel seemed to displease Pamela. She began to
frown.

‘How’s my husband?’ she asked.

‘I’ve not seen him lately – not
since the night you left.’

‘You saw him then?’

‘I’d been dining with another
MP. We came back to the Victoria Street flat to discuss some things.’

‘Which MP?’

‘Roddy Cutts – my
brother-in-law.’

‘That tall sandy-haired Tory?’

‘Yes.’

‘Were you there when Short
delivered the message?’

‘Yes.’

‘How was it taken?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well or badly?’

‘There was no scene.’

A slight flush had come over
her face when she asked these questions. There could be no doubt she derived
some sort of sensual satisfaction from dwelling on what had happened. Trapnel,
acute enough to recognize, and resent, this process of exciting herself by such
means, looked uneasy. The manner in which she managed to maintain a wholly
unchanged demeanour in these very changed surroundings was notable; yet after
all why should she become different just because she had decided to spend a
season with Trapnel? With him, with Odo Stevens, with Allied officers, for that
matter with Widmerpool, she remained the same, as individuals mostly do within
a more intimate orbit; at home; with a lover; under unaccustomed stress. To
suppose otherwise is naïve. At the same time, some require action, others are
paralysed by action. That dissimilarity recognized, people stay themselves.
Pamela did not give an inch. She was not rattled. She did the rattling.

The same could not be said of
Widmerpool. He was obstinate, not easily deflected from his purpose, but
circumstances might rattle him badly. He was not, like Pamela, consistent in
never adapting his behaviour to others. Her constant search for new lovers made
the world see her as existing solely in the field of sex, but the Furies that
had driven her into the arms of Widmerpool by their torments – no doubt his too
– at the same time invested her with the magnetic power that mesmerized
Trapnel, operated in a manner to transcend love or sex, as both are commonly
regarded. Did she and Widmerpool in some manner supplement each other, she
supplying a condition he lacked – one that Burton would have called Melancholy?
Now she showed her powers at work.