Books Do Furnish a Room (26 page)

‘I’m not satisfied with X’s
book.’

That was the first aesthetic
judgment I had ever heard her make. When she had earlier changed the subject
from Trapnel’s writing, I thought she found, as some women do, concentration on
a husband’s or lover’s work in some manner vexing. That she should return to
his writing of her own volition was unexpected. It looked as if this were
another manner of keeping Trapnel on his toes, because he reacted strongly to
the comment.

‘I’m going to alter the bits
you don’t like. You know, Nick, Pam’s got a marvellous instinct for a sequence
that has gone a shade wrong technically. I can’t put it all right in five
minutes, darling. These things take time and hard work. It’ll all be done in
due course, when I’ve thrown off this bloody thing that’s playing such hell
with work.’

‘This is
Profiles in String
?’

‘I can’t get the
feel
of the end chapters. Most of the bad criticism you read is lack of
understanding of what it feels like to get the wheels working internally when
you’re writing a novel. Not one reviewer in a thousand grasps that.’

Pamela showed no interest in
subtleties of literary feeling.

‘I’d rather you burnt it than
published it as it stands. In fact you’re not going to.’

Trapnel sighed. It was unlike
him to accept criticism so humbly. On the face of it, there seemed no more reason
to suppose Pamela knew how a novel should be written – from Trapnel’s point of
view – than did the reviewers. In general, if
he allowed himself to seek another opinion about how to deal with some matter
in what he was writing – a short story, for example – he was accustomed to argue hard all the way in favour of
whatever treatment he himself had in mind. Pamela showed contempt for the abject manner in which her objections had
been received. Once more she switched the subject to her own situation.

‘What are people saying about
us?’

‘No one knows quite what has
happened.’

‘How do you mean?’

She pouted. At that moment the
bell rang. Trapnel groaned.

‘God, it’s the man trying to
collect the money for the newspapers. He’s come back.’

Pamela made a face.

‘Take no notice. He’ll go away
after a while.’

‘He’ll see the light. It was
daytime when he came before, and he thought we weren’t in.’

Pamela turned to me.

‘You answer the door. Tell him
we’re away – that we’ve lent you the flat.’

I showed unwillingness to undertake
this commission. Trapnel was apologetic.

‘We’re being dunned. It always
happens if you allow people to know your address. It’s like hotels insisting on
cleaning the room out from time to time. There’s always some inconvenience,
wherever you live. I couldn’t help giving the address this time, otherwise we
wouldn’t have had any papers delivered.’

‘Perhaps it’s for the other
people in the house.’

‘They’ve gone away – decamped,
I think. Do deal with it.’

‘But what can I say to the man,
if he is the newspaper man?’

‘Tell him — ’

The bell rang again. Pamela
showed signs of getting cross.

‘Look, X can’t get up in his
present state. Do go. If you had ten bob – twelve at the most – that would keep
him quiet.’

There seemed no way of avoiding
the assignment. I took ten shillings from my notecase, in so far as possible to
cut short discussion, and went into the hall. To see the way, it was necessary
to leave the flat door ajar. Even so, the place was inconveniently dark, and
the front door required a certain amount of negotiating to open. It gave at
last. The figure waiting on the the doorstep was not the newspaperman, but
Widmerpool. He did not seem in the least surprised that I should be the person
to admit him.

‘I expect you’re here on
business about the magazine, Nicholas?’

‘Delivering a book to be
reviewed, as a matter of fact.’

‘I’m rather glad to find you on
the premises. Don’t go away from a mistaken sense of delicacy. Matters of a
rather personal nature are likely to be discussed. I am quite glad to have a
witness, especially one conversant with the circumstances, connected, I mean,
by ties of business, albeit literary business. Where is Trapnel? This way, I
take it?’

The light shining through the
sitting-room door showed Widmerpool where to go. He took off his hat, crossed
the boards of the hall, and over the threshold of the flat. It had at least
been unnecessary to announce him. In fact he announced himself.

‘Good evening. I have come to
talk about some things.’

Pamela, hands stuck in the
pockets of her trousers, was still standing, with her peculiar stillness of
poise, in front of
the gas fire. If Widmerpool had shown lack of surprise at my opening the door
to him, he had at least expressed what
seemed to him an adequate explanation as to why I should be with Trapnel. I
arranged reviewing at
Fission
; Trapnel reviewed books. That was
sufficient reason for my presence. The
fact that Trapnel had run away with Widmerpool’s
wife had nothing to do with the business relationship between Trapnel and
myself. To disregard it was almost something to approve. That view was no doubt more especially acceptable
in the light of propaganda put about by Widmerpool himself.

Pamela, on the other hand, except insomuch as
having left her husband, he might, in one
sense, be expected to come and
look for her, in another, could scarcely have been prepared for his arrival. So far from
showing any wonder, she made no sign whatever of being even aware that an additional person had entered
the room. She did not permit herself so
much as a glance in Widmerpool’s direction. Her expression, one of slight,
though not severe displeasure, did not alter in the smallest degree. She seemed to be concentrating on a tear in the wallpaper opposite that ran in a
great jagged parabola through a pattern of red parrots and blue storks, freak birds of the same size.

Widmerpool did not speak
immediately after his first announcement. He went rather red. He put his hat on
top of Trapnel’s manuscript, where it lay on the table. Trapnel himself was
now sitting bolt upright on the divan. This must, in a way, have been the
moment he had been awaiting all his
life: a truly dramatic occasion. That he was determined to rise to it was shown
at once by the tone of his voice when he spoke.

‘Would you oblige me by removing
your hat from off my book?’

Widmerpool, whatever else he
had taken in his stride, was astonished by this request. No doubt it
presupposed an altogether unforeseen, alien area of sensibility. Picking up the
hat again, he replaced it on one of the suitcases.

Trapnel maintained a tone of
dramatically cold politeness. His voice trembled a little when he spoke again.

‘I’m sorry. I must have sounded
rude. I did not mean to be that. I have a special thing about my manuscripts – that
is, I hate them being treated like any old pile of waste paper. Please take
your coat off and sit down.’

‘Thank you, I prefer to stand.
I shall not be staying long, so that it is not worth my taking off my coat.’

Widmerpool gazed round the
room. It was clearly worse, far worse, than he had ever dreamed; if he had
thought at all about what he was likely to run to earth. His face showed that,
considered in the light of housing insufficiencies inspected in his own
constituency, the flat was horrific. Trapnel, possibly remembering the talk
they had exchanged on such deplorable conditions, noticed this survey. He
almost grinned. Then his manner changed.

‘How did you find the house?’

This time Trapnel spoke with
the hollow faraway voice of a horror film. He was determined to remain master of
the situation. Widmerpool was quite equal to the manoeuvring.

‘I came by taxi.’

‘I mean how did you discover
where I was living?’

‘There are such aids as private
detectives.’

Widmerpool said that with
disdain. Trapnel laughed. The laughter too was of the kind associated with a
horror film.

‘I always wanted to meet
someone who employed a private detective.’

Widmerpool did not answer at
once. He appeared to be jockeying for position, taking up action stations
before the contest really broke into flame. He cleared his throat.

‘I have come here to clarify
the situation. By arrival in person, some people might judge that I have put
myself in a false position. Such is not my own opinion. A person of your kind,
Trapnel, has neither the opportunity to observe, nor
capacity to understand, the demands laid on a man
who takes up the burden of public life. It is therefore necessary that certain facts should be plainly stated. The best person to state them is myself.’

Trapnel listened to this with
the air of an accomplished actor. His
‘hollow’ laughter was now followed by a ‘grim’ smile. It
was still a performance. Widmerpool had not got him, so
to speak, out in the open yet.

‘First,’ said Widmerpool, ‘you
borrow money from me.’

Trapnel’s defiance had not been
geared to that particular form of attack at that moment. He dropped his acting
and looked very angry, quite unsimulated rage.

‘Then you lampoon me in a
magazine of which I am one of the chief supporters.’

Trapnel began to smile again at
that. If the first accusation put him in a weak position, the second to some
extent restored equilibrium.

‘Finally, my wife comes to live
with you.’

Widmerpool paused. He too was
being melodramatic now. Trapnel had ceased to smile. He was very white. He had lost command of his role as actor. Pamela watched them, still showing no change of expression. Widmerpool must have been to some extent aware
that by making Trapnel angry, dislodging him from playing a part, he was moving towards ascendancy.

‘You can keep my pound. Do not
bother, when you are next paid for some paltry piece of journalism, to make
another attempt to return it – which was, so I understand, your subterfuge for
insinuating yourself into my house. The pound does not matter. Forget about it.
I make you a present of it.’

Trapnel did not speak.

‘Secondly, I want to express
quite clearly my own indifference to your efforts to ridicule my economic
theories. Some people might have thought that an act of ungratefulness on your
part. Your own ignorance of the elementary principles of economics makes it not
even that. Your so-called parody is a failure. Not funny. Several people have
told me so. And at the same time I recognize it as a deliberate insult. That is
a matter between the board and Bagshaw — ’

Trapnel burst out.

‘You’re trying to get Books
sacked —’

‘Don’t interrupt me,’ said
Widmerpcol. ‘Bagshaw has a contract.’

He made a half turn about in
order, more unmistakably, to include Pamela in whatever he was now about to
announce. She went so far as to raise her eyebrows slightly. Widmerpool still
primarily addressed himself to Trapnel.

‘You may fear that I am going
to institute divorce proceedings. Such is not my intention. Pamela will return
in her own good time. I think we understand each other.’

Widmerpool paused.

‘That is what I came to tell
you,’ he said. ‘That – and to express my contempt for the way you live and the
way you have behaved.’

Trapnel threw back the army
blankets. He rose quite slowly from the divan. His body, seen through the
spotted pyjamas, was desperately thin. He retied their cord; then, in his bare
feet, walked very deliberately to where the huge wardrobe stood in the corner
of the room. Against it was propped the death’s-head sword-stick. Trapnel
picked up the stick, and pressed the spring at the back of the skull. The blade
was released. He threw the sheath on top of
Oblomov,
The Thin Man, Adolphe
, and the several other books
lying on the bedclothes.

‘Get out.’

Trapnel did not actually
threaten Widmerpool with the sword. He held the point to the ground, as if
about to raise the weapon in formal salute before joining combat in a duel. It
was hard to estimate where exactly his actions hovered between play-acting and loss of control. Widmerpool stood firm.

‘No dramatics, please.’

This calmness was to his credit.
He knew little of Trapnel, but
what he knew certainly gave no guarantee that a man of Trapnel’s sort would not
be capable of eccentric violence. If it came to that, I felt no absolute
assurance on that matter myself. Whatever his merits as a writer, Trapnel could not
be regarded as a well-balanced personality. Anything might be looked for from
him. Besides, there were his ‘pills’. One had the impression that, as such
stimulants go, they were fairly mild. At the same time, he could easily have
moved on to stronger stuff. Pamela might have encouraged that course; living
with her almost necessitated it. Even the pills in their accustomed form might
be sufficient to induce indiscreet conduct, especially when the question posed
was evicting from a lover’s flat the husband of his mistress.

‘Are you going?’

‘I have no wish to stay.’

Widmerpool picked up his hat
from the suitcase. He brushed the felt with his elbow. Then he turned once more
towards Pamela.

‘I shall be abroad for some
weeks in Eastern Europe. As a Member of Parliament I have been invited to enjoy
the hospitality of one of the new Governments.’

‘I said get out.’

Trapnel raised the sword
slightly. Widmerpool took no notice. He continued raspingly to brush the
surface of the hat. This time he addressed himself to me.

‘The visit should make an
interesting
Fission
article. Some apologists for
the Liberal and Peasant leaders have suggested that concessions to the Soviet
point of view have been too all-embracing. What I always tell people, who are
not themselves in the know, is that our own brand of social-democracy, for
better or worse, is not always exportable.’