Books Do Furnish a Room

3

In the course of preliminary conclaves with Bagshaw on the subject of Fission’s first number, mention was again made of an additional personage, a woman, who was backing the magazine. Bagshaw, adept at setting forth the niceties of political views, if these happened to attach to the doctrinaire Left, was less good at delineating individuals, putting over no more than that she was a widow who had always wanted some hand in running a paper. As it turned out, excuse existed for this lack of precision in grasping her name, in due course revealed in quite unforeseen circumstances. Bagshaw thought she would cause little or no trouble editorially. That was less true of Widmerpool, who certainly harboured doubts as to Bagshaw’s competence as editor. Quiggin and Craggs were another matter. They were old acquaintances who differed on all sorts of points, but they were familiar with Bagshaw’s habits. Widmerpool had no experience of these. He might take exception to some of them. Bagshaw himself was much too devious to express all this in plain terms, nor would it have been discreet to do so openly. His disquiet showed itself in repeated attempts to pinpoint Widmerpool himself politically.

‘From time to time I detect signs of fellow-travelling. Then I think I’m on the wrong tack entirely, he’s positively Right Wing Labour. Again, you find him stringing along with the far, but anti-Communist, Left. You can’t help admiring the way he conceals his hand. My guess is he’s playing ball with the Comrades on the quiet for whatever he can get out of it, but trying to avoid the appearance of doing so. He doesn’t want to prejudice his chances of a good job in the Government when the moment comes.’

‘Was that the game Hamlet was playing when he said:

The undiscovered country from whose bourn

No fellow-traveller returns, puzzles the will?’

‘There was something fishy about Hamlet’s politics, I agree,’ said Bagshaw. ‘But the only fellow-travellers we can be certain about were Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.’

Meanwhile I worked away at Burton, and various other jobs. The three months spent in the country after demobilization had endorsed the severance with old army associates, the foreign military attachés with whom I had been employed ‘in liaison’. One returned to a different world. Once in a way the commemorative gesture might be made by one or other of them of inviting a former colleague, now relegated to civilian life; once in a way an unrevised list of names might bring one incongruously to the surface again. On the whole, attendance at such gatherings became very infrequent.

When we were asked to drinks by Colonel and Madame Flores, the invitation derived from neither of these two sources. It was sent simply because the hostess wanted to take another look at a former lover who dated back to days long before she had become the wife of a Latin American army officer; or — the latter far more probable, when one came to think of it — was curious, as ladies who have had an inclination for a man so often are, regarding the appearance and demeanour of his wife; with whom, as it happened, the necessity had never arisen to emphasize that particular conjunction of the past.

The Flores’s drawing-room presented a contrast with the generally austere appearance almost prescriptive to apartments given over to official entertaining; not least on account of the profusion of flowers set about, appropriate to the host’s surname, but at that period formidably expensive. This rare display, together with the abundance and variety of drinks on offer — as Mona had remarked, still hard to obtain — suggested that Colonel Flores was fairly rich himself, or his Government determined to make a splash. It struck me all at once, confronted with this luxuriance, that, although never behaving as if that were so, money was after all what Jean really liked. In fact Duport, even apart from his other failings, had not really been rich enough. It looked as if that problem were now resolved, Jean married to a rich man.

Almost every country which had not been at war with us was represented among the guests round about, ‘Allies’ and ‘Neutrals’ alike. The ‘Iron Curtain’ states (a new phrase), from time to time irascible about hospitality offered or accepted, had on this occasion turned up in force. Looking round the room, one noted an increase in darker skins. Aiguillettes were more abundant, their gold lace thicker. Here was gathered together again an order of men with whom I should always feel an odd sense of fellowship, though now, among this crowd of uniformed figures, chattering, laughing, downing their drinks, not one of their forerunners remained with whom I had formerly transacted military business. Only two or three of those present were even familiar by sight.

Jean, rather superb in what was called ‘The New Look’ (another recent phrase), was dressed in a manner to which hardly any woman in this country, unless she possessed unusually powerful tentacles, could at that time aspire. She greeted us at the door. That she had become so fashionable had to be attributed, one supposed, to her husband. In the old days much of her charm — so it had seemed — had been to look like a well-turned-out schoolgirl, rather than an enchantress on the cover of a fashion magazine. The slight, inexpressibly slight, foreign intonation she had now acquired, or affected, went well with the splendours of haute couture.

‘How very kind of you both to come.’

Colonel Flores had his CBE ribbon up, a decoration complimenting his country rather than rewarding any very tangible achievement of his own since taking up his appointment in London; indeed presented to him on arrival like a gift at a children’s party to animate a cosy atmosphere. There was no doubt — as his predecessor and less triumphant husband, Bob Duport, had remarked — Flores did possess a distinct look of Rudolph Valentino. I thought how that comparison dated Duport and myself. Handsome, spruce, genial, the Colonel’s English was almost more fluent than his wife’s, at least in the sense that his language had that faintly old-world tinge that one associated with someone like Alfred Tolland — though naturally far more coherent in delivery — or multilingual royalties of Prince Theodoric’s stamp.

‘My dear fellow — don’t mind if I call you Nick, just as Jean does when she speaks of you — how marvellous it must be to have left the army behind. I am always meaning to send in my papers, as you call it, get to hell out of it. Then I give the old show another chance — but you must have a drink. Pink gin? My tipple too. Contigo me entierren. But the army? How should I occupy myself if there was no one to order me about? That’s what I ask. Jean always tells me also that I should be getting into trouble if I had too little to do. Our wives, our wives, what slaves they make of us. She thinks I should turn to politics. Well, I might one day, but how much I envy you to be free. My time will come at last. I shall then at least be able to look after my horses properly … Ah, my dear General … but of course … pernod, bourbon — I must tell you I have even got a bottle of tequila hidden away … Hasta mañana, su Excelencia… a bientôt, cher Colonel …

I wondered whether Jean trompé’d him with the gauchos, or whatever was of the most tempting to ladies in that country. Probably she did; her husband, having plenty of interests of his own, quite indifferent. The fact was Flores showed signs of being a great man. That had to be admitted. They were quite right to give him a CBE as soon as he arrived. His manner of handling his party suggested he well deserved it.

I circulated among the ‘Allies’, polite majors, affable colonels, the occasional urbane general, all the people who had once made up so much of daily life. Now, for some reason, there seemed little or nothing to talk about. It was no use broaching to these officers the subject of the newly founded publishing house of Quiggin & Craggs, the magazine Fission that was to embody the latest literary approach. At the same time the most superficial military topics once mutually exchanged seemed to have altered utterly overnight, everything revised, reorganized, reassembled; while — an awkward point — to approach, as a civilian, even the exterior trimmings of the military machine, when making conversation with the professional who controlled some part of it, was to risk, if not a snub, conveying an impression of curiosity either impertinent, or stemming from personal connexion with the Secret Service. While I wrestled with this problem, Jean reappeared.

‘Your wife has so kindly asked us to dine with you. It’s very hospitable, because I know how absolutely impossible it is to give dinner parties these days, not only rationing, but all sorts of other things. They are difficult enough even if you have official supplies and staff to draw on like ourselves. Carlos and I would so much have loved to come, but there has been a surprise. We have just received news from our Defence Ministry that we must go home.’

‘Already?’

‘We have to leave London almost at once. There has been a change of Government and a big reorganization.’

‘Promotion, I hope?’

‘Carlos has been given a military area in the Northern Province. It is quite unexpected and might lead to big things. There are, well, political implications. It is not just the same as being in the army here. So we have to make immediate arrangements to pack up, you see.’

She smiled.

‘I should offer congratulations as well as regrets?’

‘Of course Carlos is delighted, though he pretends not to be. He is quite ambitious. He makes very good speeches. We are both pleased really. It shows the new Government is being sensible. To tell the truth we were sent here partly to get Carlos out of the country. Now all that is changed — but the move must be done in such a hurry.’

‘How foolish of them not to have wanted such a nice man about the place.’

She laughed at that.

‘I was hoping to take Polly round a little in London. However, she is going to stay in England for a time in any case. She has ambitions to go on the stage.’

‘I haven’t seen her at your party?’

‘She’s with her father at the moment — I think you’ve met my first husband, Bob Duport?’

‘Several times — during the war among others. He’d been ill in the Middle East, and we ran across each other in Brussels.’

‘Gyppy tummy and other things left poor Bob rather a wreck. He ought to marry somebody who’d look after him properly, keep him in order too, which I never managed to do. He’s rather a weak man in some ways.’

‘Yes, poor Bob. No good being weak.’

She laughed again at this endorsement of her own estimate of Duport’s character, but at the same time without giving anything away, or to the smallest degree abandoning the determined formality of her manner. That particular laugh, the way she had of showing she entirely grasped the point of what one had said, once carried with it powerful intoxications; now — a relief to ascertain even after so long — not a split second of emotional tremor.

‘What’s he doing now?’

‘Bob? Oil. Something new for him — produced by an old friend of his called Jimmy Brent. You may have met him with my brother Peter. How I miss Peter, although we never saw much of each other.’

‘I came across Jimmy Brent in the war too.’

‘Jimmy’s a little bit awful really. He’s got very fat, and is to marry a widow with two grown-up sons. Still, he’s fixed up Bob, which is the great thing.’

To make some comment that showed I knew she had slept with Brent — by his own account, been in love with him — was tempting, but restraint prevailed. Nevertheless, recollecting that sudden hug watching a film, her whisper, ‘You make me feel so randy,’ I saw no reason why she should go scot free, escape entirely unteased.

‘How well you speak English, Madame Flores.’

‘People are always asking if I was brought up in this country.’

She laughed again in that formerly intoxicating manner. A small dark woman, wearing an enormous spray of diamonds set in the shape of rose petals trembling on a stalk, came through the crowd.

‘Rosie, how lovely to see you again. Do you know each other? Of course you do. I see Carlos is making signs that I must attend to the Moroccan colonel.’

Jean left us together. Rosie Manasch took a handful of stuffed olives from a plate, and offered one.

‘I saw you once at a meeting about Polish military hospitals. You were much occupied at the other end of the room, and I had to move on to the Titian halfway through. Besides, I didn’t know whether you’d remember me.’

The Red Cross, Allied charities, wartime activities of that sort, explained why she was at this party. It was unlikely that she had known Jean before the war, when Rosie had been married to her first husband, Jock Udall, heir apparent to the newspaper proprietor of that name, arch-enemy of Sir Magnus Donners. Rosie Manasch’s parents, inveterate givers of musical parties and buyers of modern pictures, had been patrons of both Moreland and Barnby in the past. Mark Members had made a bid to involve them in literature too, but without much success, enjoying a certain amount of their hospitality, but never bringing off anything spectacular in the way of plunder. It had been rumoured in those days that Barnby had attempted to start up some sort of a love affair with Rosie. If so, the chances were that nothing came of it. Possessing that agreeable gift of making men feel pleased with themselves by the way she talked, she was in general held to own a less sensual temperament than her appearance suggested. Quite how she accomplished this investiture of male self-satisfaction was hard to analyse, perhaps simply because, unlike some women, she preferred men that way.

Udall was shot by the SS, on recapture, after a mass escape from a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany. The marriage — in the estimation of those always prepared to appraise explicitly other people’s intimate relationships — was judged to have been only moderately happy. There were no children. There was also, even the most inquisitorial conceded, no gossip about infidelities on either side, although Udall was always reported to be ‘difficult’. Quite soon after her husband’s death, Rosie married a Pole called Andreszlwsiski, a second-lieutenant, though not at all young. I never came across him at the Titian during my period of liaison duty, but his appointment there, Polish GHQ in London, sounded fairly inconsiderable even within terms of the rank. Andreszlwsiski, as it turned out, was suffering from an incurable disease. He died only a few months after the wedding. Rosie resumed her maiden name.

‘I’ve just been talking to your wife. We’d never met before, though I knew her sister Susan Tolland before she married. I hear you didn’t guess that I was the mysterious lady in the background of Fission.’

‘Was this arranged by Widmerpool?’

‘The Frog Footman? Yes, indirectly. He used to do business when he was at Donners-Brebner with my cousin James Klein. Talking of Donners-Brebner, did you go to the Donners picture sale? I can’t think why Lady Donners did not keep more of them herself. There must be quite a lot of money left in spite of death duties — though one never knows how a man like Sir Magnus Donners may have left everything.’

‘If I’d been Matilda, I’d have kept the Toulouse-Lautrec.’

‘Of course you must have known Matilda Donners when she was married to Hugh Moreland. Matilda and I don’t much like each other, though we pretend to. Do you realize that a relation of mine — Isadore Manasch — was painted by Lautrec? Isn’t that smart? A café scene, in the gallery at Albi. Isadore’s slumped on a chair in the background. The Lautrec picture’s the only thing that keeps his slim volume of Symbolist verse from complete oblivion. Isadore’s branch of the family are still embarrassed if you talk about him. He was very disreputable.’

To emphasize the awful depths of Isadore’s habits, Rosie stood on tiptoe, clasping together plump little hands that seemed subtly moulded out of pink icing sugar, then tightly caught in by invisible bands at the wrist. At forty or so, she herself was not unthinkable in terms of Lautrec’s brush, more alluring certainly than the ladies awaiting custom on the banquettes of the Rue de Moulins, though with something of their resignation. A hint of the seraglio, and its secrets, that attached to her suggested oriental costume in one of the masked ball scenes.

‘Do you ever see Hugh Moreland now? Matilda told me he’s still living with that strange woman called Maclintick. They’ve never married. Matilda says Mrs Maclintick makes him work hard.’

‘I don’t even know his address.’

That was one of the many disruptions caused by the war. Rosie returned to Fission.

‘What do you think of the Frog Footman’s beautiful wife? Did you hear what she said to that horrid girl Peggy Klein — who’s a sort of connexion, as she was once married to Charles Stringham? James had adored Peggy for years when he married her — I’ll tell you some other time. There’s the Frog Footman himself making towards us.’

Widmerpool gave Rosie a slight bow, his manner suggesting the connexion with Fission put her in a category of business colleagues to be treated circumspectly.

‘I’ve been having an interesting talk with the military attaché of one of the new Governments in Eastern Europe,’ he said. ‘He’s just arrived in London. As a matter of fact I myself have rather a special relationship with his country, as a member — indeed a founder member — of no less than two societies to cement British relations with the new regime. You remember that ineffective princeling Theodoric, I daresay.’

‘I thought him rather attractive years ago,’ said Rosie. ‘It was at Sir Magnus Donners’ castle of all places. Was the military attaché equally nice?’

‘A sturdy little fellow. Not much to say for himself, but made a good impression. I told him of my close connexions with his country. These representatives of single-party government are inclined to form a very natural distrust for the West. I flatter myself I got through to him successfully. I expect you’ve been talking about Fission. I hear you have been having sessions with our editor Bagshaw, Nicholas?’

‘He’s going to produce for me a writer called X. Trapnel, of whom he has great hopes.’

‘Camel Ride to the Tomb?’ said Rosie. ‘I thought it so good.’

‘I shall have to read it,’ said Widmerpool. ‘I shall indeed. I must be leaving now to attend to the affairs of the nation.’

Somebody came up at that moment to claim Rosie’s attention, so I never heard the story of what Pamela had said to Peggy Klein.

The promised meeting with X. Trapnel came about the following week. Like almost all persons whose life is largely spun out in saloon bars, Bagshaw acknowledged strong ritualistic responses to given pubs. Each drinking house possessed its special, almost magical endowment to give meaning to whatever was said or done within its individual premises. Indeed Bagshaw himself was so wholeheartedly committed to the mystique of The Pub that no night of his life was complete without a final pint of beer in one of them. Accordingly, withdrawal of Bagshaw’s company — whether or not that were to be regarded as auspicious — could always be relied upon, wherever he might be, however convivial the gathering, ten minutes before closing time. If — an unlikely contingency — the ‘local’ were not already known to him, Bagshaw, when invited to dinner, always took the trouble to ascertain its exact situation for the enaction of this last rite. He must have carried in his head the names and addresses of at least two hundred London pubs — heaven knows how many provincial ones — each measured off in delicate gradations in relation to the others, strictly assessed for every movement in Bagshaw’s tactical game. The licensed premises he chose for the production of Trapnel were in Great Portland Street, dingy, obscure, altogether lacking in outer ‘character’, possibly a haunt familiar for years for stealthy BBC negotiations, after Bagshaw himself had, in principle, abandoned the broadcasting world.

‘I’m sure you’ll like Trapnel,’ he said. ‘I feel none of the reservations about presenting him sometimes experienced during the war. I don’t mean brother officers in the RAF — who could be extraordinarily obtuse in recognizing the good points of a man who happens to be a bit out of the general run — but Trapnel managed to get on the wrong side of several supposedly intelligent people.’

‘Where does he fit into your political panorama?’

Bagshaw laughed.

‘That’s a good question. He has no place there. Doesn’t know what politics are about. I’d define him as a Leftish Social-Democrat, if I had to. Born a Roman Catholic, but doesn’t practise — a lapsed Catholic, rather as I’m a lapsed Marxist. As a matter of fact I came across him in the first instance through a small ILP group in India, but Trapnel didn’t know whether it was arse-holes or Tuesday, so far as all that was concerned. As I say, he’s rather odd-man-out.’

Even without Bagshaw’s note of caution, I had come prepared for Trapnel to turn out a bore. Pleasure in a book carries little or no guarantee where the author is concerned, and Camel Ride to the Tomb, whatever its qualities as a novel, had all the marks of having been written by a man who found difficulty in getting on with the rest of the world. That might well be in his favour; on the other hand, it might equally be a source of anyway local and temporary discomfort, even while one hoped for the best.

‘Trapnel’s incredibly keen to write well,’ said Bagshaw. ‘In fact determined. Won’t compromise an inch. I admire that, so far as it goes, but writers of that sort can add to an editor’s work. Our public may have to be educated up to some of the stuff we’re going to offer — I’m thinking of the political articles Kenneth Widmerpool is planning — so Trapnel’s good, light, lively pieces, if we can get them out of him, arc likely to assist the other end of the mag.’

Trapnel’s arrival at that point did not immediately set at rest Bagshaw’s rather ominous typification of him. Indeed, Bagshaw himself seemed to lose his nerve slightly when Trapnel entered the bar, though only for a second, and quickly recovered.

‘Ah, Trappy, here you are. Take a seat. What’s it to be? How are things?’

He introduced us. Trapnel, in a voice both deep and harsh, requested half a pint of bitter, somehow an unexpectedly temperate choice in the light of his appearance and gruffness of manner. He looked about thirty, tall, dark, with a beard. Beards, rarer in those days than they became later, at that period hinted of submarine duty, rather than the arts, social protest or a subsequent fashion simply for much more hair. At the same time, even if the beard, assessed with the clothes and stick he carried, marked him out as an exhibitionist in a reasonably high category, the singularity was more on account of elements within himself than from outward appearance.

Although the spring weather was still decidedly chilly, he was dressed in a pale ochre-coloured tropical suit, almost transparent in texture, on top of which he wore an overcoat, black and belted like Quiggin’s Partisan number, but of cloth, for some reason familiarly official in cut. This heavy garment, rather too short for Trapnel’s height of well over six feet, was at the same time too full, in view of his spare, almost emaciated body. Its weight emphasized the flimsiness of the tussore trousers below. The greatcoat turned out, much later, to have belonged to Bagshaw during his RAF service, disposed of on terms unspecified, possibly donated, to Trapnel, who had caused it to be dyed black. The pride Trapnel obviously took in the coat was certainly not untainted by an implied, though unjustified, aspiration to ex-officer status.

The walking stick struck a completely different note. Its wood unremarkable, but the knob, ivory, more likely bone, crudely carved in the shape of a skull, was rather like old Skerrett’s head at Erridge’s funeral. This stick clearly bulked large in Trapnel equipment. It set the tone far more than the RAF greatcoat or tropical suit. For the rest, he was hatless, wore a dark blue sports shirt frayed at the collar, an emerald green tie patterned with naked women, was shod in grey suede brothel-creepers. These last, then relatively new, were destined to survive a long time, indeed until their rubber soles, worn to the thinness of paper, had become all but detached from fibre-less uppers, sounding a kind of dismal applause as they flapped rhythmically against the weary pavement trodden beneath.

The general effect, chiefly caused by the stick, was of the Eighteen-Nineties, the décadence; putting things at their least eclectic, a contemptuous rejection of currently popular male modes in grey flannel demob suits with pork-pie hats, bowler-crowned British Warms, hooded duffels, or even those varied outfits like Quiggin’s, to be seen here and there, that suggested recent service in the maquis. All such were rejected. One could not help speculating whether an eyeglass would not be produced — Trapnel was reported to have sported one for a brief period, until broken in a pub brawl — insomuch that the figure he recalled, familiar from some advertisement advocating a brand of chocolates or cigarettes, similarly equipped with beard and cane, wore an eye-glass on a broad ribbon, though additionally rigged out in full evening dress, an order round his neck, opera cloak over his shoulder. In Trapnel’s case, the final effect had that touch of surrealism which redeems from complete absurdity, though such redemption was a near thing, only narrowly achieved.

Perhaps this description, factually accurate — as so often when facts are accurately reported — is at the same time morally unfair. ‘Facts’ — as Trapnel himself, talking about writing, was later to point out — are after all only on the surface, inevitably selective, prejudiced by subjective presentation. What is below, hidden, much more likely to be important, is easily omitted. The effect Trapnel made might indeed be a little absurd; it was not for that reason unimpressive. In spite of much that was all but ludicrous, a kind of inner dignity still somehow clung to him.

Nevertheless, the impression made on myself was in principle an unfavourable one when he first entered the pub. A personal superstructure on human beings that seems exaggerated and disorganized threatens behaviour to match. That was the immediate response. Almost at once this turned out an incorrect as well as priggish judgment. There were no frills about Trapnel’s conversation. When he began to talk, beard, clothes, stick, all took shape as necessary parts of him, barely esoteric, as soon as you were brought into relatively close touch with the personality. That personality, it was at once to be grasped, was quite tough. The fact that his demeanour stopped just short of being aggressive was no doubt in the main a form of self-protection, because a look of uncertainty, almost of fear, intermittently showed in his eyes, which were dark brown to black. They gave the clue to Trapnel having been through a hard time at some stage of his life, even when one was still unaware how dangerously — anyway how uncomfortably — he was inclined to live. His way of talking, not at all affected or artificial, had a deliberate roughness, its rasp no doubt regulated for pub interchanges at all levels, to avoid any suggestion of intellectual or social pretension.

‘Smart cane, Trappy,’ said Bagshaw. ‘Who’s the type on the knob? Dr Goebbels? Yagoda? There’s a look of both of them.’

‘I’d like to think it’s Boris Karloff in a horror rôle,’ said Trapnel. ‘As you know, I’m a great Karloff fan. I found it yesterday in a shop off the Portobello Road, and took charge on the strength of the Quiggin & Craggs advance on the short stories. Not exactly cheap, but I had to possess it. My last stick, Shakespeare’s head, was pinched. It wasn’t in any case as good as this one — look.’

He twisted the knob, which turned out to be the pommel of a sword-stick, the blade released by a spring at the back of the skull. Bagshaw restrained him from drawing it further, seizing Trapnel’s arm in feigned terror.

‘Don’t fix bayonets, I beseech you, Trappy, or we’ll be asked to leave this joint. Keep your steel bright for the Social Revolution.’

Trapnel laughed. He clicked the sword back into the shaft of the stick.

‘You never know when you may have trouble,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have minded using it on my last publisher. Quiggin & Craggs are going to take over his stock of the Camel. They’ll do a reprint, if they can get the paper.’

I told him I had enjoyed the book. That was well received. The novel’s title referred to an incident in Trapnel’s childhood there described; one, so he insisted, that had prefigured to him what life — anyway his own life — was to be. In the narrative this episode had taken place in some warm foreign land, the name forgotten, but a good deal of sand, the faint impression of a pyramid, offering a strong presumption that the locale was Egyptian. The words that made such an impression on the young Trapnel — in many subsequent reminiscences always disposed to represent himself as an impressionable little boy — were intoned by an old man whose beard, turban, nightshirt, all the same shade of off-white, manifested the outer habiliments of a prophet; just as the stony ground from which he delivered his tidings to the Trapnel family party seemed the right sort of platform from which to prophesy.

‘Camel ride to the Tomb … Camel ride to the Tomb … Camel ride to the Tomb … Camel ride to the Tomb …’

Trapnel, according to himself, immediately recognized these words, monotonously repeated over and over again, as a revelation.

‘I grasped at once that’s what life was. How could the description be bettered? Juddering through the wilderness, on an uncomfortable conveyance you can’t properly control, along a rocky, unpremeditated, but indefeasible track, towards the destination crudely, yet truly, stated.’

If Trapnel were really so young as represented by himself at the time of the incident, the story was not entirely credible, though none the worse for that. None the worse, I mean, insomuch as the words had undoubtedly haunted his mind at some stage, even if a later one. The greybeard’s unremitting recommendation of his beast as means of local archaeological transport had probably become embedded in the memory as such phrases will, only later earmarked for advantageous literary use: post hoc, propter hoc, to invoke a tag hard worked by Sir Gavin Walpole-Wilson in post-retirement letters to The Times.

The earlier Trapnel myth, as propagated in the Camel, was located in an area roughly speaking between Beirut and Port Said, with occasional forays further afield from that axis. His family, for some professional reason, seemed to have roamed that part of the world nomadically. This fact — if it were a fact — to some extent attested the compatibility of a pleasure trip taken in Egypt, a holiday resort, in the light of other details given in the book, otherwise implying an unwarrantably prosperous interlude in a background of many apparent ups and downs, not to say disasters. Egypt cropped up more than once, perhaps — like the RAF officer’s greatcoat — adding a potentially restorative tone. The occupation of Trapnel’s father was never precisely defined; obscure, even faintly shady, commercial undertakings hinted. His social life appeared marginally official in style, if not of a very exalted order; possibly tenuous connexions with consular duties, not necessarily our own. One speculated about the Secret Service. Once — much later than this first meeting — a reference slipped out to relations in Smyrna. Trapnel’s physical appearance did not exclude the possibility of a grandmother, even a mother, indigenous to Asia Minor. He was, it appeared, an only child.

‘I always wondered what your initial stood for?’

Trapnel was pleased by the question.

‘I was christened Francis Xavier. Watching an old western starring Francis X. Bushman in a cowboy part, it struck me we’d both been called after the same saint, and, if he could suppress the second name, I could the first.’

‘You might do a novel about being a lapsed Catholic,’ said Bagshaw. ‘It’s worth considering. I know JG would like you to tackle something more engagé next time. When I think of the things I’d write about if I had your talent. I did write a novel once. Nobody would publish it. They said it was libellous.’

‘People like JG are always giving good advice about one’s books,’ said Trapnel. ‘In fact I hardly know anyone who doesn’t. “If only I could write like you, etc. etc.” They usually outline some utterly banal human situation, or moral issue, ventilated every other day on the Woman’s Page.’

‘Don’t breathe a word against the Woman’s Page, Trappy. Many a time I’ve proffered advice on it myself under a female pseudonym.’

‘Still, there’s a difference between a novel and a newspaper article. At least there ought to be. A novelist writes what he is. That’s equally true of mediaeval romances or journeys to the moon. If he put down on paper the considerations usually suggested, he wouldn’t be a novelist — or rather he’d be one of the fifty-thousand tenth-rate ones who crawl the literary scene.’

Trapnel had suddenly become quite excited. This business of being a ‘writer’ — that is, the status, moral and actual, of a writer — was a matter on which he was inordinately keen. This was one of the facets of Trapnel to emerge later. His outburst gave an early premonition.

‘Reviewers like political or moral problems,’ said Bagshaw. ‘Something they can get their teeth into. You can’t blame them. Being committed’s all the go now. I was myself until a few years ago, and still enjoy reading about it.’

Trapnel was not at all appeased. In fact he became more heated than ever, striking his stick on the floor.

‘How one envies the rich quality of a reviewer’s life. All the things to which those Fleet Street Jesuses feel superior. Their universal knowledge, exquisite taste, idyllic loves, happy married life, optimism, scholarship, knowledge of the true meaning of life, freedom from sexual temptation, simplicity of heart, sympathy with the masses, compassion for the unfortunate, generosity — particularly the last, in welcoming with open arms every phoney who appears on the horizon. It’s not surprising that in the eyes of most reviewers a mere writer’s experiences seem so often trivial, sordid, lacking in meaning.’

Trapnel was thoroughly worked up. It was an odd spectacle. Bagshaw spoke soothingly.

‘I know some of the critics are pretty awful, Trappy, but Nicholas wanted to talk to you about reviewing an occasional book yourself for Fission. If you agree to do so, you’ll at least have the opportunity of showing how it ought to be done.’

Trapnel saw that he had been caught on the wrong foot, and took this very well, laughing loudly. He may in any case have decided some apology was required for all this vehemence. All the earlier tension disappeared at once.

‘For Christ’s sake don’t let’s discuss reviews and reviewers. They’re the most boring subject on earth. I expect I’ll be writing just the same sort of crap myself after a week or two. It’s only they get me down sometimes. Look, I brought a short story with me. Could you let me know about it tomorrow, if I call you up, or send somebody along?’

Trapnel’s personality began to take clearer shape after another round of drinks. He was a talker of quite unusual persistence. Bagshaw, notoriously able to hold his own in that field, failed miserably when once or twice he attempted to shout Trapnel down. Even so, the absolutely unstemmable quality of the Trapnel monologue, the impossibility of persuading him, as night wore on, to stop talking and go home, was a menace still to be learnt. He gave a few rather cursory imitations of his favourite film stars, was delighted to hear I had only a few days before met a man who resembled Valentino. Trapnel’s mimicry was quite different from Dicky Umfraville’s — he belonged, of course, to a younger generation — but showed the same tendency towards stylization of delivery. It turned out in due course that Trapnel impersonations of Boris Karloff were to be taken as a signal that a late evening must be brought remorselessly to a close.

A favourite myth of Trapnel’s, worth recording at this early stage because it illustrated his basic view of himself, was how a down-at-heel appearance had at one time or another excited disdain in an outer office, restaurant or bar, this attitude changing to respect when he turned out to be a ‘writer’. It might well be thought that most people, if they considered a man unreasonably dirty or otherwise objectionable, would regard the culpability aggravated rather than absolved by the fact that he had published a book, but possibly some such incident had really taken place in Trapnel’s experience, simply because private fantasies so often seem to come into being at their owner’s behest. This particular notion — that respect should be accorded to a man of letters — again suggested foreign rather than home affiliations.

When I left the pub, where it looked as if Bagshaw contemplated spending the evening, Trapnel stood up rather formally and extended his hand. I asked if he had a telephone number. He at once brushed aside any question of the onus of getting in touch again being allowed to rest with myself, explaining why that should be so.

‘People can’t very well reach me. I’m always moving about. I hate staying in the same place for long. It has a damaging effect on work. I’ll ring you up or send a note. I rather enjoy the old-fashioned method of missive by hand of bearer.’

That sounded another piece of pure fantasy, but increased familiarity with Trapnel, and the way he conducted his life, modified this view. He really did send notes; the habit by no means one of his oddest. That became clear during the next few months, when we met quite often, while preparations went forward for the publication of the first number of Fission, which was due at the end of the summer or beginning of autumn. Usually we had a drink together in one of his favourite pubs — as with Bagshaw, these were elaborately graded — and once he dined with us at home, staying till three in the morning, talking about himself, his girls and his writing. That was the first occasion when the Boris Karloff imitation went on record as indication that the best of the evening was over, the curtain should fall.

A passionate interest in writing, or merely his taste for discussing it, set Trapnel aside from many if not most authors, on the whole unwilling to risk disclosure of trade secrets, or regarding such talk as desecration of sacred mysteries. Trapnel’s attitude was nearer that of a businessman or scientist, never tired of discussing his job from a professional angle. That inevitably included difficulties with editors and publishers. Many writers find such relationships delicate, even aggravating. Trapnel was particularly prone to discord in that field. He had, for example, managed to get himself caught up in a legal tangle with the publication of a conte, before the appearance of the Camel. This long short story, to be published on its own by some small press, had not yet seen light owing to a contractual row. The story was left, as it were, in baulk; unproductive, unproduced, unread. There had apparently been trouble enough for Quiggin & Craggs to take over the rights of the Camel.

‘The next thing’s the volume of short stories,’ said Trapnel. ‘Then the novel I’m already working on. That’s really where my hopes are based. It’s going to be bigger stuff than the Camel. The question is whether Quiggin & Craggs have the sales organization to handle it properly.’

The question was more substantially how well Quiggin & Craggs would handle Trapnel himself. That looked like a tricky problem. Their premises were in Bloomsbury according to Bagshaw, reduced in price on account of bomb damage. An architecturally undistinguished exterior bore out that possibility. The building, reconditioned sufficiently for business to be carried on there, though not on a lavish scale, had housed small publishers for years, changing hands as successive firms went bankrupt or were absorbed by larger ones. There was no waiting room. Once through the door, you were confronted with the bare statement of the sales counter; beyond it the packing department, a grim den looking out on to a narrow yard. On the far side of this yard a kind of outhouse enclosed Fission’s editorial staff, that is to say Bagshaw and his secretary. Ada Leintwardine would sometimes cross the yard to lend a hand when the secretary, constantly replaced in the course of time, became too harassed by Bagshaw’s frequent absences from the office to carry on unaided. Apart from that, an effort was made to keep the affairs of Fission separate so far as possible from the publishing side, although Craggs and Quiggin sat on both boards.

‘Ada’s the king-pin of the whole organization,’ said Bagshaw. ‘Maybe I should say queen bee. She provides an oasis of much needed good looks in the office, and a few contacts with writers not sunk in middle age.’

Ada had made herself at home in London. In fact she was soon on the way to becoming an established figure in the ‘literary world’, such as it was, battered and reduced, but taking some shape again, over and above the heterogeneous elements that had kept a few embers smouldering throughout the war. London suited Ada. She dealt with her directors, especially Quiggin, with all the skill formerly shown in managing Sillery. She had begun to refer to ‘Poor old Sillers.’ I had not seen Sillery himself again, as it happened, before the period of research at the University came to an end, calling once at his college, but being told he had gone to London for several days to attend the House of Lords.

When he was not present, Bagshaw was also designated by Ada ‘Poor old Books’. That did not prevent them from getting on pretty well with each other. Her emotional life had become a subject people argued about. Malcolm Crowding, the poet, not much older than herself, alleged that the novelist Evadne Clapham (niece of the publisher of that name, and by no means bigoted in a taste for her own sex) had boasted of a ‘success’ with Ada. On the other hand, Nathaniel Sheldon, always on the look out, though advancing in years, spoke of encouragement offered him by Ada, when he was waiting to see Craggs. No doubt she made herself reasonably agreeable to anyone — even Nathaniel Sheldon, as a reviewer — likely to be useful to the firm. The fact that no one could speak definitely of lovers demonstrated an ability to be discreet. Ada herself was reported to be writing a novel, as Sillery had alleged.

In the humdrum surroundings of everyday business life, when, for example, one met them on the doorstep of the office, both Quiggin and Craggs showed themselves more changed than they had in the hurried, unaccustomed circumstances of Erridge’s funeral. For instance, it was now clear Quiggin had settled down to be a publisher, intended to be a successful one, make money. He no longer spoke of himself producing a masterpiece. Unburnt Boats, his ‘documentary’, had been well received, whatever Sillery might say, when the book appeared not long before the war, but there Quiggin’s literary career was allowed to rest. He had lost interest in ‘writing’. Instead, he now identified himself, body and soul, with his own firm’s publications, increasingly convinced — like not a few publishers — that he had written them all himself.

Quiggin also considered that he had a right, even duty, to make such alterations in the books published by the firm as he saw fit; anyway in the case of authors prepared to be so oppressed. Certainly Trapnel would never have allowed anything of the sort. There were others who rebelled. These differences of opinion might have played a part in causing Quiggin — again like many publishers — to develop a detestation of authors as a tribe. On the contrary, nothing of the sort took place. As long as they were his own firm’s authors, Quiggin would allow no breath of criticism, either of themselves or their books, to be uttered in his presence, collectively or individually. His old rebellious irritability, which used formerly to break out so violently in literary or political argument, now took the form of rage — at best, extreme sourness — directed against anyone, professional critic or too blunt layman, who wrote an unfavourable notice, dropped an unfriendly remark, calculated to discourage Quiggin & Craggs sales.

Craggs’s attitude towards publishing was altogether different. Craggs had been practising the art in one form or another for a long time. That made a difference. He did not care in the smallest degree about rude remarks made on the subject of ‘his’ authors, or ‘his’ books. In some respects, so far as the former were concerned, the more people abused them, the better Craggs was pleased. Certainly he had no great affection for authors as men — for that matter, unless easily seducible, as women — but, unlike Quiggin, his policy in this respect was not subjective; at least not entirely so. It cloaked a certain commercial shrewdness. Craggs, off his guard one day with Bagshaw, expressed the view that there were more ways of advertising a book than dwelling on the intellectual and moral qualifications of its author.

‘What matters is getting authors talked about,’ Craggs said. ‘Let people know what they’re really like. It whets the appetite. Look at Alaric Kydd’s odd tastes, for instance. I drop an occasional hint.’

Craggs was being unusually communicative when he let that out, because in general nowadays he affected the manner of a man distinguished in his own sphere, but vague almost to the point of senility. Such had been his conversation at Thrubworth, though more defensive than real, to be dropped immediately if swift action were required. There was evidence that he was making good use of his wartime contacts in the civil service. Widmerpool, for his part, seemed to be pulling his weight too in a trade that was new to him.

‘He’s laid hands on some extra paper,’ said Bagshaw. ‘Found it hidden away and forgotten in some warehouse in his constituency.’

Walking through Bloomsbury one day on the way to the Fission office, I ran into Moreland. When I first caught sight of him coming towards me, he was laughing to himself. A shade more purple in the face than formerly, he looked otherwise much the same. We talked about what we had both been doing since we last met at the time of the outbreak of war. Moreland had always been fond of The Anatomy of Melancholy. I told him how I was now occupied with its author.

‘Gone for a Burton, in fact?’

‘Books-do-furnish-a-room Bagshaw’s already made that joke.’

‘How extraordinary you should mention Bagshaw. He got in touch with me recently about a magazine he’s editing.’

‘I’m on my way there now to sort out the review copies.’

‘He wanted an article on Existential Music. The last time I saw Bagshaw was coming home from a party soon after he returned from Spain. He was crawling very slowly on his hands and knees up the emergency exit stairs of a tube station — Russell Square, could it have been?’

‘He must have reached the top just in time for the war, because he was in the RAF, and now has a moustache.’

‘A fighter-pilot?’

‘PR in India.’

‘Jane Harrigan’s an’ Number Nine, The Reddick an’ Grant Road? I should think there was a good deal of that. I refused to contribute, although I suspect I’ve been an existentialist for years without knowing it. Like suffering from an undiagnosed disease. The fact is I now go my own way. I’ve turned my back on contemporary life — but what brings you to this forsaken garden? You can’t know anybody who lives in Bloomsbury these days. Personally, I’ve been getting a picture framed, and am now trying to outstrip the ghosts that haunt the place and tried to commune with me. Comme le souvenir est voisin du remords.’

‘Burton thought that too.’

‘I’ve been reading Ben Jonson lately. He’s a sympathetic writer, who reminds one that human life always remains the same. I remember Maclintick being very strong on that when mugging up Renaissance composers. Allowing for murder being then slightly easier, Maclintick believed a musician’s life remains all but unchanged. How bored one gets with the assumption that people now are organically different from people in the past — the Lost Generation, the New Poets, the Atomic Age, the last reflected in the name of your new magazine.

Fart upon Euclid, he is stale and antick.

Gi’e me the moderns.

It’s the Moderns on whom I’m much more inclined to break wind.’

‘If not too late, restrain yourself. As you’ve just pointed out, the Moderns no longer live round here.’

‘Forgive my sneering at Youth, but what a lost opportunity within living memory. Every house stuffed with Moderns from cellar to garret. High-pitched voices adumbrating absolute values, rational states of mind, intellectual integrity, civilized personal relationships, significant form … the Fitzroy Street Barbera is uncorked. Le Sacre du Printemps turned on, a hand slides up a leg … All are at one now, values and lovers. Talking of that sort of thing, you never see Lady Donners these days, I suppose?’

‘I read about her doings in the paper sometimes.’

‘Like myself. Ah, well. Bagshaw’s request made me wonder whether I would not give up music, and take to the pen as a profession. What about The Popular Song from Lilliburllero to Lili Marlene? Of course one might extricate oneself from the whole musical turmoil, cut free of it altogether. Turn to autobiography. A Hundred Disagreeable Sexual Experiences by the author of Seated One Day at an Organ — but I must be moving on. I’m keeping you from earning a living.’

I suggested another meeting, but he made excuses, murmuring something about a series of tiresome sessions with his doctor. Seen closer, he looked in less good health than suggested by the first impression.

‘I’ve sacked Brandreth. My latest physician takes not the slightest interest in music, thank God, nor for that matter in any of the arts. He also has quite different ideas from Brandreth when it comes to assessing what’s wrong with me. Life becomes more and more like an examination where you have to guess the questions as well as the answers. I’d long decided there were no answers. I’m beginning to suspect there aren’t really any questions either, none at least of any consequence, even the old perennial, whether or not to stay alive.’

‘Beyond Good and Evil, in fact?’

‘Exactly — one touch of Nietzsche makes the whole world kin.’

On that note (recalling Pennistone) we parted. Moreland went on his way. I continued towards Quiggin & Craggs, through sad streets and squares, classical façades of grimy brick, faded stucco mansions long since converted to flats. Bagshaw had a piece of news that pleased him.

‘Rosie Manasch is going to pay for a party to celebrate the First Number. That’s scheduled for the last week in September. None of us have had a party for a long time.’

In the end, owing to the usual impediments, Fission did not come to birth before the second week in October. The comparative headway made by then in establishment of the firm’s position was reflected in the fact that, when I arrived at the Quiggin & Craggs office, where the party mentioned by Bagshaw was taking place, a member of the Cabinet was making his way up the steps. As he disappeared through the door, a taxi drove up, and someone called my name. Trapnel got out. The fare must have been already in his hand, because he passed the money to the driver with a flourish, turned immediately, and waved his stick in greeting. He was wearing sun spectacles — in which for everyday life he was something of an optical pioneer — and looked rather flustered.

‘I thought I’d never get here. I’m temporarily living rather far out. Taxis are hard to find round there. I was lucky to pick up this one.’

The fact of his arriving by taxi at all did not at the time strike me as either remarkable or inevitable. I was still learning only slowly how near the knuckle Trapnel lived. The first few months of his acquaintance had been a period of comparative prosperity. They were not altogether representative. That did not prevent taxis playing a major role in his life. Trapnel used them when to the smallest degree in funds, always prepared to spend his last few shillings on this mode of transport, rather than descend to bus or tube. Later, when we were on sufficiently familiar terms to touch on so delicate a subject, he admitted that taxis also provided a security, denied to the man on foot, against bailiffs serving writs for debt. At the same time this undoubtedly represented as well an important factor in the practical expression of the doctrine of ‘panache’, which played a major part in Trapnel’s method of facing the world. I did not yet fully appreciate that. We mounted the steps together.

‘I don’t think I’ll risk leaving my stick down here,’ he said. ‘It might be pinched by some detective-story writer hoping to experiment with the perfect crime.’

No one was about by the trade counter. Guests already arrived had left coats and other belongings at the back, among the stacks of cardboard boxes and brown-paper parcels of the equally deserted packing department. A narrow staircase led to the floor above, where several small rooms communicated with each other. The doors were now all open, furniture pushed back against the wall, typewriters in rubber covers standing on steel cabinets, a table covered with stacks of the first number of Fission. Apart from these, and a bookcase containing ‘file’ copies of a few books already published by the firm, other evidences of the publishing trade had been hidden away.

In the furthest room stood another table on which glasses, but no bottles, were to be seen. Ada Leintwardine was pouring drink from a jug. She had just filled a glass for the member of the Government who preceded us up the stairs. This personage, probably unused to parties given by small publishers, tasted what he had been given and smiled grimly. Craggs and Quiggin, one on either side, simultaneously engaged him in conversation. Bagshaw, not absolutely sober, waved. His editorial, perfectly competent, had spoken of the post-war world and its anomalies, making at least one tolerable joke. Trapnel’s short story had the place of honour next to the editorial. We moved towards the drinks.

Bagshaw, like the Cabinet Minister, was taking on two at a time, in Bagshaw’s case Bernard Shernmaker and Nathaniel Sheldon. This immediately suggested an uncomfortable situation, as these two critics had played on different sides in a recent crop of letters about homosexuality in one of the weeklies. In any case they were likely to be antipathetic to each other as representing opposite ends of their calling. Sheldon, an all-purposes journalist with a professional background comparable with Bagshaw’s (Sheldon older and more successful) had probably never read a book for pleasure in his life. This did not at all handicap his laying down the law in a reasonably lively manner, and with brutal topicality, in the literary column of a daily paper. He would have been equally happy — possibly happier, if the epithet could be used of him at all — in almost any other journalistic activity. Chips Lovell, to whom Sheldon had promised a job before the war, then owing to some move in his own game withdrawn support, used often to talk about him.

Shernmaker represented literary criticism in a more eminent form. Indeed one of his goals was to establish finally that the Critic, not the Author, was paramount. He tended to offer guarded encouragement, tempered with veiled threats, to young writers; Trapnel, for example, when the Camel had first appeared. There was a piece by him in Fission contrasting Rilke with Mayakovsky, two long reviews dovetailed together into a fresh article. Shernmaker’s reviews, unlike Sheldon’s, would one day be collected together and published in a volume itself to be reviewed — though not by Sheldon. That was quite certain. Yet was it certain? Their present differences could become so polemical that Sheldon might think it worth while lampooning Shernmaker in his column. If Sheldon did decide to attack him, Shernmaker would have no way of getting his own back, however rude Sheldon might be. However, even offensive admission into Sheldon’s column was recognition that Shernmaker was worth abusing in the presence of a mass audience. That would to some extent spoil the pleasure for Sheldon, for Shernmaker allay the pain.

Publishers, especially Quiggin, endlessly argued the question whether Sheldon or Shernmaker ‘sold’ any of the hooks they discussed. The majority view was that no sales could take place in consequence of Sheldon’s notices, because none of his readers read books. Shernmaker’s readers, on the other hand, read books, but his scraps of praise were so niggardly to the writers he scrutinized that he was held by some to be an equally ineffective medium. It was almost inconceivable for a writer to bring off the double-event of being mentioned, far less praised, by both of them.

The dangerous juxtaposition of Sheldon and Shernmaker was worrying Quiggin. He continually glanced in their direction, and, when Gypsy joined his group with Craggs and the Cabinet Minister, he allowed husband and wife to guide the statesman to a corner for a more private conversation, while he himself moved across the room. He paused briefly with Trapnel and myself.

‘Where’s your wife?’

He spoke accusingly, as if he considered a covert effort had been made to undermine the importance of the Fission first number, also his own prestige as a director of the magazine.

‘Our child’s in bed with a cold. She sent many regrets at missing the party.’

Quiggin looked suspicious, but pursued the matter no further, as the Sheldon and Shernmaker situation had become more ominous. Bagshaw was reasonably well equipped to hold the balance between a couple like this, operating expertly on two fronts, provided the other parties did not too far overstep the bounds each felt the other allowed by convention, given the fact they were on bad terms. This rule appeared to have been observed so far, but Sheldon now began to embark on a detailed account of a recent visit to the Nuremberg trials, his report on which had already appeared in print. At this new development Shernmaker’s features had taken on the agonized, fractious contours of a baby about to let out a piercing cry. Quiggin stepped quickly forward.

‘Bernard, I’m going to take the liberty of sending you a proof copy of Alaric Kydd’s new novel Sweetskin. It will interest you.’

Shernmaker showed he had heard this statement by swivelling his head almost imperceptibly in Quiggin’s direction, at the same time signifying by an unaltered expression that nothing was less likely than that a work of Kydd’s would hold his attention for a second. However, he took the opportunity of moving out of the immediate range of Sheldon’s trumpeting narrative, giving Quiggin a look to denote rebuke for ever having allowed such an infliction to be visited on a sensitive critic’s nerves. Quiggin seemed to expect nothing more welcoming than this reception.

‘There may be trouble about certain passages in Kydd’s book — two especially. If it has to be toned down through fear of prosecution, I’d like you to have read what the author originally wrote.’

Shernmaker continued his stern silence. If he allowed his face to relax at all, it was only to register deeper suspicion of publishers and all their works. Quiggin was by no means to be put off by such severity. He smiled encouragingly. Although not by nature ingratiating, he could be industrious at the process if worth while.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve washed your hands of Kydd’s work, Bernard — like Pilate?’

Shernmaker did not return the smile. He thought for a time. Quiggin, unlike Pilate for his part, awaited an answer. Shernmaker brought his own out at last.

‘Pilate washed his hands — did he wash his feet?’

It was now Quiggin’s turn to withhold a smile. He was as practised a punch-line killer and saboteur of other people’s witticisms as Shernmaker himself. This disrespect for one of the firm’s new authors must also have annoyed him. A lot was expected from Kydd. Before further exchanges could take place, Quiggin’s old friend Mark Members arrived. With him was a young man whose khaki shirt, corduroy trousers, generally buccaneering aspect, suggested guerrilla warfare in the Quiggin manner, though far more effectively. This was appropriate enough in Odo Stevens, an unlikely figure to turn up at a publisher’s party, though apparently an already accepted acquaintance of Members. As Sillery had remarked, white locks suited Members. He allowed them to grow fairly long, which gave him the rather dramatic air of a nineteenth-century literary man who had loved and suffered, the mane of hair weighing down his slight, spare body. Stevens made a face expressing recognition, but, before we could speak, was at once buttonholed by Quiggin, with whom he also appeared on the best of terms. Members now introduced Stevens to Shernmaker.

‘I don’t know whether you’ve met Odo Stevens, Bernard? You probably read his piece the other day about life with the Army of Occupation. Odo and I have just been discussing the most suitable European centre for cultural congress — you know my organization is trying to get one on foot. Do you hold any views? Your own co-operation would, of course, be valuable.’

Shernmaker was still giving nothing away. Frowning, moving a little closer, he watched Members’s face as if trying to detect potential insincerities; allowing at the same time a rapid glance at the door to make sure no one of importance was arriving while his attention was thus occupied. Shernmaker’s party personality varied a good deal according to circumstance; this evening a man of iron, on guard against attempts to disturb his own profundities of thought by petty everyday concerns. His duty, this manner implied, was with a wider world than any offered by Quiggin & Craggs and their like; if a trifle sullen, he must be forgiven. He had already shown that, once committed to such inanities, the best defence was epigram. Members, who had known Shernmaker for years — almost as long as he had known Quiggin — evidently wanted to get something out of him, because he showed himself quite prepared to put up, anyway within reason, with the Shernmaker personality as then exercised.

‘You’ll agree, Bernard, that effective discussion of the Writer’s Position in Society is impractical in unsympathetic surroundings. Artists are vulnerable to circumstance, never more so than when compulsorily confined to their native shores.’

Still Shernmaker did not answer. Members became more blunt in exposition.

‘We’re none of us ever going to get out of England again, except as emissaries of culture. That’s painfully clear. We’re caught in a trap. Unless something is done, we’ll none of us ever see the Mediterranean again.’

Evadne Clapham, L. O. Salvidge and Malcolm Crowding, the last of whom had a poem in Fission, had joined the group. All agreed with this deduction. Evadne Clapham went further. She clasped her hands together, and quoted:

‘A Robin Redbreast in a Cage

Puts all Heaven in a Rage.’

The lines suddenly brought Shernmaker to life. He stared at Evadne Clapham as if outraged. She smiled invitingly back at him.

‘Rubbish.’

‘You think Blake rubbish, Mr Shernmaker?’

‘I disagree with him in this particular case.’

‘How so?’

‘A robin redbreast in a rage

Puts all heaven in a cage.’

Evadne Clapham now unclasped her hands, and brought them together several times in silent applause.

‘Very good, very good. You are quite right, Mr Shernmaker. I often notice what aggressive birds they are when I’m gardening. Your conclusion is, of course, that writers must not be held in check. Don’t you agree, Mark? We must make ourselves heard. Do tell me about the young man you came in with. Isn’t it true he’s had a very glamorous war career, and is terribly naughty?’

This question was answered by Quiggin introducing Odo Stevens all round as the man who was writing a war book to make all other war books seem thin stuff. It was to be about Partisans in the Balkans. Quiggin was a little put out to find that Stevens and I had already met, but we were again prevented from talking by an incident taking place that was in a small way dramatic. Pamela Widmerpool, followed by her husband, had come into the room. Quiggin turned to greet them. Stevens was obviously as surprised to see Pamela at this party as I had been myself to find him there. As they came past he spoke to her.

‘Why, hullo, Pam.’

She looked straight at, and through, him. It was not so much that she ignored what Stevens had said, as that she behaved as if he had never spoken, was not even there. She seemed to be looking at someone or something beyond him, unable to see Stevens himself at all. Stevens, by nature as sure of himself as a man could well be, was not in the least embarrassed, but certainly taken aback. When he grasped what had happened, he turned towards me and grinned. We were not near enough for comment.

‘There’s someone I’d like you to meet, dear heart,’ said Widmerpool. ‘We’ll talk business later, JG. There are two misprints in my own article, but on the whole Bagshaw must be agreed to have made a creditable job of the first number.’

Apart from her treatment of Stevens — or signalizing it by that — Pamela gave the impression of being on her best behaviour. She allowed herself to be piloted across to the Cabinet Minister. Cutting Stevens might be explained by the fact that, when last seen with him, she had slapped his face. It was quite possible that night, the first of the flying-bombs, had been also the last she had seen of him. To start again as total strangers was one way of handling such matters. The most recent news of her had been from Hugo Tolland. Pamela had appeared at his antique shop in the company of an unidentified man, who had paid cash for an Empire bidet, later delivered to the Widmerpool flat in Victoria Street; a highly decorative piece of furniture, according to Hugo. Inevitably her sickness at Thrubworth had developed into a legend of pregnancy, cut short artificially and not occasioned by her husband, but that was probably myth.

Widmerpool’s demeanour gave no impression of having emerged from a trying domestic experience, though it could be argued the truth had been kept from him. Not long before, a speech of his in a parliamentary debate on the reduction of interest rates had been the subject of satirical comment in a Daily Telegraph leader, but, at the stage of public life he had reached, no doubt any mention in print was better than none. Certainly he appeared well satisfied with himself, clapping Craggs on the back, and giving an amicable greeting to Gypsy, with whom he must have established some sort of satisfactory adjustment. The article he had written for Fission had been called Affirmative Action and Negative Values. Stevens came over to talk.

‘Did you notice Pam’s lack of recognition? Her all over. What the hell’s she doing here?’

He laughed heartily.

‘Her husband’s part of the Quiggin & Craggs set-up. Why did you hit on them for your book?’

‘My agent thought they’d be the right sort of firm, as I was operating with the Commies most of the time I was in the Balkans. The publishers have only seen a bit of it. It’s not finished yet. Will be soon. I’m spreading culture with Mark Members at the moment, but I hope to get out of an office — if the book sells, and it will.’

‘All about being “dropped”?’

‘A murder or two. Some rather spicy political revelations. One of the former incidents mucked up my affairs rather — lost me a DSO.’

‘What did you haul in finally?’

‘MC and bar, also one of the local gongs from the new regime. Don’t know yet whether I’ll be permitted to put it up. I shall anyway.’

‘When did you get out of the army?’

‘It was rather premature. I was never much of a hand at regimental life, even though I wasn’t sure at one moment I wouldn’t take up soldiering as a trade. So many temptations in Germany. The Colonel didn’t behave too badly, but in the end he said I’d have to go. I agreed, so far as it went. I scrounged round for a bit selling space and little articles, then got myself fixed up in this culture-toting outfit. At the moment I’m in liaison with Mark Members and his conference project. I hear you’re doing the books on this mag. What about some reviewing for Odo?’

‘Why not, Odo? Why should you be the only man in England who’s not going to review for Fission?’

‘Who’s the small dark lady talking to Sir Howard Craggs?’

‘Rosie Manasch. She too has an interest in the mag.’

‘Rather attractive. I think I’ll meet her.’

The war had washed ashore all sorts of wrack of sea, on all sorts of coasts. In due course, as the waves receded, much of this flotsam was to be refloated, a process to continue for several years, while the winds abated. Among the many individual bodies sprawled at intervals on the shingle, quite a lot resisted the receding tide. Some just carried on life where they were on the shore; others — the more determined — crawled inland. Stevens belonged to the latter category. He knew where his future lay.

‘Any books you can spare. Army matters, travel, jewellery — as you know, I’m interested in verse too. HQ, my cultural boys, always finds me.’

He strolled away. Widmerpool appeared.

‘I’ve been having a lot to do with your relations lately. It turned out your late brother-in-law was on bad terms with the family solicitor. I’ve managed to arrange that some of the work should be transferred to Turnbull, Welford & Puckering — my old firm, you remember I started the struggle for existence in Lincoln’s Inn — has the advantage of my being able to keep a weather eye on things from time to time. The Quiggin & Craggs interests will need a certain amount of attention. Hugo Tolland tells me he did not at all mind Mrs George Tolland giving birth to a son — one Jeremy, I understand — told me he was far from anxious to inherit responsibilities, myriad these days, of becoming head of the family. Titles are a survival one must deplore, but they can be a worry, as Howard Craggs was remarking last week. I see Hugo Tolland’s point. He is a sensible young man, in spite of what at first appears a foolish manner. I understand that, as mother of the little earl, Mrs George Tolland — who has two children of her own by an earlier marriage — is going to live in the wing of Thrubworth Park formerly occupied by the late Lord Warminster. Modest premises in themselves, and a good idea. Lady Blanche Tolland is to remain there as before. An excellent arrangement for one of her retiring nature. I talked to her, and greatly approved what she had to say for herself.’

Abandoning for a moment the intense pleasure people find in explaining in detail to someone the characteristics and doings of their own relations, he paused and glanced round the room. This could have been a routine survey to be taken wisely at regular intervals with the object of keeping check on his wife’s doings. She was at that particular moment revealed as listening to some sort of a harangue being given by a dark bespectacled personage in his thirties, whom I recognized as Werner Guggenbühl, now Vernon Gainsborough. There could be no doubt there was a look of Siegfried. Widmerpool marked them down.

‘I see Pam’s got caught up with Gainsborough. I don’t know whether you’ve come across him? He’s a German — a “good” German — a close friend of Lady Craggs, as a matter of fact. They go about a lot together. I’m giving away no secret. Craggs, very sensibly, takes an understanding view. He is a man of the world, though you might never guess that to look at him. Gainsborough is not a bad fellow. A little pedantic.’

‘He used to be a Trotskyist.’

‘No longer, I think. In any case I disapprove of witch-hunting. He stands, of course, considerably to the left of centre. I am not sure he is quite the sort of person Pam likes — she is easily bored — so perhaps it would be wise to come to her rescue.’

He gave the impression that Gainsborough’s relationship with Gypsy, however little Craggs might resent it, and however ‘good’ a German he might be, was not one to recommend sustained conversation with a wife like his own. Widmerpool was about to move off and break up the tête-à-tête. However, Trapnel came up at that moment. Rather to my surprise, he addressed himself to Widmerpool with a formal cordiality not at all like his usual manner. It looked as if he were playing one of his roles, a habit now becoming familiar.

‘It’s Mr Widmerpool, isn’t it? Do forgive my introducing myself. My name’s X. Trapnel. I’m a writer. JG was talking about you the other day. He said you were one of the few MPs who are trying to make the Government get a move on. I do hope you’ll do something about the laws defining certain kinds of writing as obscene, when it’s nothing of the sort. They really ought to be looked into. As a writer I can speak. You won’t have heard of me, but I’m published by Quiggin & Craggs. I’ve a short story in this opening number of Fission.’

‘Of course, of course.’

It was not possible to judge how far Widmerpool had taken in Trapnel’s identity. I was at a loss to understand the meaning of this move. Trapnel continued to speak his piece.

‘I don’t want to bother you, just to say this. It looks as if there might be a danger of their bringing a case against Alaric Kydd’s Sweetskin. I haven’t read it, of course, because it isn’t out yet — but we don’t want JG put inside just because some liverish judge happens to take a dislike to Kydd’s work.’

Widmerpool, if rather taken aback at being appealed to in this manner, was at the same time not unflattered to be regarded as the natural protector of publishers, now that he was in a sense a publisher himself. The manoeuvre was quite uncharacteristic of Trapnel. Like most writers in favour of abolishing current restrictions, such as they were, he was not so far as I knew specially interested in the question of ‘censorship’. Trapnel’s writing was not of the sort to be greatly affected by prohibitions of language or subject matter. He was competent to express whatever he wanted in an oblique manner. At the same time, he might well feel that, if obliquity in the context were less concordant than bluntness, it was absurd for bluntness to be forbidden by law. Language was a matter of taste. It looked as if the theme of censorship had been evoked on the spur of the moment as a medium convenient for making himself known to Widmerpool. Although Trapnel’s appearance was of a kind to which he was unused, Widmerpool showed himself equal to the challenge.

‘I’m happy you mention the matter. It is one that has always been at the back of my mind as of prime importance. As with so many questions of a similar sort, there are two sides. We must consider all the evidence carefully, especially that of those best fitted to judge in such matters. Amongst them I don’t doubt you are one, Mr Trapnel, an author yourself and man of experience, well versed in the subject. My own feeling is that we want to do away with the interference of old-fashioned busybodies to the furthest possible extent, while at the same time taking care not to offend the susceptibilities of simple people with a simple point of view, and their livings to earn, people who haven’t time to concern themselves too closely with what may easily have the appearance of contradictory arguments put forward by the pundits of the so-called intellectual world, men whom you and I perhaps respect less than they respect themselves. The prejudices of such people may seem unnecessarily complicated to the man in the street, who has been brought up with what could sometimes be justly regarded as a lot of out-of-date notions, but notions that are nevertheless dear to him, if only because they have been dear in the past to someone whose opinion he knew and revered — I mean of course to his mother.’

Widmerpool, who had dropped his voice at the last sentence, paused and smiled. The reply was one with which no politician could have found fault. Surprisingly enough, it seemed equally satisfactory to Trapnel. His acceptance of such an answer was as inexplicable as his reason for asking the question.

‘Admirably expressed, Mr Widmerpool. What I envy about an MP like yourself is not the power he wields, it’s his constituency. Going round and seeing how all sorts of different people live, what their homes are like, some friendly, some hostile. It must be a fascinating experience — what background stuff for a novelist.’

This was getting so near utter nonsense that I wondered whether Trapnel had managed to get drunk in a comparatively short time on the watery cocktail available, and, for reasons still obscure, wanted to pick a quarrel with Widmerpool; was, in fact, building up to deliver some public insult. Widmerpool himself totally accepted Trapnel’s words at their face value.

‘It is indeed a privilege to see ordinary folk in their own homes, though I never thought of the professional advantage you put forward. Well, housing conditions need a lot of attention, and I can tell you I am giving them of my best.’

‘You should come and try to pull the plug where I am living myself,’ said Trapnel. ‘I won’t enlarge.’

Widmerpool looked rather uneasy at that. Trapnel, seeing he risked prejudicing the good impression he intended to convey, laughed and shook his head, dismissing the matter of plumbing.

‘I just wanted to mention the matter. Nice of you to have listened to it — nice also to have met.’

‘Just let me make a note of your bad housing, my friend,’ said Widmerpool. ‘Exact information is always useful.’

Trapnel had spoken his last words in farewell, but Widmerpool led him aside and took out a notebook. At the same moment Pamela abandoned Gainsborough, whose attractions her husband must have overrated. She came towards us. Widmerpool turned to her. She disregarded him, and addressed herself to me in her slow, hypnotic voice.

‘Have you been attending any more funerals?’

‘No — have you?’

‘Just awaiting my own.’

‘Not imminent, I hope?’

‘I rather hope it is.’

‘How are you enjoying political life?’

‘Like any other form of life — sheer hell.’

She said that in a relatively friendlv tone. Craggs intervened and led Widmerpool away, Trapnel returned. I introduced him to Pamela. It was not a success. In fact it was a disaster. From being in quite a good humour, she switched immediately to an exceedingly bad one. As he came up, her face at once assumed an expression of instant dislike. Trapnel himself could not fail to notice this change in her features. He winced slightly, but did not allow himself to be discouraged sufficiently to abandon all hope of making headway. Obviously he was struck by Pamela’s appearance. For a moment I wondered whether that had been the real reason for making such a point of introducing himself to Widmerpool. Any such guess turned out wide of the mark. On the contrary, he had not seen them come into the room together, nor taken in who she was. His head appeared still full of whatever he had been talking about to Widmerpool, because he did not listen when I told him her name. It turned out later that he was determined in his own mind that Pamela was a writer of some sort. Having decided that point, he wanted to find out what sort of a writer she might be. This was on general grounds of her looks, rather than any very special attraction he himself found for them.

‘Are you doing something for Fission?’

Pamela stared at him as if he had gone off his head.

‘Me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why should I?’

‘I just thought you might.’

‘Do I look the sort of person who’d write for Fission?’

‘It struck me you did rather.’

She gave him a stare of contempt, but did not answer. Trapnel, seeing he was to be treated with deliberate offensiveness, made no further effort in Pamela’s direction. Instead, he began talking of the set-to on the subject of modern poetry that had just taken place between Shernmaker and Malcolm Crowding. Pamela walked away in the direction of Ada Leintwardine. Trapnel looked after her and laughed.

‘Who is she?’

‘I told you — Mrs Widmerpool.’

‘Wife of the MP I was chatting with?’

‘She’s rather famous.’

‘I didn’t get the name. I thought you were saying something about Widmerpool. So that’s who she is? I’d never have thought he’d have a wife like that. Bagshaw was talking about him, so I thought I’d like to make contact. I can’t say I was much taken with Mrs Widmerpool. Is that how she always behaves?’

‘Quite often.’

‘Girls like that are not in my line. I don’t care how smashing they look. I need a decent standard of manners.’

At this stage of our acquaintance I did not know much about Trapnel’s girls, beyond his own talk about them, which indicated a fair amount of experience. Some ‘big’ love affair of his had gone wrong not long before our first meeting. Ada came round with the drink jug. Trapnel filled up and moved away.

‘Not much danger of intoxication from this brew,’ she said.

‘The Editor doesn’t seem to have done too badly.’

‘Books had an early go at the actual bottle — before this potion was mixed.’

Bagshaw, rather red in the face, was in fact little if at all drunker than he had been at the beginning of the party, reaching a saturation point beyond which he never overflowed. He was clutching Evadne Clapham affectionately round the waist, he explained to her — with some supposed reference to her short story in Fission — where Marx differed from Feuerbach in aiming not to interpret the world but to change it; and what was the real significance of Lenin’s April Theses.

‘Evadne Clapham’s coiffure always reminds me of that line of Arthur Symons, “And is it seaweed in your hair?”’ said Ada. ‘There’s been some hot negotiation with poor old Sillers, but we’ve come across with quite a big advance in the end. I hope the book will justify that when it appears.’

‘What’s Odo$cvens’s work to be called?’

‘Sad Majors, an adaption of –

Let’s have one other gaudy night: call to me

All my sad captains …

JG doesn’t care for the title. We’re trying to get Stevens to change it.’

‘Why? He must agree it’s a gloomy rank.’

‘God — Nathaniel Sheldon’s helping himself. He must think he’s not being appreciated.’

It was true.Sheldon was routing about under the drink table. Ada hurried off. It was time to go home. I sought out Quiggjn to say goodbye. He was talking with Shernmaker, whose temper seemed to have improved, because he was teasing Quiggin.

‘Gauguin abandoned business for art, JG — you’re like Rimbaud, who abandoned art for business.’

‘Resemblances undoubtedly exist between publishing and the slave trade,’ said Quiggin ‘But it’s not only authors who get sold, Bernard’

Down stairs in the packing department Widmerpool was wandering about looking for something. He no longer retained his earlier geniality, was now despondent.

‘I’ve lost my briefcase. Hid it away somewhere down here. I say, that friend of yours, Trapnel, is an odd fellow, isn’t he?’

‘In appearance?’

‘Among other things.’

‘He’s a good writer.’

‘So I’m told.’

‘I mean should be useful on Fission.’

‘Ah, there’s the briefcase — no, I’ve just been talking to Trapnel, and his behaviour rather surprised me. As a matter of fact he asked me to lend him some money.’

‘Following, no doubt, on your recommendations in the House that interest rates should be reduced.’

‘Your joke is no doubt very amusing. At the same time you will agree Trapnel’s request was unusual on the part of a man whom I had never set eyes on before tonight, when he introduced himself to me?’

‘You know what literary life is like.’

‘I’m beginning to learn.’

‘Did you come across?’

‘I handed over a pound. The man assured me he was completely penniless. However, let us speak no more of that. I merely put it on record. I consider the party for Fission was a success. It will get off to a good start, even though I do not feel so much confidence in Bagshaw as I could wish.’

‘He knows his stuff.’

‘So everyone says. He appeared to me rather drunk by the end of the evening, but I must not stay gossiping. I have to get back to Westminster. Pam had to leave early. She had a dinner engagement.’

We went outside. Trapnel was standing on the pavement. He had just hailed a cab. He must have been waiting there for one to pass for some minutes; in fact since he had taken the pound off Widmerpool.

‘Dearth of taxis round this neighbourhood’s almost as bad as where I’m living. Can I give anyone a lift? I’m heading north.’

We both declined the offer.