‘Grown-up people always check on that particular point, my girl,’ said Quiggin. ‘Don’t worry. We’re not blaming you. Calm down. Take an aspirin. Isn’t it time for coffee? I admit I could have done without Bagshaw arranging this just at the moment the Sweetskin case is coming on, and all the to-do about Sad Majors.
I enquired as to Quiggin’s version of the Stevens trouble.
‘Odo’s written an excellent account of his time with the Partisans. Adventurous, personal, but a lot of controversial matter. Readers don’t want controversy. Why should they? Besides, it would be awkward for the firm to publish a book hinting some of the things Odo’s does, with Kenneth Widmerpool on the board. All his support for societies trying to promote good relations with that very country. You want to keep politics out of a book like that.’
‘Odo isn’t very interested in politics, is he?’
‘Not in a way, but he’s very obstinate.’
I left them still in a flutter about the parody. There was not much Widmerpool could do. It would increase his opposition to Bagshaw, but Bagshaw probably had a contract of some sort. At the end of that, if the magazine survived, Widmerpool was likely to try and get him sacked anyway. It was a typical Bagshaw situation. Meanwhile, he showed no sign of returning to the office. The message came that his flu was no better. Some evenings later there was a telephone call at home. A female voice asked for me.
‘Speaking.’
‘It’s Pamela Widmerpool.’
‘Oh, yes?’
She must have known I was answering, but for some reason of her own preferred to go through the process of making absolutely sure.
‘X is not well.’
‘ I’m very sorry —’
‘I want you to come and see him. He needs some books and things.’
‘But — ’
‘It’s really the only way – for you to come yourself.’
She spoke the last sentence irritably, as if the question of my bringing Trapnel aid in person had already arisen in the past, and, rather contemptibly, I had raised objections to making myself available. Now, it seemed, I was looking for a similar excuse again. She offered no explanation or apology for thus emerging as representative of the Trapnel, rather than Widmerpool, ménage. In taking on the former position there was not the smallest trace of self-consciousness.
‘This man Bagshaw has flu still. I can’t get any sense out of the half-witted girl left in charge at the Fission office. That’s why you must come.’
‘I was only going to say that I don’t know where you – where X is living.’
‘Of course you don’t. No one does. I’m about to tell you. Do you know the Canal at Maida Vale?’
‘Yes.’
‘We’re a bit north of there.’
She gave the name of a street and number of the house. I wrote them down.
‘The ground-floor flat. Don’t be put off by the look of the place outside. It’s inhabited all right, though you might not think so. When can you come? Tonight?’
She added further instructions about getting there.
‘What’s wrong with X?’
‘He’s just feeling like hell.’
‘Has he seen a doctor?’
‘He won’t.’
‘Wouldn’t it be wiser to make him?’
‘He’ll be all right in a day or two. He’s got quite a store of his pills. He just wants to talk to somebody. We don’t see anybody as a rule. You just happen to know both of us. That’s why you must come. Have you got a book to bring? Something for him to review?’
I had taken some review copies from the Fission shelves to look through at home. L. O. Salvidge’s collection of essays, Paper Wine, might do for Trapnel. I told Pamela I would produce something. She rang off without comment.
‘Don’t get robbed and murdered,’ said Isobel.
To visit Trapnel in one of his lairs was a rare experience at the best of times. Once we had both been allowed to have a drink with him at a flat in Notting Hill, within range of the Portobello Road, where he liked to wander among the second-hand stalls. He was then living with a girl called Sally. The invitation had been quite exceptional, possibly intended to establish some sort of an alibi for reasons never revealed. The present expedition was more adventurous. The Paddington area, and north of it, supplied one of the traditional Trapnel areas of bivouac. It was surprising that he and Pamela were to be found no farther afield. Their total disappearance suggested withdrawal from such ground to less established streets. It was of course true to say that, even when not specifically retired to the outer suburbs, one rarely knew for certain where Trapnel was living. The absence of news about him from pub sources indicated experiment with hitherto unfrequented taverns. Such investigation would not be unwelcome; by no means out of character. A fresh round of saloon bars would hold out promise of new disciples, new eccentrics, new bores, new near-criminals. Pamela herself might well have objected to a really radical retreat from the approaches to central London. The part she played was hard to imagine.
At this period the environs of the Canal had not yet developed into something of a quartier chic, as later incarnated. Before the war, the indigenous population, time-honoured landladies, inveterate lodgers, immemorial whores, long undisturbed in surrounding premises, had already begun to give place to young married couples, but buildings already tumbledown had now been further reduced by bombing. The neighbourhood looked anything but flourishing. Leaving Edgware Road, I walked along the north bank of the Canal. On either side of the water gaps among the houses marked where direct hits had reduced Regency villas to rubble. The street Pamela had described was beyond this stucco colony. It was not at all easy to find. When traced, the exterior bore out the description of looking uninhabited.
The architecture here had little pretension to elegance. Several steps led up to the front door. No name was quoted above the bell of the ground floor flat. I rang, and waited. The door was opened by Pamela. She was in slacks. I said good-evening. She did not smile.
‘Come in.’
Lighted only by a ray from the flat doorway left open, the hall, so far as could be seen in the gloom, accorded with the derelict exterior of the house; peeling wallpaper, bare boards, a smell of damp, cigarette smoke, stale food. The atmosphere recalled Maclintick’s place in Pimlico, when Moreland and I had visited him not long before his suicide. By contrast, the fairly large room into which I followed Pamela conveyed, chiefly on account of the appalling mess of things that filled it, an impression of rough comfort, almost of plenty. There were only a few sticks of furniture, a table, two kitchen chairs, a vast and hideous wardrobe, but several pieces of luggage lay about – including two newish suitcases evidently belonging to Pamela – clothes, books, cups, glasses, empty Algerian wine bottles. The pictures consisted of a couple of large photographs of Pamela herself, taken by well-known photographers, and, over the mantelpiece, the Modigliani drawing. Trapnel lay on a divan under some brown army blankets.
‘Look here, it’s awfully good of you to come, Nick.’
One wondered, at this austere period for acquiring any sort of clothing to be regarded as of unusual design, where he had bought the dirty white pyjamas patterned with large red spots. The circumstances were in general a shade more sordid than pictured. Trapnel had been reading a detective story, which he now threw on the floor. A lot of other books lay about over the bedclothes, among them Oblomov, The Thin Man, Adolphe, in a French edition, all copies worn to shreds. Trapnel looked pale, rather dazed, otherwise no worse than usual. Before I could speak, Pamela made a request.
‘Have you a shilling? The fire’s going out.’
She took the coin and slipped it into the slot, reviving the dying flame, just going blue. As the gas flared up again, its hiss for some inexplicable reason suggested an explanation of why Pamela had married Widmerpool. She had done it, so to speak, in order to run away with Trapnel. I do not mean she had thought that out in precise terms – a vivid imagination would be
required to predict the advent of Trapnel into Widmerpool’s life – but the violent antithesis presented by their contrasted forms of existence, two unique specimens as it were brought into collision, promised anarchic extremities of feeling of the kind at which she aimed; in which she was principally at home. She liked – to borrow a phrase from St. John Clarke – to ‘try conclusions with the maelstrom’. One of the consequences of her presence was to displace Trapnel’s tendency to play a part during the first few minutes of any meeting. That could well have been knocked out of him by ill health, as much as by Pamela. He spoke now as if he were merely a little embarrassed.
‘There were one or two things I wanted to talk about. You know I don’t much like having to explain things on the telephone, though I often have to do that. Anyway, it’s cut off here, the instrument was removed bodily yesterday, and I’m not supposed to go outside for the moment, owing to this malaise I’ve got. You and I haven’t seen each other for some time, Nick. Such a lot’s happened. As I’m a bit off colour I thought you wouldn’t mind coming to our flat. It seemed easier. Pam was sure you’d come.’
He gave her one of those ‘adoring looks’, which Lermontov says mean so little to women. Pamela stared back at him with an expression of complete detachment. I thought of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, though Pamela was far from a pre-raphaelite type or a maid, and, socially speaking, the boot was, if anything, on the other foot. No doubt it was Trapnel’s beard. He had also allowed his hair to grow longer than usual. All the same, he sitting up on the divan, she standing above him, they somehow called up the picture.
‘I brought some essays by L. O. Salvidge.’
‘Paper Wine?’
Trapnel, by some mysterious agency, always knew about all books before they were published. It was as if the information came to him instinctively. He laughed. The thought of reviewing Salvidge’s essays must have made him feel better. One had the impression that he had been locked up with Pamela for weeks, like the Spanish honeymoon couples Borrit used to describe, when we were in the War Office together. To get back to the world of reviewing seemed to offer a magical cure for whatever Trapnel suffered. It really cheered him up.
‘Just what I need – have we got anything to drink, darling?’
‘A bottle of Algerian’s open. Some dregs left, I think.’
‘I don’t want anything at the moment, thanks very much.’
Trapnel lay back on the divan.
‘To begin with, that bloody parody of mine.’
‘I mistook it at first for the real thing.’
That amused Trapnel. Pamela continued to stand by without comment or change of expression.
‘I’m glad you did that. What’s happened about it? Any reactions?’
‘None I’ve heard about. There was some trepidation at the Fission office that trouble might arise from the obvious quarter. Books is away with flu.’
‘What a bloody fool he is. I wrote the thing quite a long time ago at his suggestion. He said he’d have to talk to the others about it. I hadn’t contemplated present circumstances then.’
‘Nor did anyone else.’
‘What about Books?’
‘The evidence is that he didn’t know.’
‘Will Widmerpool believe that?’
‘What can he do?’ asked Pamela. ‘He ought to be flattered.’
Even when she made this comment the tone suggested she was no more on Trapnel’s side than Widmerpool’s. She was assessing the situation objectively.
‘That’s what Books told Evadne Clapham,’ said Trapnel. ‘On that occasion I hadn’t also run away with her husband. I suppose everything combined means I won’t be able to write for Fission any longer. That’s a blow, because it was one of my main sources of income, and I liked the magazine.’
‘JG didn’t seem unduly worried. He’s got the Sweetskin prosecution on hand, and there’s some trouble about Odo Stevens’s book.’
‘I don’t want my publishing connexions messed up too. Quiggin & Craggs have their failings, but they aren’t doing too badly with Bin Ends. I’m not under contract for the next novel. I’m getting near the end now. I don’t want to have to hawk it round.’
At one moment Trapnel would give the impression that he was under contract with Quiggin & Craggs, and wanted to get rid of them; at the next, that he was not under contract, and wanted to stay. That was like him. He pointed to a respectably thick pile of foolscap covered with cuneiform handwriting. Although able to type, to use a typewriter was against Trapnel’s principles. The books had to be written by his own hand. This talk about the novel seemed to displease Pamela. She began to frown.
‘How’s my husband?’ she asked.
‘I’ve not seen him lately – not since the night you left.’
‘You saw him then?’
‘I’d been dining with another MP. We came back to the Victoria Street flat to discuss some things.’
‘Which MP?’
‘Roddy Cutts – my brother-in-law.’
‘That tall sandy-haired Tory?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you there when Short delivered the message?’
‘Yes.’
‘How was it taken?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well or badly?’
‘There was no scene.’
A slight flush had come over her face when she asked these questions. There could be no doubt she derived some sort of sensual satisfaction from dwelling on what had happened. Trapnel, acute enough to recognize, and resent, this process of exciting herself by such means, looked uneasy. The manner in which she managed to maintain a wholly unchanged demeanour in these very changed surroundings was notable; yet after all why should she become different just because she had decided to spend a season with Trapnel? With him, with Odo Stevens, with Allied officers, for that matter with Widmerpool, she remained the same, as individuals mostly do within a more intimate orbit; at home; with a lover; under unaccustomed stress. To suppose otherwise is naïve. At the same time, some require action, others are paralysed by action. That dissimilarity recognized, people stay themselves. Pamela did not give an inch. She was not rattled. She did the rattling.
The same could not be said of Widmerpool. He was obstinate, not easily deflected from his purpose, but circumstances might rattle him badly. He was not, like Pamela, consistent in never adapting his behaviour to others. Her constant search for new lovers made the world see her as existing solely in the field of sex, but the Furies that had driven her into the arms of Widmerpool by their torments – no doubt his too – at the same time invested her with the magnetic power that mesmerized Trapnel, operated in a manner to transcend love or sex, as both are commonly regarded. Did she and Widmerpool in some manner supplement each other, she supplying a condition he lacked – one that Burton would have called Melancholy? Now she showed her powers at work.
‘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?’