Books Do Furnish a Room (16 page)

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.