Books Do Furnish a Room (2 page)

‘Sit down, Nick, sit down.
Leonard and I were talking of an old friend – Bill Truscott. Remember Bill? I’m
sure you do. Of course he was a wee bit older than you both’ – Sillery had now
perfectly achieved his chronological bearings – ‘but not very much. These
differences get levelled out in the sands of time. They do indeed. Going to do
great things was Bill. Next Prime Minister but three. We all thought so. No use
denying it, is there, Leonard?’

Short smiled a temperate
personal acquiescence that could not at the same time be interpreted for a
moment as in any way committing his Department.

‘Wrote some effective verse
too,’ said Sillery. ‘Even if it was a shade derivative. Mark Members always
sneered at Bill as a poet, even when he respected him as a coming man. Rupert
Brooke at his most babbling, Mark used to say, Housman at his most lad-ish.
Mark’s always so severe. I told him so when he was here the other day
addressing one of the undergraduate societies. You know Mark’s hair’s gone snow
white. Can’t think what happened to cause that, he’s always taken great care of
himself. Rather becoming, all the same. Gives just that air of distinction
required by the passing of youth – and nobody got more out of being a
professional young man than Mark when the going was good. He was talking of his
old friend –
our
old friend – J. C. Quiggin. JG’s
abandoned the pen, I hear, perhaps wisely. A literary caesarean was all but
required for that infant of long gestation
Unburnt Boats
, which I often feared might come to birth
prematurely as a puling little magazine article. Now JG’s going to promote
literary works rather than write them himself. In brief, he’s to become a
publisher.’

‘So I heard,’ said Short. ‘He’s
starting a new firm called Quiggin & Craggs.’

‘To think I used to sit on
committees with Howard Craggs discussing arms embargoes for Bolivia and
Paraguay,’ said Sillery. ‘Sounds like an embargo on arms for the Greeks and
Trojans now. Still, I read a good letter from Craggs the other day in one of
the papers about the need for Socialists and Communists hammering out a common
programme of European reconstruction.’

‘Craggs was a temporary civil
servant during the war,’ said Short. ‘Rationing paper, was it? Something of the
sort.’

‘That was when JG made himself
useful as caretaker at Boggis & Stone,’ said Sillery. ‘I expect that
explains why JG dresses like a partisan now, a man straight from the
maquis
, check shirts, leather jackets, ankle-boots. “Well, Quiggin’s always been in the
forefront of the Sales Resistance where clothes were concerned.” That was
Brightman’s comment. “Even if he did live ‘reserved and austere’ during
hostilities – ‘reserved’ anyway.” We all enjoy Brightman’s rather cruel wit.
Brightman and I are buddies now, by the way, all forgiven and forgotten.
Besides, I expect JG’s circumscribed by lack of clothing coupons. All right for
such as me, still wearing the suit I bought for luncheon with Mr Asquith at
Downing Street before the Flood, but then it was a good piece of cloth to start
off with, not like those sad old reach-me-downs of JG’s we’re all so familiar
with. No doubt they disintegrated under the stress of war conditions. Why not
ankle-boots, forsooth? I’d be glad of a pair myself in winter here.’

Sillery paused. He seemed to
feel he had allowed himself to rattle on rather too disconnectedly, at the same
time could not remember what exactly had been the subject in hand. Like a
conjuror whose patter for a specific trick has become misplaced, he had to go
back to the beginning again.

‘We were talking of Bill
Truscott and his verse. I expect Bill has abandoned the Muse now, though you
never know. It’s a hard habit to break. Would you believe it, I produced a slim
volume myself when a young man? Did you know that, either of you? Suggested the
influence of Coventry Patmore, so the pundits averred. I suppose most of us
think of ourselves as poets at that age. No harm done. Well, that shouldn’t be
such a bad job at the Coal Board for Bill, if things are constituted as you
prophesy, Leonard. Once Bill’s been well and truly inducted there, he should be
safe for a lifetime.’

Again Short allowed polite
agreement to be inferred, without prejudice to official discretion, or
additional evidence that might be subsequently revealed.

‘ But what mysterious mission
brings you to our academic altars, Nick? We don’t even know what you are doing
these days. Back writing those novels of yours? I expect so. I used to hear
something of your activities when you were a gallant soldier looking after
those foreign folk. You know what an interest I take in old friends. Leonard
and I were just speaking of poor Prince Theodoric, who was once going to
perform all sorts of benefits for us here, endow scholarships and whatnot.
Donners-Brebner was to co-operate, Sir Magnus Donners having interests in those
parts. Now, alas, the good Prince is in exile, Sir Magnus gathered to his
fathers. The University will never see any of those lovely scholarships. But we
must march with the times. There’s a new spirit abroad in Prince Thedoric’s
country, and, whatever people may say, there’s no doubt about Marshal Stalin’s
sincerity in desire for a good-neighbour policy, if the West allows it. What I
wrote to
The Times
. Those Tolland relations of yours, Nick? That
unsatisfactory boy Hugo, how is he?’

I dealt with these personal
matters as expeditiously as possible, explaining my purpose in staying at the
University.

‘Ah, Burton?’ said Sillery. ‘An
interesting old gentleman, I’ve no doubt. Many years since I looked into the
Anatomy
.’

That was undoubtedly true.
Sillery was not a great reader. He was also wholly uncurious about the byways
of writing, indeed not very approving of writing at all, unless books likely to
make a splash beyond mere literary consideration, of which there was no hope
here. He abandoned the subject, satisfied apparently that the motive alleged
was not designed to conceal some less pedestrian, more controversially viable
activity, and the unexciting truth had been told. A pause in his talk, never an
opportunity to be missed, offered a chance, the first one, of congratulating
him on the peerage conferred in the most recent Honours List. Sillery yelled
with laughter at such felicitations.

‘Ain’t it absurd?’ he shouted. ‘As
you’ll have guessed, my dear Nick, I didn’t want the dratted thing at all. Not
in the least. But it looked unmannerly to refuse. Doesn’t do to look
unmannerly. Literal case of
noblesse oblige
. So
there it is. A Peer of the Realm. Who’d have prophesied that for crude young
Sillers, that happy-go-lucky little fellow, in the days of yore? It certainly
gave some people here furiously to think. Ah, the envies and inhumanities of
the human heart. You wouldn’t believe. I keep on telling the college servants
to go easy with all that my-lording. Makes me feel as if I was acting in
Shakespeare. They will have it, good chaps that they are. Fact is they seem
positively to enjoy addressing their old friend in that majestic way, revel in
it even. Strange but true. Genuinely glad to see old Sillers a lord. Ah, when
you’re my age, dear men, you’ll know what an empty thing is worldly success and
human ambition – but we mustn’t say that to an important person like Leonard,
must we, Nick? And of course I don’t want to seem ungrateful to the staunch
movement that ennobled me, of which I remain the most loyal of supporters.
Indeed, we’ve just been talking of some of Labour’s young lions, for Leonard
has forgone his former Liberal allegiances in favour of Mr Attlee and his merry
men.’

‘Of course, as a civil servant,
I’m strictly speaking neutral,’ said Short primly. ‘I was merely talking with
Sillers of my present Minister’s PPS, who happens to live in the same block of
flats as myself – one Kenneth Widmerpool. You may have come across him.’

‘I have – and saw he got in at
a by-election some months ago.’

‘This arose from speaking of
Bill Truscott and his troubles,’ said Sillery. ‘I was telling Leonard how I
always marvelled at the quietly dextrous way Mr Widmerpool had poor Bill sacked
from Donners-Brebner, just at the moment Bill thought himself set for big
things. Between you and me, I would myself have doubted whether Bill offered
serious rivalry by that time, but, extinct volcano or not, Widmerpool accepted
him as a rival, and got rid of him. It was done in the neatest manner
imaginable. That was where the rot set in so far as Bill was concerned. Put him
on the downward path. He never recovered his status as a coming man. All this
arose because I happened to mention to Leonard that Mr Widmerpool had written
to me about joining a society – in fact two societies, one political, one
cultural – to cement friendship with the People’s Republic where Theodoric’s
family once held sway.’

‘I ran across Widmerpool when I
was on loan to the Cabinet Office from my own Ministry,’ said Short. ‘We first
met when I was staying in the country one weekend with a person of some import.
I won’t mention names, but say no more than that the visit was one of work
rather than play. Widmerpool came down on Sunday about an official matter,
bringing some highly secret papers with him. We played a game of croquet in the
afternoon as a short relaxation. I always remember how Widmerpool kept his
briefcase under his arm – he was in uniform, of course – throughout the game.
He nearly won it, in spite of that. Our host joked with him about his high
regard for security, but Widmerpool would not risk losing his papers, even when
he made his stroke.’

Sillery rocked himself
backwards and forwards in silent enjoyment.

‘A very capable administrator,’
said Short. ‘Of course one can’t foretell what prospects such a man can have on
the floor of the House. He may not necessarily be articulate in those very
special surroundings. I’ve heard it suggested Widmerpool is better in
committee. His speeches are inclined to alienate sympathy. Nevertheless, I am
disposed to predict success.’

Neither of them would listen to
assurances that I had known Widmerpool for years, which had indeed no
particular relevance to his election to the House of Commons some little time
before this. The event had taken place while I was myself still submerged in
the country, getting through my army gratuity. At the time, Widmerpool’s
arrival in Parliament seemed just another of the many odd things taking place
roundabout, no concern of mine after reading of it in the paper. Back in
London, occupied with sorting out the debris, physical and moral, with which
one had to contend, Widmerpool’s political fortunes – like his unexpected
marriage to Pamela Flitton – had been forgotten in attempts to warm up, as it
were, charred fragments left over from the pre-war larder.

‘He’d probably have become a
brigadier had hostilities continued,’ said Short. ‘I’m not at all surprised by
the course he’s
taken. At one moment, so he told me, he had ambitions towards a colonial
governorship – was interested in those particular problems – but Westminster
opens wider fields. The question was getting a seat.’

Sillery dismissed such a doubt
as laughable for a man of ability.

‘Elderly trade unionists die,
or reap the reward of years of toil by elevation to the Upper House – better
merited, I add in all humility, than others I could name. The miners can spare
a seat from their largesse, those hardy crofters of Scotland show a canny
instinct for the right candidate.’

‘Between ourselves, I was able
to do a little liaison work in the early stages,’ said Short. ‘That was after
return to my old niche. I’d been told there was room for City men who’d be
sensibly co-operative, especially if of a Leftward turn to start. Widmerpool’s
attitude to Cheap Money made him particularly eligible.’

‘Cheap Money! Cheap Money!’

The phrase seemed to ravish
Sillery by its beauty. He continued to repeat it, like the pirate’s parrot
screeching ‘Pieces of eight’, while he clenched his fist in the sign of the old
Popular Front.

Then suddenly Sillery’s manner
changed. He began to rub his hands together, a habit that usually indicated the
launching of one of his anti-personnel weapons, some explosive item of
information likely to be brought out with damaging effect to whoever had just
put forward some given view. Short, still contemplating Widmerpool’s chances,
showed no awareness that danger threatened.

‘I don’t think he’ll be a
back-bencher long,’ he said. ‘That’s my view.’

Sillery released the charge.

‘What about his wife?’

After that question Sillery
paused in one of his most characteristic attitudes, that of the Chinese
executioner who has so expertly severed a human head from the neck that it
remains still apparently attached to the victim’s shoulders, while the headsman
himself flicks an infinitesimal, all but invisible, speck of blood from the razor-sharp
blade of his sword. Short coughed. He gave the impression of being surprised by
a man of such enlightened intelligence as Sillery asking that.

‘His wife, Sillers?’

Short employed a level
requisitive tone, suggesting he had indeed some faint notion of what was behind
the enquiry, but it was one scarcely worthy of answer. There could be little
doubt that, in so treating the matter, Short was playing for time.

‘You can’t close your ears to
gossip in this University, however much you try,’ said Sillery. ‘It’s rampant,
I regret to say. Even at High Table in this very college. Besides, it’s always
wise to know what’s being bruited abroad, even if untrue.’

He rubbed his hands over and
over again, almost doubling up with laughter.

‘I haven’t the pleasure of
knowing Mrs Widmerpool so well as her husband,’ said Short severely. ‘We
sometimes see each other where we both live, in the hall or in the lift. I
understand the Widmerpools are to move from there soon.’