Books Do Furnish a Room (21 page)

‘I thought you got on so well
with Ada?’

Ada Leintwardine dealt with
Trapnel in ordinary contacts with the firm. She did not control disposal of
money – there Quiggin was called in – but questions of production, publicity,
all such matters passed through her hands. Book production, as it happened,
owing to shortage of paper and governmental restrictions of one kind or
another, was at the lowest ebb in its history at this period. A subject upon
which Trapnel held strong views, this potential area of difference might have
led to trouble. Ada always smoothed things over. After the honeymoon following
the transfer of
Camel Ride to the Tomb
,
Trapnel and Craggs scarcely bothered to conceal the lack of sympathy they felt
for one another. It looked as if Quiggin had now been swept into embroilment by
Trapnel’s tendency to get on bad terms with all publishers and editors.

In this connexion, Ada was an
example of Trapnel’s exemption from the need to captivate every woman with whom
he came in contact. He would not necessarily have captivated Ada had he tried.
Nothing was less likely. The point was that he did not try. He always
emphasized his amicable relations with her, how much he preferred these to be
on a purely business basis. This proved no more than that Ada was not Trapnel’s
sort of woman, Trapnel not Ada’s sort of man, but, for someone who liked
running other people’s lives so much as Ada, to get on with Trapnel, who liked
running his own, was certainly a recommendation for tact in doing business.

‘Ada’s all right. She’s a grand
girl. It isn’t Ada who gets me down. She’s always on my side. It’s Craggs who’s
impossible. I feel pretty sure of that. He makes trouble in the background.’

‘What sort of trouble?’

‘Influencing JG.’

‘
Bin Ends
went quite well?’

‘All right. They’ve been
looking at the first few chapters of
Profiles in String
– provisional
title. I want some money while I’m writing it. I can’t live on air.’

‘Surely they’ll advance
something on what you’ve shown them?’

‘They’ve given me a bit
already, but I’ve got to exist while I write the bloody book.’

‘You mean they won’t unbelt any
more?’

‘I may have to approach another
publisher.’

‘You’re under contract?’

‘They like the new book all
right, what there is. Like it very much. If they won’t see reason, I may have
to put the matter in the hands of my solicitors.’

Trapnel tapped the skull
against the table. Talk about his solicitors always meant a highly nervous
state. Even at the time of the monumental entanglement of the
conte
, it was doubtful whether legal processes had ever been carried further than
consultation with old Tim Clipthorpe, one of the seasoned habitués of The Hero,
his face covered with
crimson blotches, who had been struck off the roll in the year the
Titanic
went down, as he was always telling any adjacent toper who would listen. In any
case, Trapnel gave the impression that, as publishing rows go, this was not a
specially serious one. Even if it were, he could hardly have brought a
fellow-writer, not a particularly close friend, to shiver in the boreal chills
of The Hero’s saloon bar merely to confirm the parsimony of publishers; still
less to listen to a critical onslaught against the amateurish pornography and
slipshod prose of Alaric Kydd. Even Trapnel’s egotism was hardly capable of
that. He was, in fact, obviously playing for time, talking at random while he
tried to screw himself up to making some more or less startling confession.
Again he tapped the swordstick against the table.

‘Don’t let’s talk about all
this rot anyway. One of the things I wanted to tell you was that Tessa’s walked
out on me.’

That was much more the sort of
thing to be expected. Even so, Tessa seemed a rather slender pretext for
bringing about a portentous meeting such as this one. An attractive girl, she
had shown early signs of finding the Trapnel way of life too much for her. Her
departure was not a staggering surprise. Sympathy seemed best expressed by
enquiry, though the answer was not in much doubt.

‘How did it happen?’

‘Yesterday – just left a note
saying she was through.’

‘Things had been getting
difficult?’

‘There was rather a scene last
week. I thought it had all blown over. Apparently not. As a matter of fact I’m
not sorry. I was fond of Tessa, but things have to have an end – at least most
do.’

‘Dowson said something of the
sort in verse.’

Trapnel brushed aside further
condolences, admittedly rather feeble ones, on the subject of the vicissitudes of love. He was, to say the
least, bearing Tessa’s abdication with fortitude. I was
surprised at quite such a show of indifference, thinking some of it perhaps
assumed. Trapnel, although resilient, was not at all heartless in such matters.

‘Now Tessa’s gone I’m faced
with a decision.’

‘Giving up women altogether?’

Trapnel laughed with rather
conscious bitterness.

‘I mean Tessa kept me from
making an absolute fool of myself. Now I’m left without that support.’

He did not have the appearance
of having indulged in a recent drinking bout, nor too many pep-pills, but was
in such an unusual state that I began to wonder whether, after all, Ada was at
the bottom of all this; that I had been summoned to give advice on the uncommon
situation of an author falling in love with his publisher. The suspicion became
almost a certainty when Trapnel leant forward and spoke dramatically, almost in
a whisper.

‘Nick, I’m absolutely mad about
somebody.’

‘A replacement for Tessa?’

‘No – nothing like that.
Nothing like Tessa at all. This is love. The genuine thing. I’ve never known
what it was before. Not really. Now I do.’

This was going a little far. He
spoke with complete gravity, though he and I were not at all on the terms when
revelations of that kind are volunteered. Trapnel’s emotional life, if
proffered at all, was as a rule dished up with a light dressing of irony or
melancholy. He was never brutal; on the other hand, he was never severely
stricken. From the outside he appeared a reasonably adoring lover, if not an
unduly serious one. The attitude maintained that night in The Hero was
different from anything previously handed out. I had made up my mind to leave
very soon now, almost at once. If Trapnel wanted to make a statement, he must
get on with the job, do it expeditiously. The night was too cold to hang about
any longer, while he braced himself to set forth in detail this amatory crisis,
whatever it might be.

‘Why isn’t this one like Tessa?’

Instead of answering the
question, Trapnel opened
Sweetskin
again. He removed from its pages the review slip which notes date of
publication, together with the request (never in the history of criticism vouchsafed) that the publisher should be
sent a copy of the notice when it appeared in
print. This small square of paper had been inserted earlier by Trapnel to mark a passage of notable ineptitude to be read aloud as
illustration of Kydd’s inability to write with grace, distinction or knowledge
of the ways of women. He had recited the paragraph a few minutes before. Now he took
one of several pens from the outside breast pocket of the tropical jacket,
quickly wrote something on the back of the slip of paper, and passed it across
to me. On examination, this enigmatic missive disclosed two words inscribed in
Trapnel’s small decorative script, of which he was rather proud. I read them
without at first understanding why my attention should be drawn to this name.

Pamela
Widmerpool

The whole procedure had been so
odd, I was so cold and bored, the final flourish so unexpected – although in
one sense Trapnel at his most Trapnelesque – that I did not immediately grasp
the meaning of this revealment, if revealment it were.

‘What about her?’

Trapnel did not speak at once.
He looked as if he could not believe he had heard the words correctly. I asked
again. He smiled and shook his head.

‘That’s whom I’m in love with.’

No comment seemed anywhere near
adequate. This was beyond all limits. Burton well expressed man’s subjection to
passion. To recall his words gave some support now. ‘The scorching beams under
the
Æquinoctial
, or extremity of cold within the circle of the
Arctick
, where the very Seas are frozen, cold or torrid zone cannot avoid, or expel this
beat, fury and rage of mortal men.’ No doubt that was just how Trapnel felt.
His face showed that he saw this climax as the moment of truth, one of those
high-spots in the old silent films that he liked to recall, some terrific
consummation emphasized by several seconds of monotonous music rising louder
and louder, until, almost deafening, the notes suddenly jar out of tune in a
frightful discord: the train is derailed: the canoe swept over the rapids: the
knife plunged into the naked flesh. All is over. The action is cut: calm music
again, perhaps no music at all.

‘Of course I know I’m mad. I
don’t stand a chance. That’s one of the reasons why the situation’s nothing
like Tessa – or any other girl I’ve ever been mixed up with. I admit it’s not
sane. I admit that from the start.’

If things had gone so far that
Trapnel could not even pronounce the name of the woman he loved, had to write
it down on a review slip, the situation must indeed be acute. I laughed. There
seemed nothing else to do. That reaction was taken badly by Trapnel. He had
some right to be offended after putting on such an act. That could not be
helped. He looked half-furious, half-upset. As he was inclined to talk about
his girls only after they had left, there was no measure for judging the norm
of his feelings when they were first sighted. Possibly he was always as worked
up as at that moment, merely that I had never been the confidant. That seemed
unlikely. Even if he showed the same initial excitement, the incongruity of
making Pamela his aim was something apart.

‘You didn’t much take to her at
the
Fission
party.’

‘Of course I didn’t. I thought
her the most awful girl I’d ever met.’

‘What brought about the change?’

‘I was in Ada’s room looking
through my press-cuttings. Mrs Widmerpool suddenly came in. She’s an old friend
of Ada’s. I hadn’t known that. She didn’t bother to be announced from the
downstairs office, just came straight up to Ada’s room. She wanted to telephone
right away. I was standing there talking to Ada about the cuttings. Mrs Widmerpool didn’t take any notice of me. I might just as well not have been there, far
less chatted with her at a party. Ada told her my name again, but she
absolutely cut me. She went to the telephone, at once began cursing the girl at
the switchboard for her slowness. When she got the number, it was to bawl out
some man who’d sent her a jar of pickled peaches as a present. She said they
were absolutely foul. She’d thrown them down the lavatory. She fairly gave him
hell.’

‘That stole your heart away?’

‘Something did. Nick, I’m not
joking. I’m mad about her. I’d do anything to see her again.’

‘Did you converse after the
telephoning?’

‘That’s what I’m coming to. We
did talk. Ada asked her if she’d read the
Camel
. My God, she had – and liked it. She was – I don’t know – almost as if she were
shy all at once. Utterly different from what she’d been at the party, or even a
moment before in the room. She behaved as if she quite liked me, but felt it
would be wrong to show it. That was the moment when the thing hit me. I didn’t
know what to do. I felt quite ill with excitement. I mean both randy, and
sentimentally in love with her too. I was wondering whether I’d ask both her
and Ada to have a drink with me before lunch – perhaps borrow ten bob from Ada
and pay her back later in the afternoon, because I was absolutely cleaned out
at the moment of speaking – then Mrs Widmerpool suddenly remembered she was
lunching with some lucky devil, and had told him to be at the restaurant at
twelve-thirty, it being then a good bit after one o’clock- She went away, but
quite unhurried. She knew he’d wait. What can I do? I’m crazy about her.’

Trapnel paused. The story still
remained beyond comment. However, it was apparently not at an end. Something
else too was on Trapnel’s mind. Now he looked a shade embarrassed, a rare
condition for him.

‘You remember I talked to her
husband at that party? We got on rather well. I can never think of him as her
husband, but all the same he is, and something happened which I wish had never taken
place.’

‘If you mean you borrowed a
quid off him, I know – he told me.*

‘He did? In that case I feel
better about it. The taxi absorbed my last sixpence. I had to get back to West
Kilburn that night by hook or crook. I won’t go into the reason why, but it was
the case. I’d walked there once from Piccadilly, and preferred not to do it
again. That was why I did a thing I don’t often do, and got a loan from a
complete stranger. The fact was it struck me as I was leaving the party that Mr
Widmerpool had been so kind in listening to me – expressed such humane views on
housing and such things – that he wouldn’t mind helping me over a temporary
difficulty. I was embarrassed at having to do so. I think Mr Widmerpool was a
bit embarrassed too. He didn’t know what I meant at first.’

Trapnel laughed rather
apologetically. It was possible to recognize a conflict of feelings. As a
writer, he could perfectly appreciate the funny side of taking a pound off
Widmerpool; the whole operation looked like a little exercise in the art,
introducing himself, making a good impression, bringing off the ‘touch’. He had
probably waited to leave the party until he saw Widmerpool going down the
stairs, instinct guiding him as to the dole that would not be considered too
excessive to withhold. At the same time, as a borrower, Trapnel had to keep up
a serious attitude towards borrowing. He could not admit the whole affair had
been a prepared scheme from the start. Finally, as a lover, he had put himself
in a rather absurd relation to the husband of the object of his affections. To
confess that showed how far Trapnel’s defences were down. He returned to
the subject of Pamela.