Books Do Furnish a Room (31 page)

‘Rather a
morbid subject.’

He had used just that epithet
when he found me, as a schoolboy, reading St John Clarke’s
Fields of Amaranth
. He
may have thought reading or writing books equally morbid, whatever the content. To be fair to Le Bas as a critic,
Fields of Amaranth
– if you were prepared to use the term critically at all – might reasonably be so described. I now agreed, even if on different grounds. The admission had
to be made. Time had been on Le Bas’s side.

We were interrupted at this
moment by a very small boy, who had come to stand close by where we were
talking. It would be fairer to say we were inhibited by his presence, because
no direct interruption took place. Dispelling about him an aura of immense, if
not wholly convincing goodness, his intention was evidently to accost Le Bas in
due course, at the same time ostentatiously to avoid any implication that he
could be so lacking in good manners as to break into a conversation or attempt
to overhear it. Le Bas, possibly not unwilling to seek dispensation from
further talk about the past, distant or immediate, with all its uncomfortably
realistic – Trapnel might prefer, naturalistic – undercurrents, turned in the
boy’s direction.

‘What do you want?’

‘I can wait, sir.’

This assurance that his own
hopes were wholly unimportant, that Youth was prepared to waste valuable time
indefinitely while Age span out its senile conference, did not in the least impress
Le Bas, too conversant with the ways of boys not to be for ever on his guard.

‘Can’t you find some book?’

‘Sir – the
Dictionary of Phrase and
Fable
.’

‘Brewer’s?’

‘I think so, sir.’

‘You’ve looked on the proper
shelf?’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Akworth, sir.

Le Bas rose.

‘It will be the worse for you,
Akworth, if Brewer turns out to be on the proper shelf.’

I explained to Le Bas why I had
come; that it was time to move on to my appointment.

‘Good, good. Excellent. I’m
glad we had a – well, a chat. Most fortunate you reminded me of that society of
Widmerpool’s. I don’t know why he should think I am specially interested in the
Balkans – though now I come to think of it, Templer’s … makes a kind of link.
You know, Jenkins, among my former pupils, I should never have guessed
Widmerpool would have entered the House of Commons. Fettiplace-Jones, yes – he
was another matter.’

Le Bas paused. He had
immediately regretted this implied criticism of Widmerpool’s abilities.

‘Of course, they need all sorts
and conditions of men to govern the country. Especially these days. Sad about
those fellows who were killed. I sometimes think of the number of pupils of
mine who lost their lives. Two wars. It adds up. Come along, Akworth.’

The boy smiled, conveying at once
apology for disruption of our talk, and his own certainty that its termination
must have come as a relief to me. As he hurried off towards one of the shelves,
beside which he had piled up a heap of books, he gave the impression that quite
a complicated intellectual programme for ragging Le Bas had been planned. Le
Bas himself sighed.

‘Goodbye, Jenkins. I hope the
school will have acquired a
regular librarian by your next visit.’

It was still wet outside, but,
by the time my appointment was at an end, the rain had stopped. A damp earthy
smell filled the air. The weather was appreciably colder. In spite of that a man in a mackintosh was sitting on the low wall that ran the length of
the further side of the street in front of the
archway and chapel. It was Widmerpool. He looked in great dejection. I had not
seen him since the night at Trapnel’s flat, when he had, so to speak, expressed
his confidence in Pamela’s return. Now that had come about. He had prophesied
truly. Isobel, about a month before, soon after the destruction of
Profiles in String
, had pointed out a paragraph in
a newspaper listing guests at some public function. The names ‘Mr Kenneth
Widmerpool MP and Mrs Widmerpool’ were included. It was just as predicted. In
the Governmental reshuffle at the beginning of October Widmerpool had received
minor office. In spite of these two matters, both showing himself undoubtedly
in the ascendant, he sat lonely and cheerless. I should have been tempted to
try and slip by unnoticed, but he saw me, and shouted something. I crossed the
road.

‘Congratulations on your new
parliamentary job.’

‘Thanks, thanks. What are you
doing down here?’

I told him, adding that I had
been talking with Le Bas.

‘I ran into him too. I took the
opportunity of giving him some account of my Balkan visit. Whatever one may
think of Le Bas’s capabilities as a teacher, he is supposedly in charge of the
young, and should therefore be put in possession of the correct facts.’

‘How did your trip go?’

‘We hear a lot about what is
called an “Iron Curtain”. Where is this “Iron Curtain”, I ask myself? I found
no sign. That was what I told Le Bas. You might think him a person to hold
reactionary views, but I found that was not at all the case, now that the idea
of world revolution has been dropped. By the way, how are you employed since
Fission
has closed down.

I mentioned various concerns
that involved me. Widmerpool showed no embarrassment in mentioning the
magazine. He even asked if it were true that Bagshaw had secured a job in
television. However, when I enquired why, on such a damp and increasingly cold
evening, he should be sitting on the wall, apparently just watching the world
go by, he shifted uneasily, stiffening at the question.

‘Pam and I came down for the
day.’

He laughed.

‘She’s got a young friend here
whom she met somewhere during his holidays, and he invited her to tea. She’s
having tea in his room now. I’m waiting for her.’

‘A boy, you mean?’

‘Yes – I suppose you’d call him
a boy still.’

‘I meant still at the school?’

‘He was leaving, but stayed on
for some reason – to captain some team, I think. Son or nephew of one of the
Calthorpes. Do you remember them? Pam thought it would be an amusing jaunt. She
insisted I mustn’t spoil the party by coming too. Rather a good joke.’

All the same, he did not look
as if he found it specially funny. Blue-grey mist was thickening round us. I
had a train to catch. The Widmerpools had come by car. They had no fixed plan
about getting back to London. Pamela hated being tied down by too positive
arrangements. She was going to pick her husband up hereabouts when the tea-party
was over. I thought of what Trapnel had said of her couplings.

‘I must be off.’

‘I don’t believe I ever sent
you details about that society I was telling Le Bas about. My secretary will
forward them. I received Quiggin & Craggs’s Autumn List recently – their
last. There were some interesting titles. Clapham has asked me to continue my
association with publishing by joining his board.’

I too had
received the list; later heard Quiggin’s comments on
it. Sillery’s
Garnered at Sunset
, unexciting as the selection might be, had been noticed respectfully. Shernmaker, for
example, was unexpectedly approving. Sales were not too bad, even if the
advance was never recouped. Sillery might be said to have successfully imposed his will in this last fling. So did Ada Leintwardine.
I Stopped at a Chemist
upset several of the more old-fashioned reviewers who had
survived the war, but they admitted a novel-writing career lay ahead of her.
Even Evadne Clapham was impressed. In fact,
Golden Grime
was
the last of Evadne Clapham’s
books in her former style. Her subsequent manner followed Ada’s.
Engine Melody
– truncated
title of
The Pistons of Our Locomotives Sing the Songs of
Our Workers
– believed to be not too well translated, was by
no means ignored, Nathaniel Sheldon’s mention including the phrase ‘muted
beauty’. Vernon Gainsborough’s
Bronstein: Marxist or
Mystagogue?
, with seven other books on similar subjects, was
favourably noticed in a
Times Literary Supplement
‘front’.

‘It’s a real
apologia pro vita sua
,’ said Bagshaw. ‘Conversion
from Trotskyism expressed in such unqualified terms must have warmed Gypsy’s
heart after her reverses.’

The last reference was to
Sad
Majors
. Odo Stevens had dealt effectively with efforts, such as they were, to suppress
his book. He had enjoyed exceptional opportunities for knowing about such
things. That may have put him at an advantage. As usual, he also had good luck.
So far from being inconvenient, the whole matter worked out in his best
interests. Having already grasped that he might have done better financially by
going to some publisher other than Quiggin & Craggs, he at once recognized
that the loss of the two typescripts would give a potent reason for requiring
release from his contract. He did not mention the third typescript, which had
been all the time in the hands of Rosie Manasch. Rosie had apparently suggested
that her former Fleet Street contacts might be useful in exploiting serial
possibilities. She was right.
Sad Majors
was
serialized on excellent terms. It was published in book form in the spring.

L. O. Salvidge, rather an
achievement in the light of current publishing delays, got out a further volume
of essays to follow up
Paper Wine
. The
new one,
Secretions
, was much reviewed beside Shernmaker’s
Miscellaneous Equities
. It was a notable score for
Salvidge to have produced two books in less than a year. After the unsuccessful
prosecution, Kydd’s
Sweetskin
at
first failed to recover from the withdrawal at the time of the injunction, but,
given a new wrapper design, Kydd himself alleged that it picked up relatively
well. That season also appeared David Pennistone’s
Descartes, Gassendi, and the Atomic Theory of Epicurus
, the
work of which he used to speak so despairingly when we were in the army
together. I busied myself with Burton, even so only just managing to see
Borage and Hellebore: a Study in print
by the following
December.

The scattered pages of
Profiles in String
, with the death’s-head
swordstick, floated eternally downstream into the night. It was the beginning
of Trapnel’s drift too, irretrievable as they. He went underground for a long
time after that night. When at last he emerged, it was to haunt an increasingly
gruesome and desolate world. There were odds and ends of film work, stray
pieces of journalism, an occasional short story. In the last, possibly some
traces reappeared of what had gone into
Profiles in String
, though in a much diminished
form. Something of it may even have emerged on the screen. Another novel never
got written. Trapnel himself always insisted that a novel is what its writer
is. The definition only opens up a lot more questions. Perhaps he had taken a
knock from which he never recovered; perhaps he had used up already what was in him, in the way writers do. In these sunless marshlands of existence, a dwindling reserve of pep-pills, a certain innate inventiveness, capacity for survival, above all the mystique of
panache – in short, the Trapnel method – just about made it possible to hang on. That was the best you could say.

I once asked Dicky Umfraville – whose own experiences on
the Turf made his knowledge of racing personalities extensive – whether
he had ever heard of a jockey called Trapnel, whose professional career had been made largely in
Egypt.

‘Heard of him, old boy? When I
was in Cairo in the ’twenties, I won a packet on a French horse he rode called Amour Piquant.’