Books Do Furnish a Room - Anthony Powell [15]
I told him why I was staying at the University, and how work was going to be disrupted during the following week owing to Erridge’s funeral. The information about Erridge at once disturbed Bagshaw.
‘Lord Warminster is no more?’
‘Heard it last night.’
‘This is awful.’
‘I’d no idea you were a close friend.’
Bagshaw’s past activities, especially at the time when he was seeing a good deal of Quiggin, might well have brought him within Erridge’s orbit, though I had never connected them in my mind.
‘I didn’t know Warminster well. Always liked him when we met, and of course sorry to hear the sad news, but why it might be ominous for me was quite apart from personal feelings. The fact was he was putting up the money for a paper I’m supposed to be editing. I was on the point of telling you about it.’
At this period there was constant talk of ‘little magazines’ coming into being. Professionally speaking, their establishment was of interest as media for placing articles, reviewing books, the various pickings of literary life. Erridge had toyed with some such project for years, although the sort of paper he contemplated was not likely to be of much use to myself. It was no great surprise to hear he had finally decided to back a periodical of some sort. The choice of Bagshaw as editor was an adventurous one, but, if they knew each other already, Bagshaw’s recommendation of himself as a ‘professional rebel’ might well have been sufficient to get a job in Erridge’s gift.
‘A new publishing firm, Quiggin & Craggs, is going to produce the magazine. Warminster – Erry, as you call him – was friends with both directors. You must know J. G. Quiggin. Doubt if he’s ever been CP, but Craggs has been a fellow-traveller for years, and my old friend Gypsy toes the Party line as consistently as anyone could.’
‘What’s Gypsy got to do with it?’
‘As Craggs’s wife.’
‘Gypsy married to Craggs?’
‘Has been for a year or two. Quiggin’s an interesting case. He’s always had Communist leanings, but afraid to commit himself. JG doesn’t like too many risks. He feels he might get into more trouble as a Party Member than outside. He hasn’t got Craggs’s staying power.’
‘But Erry wasn’t a Communist at all. In many ways he disapproved, I believe, though he never came out in the open about it.’
‘No, but he got on all right with JG and Howard Craggs. There was even a suggestion he did more than get on well with Gypsy at one time. He was going to back the publishing firm too, though they are to be run quite separately.’
‘What’s the magazine to be called?’
‘Fission. That was thought to strike the right note for the Atomic Age. Something to catch the young writers coming out of the services – Trapnel, for example. That was why I mentioned him. The firm would, of course, be of a somewhat Leftward tendency, given its personnel, but general publishing, not like Boggis & Stone. The magazine was to be Warminster’s toy to do more or less what he liked with. I hope his demise is not going to wreck things. It was he who wanted me to edit it There were one or two others after the job. Gypsy wasn’t all that keen for me to get it, in spite of old ties. I know a bit too much.’
Bagshaw’s lack of orthodoxy, while at the same time soaked in Left-Wing lore, was something to make immediate appeal to Erridge, once considered. Then another idea occurred to me. It was worth firing a shot at random.
‘You’ve been seeing Miss Ada Leintwardine about all this?’
Bagshaw was not in the least taken aback. He stroked his moustache, an utterly unsuitable appendage to his smooth round somewhat priest-like face, and smiled.
‘You know Ada? I thought she was my secret. Where did you run across her?’
He listened to an account of what had taken place in Sillery’s rooms; then nodded, as if understanding all.
‘Sillery’s an interesting case too. I’ve heard it suggested he’s been in the Party himself for years. Myself