Books Do Furnish a Room - Anthony Powell [69]
‘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