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By Root 3023 0

His work for Fission continued. The stooges came into play, delivering reviews or other pieces, collecting books and cheques, bringing suggestions for further items. Trapnel himself was no longer available. According to Bagshaw, he even ceased to pursue the question of further payment to assist the completion of Profiles in String. Use of surrogates did not prevent complicated negotiations taking place in relation to Fission contributions. For example, Trapnel suggested withdrawing what he had written about Sweetskin, and replacing the review with a parody. Bagshaw liked the idea. It was better for his own relations with Quiggin that Kydd’s novel should not be torn to shreds; better, if it came to that, from my own standpoint too. Alaric Kydd himself might not be altogether pleased to be treated in this fashion, but, a prosecution now pending, he had other things to think about. In any case Sweetskin would enjoy more space than in a notice of normal length. Trapnel’s lightness of touch in showing up Kydd’s weak points as a novelist indicated that the hysterical feelings displayed at The Hero had calmed down; at least infatuation with Pamela had left his talent unimpaired. Possibly this hopeless passion had already been apportioned to the extensive storehouse of forgotten Trapnel fantasies.

Sweetskin was not the only book to cause Quiggin & Craggs worry. Bagshaw reported a serious row blowing up about Sad Majors. Here the complexities of politics, rather than those of sex, impinged on purely commercial considerations. Bagshaw was very much at home in this atmosphere. He talked a lot about the Odo Stevens manuscript, which he had been allowed to read, and described as ‘full of meat’. However, although written in a lively manner, some of the material dealing with the Communist guerillas with whom Stevens had been in contact was at least as outspoken in its field as Kydd on the subject of sex.

‘It appears a British officer operating with a rival Resistance group got rather mysteriously liquidated. Accidents will happen even with the best-regulated secret police. Of course a lot of Royalists were shot, and quite a fair number of people who weren’t exactly Royalists, not to mention a crowd of heretical Communists too, the whole party ending, as we all know, in wholesale arrests and deportations. This is, of course, rather awkward for a firm of progressive tone. JG thinks it can be hoovered over satisfactorily. He wants to do the book, because it will sell, but Howard’s against. He saw at once there’d be a lot of trouble, if the material appeared in its present form.’

‘What will happen?’

‘Gypsy won’t hear of it.’

‘What’s Gypsy got to do with it?’

‘It’s her affair, isn’t it, if what Stevens has said is damaging to the Party? She’s bloody well consulted, apart from anything else, because Howard’s afraid of her – actually physically afraid. He knows about one or two things Gypsy’s arranged in her day. So do I. I don’t blame him.’

‘Have they turned the book down?’

‘They’re arguing it out.’

The weather was still unthawed when, a month or two later, I dined with Roddy Cutts at the House of Commons. Spring should have been on the way by then, but there was no sign. Our respective wives were both to give birth any day now. Roddy had suggested having a night out together to relieve the strain. A night out with Roddy carried no implications of outrageous dissipation. We talked most of the time about family affairs. He had seen Hugo Tolland the day before, who had been staying at Thrubworth, bringing back an account of how Siegfried, the German POW, was every day growing in local stature.

‘Siegfried gives regular conjuring displays now in the village hall. There’s talk of his getting engaged to one of Skerrett’s granddaughters. He’ll be nursing the constituency before we know where we are. Well, I suppose it’s about time to be getting along. I’ll just see how the debate’s going before we make for home.’

Roddy Cutts’s large handsome face always became drawn with anxiety when, at the close of any party at which he had been host,