Books Do Furnish a Room - Anthony Powell [84]
‘There were one or two things I wanted to talk about. You know I don’t much like having to explain things on the telephone, though I often have to do that. Anyway, it’s cut off here, the instrument was removed bodily yesterday, and I’m not supposed to go outside for the moment, owing to this malaise I’ve got. You and I haven’t seen each other for some time, Nick. Such a lot’s happened. As I’m a bit off colour I thought you wouldn’t mind coming to our flat. It seemed easier. Pam was sure you’d come.’
He gave her one of those ‘adoring looks’, which Lermontov says mean so little to women. Pamela stared back at him with an expression of complete detachment. I thought of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, though Pamela was far from a pre-raphaelite type or a maid, and, socially speaking, the boot was, if anything, on the other foot. No doubt it was Trapnel’s beard. He had also allowed his hair to grow longer than usual. All the same, he sitting up on the divan, she standing above him, they somehow called up the picture.
‘I brought some essays by L. O. Salvidge.’
‘Paper Wine?’
Trapnel, by some mysterious agency, always knew about all books before they were published. It was as if the information came to him instinctively. He laughed. The thought of reviewing Salvidge’s essays must have made him feel better. One had the impression that he had been locked up with Pamela for weeks, like the Spanish honeymoon couples Borrit used to describe, when we were in the War Office together. To get back to the world of reviewing seemed to offer a magical cure for whatever Trapnel suffered. It really cheered him up.
‘Just what I need – have we got anything to drink, darling?’
‘A bottle of Algerian’s open. Some dregs left, I think.’
‘I don’t want anything at the moment, thanks very much.’
Trapnel lay back on the divan.
‘To begin with, that bloody parody of mine.’
‘I mistook it at first for the real thing.’
That amused Trapnel. Pamela continued to stand by without comment or change of expression.
‘I’m glad you did that. What’s happened about it? Any reactions?’
‘None I’ve heard about. There was some trepidation at the Fission office that trouble might arise from the obvious quarter. Books is away with flu.’
‘What a bloody fool he is. I wrote the thing quite a long time ago at his suggestion. He said he’d have to talk to the others about it. I hadn’t contemplated present circumstances then.’
‘Nor did anyone else.’
‘What about Books?’
‘The evidence is that he didn’t know.’
‘Will Widmerpool believe that?’
‘What can he do?’ asked Pamela. ‘He ought to be flattered.’
Even when she made this comment the tone suggested she was no more on Trapnel’s side than Widmerpool’s. She was assessing the situation objectively.
‘That’s what Books told Evadne Clapham,’ said Trapnel. ‘On that occasion I hadn’t also run away with her husband. I suppose everything combined means I won’t be able to write for Fission any longer. That’s a blow, because it was one of my main sources of income, and I liked the magazine.’
‘JG didn’t seem unduly worried. He’s got the Sweetskin prosecution on hand, and there’s some trouble about Odo Stevens’s book.’
‘I don’t want my publishing connexions messed up too. Quiggin & Craggs have their failings, but they aren’t doing too badly with Bin Ends. I’m not under contract for the next novel. I’m getting near the end now. I don’t want to have to hawk it round.’
At one moment Trapnel would give the impression that he was under contract with Quiggin & Craggs, and wanted to get rid of them; at the next, that he was not under contract, and wanted to stay. That was like him. He pointed to a respectably thick pile of foolscap covered with cuneiform handwriting. Although