Books Do Furnish a Room - Anthony Powell [86]
‘What are people saying about us?’
‘No one knows quite what has happened.’
‘How do you mean?’
She pouted. At that moment the bell rang. Trapnel groaned.
‘God, it’s the man trying to collect the money for the newspapers. He’s come back.’
Pamela made a face.
‘Take no notice. He’ll go away after a while.’
‘He’ll see the light. It was daytime when he came before, and he thought we weren’t in.’
Pamela turned to me.
‘You answer the door. Tell him we’re away – that we’ve lent you the flat.’
I showed unwillingness to undertake this commission. Trapnel was apologetic.
‘We’re being dunned. It always happens if you allow people to know your address. It’s like hotels insisting on cleaning the room out from time to time. There’s always some inconvenience, wherever you live. I couldn’t help giving the address this time, otherwise we wouldn’t have had any papers delivered.’
‘Perhaps it’s for the other people in the house.’
‘They’ve gone away – decamped, I think. Do deal with it.’
‘But what can I say to the man, if he is the newspaper man?’
‘Tell him — ’
The bell rang again. Pamela showed signs of getting cross.
‘Look, X can’t get up in his present state. Do go. If you had ten bob – twelve at the most – that would keep him quiet.’
There seemed no way of avoiding the assignment. I took ten shillings from my notecase, in so far as possible to cut short discussion, and went into the hall. To see the way, it was necessary to leave the flat door ajar. Even so, the place was inconveniently dark, and the front door required a certain amount of negotiating to open. It gave at last. The figure waiting on the the doorstep was not the newspaperman, but Widmerpool. He did not seem in the least surprised that I should be the person to admit him.
‘I expect you’re here on business about the magazine, Nicholas?’
‘Delivering a book to be reviewed, as a matter of fact.’
‘I’m rather glad to find you on the premises. Don’t go away from a mistaken sense of delicacy. Matters of a rather personal nature are likely to be discussed. I am quite glad to have a witness, especially one conversant with the circumstances, connected, I mean, by ties of business, albeit literary business. Where is Trapnel? This way, I take it?’
The light shining through the sitting-room door showed Widmerpool where to go. He took off his hat, crossed the boards of the hall, and over the threshold of the flat. It had at least been unnecessary to announce him. In fact he announced himself.
‘Good evening. I have come to talk about some things.’
Pamela, hands stuck in the pockets of her trousers, was still standing, with her peculiar stillness of poise, in front of the gas fire. If Widmerpool had shown lack of surprise at my opening the door to him, he had at least expressed what seemed to him an adequate explanation as to why I should be with Trapnel. I arranged reviewing at Fission; Trapnel reviewed books. That was sufficient reason for my presence. The fact that Trapnel had run away with Widmerpool’s wife had nothing to do with the business relationship between Trapnel and myself. To disregard it was almost something to approve. That view was no doubt more especially acceptable in the light of propaganda put about by Widmerpool himself.
Pamela, on the other hand, except insomuch as having left her husband, he might, in one sense, be expected to come and look for her, in another, could scarcely have been prepared for his arrival. So far from showing any wonder, she made no sign whatever of being even aware that an additional person had entered the room. She did not permit herself so much as a glance in Widmerpool’s direction. Her expression, one of slight, though not severe displeasure, did not alter in the smallest degree. She seemed to be concentrating on a tear in the wallpaper opposite that ran in a great jagged parabola through a pattern of red parrots and blue storks, freak birds of the same size.
Widmerpool did not speak immediately after his first announcement.