Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [29]
Delavacquerie kept the proof copy hidden on his knee. He always gave the impression of knowing exactly what he wanted to say, how he was going to behave. Emily Brightman, aware that to show impatience would undermine the strength of her position, displayed self-control. Delavacquerie possessed several of her own characteristics, firmness, directness, grasp of whatever subject had to be considered-
If they opposed each other, she was prepared to accept him on equal terms as an adversary, by no means true of everyone. When food and drink had been ordered, Delavacquerie began to make his statement. Even at the outset this was a sufficiently startling one.
‘You remember, a long time ago, the name came up at one of these meetings of the novelist, X. Trapnel, author of Camel Ride to the Tomb, Dogs Have No Uncles, and other works? He died in the nineteen-fifties. You knew him quite well, I think, Nick?’
Members broke in.
‘I knew Trapnel well too. We all knew him. Did he leave a posthumous biography of somebody, which has just been discovered?’
‘I never knew Trapnel,’ said Emily Brightman. ‘Not personally, that is. I’m always promising myself to read his books, but this must be — ’
‘Please,’ said Delavacquerie.
Smiling, he held Emily Brightman in check.
‘I’m sorry, Gibson, but I’m sure I know more about this subject than you do.’
Delavacquerie, still smiling, shook his head. He continued. In relation to Trapnel he was determined to clarify his own position before anything else was said.
‘I met Trapnel himself only once, and that not for long, more than twenty years ago, but I believe him to be a good writer. We have a life of Trapnel here. His career was not altogether uneventful. This book is by an American professor, a doctoral dissertation, none the worse for that. I have read the book. I think you will like it.’
Emily Brightman was not to be held in any longer. She raised a fork threateningly, as if about to stab Delavacquerie, tf he did not come quickly to the point. Members, too, was showing signs of wanting to ventilate his own Trapnel experiences, before things went much further. I myself felt the same impelling urge.
‘Gibson, this book must be written by Russell Gwinnett.’
Delavacquerie, who, reasonably enough, had forgotten that Emily Brightman once announced herself an old friend of Gwinnett’s, looked a little surprised that she should know the name of the biographer.
‘Have the publishers sent your proof copy already, Emily?’
‘Not yet, but I knew Russell Gwinnett was writing a life of Trapnel. So did Nicholas. We could have told you at once, Gibson, had we been allowed to speak. Russell is an old friend of mine. Nicholas, too, met him when we were in Venice. We talked of it at the first meeting of this committee. You could not have been attending, Gibson. You see you sometimes underrate our capabilities.’
Delavacquerie laughed. Before he could defend himself, Members pegged out his own claim.
‘I don’t know Gwinnett, but I knew Trapnel. You count as knowing a man reasonably well after he’s borrowed five pounds off you. Is that incident mentioned? I hope so.’
If Delavacquerie considered Gwinnett’s book good, the judgment was likely to be sound. I was less surprised to hear that Gwinnett’s biography of Trapnel was well done, than that it had ever been completed at all. If the work was accomplished, Gwinnett was likely to have brought to it the powers he certainly possessed. Personally, I had doubted that the study would ever see light. Emily Brightman must have thought the same. She was greatly excited by the news. When they had both been teaching at the same women’s college in America, in a sense Gwinnett had been a protégé of hers. She had always supported a belief in his abilities as a writer. How much she was prepared to face another, more enigmatic, even more sinister, side of his character, was less easy to assess.
‘I told you Russell was an industrious young man, Nicholas. A capable one too. I suppose he can’t be spoken of as young any longer. He must be well into his forties. At last it looks