Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [46]
‘Was the last speaker a famous writer too?’
‘A famous poet.’
Members seemed owed this description, within the context of the question. Gwinnett followed. He did not speak for long. In fact, without almost impugning the compliment of the award, he could hardly have been more brief. He said that he had admired Trapnel’s work since first reading a short story found in an American magazine, taken immediate steps to discover what else he had written, in due course formed the ambition to write about Trapnel himself. His great regret, Gwinnett said, was never to have met Trapnel in the flesh.
‘I called my book Death’s-head Swordsman, because X. Trapnel’s sword-stick symbolized the way he faced the world. The book’s epigraph – spoken as you will recall, by an actor holding a skull in his hands – emphasizes that Death, as well as Life, can have its beauty.
‘Whether our death be good
Or bad, it is not death, but life that tries.
He lived well: therefore, questionless, well dies.’
Gwinnett stopped. He sat down. The audience, myself included, supposing he was going to elaborate the meaning of the quotation, draw some analogy, waited to clap. Whatever significance he attached to the lines, they remained unexpounded. After the moment of uncertainty some applause was given. Emily Brightman whispered approval.
‘Good, didn’t you think? I impressed on Russell not to be prosy.’
Conversation became general. In a minute or two people would begin to move from their seats – a few were doing so already – and the party break up. I turned over in my mind the question of seeing, or not seeing, Gwinnett, while he remained in England. Now that his work on Trapnel was at an end we had no special tie, although in an odd way I had always felt well disposed towards him, even if his presence imposed a certain strain. The matter was likely to lie in Gwinnett’s hands rather than mine, and in any case, he was only to stay a week. It could be put off until research brought him over here again.
‘In the end we decided against the Bahamas,’ said the director’s lady.
At the far end of the dining-room a guest at one of the tables had begun to talk in an unusually loud voice, probably some author, publisher or reviewer, who had taken too much to drink. There had been enough on supply, scarcely an amount to justify anything spectacular in the way of intoxication. Whoever was responsible for making so much row had probably arrived tipsy, or, during the time available, consumed an exceptional number of pre-dinner drinks. Members, for instance – who put away more than he used – was rather red in the face, no more than that. Conceivably, the noise was simply one of those penetrative conversational voices with devastating carrying power. Then a thumping on the table with a fork or spoon indicated a call for silence. Somebody else wanted to make a speech. There was going to be another unplanned oration, probably on the lines of Alaric Kydd’s tribute to the memory of the homosexual politician, whose biography had received the Prize that year.
‘Look – Lord Widmerpool is going to speak. He was awfully good when I heard him on telly. He talked of all sorts of things I didn’t know about in the most interesting way. He’s not at all conventional, you know. In fact he said he hated all conventions. The American was rather dull, wasn’t he?’
The moment inevitably recalled that when, at a reunion dinner of Le Bas’s Old Boys, Widmerpool had risen to give his views on the current financial situation. I had seen little or nothing of his later career as a public man, so this occasion could have been