Temporary Kings - Anthony Powell [10]
Gwinnett sounded oddly excited. His manner had altogether altered. The thought of Iphigenia must have strangely moved him. Then he abruptly changed the subject. For some reason speaking of the Veronese had released something within himself, made it possible to introduce another, quite different motif, one, as it turned out, that had been on his mind ever since we met. This matter, once given expression, a little explained earlier lack of ease. At least it suggested that Gwinnett, when broaching topics that meant a lot to him, was not so much vain or unaccommodating, as nervous, paralysed, unsure of himself. That was the next impression, equally untrustworthy as a judgment.
‘You knew the English writer X. Trapnel, Mr Jenkins?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Pretty well, I believe?’
‘Yes, I was quite an authority on Trapnel at one moment.’
Gwinnett sighed.
‘I’d give anything to have known Trapnel.’
‘There were ups and downs in being a friend.’
‘You thought him a good writer?’
‘A very good writer.’
‘I did too. That’s why I’d have loved to meet him. I could have done that when I was a student. I was over in London. I get mad at myself when I think of that. He was still alive. I hadn’t read his books then. I wouldn’t have known where to go and see him anyway.’
‘All you had to do was to have a drink at one of his pubs.’
‘I couldn’t just speak to him. He wouldn’t have liked that.’
‘If somebody had told you one or two of his haunts – The Hero of Acre or The Mortimer – you could hardly have avoided hearing Trapnel holding forth on books and writers. Then you might have stood him a drink. The job would have been done.’
‘Trapnel’s the subject of my dissertation – his life and works.’
‘So Trapnel’s going to have a biographer?’
‘Myself.’
‘Fine.’
‘You think it right?’
‘Quite right.’
Gwinnett nodded his head.
‘I ought to say I’d already planned to get in touch with you, Mr Jenkins – among others who’d known Trapnel – when I reached England after this Conference. I’d never have expected to find you here.’
After the statement of Gwinnett’s Trapnel project relations might have been on the way to becoming easier. That did not happen; at least easing was by no means immediate. For a minute or two he seemed even to regret the headlong nature of the confession. Then he recovered some of the earlier more amenable manner.
‘You did not go on seeing Trapnel right up to his death, I guess?’
‘Not for about four or five years before that. It must be the best part of ten years now since I talked to him – though he once sent me a note asking the date when some book had been published, the actual month, I mean. He went completely underground latterly.’
‘What book was that – the one he wanted to know about?’
‘A collection of essays by L. O. Salvidge called Paper Wine. There had been some question of Trapnel reviewing it, but the notice never got written.’
‘Where was Trapnel living when he wrote you?’
‘He only gave an accommodation address. A newspaper shop in the Islington part of the world.
‘I want to see Mr Salvidge too when I get to London.’
‘As you know, he contributed an Introduction to a posthumous work of Trapnel’s called Dogs Have No Uncle.’
‘It’s good. Not as great as Camel Ride to the Tomb, but good. What a sense of doom that other tide gives.’
In contrast with the passing of a prolific writer like Ferrand-Sénéschal, Trapnel’s end, in spite of aptness of circumstances, took place unnoticed by the press. That was not surprising. He had produced no ‘serious’ work during his latter days. Throughout his life he had been accustomed to ‘go underground’ intermittently, when things took an unfavourable turn; the underground state becoming permanent after the Pamela Widmerpool affair, her destruction of his manuscript, return to her husband. That was when Trapnel disappeared for good. I knew no one who continued to hobnob with him. He must have made business contacts from time to time. His name would occasionally appear in print, or on the air, in connexion with hack work of one kind or another. This