Temporary Kings - Anthony Powell [14]
‘X started in at once – Wodehouse and Wittgenstein, Malraux and the Marx Brothers – it was just like the old days, though never before had The Hero known a night like that for free drinks.’
Unlike the mourners of Lazarus – to accept Crowding’s apprehension of the incident, rather than Evadne Clapham’s – the mourners of Trapnel, as, on the strength of his resurrection, they were soon to become, were stood round after round. The Hero, one of those old-fashioned pubs in grained pitchpine with engraved looking-glass (what Mr Deacon used to call a ‘gin palace’), was anatomized into half-a-dozen or more separate compartments, subtly differentiating, in the traditional British manner, social subdivisions of its clientèle, according to temperament or means: saloon bar: public bar: private bar: ladies’ bar: wine bar: off-licence: possibly others too. Customers occupied in these peripheries were all included in the Trapnel largesse, no less than those in the saloon bar, where he had manifested himself. Swept in, too, were several birds of passage, transients buying half-a-bottle in the off-licence. The fountains ran with wine, more precisely with bitter and scotch. News of this boundless munificence got round immediately, not only emptying The French-polishers’ Arms opposite – according to Crowding, lately a serious rival to The Hero in draining off a sediment of discontented intellectuals – but also considerably reducing numbers in The Marquess of Sleaford round the corner, where intellectuals were virtually unknown. Not only were these two latter pubs practically cleared of customers, but what Crowding called a ‘thirsty concourse’ poured into The Hero from The Wheelbarrow (at the time of Bagshaw’s first marriage, his last port of call on the way home, owing to staying open until eleven), auxiliary drinkers from other taverns being all hospitably received by Trapnel, if they could only get near enough to him. Crowding, telling the story, would here shake his head.
‘X looked dreadfully ill. As near the image of Death as the knob of that stick he used to carry round, before he threw it into the Grand Union Canal. His face was even whiter.’
Trapnel had been at the height of his old form, talking at the top of his voice, laughing, shouting, contradicting, laying down the law about books and writers, films and film stars, giving prolonged imitations of Boris Karloff; in general reconstructing in its most intrinsic aspects his own persona of years gone by. Not only Crowding, but many others, agreed The Hero had never known such a night. That could not go on for ever. An end had to come. Finally, inexorably, closing time was announced. This moment always represented the peak of Crowding’s narrative.
‘X walked through the doors of The Hero like a king. There was real dignity in his stride. It was a royal progress. Courtiers followed in his wake. You can imagine – free drinks – there was quite a crowd by that time, some of them singing, as it might be, chants in a patron’s praise. X stopped outside, and they all stood round. He waited for a moment by the kerb. Everyone kept back somehow, as if they didn’t dare be too familiar. X gazed up the street, then down it, in that proud way of his. He must have been looking for a taxi. He hadn’t said yet where he wanted to go. I noticed for the first time that his beard was turning grey. Suddenly he gave a start, remembering something. He wrung his hands, rushed back, tried to get into the pub again through the outer doors, which they were barring up. They wouldn’t let him back. He gave a loud cry.
‘“I’ve forgotten my stick. I’ve lost my stick. My death’s head stick.”
‘Of course they wouldn