Anthony Powell - Temporary Kings

‘We’re a bit north of Primrose Hill. I got the lease on quite favourable terms during the property slump some years after the war, when I left Fission . I shall look forward to hearing all about Professor Gwinnett, when I see you.’

Bagshaw’s house, larger than surmised, was of fairly dilapidated exterior. Waiting on the doorstep, I wondered whether the upper storeys were let off. Children’s voices were to be heard above, one of them making rather a fuss. Children had never played a part in the Bagshaw field of operation. They seemed out of place there. I rang a couple of times, then knocked. The door was opened by a girl of about sixteen or seventeen. Rather vacant in expression, reasonably good-looking, she was not on sight identifiable as member of the family or hired retainer. The point could not be settled, because she turned away without speaking, and set off up some stairs. At first I supposed her a foreign ‘au pair’, speaking no English, possibly seeking an interpreter, but, as she disappeared, she could be heard complaining.

‘All right, I’m coming. Don’t make such a bloody row.’

The protest was a little hysterical as uttered. There was an impression, possibly due to a naturally tuberous figure, that she might be pregnant. That could easily have been a mistaken conclusion. I waited. Several doors could be explored, if no one appeared. I was about to experiment with one of these, when an elderly man, wearing a woollen dressing-gown, came slowly down the stairs up which the girl had departed. It was evident that he did not expect to find me in the hall. His arrival there would pose action of some sort, but, suddenly aware of my presence, he muttered some sort of apology, retreating up the stairs again. Even if Bagshaw’s way of life had in certain respects altered, become more solid, a fundamental pattern of unconventionality remained. The problem of what to do next was solved by the appearance, from a door leading apparently to the basement, of Bagshaw himself.

‘Ah, Nicholas. When did you arrive? How did you get in? Avril opened the door, I suppose. Where is she now? Gone off to quieten the kids, I expect. You haven’t been here long, have you?’

‘No, but a white-haired gentleman came down the stairs just now, apparently seeking help.’

Bagshaw dismissed that.

‘Only my father. May didn’t appear, did she? The gas-cooker’s blown. Come in here, shall we?’

He had changed a good deal since last seen. At that period we did not have a television set, so I had never watched a Bagshaw programme. He looked not only much older, also much more untidy, which once would have seemed hard to achieve. The room we entered was even untidier than Bagshaw himself. The mess there was epic. It seemed half-study, half-nursery, in one corner a bookcase full of works on political theory, in another a large dolls’ house, lacking its façade. The tables and floor were covered with typescripts, income-tax forms, newspapers, weeklies, mini-cars, children’s bricks. Bagshaw made a space on the sofa, at the far end from that where the stuffing was bursting out.

‘Now — a drink?’

‘Who is Avril?’

‘One of my stepdaughters.’

‘I didn’t know — ’

‘Three of them. Avril’s not a bad girl. Not very bright. A bit sub, to tell the truth. She’s in rather a jam at the moment. Can’t be helped.’

Bagshaw made a despairing, consciously theatrical gesture, no doubt developed from his professional life.

‘Are the other stepchildren upstairs?’

He looked surprised. Certainly the ages seemed wrong, if anything were to be inferred from the noises being made.

‘No, no. The ones upstairs are my own. The stepchildren are more or less grown-up. Getting into tangles with boyfriends all the time. You see I’m quite a family man now.’

Bagshaw said that in a whimsical, rather faraway voice, probably another echo of his programme. His whole demeanour had become more histrionic, at least histrionic in a different manner from formerly. He sat down without pouring himself out a drink, something not entirely without precedent, though unlikely to be linked now with curative abstinences of the past.

‘Aren’t you having anything?’

‘I hardly drink at all these days. Find I feel better. Get through more work. Here’s May. How’s your migraine, dear? Have a drink, it may make you feel better. No? Too busy?’

Mrs Bagshaw, in her forties, with traces of the same blonde good-looks as her daughter, had the air of being dreadfully harassed. She was also rather lame. Evidently used to people coming to see her husband about matters connected with his work, perfectly polite, she obviously hoped to get out of the room as soon as possible, after giving some sort of a progress report about the cooking-stove crisis. This problem solved, or postponed, she excused herself and retired again. Bagshaw, who had listened gravely, replied with apparent good sense to his wife’s statements and questions, clearly accepted this new incarnation of himself. In any case, it was no longer new to him. When Mrs Bagshaw had gone, he settled down again to his professionally avuncular manner.

‘Where will this American friend of yours stay in London, Nicholas?’

‘In one of those bleak hotels X used to frequent. He hopes to get the atmosphere first-hand. He really is very keen on doing the book well.’

‘Which one?’

Bagshaw groaned at the name, and shook his head. To judge from the exterior of the place, that reaction was justified.

‘I spent a night there myself once years ago — rather a sordid story I won’t bore you with — in fact recommended the place to Trappy in the first instance. The bathroom accommodation doesn’t exactly measure up to the highest mod. con. standards. You know how strongly Americans feel about these things.’

‘Gwinnett wants the Trapnel ethos, not the best place in London to take a bath.’

‘I see.’

That fact impressed Bagshaw. He thought about it for a moment.

‘Look here, this idea occurred to me as soon as you mentioned your American. Why doesn’t Professor Gwinnett — I mean only when he’s completed his stint of Trapnel ports of call, not before — come and PG with us? The spare room’s free at the moment. Our Japanese statistician went back to Osaka. I think we made him comfortable during his stay. At least he never complained. That may have been Zen, of course, overcoming of illusory dualisms. I got quite interested in Zen while he was with us.’

The idea of lodging with Bagshaw, a guest paying or non-paying, would once have seemed almost as extraordinary as the fact of his possessing a house. Even in the reformed state of his ménage there were disrecommendations. If anyone were to be ‘lodger’, Bagshaw himself had always appeared prototype of the kind, one of Nature’s lodgers; coaxing the landlady, when behind with the rent, seducing her daughter, storing (in his revolutionary days) subversive pamphlets under the bed. He was imaginable in all such stylized circumstances; even meeting his death as a lodger — the Passing of the Third Floor Back, with Bagshaw as the body. Although that picture had to be revised, the thought of paying to live with Bagshaw was still to be accepted with some demur. That was what I felt as Bagshaw himself digressed on the subject.

‘The Icelander, an economist, was rather a turgid fellow, the Eng. Lit. New Zealander, a charming boy. We’re looking for a replacement just like your friend — and what could be better from his point of view, if he’s writing a book about poor old Trappy? I’ll tell you what, Nicholas, I’ll send a line to Professor Gwinnett to await arrival, so that he can arrange to see me whenever it suits his purpose. We’ll have a talk. If all goes well, I’ll suggest he comes and beds down here. I’ll put it this way, that he doesn’t dream of doing any such thing until he’s made an exhaustive study, in depth, of Trapnel haunts, thoroughly absorbed the Trapnel Weltanschauung . That should not take long. The essentials are not difficult to grasp.’