Anthony Powell - Books Do Furnish a Room

‘I warned her that old fool Craggs, whose firm she’s joining, is as randy as a stoat. I threw a glass of Algerian wine over him once when he was trying to rape me. Christ, his wife’s a bore. I thought I’d strangle her on the way here. Look at her now.’

Gypsy, followed by Craggs, Quiggin and Widmerpool, had just arrived, ushered in by Siegfried, to whom Widmerpool was talking loudly in German. Whatever he had been saying must have impressed Siegfried, who stuck out his elbows and clicked his heels before once more leaving the room. Widmerpool missed this mark of respect, because he had already begun to look anxiously round for his wife. Frederica went forward to receive him, and the others, but Widmerpool scarcely took any notice of her, almost at once marking down Pamela’s location and hurrying towards her. To run her to earth was obviously an enormous relief. He was quite breathless when he spoke.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Why should I be all right?’

‘I meant no longer feeling faint. How did you find your way here? It was sensible to come and lie down.’

‘I didn’t fancy dying of exposure, which was the alternative.’

‘Is it one of your nervous attacks?’

‘I told you I’d feel like bloody hell if I came on this ghastly party — you insisted.’

‘I know I did, dear, I didn’t want to leave you alone. We’ll be back soon.’

‘Back where?’

‘Home.’

‘After another lovely journey with your friends.’

Widmerpool was not at all dismayed by this discouraging reception. What he wanted to know was Pamela’s whereabouts. Having settled that, all was well. The physical state she might or might not be in was in his eyes a secondary matter. In any case he was probably pretty used to rough treatment by now, would not otherwise have been able to survive as a husband. Barnby used to describe the similar recurrent anxieties of the husband of some woman with whom he had been once involved, the man’s disregard for everything except ignorance on his own part of his wife’s localization. Having her under his eye, no matter how ill-humoured or badly-behaved, was all that mattered. Widmerpool seemed to have reached much the same stage in married life. Anything was preferable to lack of information as to what Pamela might be doing. His tone now altered to one of great relief.

‘You’d better lie still. Rest while you can. I must go and talk business.’

‘Do you ever talk anything else?’

Disregarding the question, he turned to me.

‘Why is that Tory MP Cutts here?’

‘He’s another brother-in-law.’

‘Of course, I’d forgotten. Retained his seat very marginally. I must have a word with him. That’s Hugo Tolland he’s talking to, I believe?’

‘I haven’t had an opportunity yet to congratulate you on winning your own seat.’

Widmerpool grasped my arm in the chumminess appropriate to a public man to whom all other men are blood brothers.

‘Thanks, thanks. It showed the way things are going. A colleague in the House rather amusingly phrased it to me. We are the masters now, he said. The fight itself was a heartening experience. I used to meet Cutts when I was younger, but we have not yet made contact at Westminster. He had a sister called Mercy, I remember from the old days. Rather a plain girl. There are some things I’d like to discuss with him.’

He left the area of the sofa. Now the war was over one constantly found oneself congratulating people. In a mysterious manner almost everyone who had survived seemed also to have had a leg up. For example, books written by myself, long out of print, appeared better known after nearly seven years of literary silence. This was a more acceptable side of growing older. Even Quiggin, Craggs and Bagshaw had the air of added stature. Craggs was talking to Norah. Either to get away from him, or because she had decided that contact with Pamela was unavoidable, better to be faced coolly, she made some excuse, and came towards us. She may also have felt the need to restore her own reputation for disregarding commonplaces of sentiment in relation to such things as love and death. A brisk talk to Pamela offered opportunity to cover both elements with lightness of touch.

‘Hullo, Pam.’

Norah’s manner was jaunty.

‘Hullo.’

‘I never expected to see you here today.’

‘You wouldn’t have done, if I’d had my way.’

‘Unlike you not to have your way, Pam.’

‘That’s good from you. You were always wanting me to do things I hated.’

‘But didn’t succeed.’

‘It didn’t look like that to me.’

‘How have you been, Pam?’

‘Like hell.’

After saying that Pamela picked up the book from the floor — revealed as Hugo’s copy of Camel Ride to the Tomb , which he had brought down with him — smoothed out the crumpled pages, and began to turn them absently. Conceiving Norah well qualified by past experience to contend with manoeuvring of this particular kind, in which emotional undercurrents were veiled by unpromising mannerisms, I moved away. Their current relationship would be better hammered out unimpeded by male surveillance. Craggs, left on his own by Norah, had joined Quiggin and Frederica, who were talking together. In his elaborately refined vocables, reminiscent of a stage clergyman in spite of his anti-clericalism, he began to speak of Erridge.

‘Such satisfying recollections of your brother were brought home to us — JG and myself, I mean — by the letter you are discussing. It revealed the man, the humanity under a perplexed, one might almost say headstrong exterior.’

Quiggin nodded judiciously. He may have felt a follow-up by Craggs would be helpful after whatever he had himself been saying, because he led me away from the other two. He had been looking rather fiercely round the room while engaged with Frederica. Now his manner became jocular.

‘Only through me you infiltrated this house.’

Notwithstanding fairly powerful efforts on his own part to prevent any such ingress, that was broadly speaking true. Obstructive tactics at such a distant date could be overlooked in the light of subsequent events. In any case Quiggin seemed to have forgotten this obverse side of his own benevolence. I supposed he was going to explain whatever dispositions Erridge had left which affected the new publishing firm, but something else was on his mind.

‘You saw Mona?’ he asked.

‘I had quite a talk with her.’

‘She was looking very prosperous.’

‘She’s married to an Air Vice-Marshal.’

‘Good God.’

‘She appears to like it.’

‘Rather an intellectual comedown.’

‘You never can tell.’

‘Did she ask about me?’

‘Said she’d sighted you outside the church and waved.’

‘Not particularly good taste her coming, I thought. But listen — I understand you met Bagshaw, and he talked about Fission ?’

‘Not in detail. He said Erry had an interest — that to some extent the magazine would propagate his ideas.’

‘Unfortunately that will be possible only in retrospect, but the fact Alf is no longer with us does not mean the paper will not be launched. In fact it will be carried forward much as he would have wished, subject to certain modifications. Kenneth Widmerpool is interested in it now. He wants an organ for his own views. There is another potential backer keen on the more literary, less political side. We have no objection to that. We think the magazine should be open to all opinion to be looked upon as progressive, a rather broader basis than Alf envisaged might be advantageous.’

‘Why not?’

‘Bagshaw was in Alf’s eyes editor-designate. He has had a good deal of experience, even if not of actually running a magazine. I think he should make a tolerable job of it. Howard does not altogether approve of his attitude in certain political directions, but then Howard and Alf did not always see eye to eye.’