Anthony Powell - Books Do Furnish a Room

A further reason for the story to develop a strangely muffled character, almost as if leaked through a kind of censorship, was the hard work Widmerpool himself put in to lower the outside temperature. However he might inwardly regard the situation, as an MP he was understandably anxious to play down such a blemish on the life of a public man. Just as he had done to Short on the night of Pamela’s departure, he emphasized through all possible channels his wife’s undoubted eccentricity, circulating anecdotes about her to suggest that she was doing no more than taking a brief holiday from married life. She would return when she thought fit. That was Widmerpool’s line. Her husband, knowing her strange ways, paid little attention, in the end more people than might be expected pretty well accepted that explanation. It was a trump card. At first that was not so apparent as it became later.

Of course a friend of Pamela’s like Ada Leintwardine — a position in which Ada was, as a woman, probably unique — was thrown into a great state of commotion when the news, such as it was, broke. It was confirmed by L. O. Salvidge to the extent that two or three weeks before he had seen Trapnel in The Hero, accompanied by a very beautiful girl with a pale face and dark hair. They had stayed in the saloon bar only a few seconds, not even ordering drinks. Trapnel wanted to make some arrangement with one of the auxiliaries. Salvidge’s information predated the night at Widmerpool’s. Ada conceded not only that she had now lost all touch with Pamela, but — an unexampled admission on Ada’s part — could claim no suspicion whatever as to what must have been going on. This amounted to confession that, however profound her own powers of intuition, they had fallen short of paramountcy in probing this particular sequence of emotional development. All she had supposed was that Trapnel had been ‘rather intrigued’ by Pamela; the notion that he should sufficiently flatter himself as to allow dreams of her mastery was something quite beyond credibility. Ada’s alliance with Pamela had, in fact, never taken the form of frequentation of the Widmerpool household. They had just been ‘girls together’ outside Pamela’s married life. Ada continually repeated her disbelief.

‘It can’t really be Trapnel.’

Not only did Trapnel himself no longer appear at the Fission office, his representatives now dropped off too. Bagshaw had recently retired to bed with flu. For once the new number was fully made up, left to be seen through the press by the latest secretary, a red-haired, freckled girl called Judy, whom Bagshaw himself had produced from somewhere or other, alleging that she was not at all stupid, but unreliable at spelling. Judy had just brought in a stack of advance copies of the magazine when in due course I arrived to carry out the normal stint with the books. These were being examined by Quiggin and Ada, who were both on the Fission side of the backyard.

Quiggin, possibly under the influence of Ada, had now for the most part abandoned his immediately post-war trappings suggesting he had just come in from skirmishing with a sten-gun in the undergrowth, though traces remained in a thick grey shirt. On the whole he had settled for a no-nonsense middle-aged intellectual’s style of dress, a new suit in dark check and bow tie, turn-out better suited to his station as an aspiring publisher. Ada was laughing at what they were reading, Quiggin less certain that he was finding the contribution funny. He had taken his hands from the jacket pockets of the check suit, and was straightening the lapels rather uneasily.

‘There’s going to be a row,’ said Ada.

She was pleased rather than the reverse by that prospect. Quiggin himself seemed not wholly displeased, though his amusement was combined with anxiety, which the Sweetskin case was sufficient to explain. An extract from Ada’s own novel was to be included in this current number. Her work in progress had not yet been given a tide, but it was billed as ‘daring’, so that in the cold light of print Quiggin might fear the police would now step in where Fission too was concerned.

‘Are you going to be prosecuted, Ada?’

‘I was laughing at X’s piece. Read this.’

She handed me a copy of the magazine. It was open at Widmerpool’s article Assumptions of Autarchy v. Dynamics of Adjustment . Since she had indicated Trapnel’s piece as the focus of interest, I turned back to the list of contents to find the page. Ada snatched it from me.

‘No, no. Where I gave it you.’

Another glance at the typeface showed what she meant. The page that at first appeared to be the opening of Widmerpool’s routine article on politics or economics — usually a mixture of both — was in fact a parody of Widmerpool’s writing by Trapnel. I sat down the better to appreciate the pastiche. It was a little masterpiece in its way. Trapnel’s ignorance of matters political or economic, his total lack of interest in them, had not handicapped the manner in which he caught Widmerpool’s characteristic style. If anything that ignorance had been an advantage. The gibberish, interspersed with double ententes , was entirely convincing.

‘I do not assert … a convincing lead … cyclical monopoly resistance… the optimum factor …’

This was Bagshaw taking the bit between his teeth. However one looked at it, that much was clear. In the course of arranging subjects for Trapnel’s parodies he had certainly included contributors to Fission before now. Alaric Kydd was not, as it happened, one of these, being somewhat detached from the Fission genre of writer, but Evadne Clapham, represented by a short story in the first number, had been one of Trapnel’s victims. Always excitable, she had at first talked of a libel action. Bagshaw had convinced her finally that only the most talented of writers were amenable to parody, and she had forgiven both himself and Trapnel. All this was in line with Bagshaw’s taste for sailing near the wind, whatever he did, but he had never spoken of setting Trapnel to work on Widmerpool. That was certainly to expose himself to danger. The temptation to do so, once the idea had occurred to an editor of Bagshaw’s temperament, would, on the other hand, be a hard one to resist.

If, in the light of his business connexions with the publishing firm and the magazine, it were risky to parody Widmerpool, Widmerpool’s lack of respect for Bagshaw’s abilities as an editor did not make the experiment any less hazardous. For the parody to appear in print at this moment would certainly liven the mixture with new unforeseen fermentations. It was equally characteristic of Bagshaw to be away from the office at such a juncture. Quiggin himself certainly grasped that, at a moment when lurid theories about the elopement were giving place to acceptance of the Widmerpool version, there was a danger of a severe setback for such an interpretation of the story. He saw that circumstances were so ominous that the only thing to do was to claim the parody as a victory rather than a defeat.

‘You have to look at things all ways. Kenneth Widmerpool is taking the line that no catastrophic break in his married life is threatened. Whether or not that is true, we have no reliable evidence how far, if at all, Trapnel is involved. In a sense, therefore, a good-natured burlesque by X of Kenneth’s literary mannerisms suggests friendly, rather than unfriendly, relations.’

‘Good-natured?’

Quiggin looked at Ada severely, but not without a suggestion of desire.

‘Parodies are intended to raise a laugh. Perhaps you did not know that, Ada. If someone had taken the trouble to show me the piece before it was printed, I might have done a little sub-editing here and there. I don’t promise it would have improved the whole, so perhaps it was better not.’