Anthony Powell - Books Do Furnish a Room

‘Look here, it’s awfully good of you to come, Nick.’

One wondered, at this austere period for acquiring any sort of clothing to be regarded as of unusual design, where he had bought the dirty white pyjamas patterned with large red spots. The circumstances were in general a shade more sordid than pictured. Trapnel had been reading a detective story, which he now threw on the floor. A lot of other books lay about over the bedclothes, among them Oblomov, The Thin Man, Adolphe , in a French edition, all copies worn to shreds. Trapnel looked pale, rather dazed, otherwise no worse than usual. Before I could speak, Pamela made a request.

‘Have you a shilling? The fire’s going out.’

She took the coin and slipped it into the slot, reviving the dying flame, just going blue. As the gas flared up again, its hiss for some inexplicable reason suggested an explanation of why Pamela had married Widmerpool. She had done it, so to speak, in order to run away with Trapnel. I do not mean she had thought that out in precise terms — a vivid imagination would be required to predict the advent of Trapnel into Widmerpool’s life — but the violent antithesis presented by their contrasted forms of existence, two unique specimens as it were brought into collision, promised anarchic extremities of feeling of the kind at which she aimed; in which she was principally at home. She liked — to borrow a phrase from St. John Clarke — to ‘try conclusions with the maelstrom’. One of the consequences of her presence was to displace Trapnel’s tendency to play a part during the first few minutes of any meeting. That could well have been knocked out of him by ill health, as much as by Pamela. He spoke now as if he were merely a little embarrassed.

‘There were one or two things I wanted to talk about. You know I don’t much like having to explain things on the telephone, though I often have to do that. Anyway, it’s cut off here, the instrument was removed bodily yesterday, and I’m not supposed to go outside for the moment, owing to this malaise I’ve got. You and I haven’t seen each other for some time, Nick. Such a lot’s happened. As I’m a bit off colour I thought you wouldn’t mind coming to our flat. It seemed easier. Pam was sure you’d come.’

He gave her one of those ‘adoring looks’, which Lermontov says mean so little to women. Pamela stared back at him with an expression of complete detachment. I thought of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, though Pamela was far from a pre-raphaelite type or a maid, and, socially speaking, the boot was, if anything, on the other foot. No doubt it was Trapnel’s beard. He had also allowed his hair to grow longer than usual. All the same, he sitting up on the divan, she standing above him, they somehow called up the picture.

‘I brought some essays by L. O. Salvidge.’

‘ Paper Wine ?’

Trapnel, by some mysterious agency, always knew about all books before they were published. It was as if the information came to him instinctively. He laughed. The thought of reviewing Salvidge’s essays must have made him feel better. One had the impression that he had been locked up with Pamela for weeks, like the Spanish honeymoon couples Borrit used to describe, when we were in the War Office together. To get back to the world of reviewing seemed to offer a magical cure for whatever Trapnel suffered. It really cheered him up.

‘Just what I need — have we got anything to drink, darling?’

‘A bottle of Algerian’s open. Some dregs left, I think.’

‘I don’t want anything at the moment, thanks very much.’

Trapnel lay back on the divan.

‘To begin with, that bloody parody of mine.’

‘I mistook it at first for the real thing.’

That amused Trapnel. Pamela continued to stand by without comment or change of expression.

‘I’m glad you did that. What’s happened about it? Any reactions?’

‘None I’ve heard about. There was some trepidation at the Fission office that trouble might arise from the obvious quarter. Books is away with flu.’

‘What a bloody fool he is. I wrote the thing quite a long time ago at his suggestion. He said he’d have to talk to the others about it. I hadn’t contemplated present circumstances then.’

‘Nor did anyone else.’

‘What about Books?’

‘The evidence is that he didn’t know.’

‘Will Widmerpool believe that?’

‘What can he do?’ asked Pamela. ‘He ought to be flattered.’

Even when she made this comment the tone suggested she was no more on Trapnel’s side than Widmerpool’s. She was assessing the situation objectively.

‘That’s what Books told Evadne Clapham,’ said Trapnel. ‘On that occasion I hadn’t also run away with her husband. I suppose everything combined means I won’t be able to write for Fission any longer. That’s a blow, because it was one of my main sources of income, and I liked the magazine.’

‘JG didn’t seem unduly worried. He’s got the Sweetskin prosecution on hand, and there’s some trouble about Odo Stevens’s book.’

‘I don’t want my publishing connexions messed up too. Quiggin & Craggs have their failings, but they aren’t doing too badly with Bin Ends . I’m not under contract for the next novel. I’m getting near the end now. I don’t want to have to hawk it round.’

At one moment Trapnel would give the impression that he was under contract with Quiggin & Craggs, and wanted to get rid of them; at the next, that he was not under contract, and wanted to stay. That was like him. He pointed to a respectably thick pile of foolscap covered with cuneiform handwriting. Although able to type, to use a typewriter was against Trapnel’s principles. The books had to be written by his own hand. This talk about the novel seemed to displease Pamela. She began to frown.

‘How’s my husband?’ she asked.

‘I’ve not seen him lately — not since the night you left.’

‘You saw him then?’

‘I’d been dining with another MP. We came back to the Victoria Street flat to discuss some things.’

‘Which MP?’

‘Roddy Cutts — my brother-in-law.’

‘That tall sandy-haired Tory?’

‘Yes.’

‘Were you there when Short delivered the message?’

‘Yes.’

‘How was it taken?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well or badly?’

‘There was no scene.’

A slight flush had come over her face when she asked these questions. There could be no doubt she derived some sort of sensual satisfaction from dwelling on what had happened. Trapnel, acute enough to recognize, and resent, this process of exciting herself by such means, looked uneasy. The manner in which she managed to maintain a wholly unchanged demeanour in these very changed surroundings was notable; yet after all why should she become different just because she had decided to spend a season with Trapnel? With him, with Odo Stevens, with Allied officers, for that matter with Widmerpool, she remained the same, as individuals mostly do within a more intimate orbit; at home; with a lover; under unaccustomed stress. To suppose otherwise is naïve. At the same time, some require action, others are paralysed by action. That dissimilarity recognized, people stay themselves. Pamela did not give an inch. She was not rattled. She did the rattling.

The same could not be said of Widmerpool. He was obstinate, not easily deflected from his purpose, but circumstances might rattle him badly. He was not, like Pamela, consistent in never adapting his behaviour to others. Her constant search for new lovers made the world see her as existing solely in the field of sex, but the Furies that had driven her into the arms of Widmerpool by their torments — no doubt his too — at the same time invested her with the magnetic power that mesmerized Trapnel, operated in a manner to transcend love or sex, as both are commonly regarded. Did she and Widmerpool in some manner supplement each other, she supplying a condition he lacked — one that Burton would have called Melancholy? Now she showed her powers at work.