Anthony Powell - Books Do Furnish a Room

‘Is it a work of genius? Do decide one way or the other. We can’t bear more delay to know whether it ought to be published or not.’

Trapnel gave a kind of shudder. He swayed. Either drink had once more overcome him with the suddenness with which it had struck outside the pub, or he was acting out a scene of feigned horror at what he read. Whichever it were, he really did look again as if about to fall into the Canal. Abruptly he stopped playing the part, or recovered his nerve. I suppose these antics, like the literary ramblings in the pub, also designed to delay discovery that Pamela had abandoned him; alternatively, to put off some frightful confrontation with her.

‘Do come back, Trappy.’

Then an extraordinary thing happened. Trapnel was still standing by the edge of the water holding the dripping sheet of foolscap. Now he crushed it in his hand, and threw the ball of paper back into the Canal. He lifted the sword-stick behind his head, and, putting all his force into the throw, cast it as far as this would carry, high into the air. The stick turned and descended, death’s-head first. A mystic arm should certainly have risen from the dark waters of the mere to receive it. That did not happen. Trapnel’s Excalibur struck the flood a long way from the bank, disappeared for a moment, surfaced, and began to float downstream.

‘Now he really has become unmoored,’ said Bagshaw.

Trapnel came slowly up the bank.

‘You’ll never get your stick back, Trappy. What ever made you do it? We’ll hurry on to the bridge right away. It might have got caught up on something. There’s not much hope.’

Trapnel climbed back on to the pavement.

‘You were quite wrong, Books.’

‘What about?’

‘It was a work of genius.’

‘What was?’

‘The manuscript in the water — it was Profiles in String .’

I now agreed with Bagshaw in supposing Trapnel to have gone completely off his head. He stood looking at us. His smile was one of the consciously dramatic ones.

‘She brought the MS along, and chucked it into the Canal. She knew I should be almost bound to pass this way, and it would be well on the cards I should notice it. We quite often used to stroll down here at night and talk about the muck floating down, french letters and such like. She must have climbed over the railings to get to the water. I’d like to have watched her doing that. I’d thought of a lot of things she might be up to — doctoring my pills, arranging for me to find her being had by the milkman, giving the bailiffs our address. I never thought of this. I never thought she’d destroy my book.’

He stood there, still smiling slightly, almost as if he were embarrassed by what had happened.

‘You really mean that’s your manuscript over there in the water?’

Trapnel nodded.

‘The whole of it?’

‘It wasn’t quite finished. The end was what we had the row about.’

‘You must have a copy?’

“Of course I haven’t a copy. Why should I? I told you, it wasn’t finished yet.’

Even Bagshaw was appalled. He began to speak, then stopped, something I had never seen happen before. There was certainly nothing to say. Trapnel just stood there.

‘Come and look for the stick, Trappy.’

Trapnel was not at all disposed to move. Now the act had taken place, he wanted to reflect on it. Perhaps he feared still worse damage when the flat was reached, though that was hard to conceive.

‘In a way I’m not surprised. Even though this particular dish never struck me as likely to appear on the menu, it all fits in with the cuisine. Christ, two years’ work, and I’ll never feel the same as when I was writing it. She may be correct in what she thinks about it, but I’ll never be able to write it again — either her way or my own.’

Bagshaw, in spite of his feelings about the manuscript, could not forget the stick. The girl did not interest him at all.

‘You’ll never find a swordstick like that again. It was a great mistake to throw it away.’

Trapnel was not listening. He stood there musing. Then all at once he revealed something that had always been a mystery. Being Trapnel, an egotist of the first rank, he supposed this disclosure as of interest only in his own case, but a far wider field of vision was at the same time opened up by what was unveiled. In a sense it was of most interest where Trapnel was concerned, because he seems to have reacted in a somewhat different fashion to the rest of Pamela’s lovers, but, applicable to all of them, what was divulged offered clarification of her relations with men. Drink, pills, the strain of living with her, the destruction of Profiles in String , combination of all those, brought about a confession hardly conceivable from Trapnel in other circumstances. He now spoke in a low, confidential tone.

‘You may have wondered why a girl like that ever came to live with me?’

‘Not so much as why she ever married that husband of hers,’ said Bagshaw. ‘I can understand all the rest.’

‘I doubt if you can. Not every man can stand what’s entailed.’

‘I don’t contradict that.’

‘You don’t know what I mean.’

‘What do you mean?’

Trapnel did not answer for a moment. It was as if he were thinking how to phrase whatever he intended to say. Then he spoke with great intensity.

‘It’s when you have her. She wants it all the time, yet doesn’t want it. She goes rigid like a corpse. Every grind’s a nightmare. It’s all the time, and always the same.’

Trapnel said this with absolute simplicity. Irony, melodrama, narcissism, fantasy, all his accustomed tendency to. play a role had been this time completely eliminated. The curtain was at least partially drawn aside. A little light had been let in, Stevens had not told all the truth.

‘I could take it, because — well, I suppose because I loved her. Why not admit it? I’m not sure I don’t still.’

Bagshaw could not stand that. Excessive displays of amative sensibility always disturbed him.

‘Even Sacher-Masoch drew the line somewhere, Trappy — true we don’t know where. What did her husband think about this, I’d like to know.’

‘She told me he only tried a couple of times. Gave it up as a bad job.’

‘So that’s how things are?’

‘For certain reasons it suited him to be married to her.’

‘And her to him?’

‘She stopped that, if ever true, when she came to live with me.’

Even after what had taken place, Trapnel spoke defensively.

‘It gave him a kind of prestige,’ he said.

‘Not much prestige the way she was carrying on.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘I don’t.’

‘It’s not what she does, it’s what she is.’

‘You mean he’s positively flattered?’

‘That’s what she seemed to think. She may be right. That’s a form of masochism too. It’s not my sort. Not that I can explain my sort, if that’s what it is. It doesn’t feel unnatural to me. As I said, I love her — at least used to. I don’t think I do now. She’ll always go on like this. She’s a child, who doesn’t know any better.’

‘Oh, balls,’ said Bagshaw. ‘I’ve heard men say that sort of thing about women before. It’s rubbish, the scrapings of the barrel. You must rise above that, Trappy. Let’s get back to your place anyway.’

I had never seen Bagshaw so agitated. This time Trapnel came quietly. When we reached the bridge, he insisted that he did not want to look for the stick.

‘It’s a sacrifice. One of those things you dedicate to the Gods. I remember reading about a sacred pool in an Indian temple, where good writing floated on the water, bad writing sank. Perhaps the Canal has the same property, and Pam was right to put my book there.’