Books Do Furnish a Room - Anthony Powell [43]
‘He’s going to produce for me a writer called X. Trapnel, of whom he has great hopes.’
‘Camel Ride to the Tomb?’ said Rosie. ‘I thought it so good.’
‘I shall have to read it,’ said Widmerpool. ‘I shall indeed. I must be leaving now to attend to the affairs of the nation.’
Somebody came up at that moment to claim Rosie’s attention, so I never heard the story of what Pamela had said to Peggy Klein.
The promised meeting with X. Trapnel came about the following week. Like almost all persons whose life is largely spun out in saloon bars, Bagshaw acknowledged strong ritualistic responses to given pubs. Each drinking house possessed its special, almost magical endowment to give meaning to whatever was said or done within its individual premises. Indeed Bagshaw himself was so wholeheartedly committed to the mystique of The Pub that no night of his life was complete without a final pint of beer in one of them. Accordingly, withdrawal of Bagshaw’s company – whether or not that were to be regarded as auspicious – could always be relied upon, wherever he might be, however convivial the gathering, ten minutes before closing time. If – an unlikely contingency – the ‘local’ were not already known to him, Bagshaw, when invited to dinner, always took the trouble to ascertain its exact situation for the enaction of this last rite. He must have carried in his head the names and addresses of at least two hundred London pubs – heaven knows how many provincial ones – each measured off in delicate gradations in relation to the others, strictly assessed for every movement in Bagshaw’s tactical game. The licensed premises he chose for the production of Trapnel were in Great Portland Street, dingy, obscure, altogether lacking in outer ‘character’, possibly a haunt familiar for years for stealthy BBC negotiations, after Bagshaw himself had, in principle, abandoned the broadcasting world.
‘I’m sure you’ll like Trapnel,’ he said. ‘I feel none of the reservations about presenting him sometimes experienced during the war. I don’t mean brother officers in the RAF – who could be extraordinarily obtuse in recognizing the good points of a man who happens to be a bit out of the general run – but Trapnel managed to get on the wrong side of several supposedly intelligent people.’
‘Where does he fit into your political panorama?’
Bagshaw laughed.
‘That’s a good question. He has no place there. Doesn’t know what politics are about. I’d define him as a Leftish Social-Democrat, if I had to. Born a Roman Catholic, but doesn’t practise – a lapsed Catholic, rather as I’m a lapsed Marxist. As a matter of fact I came across him in the first instance through a small ILP group in India, but Trapnel didn’t know whether it was arse-holes or Tuesday, so far as all that was concerned. As I say, he’s rather odd-man-out.’
Even without Bagshaw’s note of caution, I had come prepared for Trapnel to turn out a bore. Pleasure in a book carries little or no guarantee where the author is concerned, and Camel Ride to the Tomb, whatever its qualities as a novel, had all the marks of having been written by a man who found difficulty in getting on with the rest of the world. That might well be in his favour; on the other hand, it might equally be a source of anyway local and temporary discomfort, even while one hoped for the best.
‘Trapnel’s incredibly keen to write well,’ said Bagshaw. ‘In fact determined. Won’t compromise an inch. I admire that, so far as it goes, but writers of that sort can add to an editor’s work. Our public may have to be educated up to some of the stuff we’re going to offer – I’m thinking of the political articles Kenneth Widmerpool is planning – so Trapnel’s good, light, lively pieces, if we can get them out of him, arc likely to assist the other end of the mag.’
Trapnel’s arrival at that point did not immediately set at rest Bagshaw’s rather ominous typification of him. Indeed, Bagshaw himself seemed to lose his nerve slightly when Trapnel entered the bar, though only for a second, and quickly recovered.