Temporary Kings - Anthony Powell [76]
‘We’re a bit north of Primrose Hill. I got the lease on quite favourable terms during the property slump some years after the war, when I left Fission. I shall look forward to hearing all about Professor Gwinnett, when I see you.’
Bagshaw’s house, larger than surmised, was of fairly dilapidated exterior. Waiting on the doorstep, I wondered whether the upper storeys were let off. Children’s voices were to be heard above, one of them making rather a fuss. Children had never played a part in the Bagshaw field of operation. They seemed out of place there. I rang a couple of times, then knocked. The door was opened by a girl of about sixteen or seventeen. Rather vacant in expression, reasonably good-looking, she was not on sight identifiable as member of the family or hired retainer. The point could not be settled, because she turned away without speaking, and set off up some stairs. At first I supposed her a foreign ‘au pair’, speaking no English, possibly seeking an interpreter, but, as she disappeared, she could be heard complaining.
‘All right, I’m coming. Don’t make such a bloody row.’
The protest was a little hysterical as uttered. There was an impression, possibly due to a naturally tuberous figure, that she might be pregnant. That could easily have been a mistaken conclusion. I waited. Several doors could be explored, if no one appeared. I was about to experiment with one of these, when an elderly man, wearing a woollen dressing-gown, came slowly down the stairs up which the girl had departed. It was evident that he did not expect to find me in the hall. His arrival there would pose action of some sort, but, suddenly aware of my presence, he muttered some sort of apology, retreating up the stairs again. Even if Bagshaw’s way of life had in certain respects altered, become more solid, a fundamental pattern of unconventionality remained. The problem of what to do next was solved by the appearance, from a door leading apparently to the basement, of Bagshaw himself.
‘Ah, Nicholas. When did you arrive? How did you get in? Avril opened the door, I suppose. Where is she now? Gone off to quieten the kids, I expect. You haven’t been here long, have you?’
‘No, but a white-haired gentleman came down the stairs just now, apparently seeking help.’
Bagshaw dismissed that.
‘Only my father. May didn’t appear, did she? The gas-cooker’s blown. Come in here, shall we?’
He had changed a good deal since last seen. At that period we did not have a television set, so I had never watched a Bagshaw programme. He looked not only much older, also much more untidy, which once would have seemed hard to achieve. The room we entered was even untidier than Bagshaw himself. The mess there was epic. It seemed half-study, half-nursery, in one corner a bookcase full of works on political theory, in another a large dolls’ house, lacking its façade. The tables and floor were covered with typescripts, income-tax forms, newspapers, weeklies, mini-cars, children’s bricks. Bagshaw made a space on the sofa, at the far end from that where the stuffing was bursting out.
‘Now – a drink?’
‘Who is Avril?’
‘One of my stepdaughters.’
‘I didn’t know — ’
‘Three of them. Avril’s not a bad girl. Not very bright. A bit sub, to tell the truth. She’s in rather a jam at the moment. Can’t be helped.’
Bagshaw made a despairing, consciously theatrical gesture, no doubt developed from his professional life.
‘Are the other stepchildren upstairs?’
He looked surprised. Certainly the ages seemed wrong, if anything were to be inferred from the noises being made.
‘No, no. The ones upstairs are my own. The stepchildren are more or less grown-up. Getting into tangles with boyfriends all the time. You see I’m quite a family man now.’
Bagshaw said that in a whimsical, rather faraway voice, probably another echo of his programme. His whole demeanour had become more histrionic, at least histrionic in a different manner from formerly. He sat down without pouring himself out a drink, something not entirely without precedent, though unlikely to be linked now with curative abstinences of the past.