Temporary Kings (25 page)

‘Who
is…?’

The
row of consonants, unlinked by vowels, was not to be spoken aloud. Bagshaw was
quite excited. He was no longer an oppressed family man, nor even a television ‘personality’.

‘Is
it one of their own people?’

‘You
don’t recognize the name?’

‘Not
at all.’

‘Try
speaking it.’

On
the tongue the syllables were no more significant.

‘An
old friend.’

‘Of
yours?’

‘Both
of us.’

‘A
hanger-on of Gypsy’s?’

That
was just a shot at possibles.

‘Once,
I believe. A
Fission
connexion.’

‘A
foreigner?’

‘Not
at all.’

‘You’re
not suggesting the name’s “Widmerpool”?’

‘What
else could it be?’

‘Denounced
as – what amounts to being denounced as a Stalinist?’

‘In
fact, a Revisionist, I think.’

‘But
– ’

‘I
always said he was at the game.’

‘Docs
a certain Dr Belkin mean anything to you?’

Among
the scores of such names proverbial to Bagshaw, Dr Belkin’s did not figure.
That did not alter the conviction Bagshaw had already reached about Widmerpool.

‘There
have been some odd stories going round about both the Widmerpools since
Ferrand-Sénéschal died.’

Bagshaw
was not greatly interested in whatever part Pamela had played. It was the
political angle he liked.

‘That
woman may have invented the whole tale about herself and Ferrand-Sénéschal. A
sexual fantasy. It wouldn’t surprise me at all. The denunciations at the trial
are another matter. It’s become a routine process. Nagy in Hungary, earlier in
the year. Slansky in Czechoslovakia. I’d like to know just what happened about
Widmerpool. He probably didn’t move quite quick enough. Might be a double
bluff. You can’t tell. He himself could have felt he needed a little of that
sort of attention to build up his reputation as an anti-Communist of the
extreme Left. Make people think he’s a safe man, because he’s attacked from the
Communist end. Pretend he’s an enemy, when he’s really a close friend.’

Bagshaw
rambled on. Time came to leave. I was rather glad to go. The Bagshaw house was
on the whole lowering to the spirit. Its other members did not appear again,
but, when Bagshaw opened the front door, discordant sounds were still audible
from the higher floors, together with the noise of loud hammering in the
basement. Bagshaw came down the steps.

‘Well,
goodbye. I expect you’re hard at work. I’ve been thinking a lot about
Widmerpool. He’s a very interesting political specimen.’

The
Venetian trip, contrary to the promises of Mark Members, had not renewed
energies for writing. All the same, established priorities, personal
continuities, the confused scheme of things making up everyday life, all
revived, routines proceeding much as before. The Conference settled down in the
mind as a kind of dream, one of those dreams laden with the stuff of real life,
stopping just the right side of nightmare, yet leaving disturbing undercurrents
to haunt the daytime, clogging sources of imagination – whatever those may be –
causing their enigmatic flow to ooze more sluggishly than ever, periodically
cease entirely.

Gwinnett
showed no sign of arrival in England. In the light of his general behaviour,
changing moods, estrangement from social life, distaste for doing things in a
humdrum fashion, that was not at all surprising. If still engaged in the
unenviable labour of sampling first-hand former Trapnel anchorages, he might
well judge that enterprise liable to prejudice from outside contacts. Some
writers require complete segregation for getting down to a book. Gwinnett could
be one of them. He was, in any case, under no obligation to keep me, or anyone
else, informed of his movements. He might quite easily have decided that, so
far as I was concerned, any crop of Trapnel memories had been sufficiently
harvested by him in Venice. When it comes to recapitulation of what is known of
a dead friend, for the benefit of a third party (whether or not writing a
biography), remnants transmissible in a form at once lucid, unimpeded by
subjective considerations, are astonishingly meagre.

I
felt a little concerned by being left with the
Commonplace Book
on my hands, and would have liked
opportunity to return it to Gwinnett. Scrappy, much abbreviated, lacking the
usual neatness of Trapnel’s holographs, its contents were not without interest
to a professional writer, who had also known Trapnel. The notes gave an idea,
quite a good idea, of what the novel destroyed by Pamela might have been like,
had it ever been finished. Certain jottings, not always complimentary, had
obvious reference to herself. Clearly obsessive, they were not always possible
to interpret. If Pamela had her way, a film based on
Profiles in String
– more likely on
Trapnel’s own life – made by Glober, the
Commonplace Book
could be of assistance.

If
Gwinnett wanted to ‘understand’ Trapnel, two aspects emerged, one general, the
other peculiar to Trapnel himself. There was the larger question, why writers,
with apparent reserves of energy and ideas, after making a good start,
collapse, or fizzle out in inferior work. In Trapnel’s case, that might have
been inevitable. On the other hand, its consideration as an isolated instance
unavoidably led to Pamela. Gwinnett’s approach, not uncommon among biographers,
seemed to be to see himself, at greater or lesser range, as projection of his
subject. He aimed, anyway to some extent, at reconstructing in himself Trapnel’s
life, getting into Trapnel’s skin, ‘becoming’ Trapnel. Accordingly, if, in the
profoundest sense, he were to attempt to discover why Trapnel broke down,
failed to surmount troubles, after all, not greatly worse than many other
writers had borne – and mastered – the inference could not be dodged that
Gwinnett himself must have some sort of a love affair with Pamela. So far as he
had revealed his plans, Gwinnett appeared to aim at getting into Trapnel’s
skin, but not to that extent. In fact everything about Gwinnett suggested that
he did not at all intend to have a love affair with Pamela. If he accepted the
possibility, he was playing his cards with subtlety, holding them close to his
chest. It was, of course, possible something of the sort had already taken
place. Instinctively, one felt that had not happened.

This
conjecture was endorsed – anyway in one sense – in an odd manner. To express
how things fell out is to lean heavily on hearsay. That is unavoidable. Trapnel
himself, speaking as a critic, used to insist that every novel must be told
from a given point of view. An extension of that fact is that every story one
hears has to be adjusted, in the mind of the listener, to prejudices of the
teller; in practice, most listeners increasing, reducing, discarding, much of
what they have been told. In this case, the events have to be seen through the
eyes of Bagshaw’s father. What Bagshaw himself later related was not
necessarily untrue. Bagshaw was in a position to get the first and best
account. He must also have been the main channel to release details, even if
other members of the household added to the story’s volume. Nevertheless,
Bagshaw’s father, in his son’s phrase ‘the man on the spot’, was the only human
being who really knew the facts, he himself only some of them.

The
first indication that Gwinnett had accepted Bagshaw’s offer, gone to live in
the house, was a story purporting to explain why he had left. This was towards
Christmas. It looks as if the alleged happenings were broadcast to the world
almost immediately after taking place, but only a long time later did I hear
them from Bagshaw’s own lips. Dating is possible, because, on that occasion,
Bagshaw made a great point of the Christmas decorations being up, imparting a
jovial grotesqueness to the scene. Knowledge of the Christmas decorations did
certainly add something. Through thick and thin, Bagshaw always retained
vestiges of a view of life suggesting a thwarted artist, no doubt the side that
finally brought him where he was.

‘My
father enacted the whole extraordinary incident under a sprig of mistletoe. In
the middle of it all, some of the holly came down, with that extraordinary
scratchy noise holly makes.’

Although
I had not expected Bagshaw’s father to be descending the stairs in his
dressing-gown, when I called at the house, I had, in the distant past, more
than once heard Bagshaw speak of him. They were on good terms. Even in those
days, that had seemed a matter of interest in the light of the manner Bagshaw
himself used to go on. Bagshaw senior had been in the insurance business, not a
notable success in his profession, being neither energetic nor ambitious, but
with the valuable quality that he was prepared to put up in a good-natured
spirit with his son’s irregularities of conduct. On this account there was a
certain justice in Bagshaw apparently more or less supporting his father in
retirement.

Mr
Bagshaw had risen in the night to relieve himself. He was making his way to a
bathroom in, or on the way down to, the basement. This fact at once raises
questions as to the recesses of the Bagshaws’ house, its interior architectural
complications. An upper lavatory may not have existed, been out of order,
possibly occupied, in view of what took place later. On the other hand, some
preference or quirk may have brought him downstairs. He could have been making
a similar journey, when I had seen him. Perhaps sleeping pills, digestive
mixtures, medicaments of some sort, were deposited at this lower level. The
essential thing was that Mr Bagshaw had to pass through the hall.

It
seems to have been a mild night for the time of year. That did not prevent Mr Bagshaw
from being surprised, even for a moment startled, when, turning on one of the
lights, he saw a naked woman standing in the passage or hall. Here again the
narrative lacks absolute positiveness. In a sense, the truth of its essential
features is almost strengthened by the comparative unimportance adjudged to
exact locality. Bagshaw’s insistence on the mistletoe suggests the hall; other
circumstances, a half-landing, or alcove, on the first-floor; not uncommon in a
house of that date, possibly also offering a suitable nook or niche for mistletoe.

Bagshaw’s
father, short-sighted, had not brought his spectacles with him. His immediate
assumption was that the dimly outlined female shape was one of his son’s
stepchildren, who, having taken a bath at a relatively unorthodox hour, had
considered dressing not worth while for making the short transit required to
her bedroom. Bagshaw, telling the story, admitted the girls behaved in a
sufficiently unmethodical, not to say disordered manner, to make that possibility
by no means out of the question. What seemed to have caused his father most
surprise was not so much lack of clothing, but extinction of all movement. The
naked lady was lost in thought, standing as if in silent vigil.

Mr
Bagshaw made a conventional remark to the effect that she ‘must not catch cold’.
Then, probably owing to receiving no reply, grasped that he was not speaking to
one of the family. He may also, in spite of his poor sight, have observed the
lady’s hair was grey, even if scarcely seeing well enough to appreciate threads
of strawberry-pink caught by artificial light. Whatever he did or did not take
in, one must concur in Bagshaw’s praise of his father for showing good sense,
in no manner panicking at this unforeseen eventuality. At one time or another,
he had undoubtedly experienced testing incidents in the course of existence
with Bagshaw as a son, but by then he was a man of a certain age, and, however
happy-go-lucky the atmosphere of the household, this was exceptional.
Speculation as to what Mr Bagshaw thought is really beside the point. What
happened was that (as when I myself saw him) he muttered an apology, and moved
on; his comportment model of what every elderly gentleman might hope to display
in similar circumstances.

Whether
or not he associated in his mind the midnight nymph with Gwinnett is another
matter. Gwinnett by then had lived in the house some little time, probably a
couple of months. Equally unknown is how Pamela, in the first instance,
effected entry into the Bagshaw house. Even Bagshaw himself never claimed to be
positive about that. His theory was she had somehow ascertained the whereabouts
of Gwinnett’s bedroom, then more or less broken in. That seems over-dramatic,
if not infeasible. A more probable explanation, that one of the stepdaughters,
the rather dotty, possibly pregnant one likeliest, had admitted her earlier in
the evening, then denied doing so during subsequent investigations; Pamela
finding Gwinnett in his room, or waiting there for his return. If the former, the
two of them, Pamela and Gwinnett, had spent quite a long time, several hours,
in the bedroom together, before Bagshaw’s father encountered her, wherever he
did, in an unclothed state.

She
was no longer in the hall, or on the half-landing, when Mr Bagshaw reappeared
on his return journey. He seems to have taken this as philosophically as he had
earlier sight of her, simply retiring to bed again. If he hoped after that for
a good night’s rest, that hope was nullified by a further complication, a more
ominous one. This development had taken place while he was himself down in the
basement incommunicado. Bagshaw’s other stepdaughter, Felicity, now played a
part. Woken by the interchange, slight as that had been, between Pamela and
Bagshaw’s father, or (another possibility) herself cause of Mr Bagshaw’s
descent to the basement by excluding him from an upstairs retreat, perhaps
noticing the light on, came down to see what was afoot. She was faced with the
same spectacle, a slim grey-haired lady wearing no clothes. Bagshaw, when he
spoke of the matter, added a gloss to the circumstances.

‘The
truth seems to be – I’d noticed it myself – Felicity had taken a fancy to
Gwinnett. That was why she drew the obvious conclusions, and kicked up the hell
of a row. So far as I know, Gwinnett hadn’t made any sort of a pass at her.
Perhaps that was what made her so keen on him. Before you could quote Proudhon’s
phrase about equilibrium of competition, her sister Stella heard the talking,
and came down too. The whole lot were quarrelling like wild cats.’