Books Do Furnish a Room (10 page)

‘Do hope you’re …’

‘I’m what?’

‘Better.’

He brought the word out
sharply. Probably he ought always to be treated in an equally brusque manner,
told to get on with it, make a move, show a leg, instead of being allowed to
maunder on indefinitely trying to formulate in words his own obscurities of
thought; licence that his relations had fallen too long into the habit of
granting without check. Siegfried appeared again, this time carrying a tray loaded
with cups and saucers. His personality lay somewhere between that of Odo
Stevens and Mrs Andriadis’s one-time boy-friend, Guggenbühl, now Gainsborough.
He made firmly towards Alfred Tolland, who stood between him and the table
where he planned to lay the tea things.

‘Sir, excuse, you are in the
way, please.’

Called to order only a second
before by Pamela, Alfred Tolland again reacted more quickly than usual. He
almost jumped aside. Siegfried pushed adroitly past him, set the tray on a
table, then returned to retrieve Pamela’s cup from the floor.

‘More of tea, Miss, please?’

‘No.’

‘Not good?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘Why not so?’

‘God knows.’

‘Another cup then, please.
There is enough. China tea for the ration more easy.’

‘I said I don’t want any more.’

‘No?’

She did not answer this time,
merely closed her eyes. Siegfried, not in the least put out, showed no sign of
going away. He and Alfred Tolland stood side by side staring at Pamela,
expressing in their individual and contrasted ways boundless silent admiration.
Her contempt for both of them was absolute. It seemed only to stimulate more
fervent worship. After remaining thus entranced for some little time, Siegfried
must have decided that after all work came first, because he suddenly hurried
away, no less complacent and apparently finding the situation irresistibly
funny. He had certainly conceived a more down-to-earth estimate of Pamela’s
character and possibilities than Alfred Tolland, who was in any case taken over
at that moment by Blanche. He allowed himself to be led away, showing signs of
being even a little relieved at salvage in this manner. Pamela opened her eyes
again, though only to look straight in front of her. When I spoke of a meeting
with Ada Leintwardine, she showed a little interest.

‘I warned her that old fool
Craggs, whose firm she’s joining, is as randy as a stoat. I threw a glass of
Algerian wine over him once when he was trying to rape me. Christ, his wife’s a
bore. I thought I’d strangle her on the way here. Look at her now.’

Gypsy, followed by Craggs,
Quiggin and Widmerpool, had just arrived, ushered in by Siegfried, to whom
Widmerpool was talking loudly in German. Whatever he had been saying must have
impressed Siegfried, who stuck out his elbows and clicked his heels before once
more leaving the room. Widmerpool missed this mark of respect, because he had
already begun to look anxiously round for his wife. Frederica went forward to
receive him, and the others, but Widmerpool scarcely took any notice of her,
almost at once marking down Pamela’s location and hurrying towards her. To run
her to earth was obviously an enormous relief. He was quite breathless when he
spoke.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Why should I be all right?’

‘I meant no longer feeling
faint. How did you find your way here? It was sensible to come and lie down.’

‘I didn’t fancy dying of
exposure, which was the alternative.’

‘Is it one of your nervous
attacks?’

‘I told you I’d feel like
bloody hell if I came on this ghastly party – you insisted.’

‘I know I did, dear, I didn’t
want to leave you alone. We’ll be back soon.’

‘Back where?’

‘Home.’

‘After another lovely journey
with your friends.’

Widmerpool was not at all
dismayed by this discouraging reception. What he wanted to know was Pamela’s
whereabouts. Having settled that, all was well. The physical state she might or
might not be in was in his eyes a secondary matter. In any case he was probably
pretty used to rough treatment by now, would not otherwise have been able to
survive as a husband. Barnby used to describe the similar recurrent anxieties
of the husband of some woman with whom he had been once involved, the man’s
disregard for everything except ignorance on his own part of his wife’s
localization. Having her under his eye, no matter how ill-humoured or
badly-behaved, was all that mattered. Widmerpool seemed to have reached much
the same stage in married life. Anything was preferable to lack of information
as to what Pamela might be doing. His tone now altered to one of great relief.

‘You’d better lie still. Rest
while you can. I must go and talk business.’

‘Do you ever talk anything else?’

Disregarding the question, he
turned to me.

‘Why is that Tory MP Cutts
here?’

‘He’s another brother-in-law.’

‘Of course, I’d forgotten.
Retained his seat very marginally. I must have a word with him. That’s Hugo
Tolland he’s talking to, I believe?’

‘I haven’t had an opportunity
yet to congratulate you on winning your own seat.’

Widmerpool grasped my arm in
the chumminess appropriate to a public man to whom all other men are blood brothers.

‘Thanks, thanks. It showed the
way things are going. A colleague in the House rather amusingly phrased it to
me. We are the masters now, he said. The fight itself was a heartening
experience. I used to meet Cutts when I was younger, but we have not yet made
contact at Westminster. He had a sister called Mercy, I remember from the old
days. Rather a plain girl. There are some things I’d like to discuss with him.’

He left the area of the sofa.
Now the war was over one constantly found oneself congratulating people. In a
mysterious manner almost everyone who had survived seemed also to have had a
leg up. For example, books written by myself, long out of print, appeared
better known after nearly seven years of literary silence. This was a more
acceptable side of growing older. Even Quiggin, Craggs and Bagshaw had the air
of added stature. Craggs was talking to Norah. Either to get away from him, or
because she had decided that contact with Pamela was unavoidable, better to be
faced coolly, she made some excuse, and came towards us. She may also have felt
the need to restore her own reputation for disregarding commonplaces of
sentiment in relation to such things as love and death. A brisk talk to Pamela
offered opportunity to cover both elements with lightness of touch.

‘Hullo, Pam.’

Norah’s manner was jaunty.

‘Hullo.’

‘I never expected to see you
here today.’

‘You wouldn’t have done, if I’d
had my way.’

‘Unlike you not to have your
way, Pam.’

‘That’s good from you. You were
always wanting me to do things I hated.’

‘But didn’t succeed.’

‘It didn’t look like that to
me.’

‘How have you been, Pam?’

‘Like hell.’

After saying that Pamela picked
up the book from the floor – revealed as Hugo’s copy of
Camel Ride to the Tomb
, which he had brought down with
him – smoothed out the crumpled pages, and began to turn them absently.
Conceiving Norah well qualified by past experience to contend with manoeuvring
of this particular kind, in which emotional undercurrents were veiled by
unpromising mannerisms, I moved away. Their current relationship would be
better hammered out unimpeded by male surveillance. Craggs, left on his own by
Norah, had joined Quiggin and Frederica, who were talking together. In his
elaborately refined vocables, reminiscent of a stage clergyman in spite of his
anti-clericalism, he began to speak of Erridge.

‘Such satisfying recollections
of your brother were brought home to us – JG and myself, I mean – by the letter
you are discussing. It revealed the man, the humanity under a perplexed, one
might almost say headstrong exterior.’

Quiggin nodded judiciously. He
may have felt a follow-up by Craggs would be helpful after whatever he had
himself been saying, because he led me away from the other two. He had been
looking rather fiercely round the room while engaged with Frederica. Now his
manner became jocular.

‘Only through me you
infiltrated this house.’

Notwithstanding fairly powerful
efforts on his own part to prevent any such ingress, that was broadly speaking
true. Obstructive tactics at such a distant date could be overlooked in the
light of subsequent events. In any case Quiggin seemed to have forgotten this
obverse side of his own benevolence. I supposed he was going to explain
whatever dispositions Erridge had left which affected the new publishing firm,
but something else was on his mind.

‘You saw Mona?’ he asked.

‘I had quite a talk with her.’

‘She was looking very
prosperous.’

‘She’s married to an Air
Vice-Marshal.’

‘Good God.’

‘She appears to like it.’

‘Rather an intellectual
comedown.’

‘You never can tell.’

‘Did she ask about me?’

‘Said she’d sighted you outside
the church and waved.’

‘Not particularly good taste
her coming, I thought. But listen – I understand you met Bagshaw, and he talked
about
Fission
?’

‘Not in detail. He said Erry
had an interest – that to some extent the magazine would propagate his ideas.’

‘Unfortunately that will be
possible only in retrospect, but the fact Alf is no longer with us does not
mean the paper will not be launched. In fact it will be carried forward much as
he would have wished, subject to certain modifications. Kenneth Widmerpool is
interested in it now. He wants an organ for his own views. There is another
potential backer keen on the more literary, less political side. We have no
objection to that. We think the magazine should be open to all opinion to be
looked upon as progressive, a rather broader basis than Alf envisaged might be
advantageous.’

‘Why not?’

‘Bagshaw was in Alf’s eyes
editor-designate. He has had a good deal of experience, even if not of actually
running a magazine. I think he should make a tolerable job of it. Howard does
not altogether approve of his attitude in certain political directions, but
then Howard and Alf did not always see eye to eye.’

I could not quite understand
why I was being told all this. Quiggin’s tone suggested he was leading up to
some overture.

‘There will be too much for
Bagshaw to keep an eye on with books coming in for review. We’d
have liked Bernard Shernmaker to do that, but everyone’s after him. Then we
tried L. O. Salvidge. He’d been snapped up too. Bagshaw suggested you might
like to take the job on.’

The current financial situation
was not such as to justify turning down out of hand an offer of this sort.
Researches at the University would be at an end in a week or two. I made
enquiries about hours of work and emoluments. Quiggin mentioned a sum not
startling in its generosity, none the less acceptable, bearing in mind that one
might ask for a rise later. The duties he outlined could be fitted into
existing routines.

‘It would be an advantage
having you about the place as a means of keeping in touch with Alf’s
family. Also you’ve known Kenneth Widmerpool a long time, he tells me. He’s
going to advise the firm on the business side. The magazine and the publishing
house are to be kept quite separate. He will contribute to
Fission
on political and economic subjects.’

‘Do Widmerpool’s political
views resemble Erry’s?’

‘They have a certain amount in
common. What’s more important is that Widmerpool is not only an MP, therefore a
man who can to some extent convert ideas into action – but also an MP
untarnished by years of back-benching, with all the intellectual weariness that
is apt to bring – I say, look what that girl’s doing now.’

On the other side of the room
Widmerpool had been talking for some little time to Roddy Cutts. The two had
gravitated together in response to that law of nature which rules that the
whole confraternity of politicians prefers to operate within the closed circle
of its own initiates, rather than waste time with outsiders; differences of
party or opinion having little or no bearing on this preference. Paired off
from the rest of the mourners, speaking rather louder than the hushed tones to
some extent renewed in the house after seeming befitted to the neighbourhood of
the church, they were animatedly arguing the question of interest rates in
relation to hire-purchase; a subject, if only in a roundabout way, certainly
reconcilable to Erridge’s memory. Widmerpool was apparently giving some sort of
an outline of the Government’s policy. In this he was interrupted by Pamela.
For reasons of her own she must have decided to break up this tête-à-tête.
Throwing down her book, which, having freed herself from Norah, she had been
latterly reading undisturbed, she advanced from behind towards her husband and
Roddy Cutts.

‘People refer to the suppressed
inflationary potential of our present economic situation,’ Widmerpool was
saying. ‘I have, as it happens, my own private panacea for—’

He did not finish the sentence
because Pamela, placing herself between them, slipped an arm round the waists
of the two men. She did this without at all modifying the fairly unamiable
expression on her face. This was the action to which Quiggin now drew
attention. Its effect was electric; electric, that is, in the sense of
switching on currents of considerable emotional force all round the room.
Widmerpool’s face turned almost brick red, presumably in unexpected
satisfaction that his wife’s earlier ill-humour had changed to manifested affection,
even if affection shared with Roddy Cutts. Roddy Cutts himself – who, so far as
I know, had never set eyes on Pamela before that afternoon – showed, reasonably
enough, every sign of being flattered by this unselfconscious demonstration of
attention. Almost at once he slyly twisted his own left arm behind him, no
doubt the better to secure Pamela’s hold.