Books Do Furnish a Room (20 page)

However, this body of
auxiliaries was a vital aspect of the Trapnel way of life. When things were
bad, they would come into play, collect books for review, deliver ‘copy’ – Trapnel
in any case distrusted the post – telephone in his name about arrangements or
disputes, tactfully propound his case if required, detail his future plans if
known, try – when such action was feasible, sometimes when not – to raise the
bid in his favour. They were to be seen lingering patiently in waiting rooms or
halls of the journal concerned – at Quiggin & Craggs in the packing room,
if cold and wet, the yard, if sunny and dry – usually the end in view to
acquire ready cash for the Trapnel piece they had handed to the editor a short
time before. Where Trapnel recruited these auxiliaries, how he disciplined
them, was always a mystery.

This need to receive payment on
the nail was never popular with the publishers and editors. Even Bagshaw used
to grouse about it. The money in his hand, Trapnel could rarely hang on to it.
He was always in debt, liked standing drinks. He could not understand the
difficulties publishers and editors, especially the latter, made about
advancing further sums.

‘After all, it’s not their own
money. It’s little or no trouble to them. As a matter of fact the accountants,
the boys who are put to the ultimate bother, such as it is, of unlocking the
safe and producing the dough, are far easier to deal with than the editor
himself.’

Accountants, as described by
Trapnel, would often leave their offices after the money had been paid out, and
join him in a drink. Perhaps they thought they were living dangerously. It
might be argued they were. Trapnel had made a study of them.

‘People who spend their time
absorbed with money always have a bright apologetic look about the eyes. They crave
sympathy. Particularly accountants. I always offer a drink when specie changes
hands. It’s rarely refused.’

Bagshaw was unusually skilful
in controlling this aspect of Trapnel as
a
Fission
contributor. Not at all inexperienced himself in the
exertions of extracting money, he knew all the arguments why Trapnel should not be given any more until
he produced the goods. Bagshaw would put on an immensely good-natured act that represented him as a man no
less necessitous than Trapnel himself, if not more so. Trapnel did
not have to believe that, but it created some sort
of protection for Bagshaw. That was when Trapnel appeared in
person. As time went on, these personal visits decreased in
frequency.

Living as
he did, there were naturally times when Trapnel was forced to apply for a loan. Widmerpool was a case in point. One of the principles dearest to Trapnel was that, as a
writer himself, he did not care to borrow from another writer; anyway not more than once. At a party consisting predominantly of writers and
publishers – publishers naturally unsuitable for rather different reasons – Widmerpool was a tempting expedient. A man of strong principle in his own particular genre, Trapnel appears to have observed this
self-imposed
limitation to the best of his ability, circumstances from time to time perforce intervening. The fulfilment of
this creed must have been strengthened by practical experience of the literary profession’s collective deficiencies as
medium for floating loans.

However, almost everyone had
their story of being approached by Trapnel at one time or another: Mark
Members: Alaric Kydd: L. O. Salvidge: Evadne Clapham: Bernard Shernmaker:
Nathaniel Sheldon: Malcolm Crowding: even Len Pugsley. All had paid up. Among
these Alaric Kydd took it the hardest. The ‘touch’ had been one afternoon, when
Kydd and Trapnel had met at the Quiggin & Craggs office. They were moving
northwards together in the direction of Tavistock Square, according to Kydd,
who was very bitter about it afterwards. He had been particularly outraged by
Trapnel’s immediate offer of a drink, a piece of good-fellowship received not
at all in the spirit proffered. Quiggin, whose relations with Kydd were not
entirely friendly, although proud of him as a capture, told the story after.

‘Alaric had my sympathy. The
money was at one moment resting frugally and safely in his pocket – the next,
scattered broadcast by Trapnel. Alaric wasn’t going to stand Trapnel a drink
with it, it’s therefore logical he should object to Trapnel wasting it on a drink
for him.’

Kydd’s never wholly appeased
rancour implied abstraction of a somewhat larger sum than customary. A tenner
was normal. Quiggin, whose judgment on such matters was to be respected, put it
as high as twelve or fifteen – possibly even twenty. He may have been right. He
had just signed a cheque for Kydd. There must have been a battle of wills.
Trapnel did not on the whole prejudice his own market by gleaning the odd five
bob or half-a-crown, though there may have been fallings by the wayside in this
respect when things were bad; even descent to sixpences and pennies, if it came
to that, for his unceasing and interminable telephone calls from the afternoon
drinking clubs he liked to frequent. Such dives appealed to him chiefly as
social centres, when The Hero and other pubs were closed, because Trapnel, as
drinking goes, was not a great consumer, though he chose to speak of himself as
if he were. An exceptionally excited or demoralized mood was likely to be the
consequence of his ‘pills’, also apparently taken in moderation, rather than
alcohol.

‘The habit of words bestows
adroitness on men of letters in devising formulae of excuse in evading onerous
obligations. More especially when it comes to parting with hard cash.’

St John Clarke had voiced that
reflection – chronologically speaking, before the beginning of years – when
Mark Members had managed to oust Quiggin from being the well-known novelist’s secretary; himself to be replaced in turn by Guggenbühl. Members had goodish stories about his former master,
particularly on the theme of handling needy acquaintances from the past, who called in search of financial
aid. Members insisted that the sheer artistry of St John Clarke’ pretexts claiming exemption from lending were so ornate in expression that they
sometimes opened fresh avenues of attack for the quicker-witted of his
persecutors.

‘Many a literary parasite met
his Waterloo in that sitting-room,’
said Members. ‘There were crises when shelling out seemed unavoidable. St J.
always held out right up to the time he was himself
remaindered by the Great Publisher. I wonder what luck X. Trapnel would have
had on that stricken field of borrowers.’

It was an interesting question.
Trapnel was just about old enough to have applied for aid before St John Clarke’s
passing. His panoramic memory for the plots of twentieth-century novels certainly
retained all the better known of St John Clarke’s works; as of almost every
other novelist, good, bad or indifferent, published in Great Britain since the
beginning of the century. As to the United States, Trapnel was less reliable,
though he could put up a respectable display of familiarity with American
novelists too; anyway since the end of the first war. An apt quotation from
Dust Thou Art
(in the College rooms),
Match Me Such Marvel
(Bithel’s favourite) or the
much more elusive
Mimosa
(brought to my notice by Trapnel himself), might well have done the trick,
produced at the right moment by a young, articulate, undeniably handsome fan;
the intoxicating sound to St John Clarke of his own prose repeated aloud
bringing off the miracle of success, where so many tired old leathery hands at
the game had failed. In the face of what might sound damaging, even
contradictory evidence, Trapnel was no professional sponge in the manner of
characters often depicted in nineteenth-century novels, borrowing compulsively
and indiscriminately, while at the same time managing to live in comparative
comfort. That was the picture Members painted of the St John Clarke
petitioners, spectres from the novelist’s younger, more haphazard days, who
felt an old acquaintance had been allowed too long to exist in undisturbed
affluence. Members had paused for a phrase. ‘Somewhere between men of letters
and blackmailers, a largely forgotten type.’

No one could say Trapnel
resembled these. He neither lived comfortably, nor, once the need to take taxis
were recognized, borrowed frivolously. Indeed, when things were going badly,
there was nothing frivolous about Trapnel’s condition except the manner in
which he faced it. He borrowed literally to keep alive, a good example of
something often unrecognized outside the world of books, that a writer can have
his name spread all over the papers, at the same time net perhaps only a
hundred pounds to keep him going until he next writes a book. Finally, the
battle against all but overwhelming economic pressures might have been lost
without the support of Trapnel’s chief weapon – to use the contemporary
euphemism ‘moral deterrent’ – the swordstick. The death’s head, the concealed
blade, in the last resort gained the day.

I have given a long account of
Trapnel and his ways in order to set in perspective what happened later. Not
all this description is derived from first-hand knowledge. Part is Trapnel
legend, of which there was a good deal. He reviewed fairly regularly for
Fission
, wrote an occasional short story, article or parody – he was an accomplished
parodist of his contemporaries – and on the whole, in spite of friction now and
then, when he lost his temper with a book or one of his pieces was too long or
too short, the magazine suited him, he the magazine. His own volume of
collected short stories
Bin Ends
was
published. Trapnel’s reputation increased. At the same time he was clearly no stranger to
what Burton called ‘those excrementitious humours of
the third concoction, blood and tears’.

One day
the blow fell. Alaric Kydd’s
Sweetskin
appeared on
the shelf for review. Even Quiggin was known to
have reservations about the novel’s merits. Several supposedly outspoken passages made him unwilling to identify himself with the author in
his accustomed manner, in case there was
a prosecution. In addition to that, a lack of humdrum qualities likely to
appeal to critics caused him worry about its reception. These anxieties Quiggin had already transmitted to Bagshaw.
Sweetskin
was
a disappointing book. Kydd had been coaxed away from Clapham’s
firm. Now he seemed to be only a liability. On the one hand, the novel might be
suppressed, the firm fined, a
director possibly sent to gaol; on the other, the alleged lubricities being in themselves not sufficient to guarantee by
any means a large sale,
Sweetskin
might easily not
even pay off its considerable advance of royalties. How was the book to be
treated in
Fission
? Kydd was too well known to be ignored completely. That would be worse than an offensive review. Who could be found, without too
hopelessly letting down the critical reputation of
Fission
itself, to hold some balance between feelings on either side of the backyard at the Quiggin & Craggs office?

Then an opportune thing
happened. Trapnel rang up Bagshaw, and asked if he could deal with Kydd, in
whose early work he was interested, even though he thought the standard had not
been maintained. If he could see
Sweetskin
, he
might want to write a longer piece, saying something about Kydd’s origins and
development, in which the new book would naturally be mentioned. Bagshaw got in
touch with me about this. It seemed the answer. Trapnel’s representative came
round the same afternoon to collect the review copy.

The following week, when I was
at
Fission
‘doing’ the books,
Trapnel rang up. He said he was bringing the
Sweetskin
review along himself late that afternoon, and suggested we should have a drink
together. There was something he particularly wanted to talk about. This was a
fairly normal thing to happen, though the weather was not the sort to encourage
hanging about in pubs. I also wanted to get back to Burton. However, Trapnel
was unusually pressing. When he arrived he was in a jumpy state, hard to say
whether pleased or exasperated. Like most great egoists, a bad arriver, he
lacked ease until settled down into whatever role he was going to play.
Something was evidently on his mind.

‘Would you object to The Hero?
That’s the place I’d feel it easiest to tell you about this.’

If the object of the meeting
was to disclose some intimate matter that required dissection, even allowing
for Trapnel’s reasonably competent control of his creatures, few worse places
could be thought of, but the venue was clearly demanded by some quirk of pub
mystique. These fears were unjustified. The immoderate cold had kept most of
the usual customers away. The place was almost empty. We sat down. Trapnel
looked round the saloon bar rather wildly. His dark-lensed spectacles brought
to The Hero’s draught-swept enclaves a hint of warmer shores, bluer skies,
olives, vines, in spite of the fact that the turn-ups of the tussore trousers
were soaked from contact with the snow. He at once began a diatribe against
Sweetskin
, his
notice of which had been left unread at the office.

‘I warned you it wasn’t much
good.’

This would mean embarrassment
for Quiggin, if Trapnel had been unremittingly scathing. Coming on top of the ‘touch’,
unfavourable comment from such a source would make Kydd more resentful than
ever. However, that was primarily Quiggin’s worry. So far as I was concerned
the juggernaut of critical opinion must be allowed to take its irrefragable course. If too fervent worshippers, like Kydd, were crushed to powder beneath
the pitiless wheels of its car, nothing could be done. Only their own adoration
of the idol made them so vulnerable. Trapnel was specially contemptuous of Kydd’s
attempts at eroticism. To be fair,
Sweetskin
was
in due course the object of prosecution, so presumably someone found the book erotic, but Trapnel became almost frenzied in his
expostulations to the contrary. It was then suddenly revealed that Trapnel was
in the middle of a row with Quiggin & Craggs.