Hearing secret harmonies (9 page)

‘It was Senile Lust that so upset that unfortunate wife of his. She rushed out of the room. What was her name? Donners made her play Avarice. The poor little thing wasn’t in the least avaricious. Probably very generous, if given a chance. Somebody had to do Avarice, as we were only seven all told. She might have seen that without kicking up such a to-do. Of course she was pretty well nuts by then. Peter Templer as a husband had sent her up the wall. Donners insisted she should go through with Avarice. That was Donners at his worst. He could be very sadistic, unless you stood up to him, then he might easily become masochistic. Betty – that’s what she was called. She ought to have seen it was only a game, and numbers were short. I believe she had to be put away altogether for a time, but came out after her husband was killed, and had lots of proposals. You know how men adore mad women.’

‘Women like mad men, too, Matty, you must admit that. Besides, she wasn’t really mad. Did she accept any of the Proposals?’

‘She married a man in the Foreign Office, and became an ambassadress. They were very happy, I believe. He’s retired now. Most of these pictures are pretty mediocre. Hugh’s the only star.’

Chandler turned the pictures over.

‘I think they’re wonderful, Matty. What fun it all was in those days.’

Matilda made a face.

‘Oh, it wasn’t. Do you truly think that, Norman? I always felt it was dreadfully grim. I don’t believe that was only because the war was going to happen. Do you remember that awful man Kenneth Widmerpool coming in wearing uniform? He ought to have played the eighth Sin – Humbug.’

I was a little surprised by the violence of Matilda’s comment. So far as I knew Widmerpool had taken no particular part in her life, though she might have heard about him from Sir Magnus. She was, in any case, a woman who said – and did – unexpected things, a strangeness of character reflected by her marriages to Carolo, Moreland and Sir Magnus, even if the marriage to the violinist had been a very brief one.

‘I think I rather like humbugs,’ said Chandler. ‘People like old Gossage, the music critic, he’s always been quite a friend of mine.’

Matilda laughed.

‘I mean something much above poor old Gossage’s bumblings. I’m speaking of making claims to a degree of virtue, purity, anything you like to call it – morals, politics, the arts, any field you prefer – which the person concerned neither possesses, nor is seriously attempting to attain. They just flatter themselves they are like that. How solemn I’m getting. That sounds just like the speeches I used to make in my early days from behind the footlights. Tell Norman about the Magnus Donners Memorial Prize, Nick.’

She began to put the photographs away. I described the Prize to Chandler.

‘My dear, you ought to link the Prize with the photographs. Do the Seven Deadly Sins in rotation. The book wins, which best enhances the Sin-of-the-Year.’

‘Oh, Norman, I wish we could.’

That emendation would have added spice to the Magnus Donners Prize, which got off to an unspirited start, with a somewhat pedestrian biography of Sir Horrocks Rusby. A contemporary of Sir Magnus, this once celebrated advocate’s life-story was the only book of that year falling within the terms required. The frontispiece, a florid portrait of Rusby in wig and gown, was from the brush of Isbister, foreshadowing the painter’s later resurgence. The following year there were sufficient eligible candidates to make me regret ever having let myself in for so much additional reading of an unexciting kind. It was won with a lively study of a wartime commander, written by a military historian of repute. The third year’s choice, reflecting a new mood of free expression, was of greater interest than its forerunners; a politician, public personality rather than statesman, chronicled by a journalist friend, who provided, in generous profusion, details of his subject’s adventures (he had been homosexual), which would have remained unrecorded only a few years before. Emily Brightman made one of her pronouncements, when this book had been finally adopted for the Prize.

‘In its vulgar way, a painstaking piece of work, although one must always remember – something often forgotten today – that because things are generally known, they are not necessarily the better for being written down, or publicly announced. Some are, some aren’t. As in everything else, good sense, taste, art, all have their place. Saying you prefer to disregard art, taste, good sense, does not mean that those elements do not exist – it merely means you lack them yourself.’

On the fourth and final year of the panel, the existing committee was confronted with much the same situation as that of the first presentation of the award, except that then there had been at least one eligible book, if no very inspiring one. This year, as I had told Salvidge, nothing at all seemed available. For one reason or another every biography to appear, or billed to appear within the publishing period required, fell outside the Magnus Donners category. When I arrived at the table for the second annual meeting, Emily Brightman and Mark Members were discussing procedure for announcing that, this year, the Prize would not be presented. A minute or two later Delavacquerie came into the restaurant. He held under his arm what looked like the proof copy of a book. When he sat down Emily Brightman tried to take it from him. Delavacquerie resisted. He would not even let her see the title, though admitting he had found a possible entrant for the Prize.

‘The publishers got in touch with me yesterday.’

‘Who’s it about?’

‘I’d like to speak of a few things first, before we get on to the actual merits of the book. There are complications. Other copies of this proof are in the post to the private addresses of all members of the Magnus Donners committee. If you decide in favour, the publishers can get the book out within the appointed time. Let’s order luncheon before we go into the various problems.’

Delavacquerie kept the proof copy hidden on his knee. He always gave the impression of knowing exactly what he wanted to say, how he was going to behave. Emily Brightman, aware that to show impatience would undermine the strength of her position, displayed self-control. Delavacquerie possessed several of her own characteristics, firmness, directness, grasp of whatever subject had to be considered-

If they opposed each other, she was prepared to accept him on equal terms as an adversary, by no means true of everyone. When food and drink had been ordered, Delavacquerie began to make his statement. Even at the outset this was a sufficiently startling one.

‘You remember, a long time ago, the name came up at one of these meetings of the novelist, X. Trapnel, author of
Camel Ride to the Tomb, Dogs Have No Uncles
, and other works? He died in the nineteen-fifties. You knew him quite well, I think, Nick?’

Members broke in.

‘I knew Trapnel well too. We all knew him. Did he leave a posthumous biography of somebody, which has just been discovered?’

‘I never knew Trapnel,’ said Emily Brightman. ‘Not personally, that is. I’m always promising myself to read his books, but this must be — ’

‘Please,’ said Delavacquerie.

Smiling, he held Emily Brightman in check.

‘I’m sorry, Gibson, but I’m sure I know more about this subject than you do.’

Delavacquerie, still smiling, shook his head. He continued. In relation to Trapnel he was determined to clarify his own position before anything else was said.

‘I met Trapnel himself only once, and that not for long, more than twenty years ago, but I believe him to be a good writer. We have a life of Trapnel here. His career was not altogether uneventful. This book is by an American professor, a doctoral dissertation, none the worse for that. I have read the book. I think you will like it.’

Emily Brightman was not to be held in any longer. She raised a fork threateningly, as if about to stab Delavacquerie, tf he did not come quickly to the point. Members, too, was showing signs of wanting to ventilate his own Trapnel experiences, before things went much further. I myself felt the same impelling urge.

‘Gibson, this book must be written by Russell Gwinnett.’

Delavacquerie, who, reasonably enough, had forgotten that Emily Brightman once announced herself an old friend of Gwinnett’s, looked a little surprised that she should know the name of the biographer.

‘Have the publishers sent your proof copy already, Emily?’

‘Not yet, but I knew Russell Gwinnett was writing a life of Trapnel. So did Nicholas. We could have told you at once, Gibson, had we been allowed to speak. Russell is an old friend of mine. Nicholas, too, met him when we were in Venice. We talked of it at the first meeting of this committee. You could not have been attending, Gibson. You see you sometimes underrate our capabilities.’

Delavacquerie laughed. Before he could defend himself, Members pegged out his own claim.

‘I don’t know Gwinnett, but I knew Trapnel. You count as knowing a man reasonably well after he’s borrowed five pounds off you. Is that incident mentioned? I hope so.’

If Delavacquerie considered Gwinnett’s book good, the judgment was likely to be sound. I was less surprised to hear that Gwinnett’s biography of Trapnel was well done, than that it had ever been completed at all. If the work was accomplished, Gwinnett was likely to have brought to it the powers he certainly possessed. Personally, I had doubted that the study would ever see light. Emily Brightman must have thought the same. She was greatly excited by the news. When they had both been teaching at the same women’s college in America, in a sense Gwinnett had been a protégé of hers. She had always supported a belief in his abilities as a writer. How much she was prepared to face another, more enigmatic, even more sinister, side of his character, was less easy to assess.

‘I told you Russell was an industrious young man, Nicholas. A capable one too. I suppose he can’t be spoken of as young any longer. He must be well into his forties. At last it looks as if we’ve found someone for the Prize. There is no writer to whom I would rather award it than Russell. It’s just what he needs to give him self-assurance, and what the Prize itself needs, to lift it out of the rut of the commonplace. Show me the proof at once, Gibson.’

Delavacquerie continued to withhold the proof copy.

‘Not yet, Emily.’

‘Gibson, you are intolerable. Don’t be absurd. Hand it over immediately.’

‘I’m prepared to be magnanimous about the fiver,’ said Members. ‘I could ill afford forfeiture of five pounds at the time, but we were all penniless writers together, and bygones shall be bygones. The point is whether the book is good.’

‘The merits of Gwinnett’s book are not so much the issue,’ said Delavacquerie. ‘The difficulty is quite another matter.’

‘I know what you’re going to put forward,’ said Emily Brightman. ‘Libel. Am I right? I can see a book of that sort might be libellous, but that is surely the publisher’s affair. We shall have given the Prize before the row starts.’

‘That is not exactly the problem. At least the publishers are not worried in a general way on that ground. They think the possibility of anything of the sort very remote. The libel, if any, would be in connexion with Trapnel’s love affair with Pamela Widmerpool. As you know, she destroyed the manuscript of his last novel. That business was largely responsible for Trapnel’s final débâcle.’

‘An interesting legal point,’ said Members. ‘Is it libellous to write that someone’s deceased wife was unfaithful to him? I always understood, in days when I myself worked in a publisher’s office, that you can’t libel the dead. That was one of the firmest foundations of the publishing profession. On the other hand, I suppose the surviving partner might consider himself libelled, as being put on record as a trompé’d husband. At the time I was speaking of, my ancient publishing days, there also existed the element Emily brought up, rather severely, at one of our meetings – good taste – but fortunately we don’t have to bother about that now – even if it does platonically exist, as Emily assures us. Don’t say it’s good taste that makes you waver, Gibson. I believe you’re frightened of Emily’s disapproval.’

Members and Delavacquerie, outwardly well disposed towards each other, anyway conversationally, were not much in sympathy at base. Delavacquerie, formal as always, may all the same have revealed on some occasion his own sense of mutual disharmony. If so, Members was now getting his own back. Delavacquerie, recognizing that, smiled.

‘You may be right, Mark. At the same time you will agree, I think, when I state the problem, that it is a rather special one. Meanwhile, let me release these proofs.’

He handed the bundle to Emily Brightman, who almost snatched it from his hands. She turned at once to the title page. I read the layout over her arm.

DEATH’S-HEAD SWORDSMAN
The Life and Works of X. TRAPNEL
by
RUSSELL GWINNETT

In due course the proofs came my way. Gwinnett’s academic appointment, named at the beginning of the book, was held at an American college to be judged of fairly obscure status, though lately in the news, owing to exceptionally severe student troubles on its campus. On the page where a dedication might have stood, an epigraph was set.

My study’s ornament, thou shell of death,
Once the bright face of my betrothed lady.

The Revenger’s Tragedy.

For those who knew anything of Gwinnett, or of Trapnel for that matter, the quotation was, to say the least, ambiguous. The longer the lines were considered, the more profuse in private meaning they seemed to become. Moreland, too, had been keen on the plays of Cyril Tourneur. He used often to quote a favourite image from one of them: ‘… and how quaintly he died, like a politician, in hugger-mugger, made no man acquainted with it…’