Hearing secret harmonies (13 page)

‘Beaumont, the dramatist, was a kind of first-cousin of my own old friend, Robert Burton of the
Anatomy of Melancholy

‘Sure.’

Gwinnett spoke as if every schoolboy knew that. Emily Brightman, abandoning seventeenth-century scholarship, asked where he was staying in London. Gwinnett named an hotel.

‘Wait, I’ll write that down.’

She took an address-book from her bag. Either the name conveyed nothing, or Emily Brightman was showing more then ever her refusal to find human behaviour, notably Gwinnett’s, at all out of the ordinary, anyway when his was removed from the purely academic sphere. I was not sure I should myself have been equally capable of concealing the least flicker of recognition at the name. Gwinnett had chosen to visit again the down-at-heel hostelry in the St Pancras neighbourhood, where he had spent the night – her last – with Pamela Widmerpool. He drawled the address in his usual slow unemphasized scarcely audible tone. Emily Brightman’s impassivity in face of this taste for returning to old haunts, however gruesome their associations, could have been due as much to forgetfulness as to pride in accepting Gwinnett’s peculiarities. Nevertheless, she changed the subject again.

‘Now tell me of your other doings, Russell. I don’t know much about your college, beyond reading in the papers that it had been suffering from campus disturbances. Sum up the root of the trouble. What is the teaching like there?’

Gwinnett began speaking of his academic life. Emily Brightman, listening with professional interest, made an occasional comment. Delavacquerie, who was now standing by in silence, drew me aside. He had perhaps been waiting for a suitable opportunity to do that.

‘As soon as Professor Gwinnett arrived I informed him that Lord Widmerpool was attending the dinner.’

‘How did he take that?’

‘He just acknowledged the information.’

‘There’s no necessity for them to meet.’

‘Unless one of them feels the challenge.’

‘Widmerpool probably wants to do no more than re-examine Gwinnett. He barely met him when we were in Venice. Widmerpool is not at all observant where individuals are concerned. Also, he had plenty of other things to think about at the time. It would be reasonable to have developed a curiosity about Gwinnett, after what happened, even if this is not a particularly sensitive way of taking another look at him.’

‘Didn’t they see each other at the inquest?’

‘How are such enquiries arranged? Perhaps they did. All I know is that Gwinnett was exonerated from all blame. I find it more extraordinary that Widmerpool should choose to bring the Quiggin twins, rather than that he should wish to gaze at Gwinnett.’

‘Aren’t the girls just a way of showing off?’

Delavacquerie put on an interrogative expression that was entirely French. He was probably right. Commonplace vanity was the explanation. Widmerpool felt satisfaction, as a man of his age, in appearing with a pair of girls, who, if no great beauties, were lively and notorious. They could be a spur to his own exhibitionism, if not his masochism.

‘I see Evadne Clapham making towards us. She tells me she has something vital to convey to Professor Gwinnett about Trapnel. Can Trapnel have slept with her? One never knows. It might be best to get the introduction over before dinner.’

Delavacquerie went off. By now Matilda had arrived. As queen of the assembly, she had got herself up even more theatrically than usual, a sort of ruff, purple and transparent, making her look as if she were going to play Lady Macbeth; an appearance striking the right note in the light of Gwinnett’s new literary preoccupations. When Delavacquerie presented him to her this seemed to go well. Matilda must often have visited New York and Washington with Sir Magnus, and Gwinnett showed none of the moodiness of which he could be capable, refusal to indulge in any conversational trivialities. By the time dinner was announced the two of them gave the appearance of chatting together quite amicably. There was no sign yet of Widmerpool, nor the Quiggin twins. They would presumably all arrive together. As Delavacquerie had said, I found myself between Emily Brightman, and the wife of a Donners-Brebner director; the latter, a rather worried middle-aged lady, had put on all her best clothes, and most of her jewellery, as protection, when venturing into what she evidently regarded as a world threatening perils of every kind. We did not make much contact until the soup plates were being cleared away.

‘I’m afraid I haven’t read any of your books. I believe you write books, don’t you? I hope you won’t mind that.’

I was in process of picking out one of the several routine replies designed to bridge this not at all uncommon conversational opening – a phrase that at once generously accepts the speaker’s candour in confessing the omission, while emphasizing the infinite unimportance of any such solicitude on that particular point – when need to make any reply at all was averted by a matter of much greater interest to both of us. This was entry into the room of Widmerpool and the Quiggin twins. My neighbour’s attention was caught simultaneously with my own, though no doubt for different reasons. Widmerpool led the party of three, Amanda and Belinda following a short distance behind. As they came up the room most of the talk at the tables died down, while people stopped eating to stare.

‘Do tell me about that man and the two girls. I’m sure I ought to know who they are. Isn’t it a famous author, and his two daughters? He’s probably a close friend of yours, and you will laugh at my ignorance.’

In the circumstances the supposition of the director’s lady was not altogether unreasonable. If you thought of authors as a grubby lot, a tenable standpoint, Widmerpool certainly filled the bill; while the age of his companions in relation to his own might well have been that even of grandfather and granddaughters. Since I had known him as a schoolboy, Widmerpool had been not much less than famous for looking ineptly dressed, a trait that remained with him throughout life, including his army uniforms. At the same time – whether too big, too small, oddly cut, strangely patterned – his garments had hitherto always represented, even at his most revolutionary period, the essence of stolid conventionality as their aim. They had never been chosen, in the first instance, with the object of calling attention to himself. Now all was altered. There had been a complete change of policy. He wore the same old dark grey suit – one felt sure it was the same one – but underneath was a scarlet high-necked sweater.

‘As a matter of fact he’s not an author, though I believe he’s writing a book. He’s called Lord Widmerpool.’

‘Not
the
Lord Widmerpool?’

‘There’s only one, so far as I know.’

‘But I’ve seen him on television. He didn’t look like that.’

‘Perhaps he was well made-up. In any case he’s said to have changed a good deal lately. I haven’t seen him for a long time myself. He’s certainly changed since I last saw him.’

Her bewilderment was understandable.

‘Are the girls his daughters?’

‘No – he’s never had any children.’

‘Who are they then? They look rather sweet. Are they twins? I love their wearing dirty old jeans at this party.’

‘They’re the twin daughters of J. G. Quiggin, the publisher, and his novelist wife, Ada Leintwardine. Their parents are sitting over there at the table opposite. J. G. Quiggin’s the bald man, helping himself to vegetables, his wife the lady with her hair piled up rather high.’

‘I believe I’ve read something by Ada Leintwardine –
The Bitch
–
The Bitches
– something like that. I know bitches came into the title.’

‘
The Bitch Pack meets on Wednesday
.’

‘That’s it. I don’t remember much about it. Are the girls with Lord Widmerpool, or are they just joining their parents?’

‘They’re with him.’

‘Are they his girlfriends?’

The party was evidently coming up to expectations.

‘He’s chancellor of their university. They threw paint over him last summer. I don’t know how close the relationship is apart from that.’

‘Those two little things threw paint over him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Didn’t he mind?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘And now they’re all friends?’

‘That’s what it looks like.’

‘What do you think about the Permissive Society?’

Widmerpool had entered the dining-room with the air of Stonewall Jackson riding into Frederick, that is to say glaring round, as if on the alert for flags representing the Wrong Side. Amanda and Belinda, apart from looking as ready for a square meal as the rebel horde itself seemed otherwise less sure of their ground, sullen, even rather hangdog. Their getup, admired by my neighbour, was identical. As companions for Widmerpool they belonged, broadly speaking, to the tradition of Gypsy Jones, so far as physical appearance was concerned. (A couple of lines had announced, not long before, the death of ‘Lady Craggs, widow of Sir Howard Craggs, suddenly in Czechoslovakia’; and I had made up my mind to ask Bagshaw, when next seen, if he knew anything of Gypsy’s end.) This Gypsy Jones resemblance gave a certain authenticity to the twins’ Widmerpool connexion. Their bearing that evening, on the other hand, had none of her aggressive self-confidence. It more approximated to that of Baby Wentworth (also deceased the previous year, at Montego Bay, having just married a relatively rich Greek), when, as his discontented mistress, Baby entered a room in the company of Sir Magnus Donners. In the case of the Quiggin twins, as Delavacquerie had observed, sexual relations with Widmerpool highly improbable, the girls may have been embarrassed by merely appearing in front of this sort of public as his guests. If so, why did they accompany him? Perhaps there was a small gratifying element of exhibitionism for them too; in that a meeting of true minds. Emily Brightman allowed a murmur to escape her.

‘I hope those young ladies are going to behave.’

Delavacquerie, already on the look out and seeing action required, had risen at once from his seat, when the Widmerpool party came in. Now he led them to the table indicated earlier, where three chairs remained unoccupied. The Donners-Brebner lady lost interest after they disappeared.

‘What do you think about Vietnam?’

Widmerpool and the twins once setded at their table, dinner passed off without further notable incident. Isobel reported later that Gwinnett had given no outward sign of noticing Widmerpool’s arrival. Possibly he had not even penetrated the disguise of the red sweater. That would have been reasonable enough. Alternatively, Gwinnett’s indifference could have been feigned, a line he chose to take, or, quite simply, expression of what he genuinely felt. Neither with Isobel, nor Matilda, did he display any of his occasional bouts of refusing to talk. He had, Isobel said, continued to abstain from alcohol.

‘What do you think of Enoch?’ asked the Donners-Brebner lady.

The time came for speeches. Delavacquerie said his usual short introductory word. He was followed by Members, who settled down to what sounded like the gist of an undelivered lecture on The Novel; English, French, Russian; notably American, in compliment to Gwinnett, and recognition of the American Novel’s influence on Trapnel’s style. Members went on, also at some length, to consider Trapnel as an archetypal figure of our time. The final reference to his own gone-for-ever five pounds was received with much relieved laughter.

‘Was the last speaker a famous writer too?’

‘A famous poet.’

Members seemed owed this description, within the context of the question. Gwinnett followed. He did not speak for long. In fact, without almost impugning the compliment of the award, he could hardly have been more brief. He said that he had admired Trapnel’s work since first reading a short story found in an American magazine, taken immediate steps to discover what else he had written, in due course formed the ambition to write about Trapnel himself. His great regret, Gwinnett said, was never to have met Trapnel in the flesh.

‘I called my book
Death’s-head Swordsman
, because X. Trapnel’s sword-stick symbolized the way he faced the world. The book’s epigraph – spoken as you will recall, by an actor holding a skull in his hands – emphasizes that Death, as well as Life, can have its beauty.

‘Whether our death be good
Or bad, it is not death, but life that tries.
He lived well: therefore, questionless, well dies.’

Gwinnett stopped. He sat down. The audience, myself included, supposing he was going to elaborate the meaning of the quotation, draw some analogy, waited to clap. Whatever significance he attached to the lines, they remained unexpounded. After the moment of uncertainty some applause was given. Emily Brightman whispered approval.

‘Good, didn’t you think? I impressed on Russell not to be prosy.’

Conversation became general. In a minute or two people would begin to move from their seats – a few were doing so already – and the party break up. I turned over in my mind the question of seeing, or not seeing, Gwinnett, while he remained in England. Now that his work on Trapnel was at an end we had no special tie, although in an odd way I had always felt well disposed towards him, even if his presence imposed a certain strain. The matter was likely to lie in Gwinnett’s hands rather than mine, and in any case, he was only to stay a week. It could be put off until research brought him over here again.