‘You mean they won’t unbelt any more?’
‘I may have to approach another publisher.’
‘You’re under contract?’
‘They like the new book all right, what there is. Like it very much. If they won’t see reason, I may have to put the matter in the hands of my solicitors.’
Trapnel tapped the skull against the table. Talk about his solicitors always meant a highly nervous state. Even at the time of the monumental entanglement of the conte, it was doubtful whether legal processes had ever been carried further than consultation with old Tim Clipthorpe, one of the seasoned habitués of The Hero, his face covered with crimson blotches, who had been struck off the roll in the year the Titanic went down, as he was always telling any adjacent toper who would listen. In any case, Trapnel gave the impression that, as publishing rows go, this was not a specially serious one. Even if it were, he could hardly have brought a fellow-writer, not a particularly close friend, to shiver in the boreal chills of The Hero’s saloon bar merely to confirm the parsimony of publishers; still less to listen to a critical onslaught against the amateurish pornography and slipshod prose of Alaric Kydd. Even Trapnel’s egotism was hardly capable of that. He was, in fact, obviously playing for time, talking at random while he tried to screw himself up to making some more or less startling confession. Again he tapped the swordstick against the table.
‘Don’t let’s talk about all this rot anyway. One of the things I wanted to tell you was that Tessa’s walked out on me.’
That was much more the sort of thing to be expected. Even so, Tessa seemed a rather slender pretext for bringing about a portentous meeting such as this one. An attractive girl, she had shown early signs of finding the Trapnel way of life too much for her. Her departure was not a staggering surprise. Sympathy seemed best expressed by enquiry, though the answer was not in much doubt.
‘How did it happen?’
‘Yesterday — just left a note saying she was through.’
‘Things had been getting difficult?’
‘There was rather a scene last week. I thought it had all blown over. Apparently not. As a matter of fact I’m not sorry. I was fond of Tessa, but things have to have an end — at least most do.’
‘Dowson said something of the sort in verse.’
Trapnel brushed aside further condolences, admittedly rather feeble ones, on the subject of the vicissitudes of love. He was, to say the least, bearing Tessa’s abdication with fortitude. I was surprised at quite such a show of indifference, thinking some of it perhaps assumed. Trapnel, although resilient, was not at all heartless in such matters.
‘Now Tessa’s gone I’m faced with a decision.’
‘Giving up women altogether?’
Trapnel laughed with rather conscious bitterness.
‘I mean Tessa kept me from making an absolute fool of myself. Now I’m left without that support.’
He did not have the appearance of having indulged in a recent drinking bout, nor too many pep-pills, but was in such an unusual state that I began to wonder whether, after all, Ada was at the bottom of all this; that I had been summoned to give advice on the uncommon situation of an author falling in love with his publisher. The suspicion became almost a certainty when Trapnel leant forward and spoke dramatically, almost in a whisper.
‘Nick, I’m absolutely mad about somebody.’
‘A replacement for Tessa?’
‘No — nothing like that. Nothing like Tessa at all. This is love. The genuine thing. I’ve never known what it was before. Not really. Now I do.’
This was going a little far. He spoke with complete gravity, though he and I were not at all on the terms when revelations of that kind are volunteered. Trapnel’s emotional life, if proffered at all, was as a rule dished up with a light dressing of irony or melancholy. He was never brutal; on the other hand, he was never severely stricken. From the outside he appeared a reasonably adoring lover, if not an unduly serious one. The attitude maintained that night in The Hero was different from anything previously handed out. I had made up my mind to leave very soon now, almost at once. If Trapnel wanted to make a statement, he must get on with the job, do it expeditiously. The night was too cold to hang about any longer, while he braced himself to set forth in detail this amatory crisis, whatever it might be.
‘Why isn’t this one like Tessa?’
Instead of answering the question, Trapnel opened Sweetskin again. He removed from its pages the review slip which notes date of publication, together with the request (never in the history of criticism vouchsafed) that the publisher should be sent a copy of the notice when it appeared in print. This small square of paper had been inserted earlier by Trapnel to mark a passage of notable ineptitude to be read aloud as illustration of Kydd’s inability to write with grace, distinction or knowledge of the ways of women. He had recited the paragraph a few minutes before. Now he took one of several pens from the outside breast pocket of the tropical jacket, quickly wrote something on the back of the slip of paper, and passed it across to me. On examination, this enigmatic missive disclosed two words inscribed in Trapnel’s small decorative script, of which he was rather proud. I read them without at first understanding why my attention should be drawn to this name.
Pamela Widmerpool
The whole procedure had been so odd, I was so cold and bored, the final flourish so unexpected — although in one sense Trapnel at his most Trapnelesque — that I did not immediately grasp the meaning of this revealment, if revealment it were.
‘What about her?’
Trapnel did not speak at once. He looked as if he could not believe he had heard the words correctly. I asked again. He smiled and shook his head.
‘That’s whom I’m in love with.’
No comment seemed anywhere near adequate. This was beyond all limits. Burton well expressed man’s subjection to passion. To recall his words gave some support now. ‘The scorching beams under the Æquinoctial, or extremity of cold within the circle of the Arctick, where the very Seas are frozen, cold or torrid zone cannot avoid, or expel this beat, fury and rage of mortal men.’ No doubt that was just how Trapnel felt. His face showed that he saw this climax as the moment of truth, one of those high-spots in the old silent films that he liked to recall, some terrific consummation emphasized by several seconds of monotonous music rising louder and louder, until, almost deafening, the notes suddenly jar out of tune in a frightful discord: the train is derailed: the canoe swept over the rapids: the knife plunged into the naked flesh. All is over. The action is cut: calm music again, perhaps no music at all.
‘Of course I know I’m mad. I don’t stand a chance. That’s one of the reasons why the situation’s nothing like Tessa — or any other girl I’ve ever been mixed up with. I admit it’s not sane. I admit that from the start.’
If things had gone so far that Trapnel could not even pronounce the name of the woman he loved, had to write it down on a review slip, the situation must indeed be acute. I laughed. There seemed nothing else to do. That reaction was taken badly by Trapnel. He had some right to be offended after putting on such an act. That could not be helped. He looked half-furious, half-upset. As he was inclined to talk about his girls only after they had left, there was no measure for judging the norm of his feelings when they were first sighted. Possibly he was always as worked up as at that moment, merely that I had never been the confidant. That seemed unlikely. Even if he showed the same initial excitement, the incongruity of making Pamela his aim was something apart.
‘You didn’t much take to her at the Fission party.’