‘It’s not the first row we’ve had by a long chalk. Christ, I don’t want her to leave me. I know it’s pretty awful living the way we do, but I can’t face the thought of her leaving. You know I’m not sure there isn’t going to be a film in Profiles in String. It was the last thing I thought about when I started, but now I believe there might be. It would go over big, if it went over at all.’
At one moment it looked as if Trapnel were going to break down, at the next, that he was about to indulge in one of his fantasies about making money, which overwhelmed him from time to time. These sudden changes of gear were going to require careful handling, if he were to be conveyed back to the flat. It was much more likely that he would want to go to a drinking club of some sort. He usually knew the address of one that would admit him. Bagshaw, grasping the fact that Trapnel needed soothing, now took charge quite effectively. He must have had long experience in persuading fellow-drunks to do what he, rather than they themselves, wanted. He was ruthless about getting his own way when he thought that necessary, showing total disregard for other people’s wishes or convenience. That was now all to the good.
‘We know what you feel, Trappy. Come on. We’ll go back and see how things are. She’s probably longing to see you.’
‘You don’t know her.’
‘I admit that, but I’ve seen her. They’re all the same.’
‘There’s not a drop to drink.’
‘Never mind. Nick and I will just see you home.’
‘Will you really? I couldn’t face it otherwise.’
Trapnel was like a child who suddenly decides to be fretful no longer. Now he was even full of gratitude. We reached Edgware Road with him still in this mood. There was a small stretch of the main highway to negotiate before turning off by the Canal. The evening was warm, stuffy, full of strange smells. For once Trapnel seemed suitably dressed in his tropical suit. We turned down the south side of the Canal, walking on the pavement away from the houses. Railings shut off a grass bank that sloped down to the tow-path. Trapnel had now moved into a pastoral dream.
‘I love this waterway. I’d like to have a private barge, and float down it waving to the tarts.’
‘Do you get a lot down here?’ asked Bagshaw, interested.
‘You see the odd one. They live round about, but tend to work other streets. What a mess the place is in.’
Most of London was pretty grubby at this period, the Canal no exception. On the surface of the water concentric circles of oil, undulating in the colours of the spectrum, were illuminated by moonlight. Through these luminous prisms floated anonymous off-scourings of every kind, tin cans, petrol drums, soggy cardboard boxes. Watery litter increased as the bridge was approached. Bagshaw pointed to a peculiarly obnoxious deposit bobbing up and down by the bank.
‘Looks as if someone’s dumped their unit’s paper salvage. I used to have to deal with that at one stage of the war. Obsolete forms waiting to be pulped and made into other forms. An internal reincarnation. Fitted the scene in India.’
Trapnel stopped, and leant against the railings.
‘Let’s pause for a moment. Contemplate life. It’s a shade untidy here, but romantic too. Do you know what all that mess of paper looks like? A manuscript. Probably someone’s first novel. Authors always talk of burning their first novel, I believe this one’s drowned his.’
‘Or hers.’
‘Some beautiful girl who wrote about her seduction, and couldn’t get it published.’
‘When lovely woman stoops to authorship?’
‘I think I’ll go and have a look. Might give me some ideas.’
‘Trappy, don’t be silly.’
Trapnel, laughing rather dementedly, began to climb the railings. Bagshaw attempted to stop this. Before he could be persuaded otherwise, Trapnel had lifted himself up, and was halfway across. The railings presented no very serious obstacle even to a man in a somewhat deranged state, who carried a stick in one hand. He dropped to the other side without difficulty. The bank sloped fairly steeply to the lower level of the tow-path and the water. Trapnel reached the footway. He paused for a moment, looking up and down the length of the Canal. Then he went to the water’s edge, and began to poke with the swordstick at the sheets of paper floating about all over the surface.
‘Come back, Trappy. You’re not the dustman.’
Trapnel took no notice of Bagshaw. He continued to strain forward with the stick, until it looked ominously as if he would fall in. The pieces of paper, scattered broadcast, were all just out of reach.
‘We shall have to get over,’ said Bagshaw. ‘He’ll be in at any moment.’
Then Trapnel caught one of the sheets with the end of the stick. He guided it to the bank. For a second it escaped, but was recaptured. He bent down to pick it up, shook off the water and straightened out the page. The soaked paper seemed to fascinate him. He looked at it for a long time. Bagshaw, relieved that the railings would not now have to be climbed, for a minute or two did not intervene. At last he became tired of waiting.
‘Is it a work of genius? Do decide one way or the other. We can’t bear more delay to know whether it ought to be published or not.’
Trapnel gave a kind of shudder. He swayed. Either drink had once more overcome him with the suddenness with which it had struck outside the pub, or he was acting out a scene of feigned horror at what he read. Whichever it were, he really did look again as if about to fall into the Canal. Abruptly he stopped playing the part, or recovered his nerve. I suppose these antics, like the literary ramblings in the pub, also designed to delay discovery that Pamela had abandoned him; alternatively, to put off some frightful confrontation with her.
‘Do come back, Trappy.’
Then an extraordinary thing happened. Trapnel was still standing by the edge of the water holding the dripping sheet of foolscap. Now he crushed it in his hand, and threw the ball of paper back into the Canal. He lifted the sword-stick behind his head, and, putting all his force into the throw, cast it as far as this would carry, high into the air. The stick turned and descended, death’s-head first. A mystic arm should certainly have risen from the dark waters of the mere to receive it. That did not happen. Trapnel’s Excalibur struck the flood a long way from the bank, disappeared for a moment, surfaced, and began to float downstream.
‘Now he really has become unmoored,’ said Bagshaw.
Trapnel came slowly up the bank.
‘You’ll never get your stick back, Trappy. What ever made you do it? We’ll hurry on to the bridge right away. It might have got caught up on something. There’s not much hope.’
Trapnel climbed back on to the pavement.
‘You were quite wrong, Books.’
‘What about?’
‘It was a work of genius.’
‘What was?’
‘The manuscript in the water — it was Profiles in String.’
I now agreed with Bagshaw in supposing Trapnel to have gone completely off his head. He stood looking at us. His smile was one of the consciously dramatic ones.
‘She brought the MS along, and chucked it into the Canal. She knew I should be almost bound to pass this way, and it would be well on the cards I should notice it. We quite often used to stroll down here at night and talk about the muck floating down, french letters and such like. She must have climbed over the railings to get to the water. I’d like to have watched her doing that. I’d thought of a lot of things she might be up to — doctoring my pills, arranging for me to find her being had by the milkman, giving the bailiffs our address. I never thought of this. I never thought she’d destroy my book.’
He stood there, still smiling slightly, almost as if he were embarrassed by what had happened.