Pamela turned to me.
‘You answer the door. Tell him we’re away — that we’ve lent you the flat.’
I showed unwillingness to undertake this commission. Trapnel was apologetic.
‘We’re being dunned. It always happens if you allow people to know your address. It’s like hotels insisting on cleaning the room out from time to time. There’s always some inconvenience, wherever you live. I couldn’t help giving the address this time, otherwise we wouldn’t have had any papers delivered.’
‘Perhaps it’s for the other people in the house.’
‘They’ve gone away — decamped, I think. Do deal with it.’
‘But what can I say to the man, if he is the newspaper man?’
‘Tell him — ’
The bell rang again. Pamela showed signs of getting cross.
‘Look, X can’t get up in his present state. Do go. If you had ten bob — twelve at the most — that would keep him quiet.’
There seemed no way of avoiding the assignment. I took ten shillings from my notecase, in so far as possible to cut short discussion, and went into the hall. To see the way, it was necessary to leave the flat door ajar. Even so, the place was inconveniently dark, and the front door required a certain amount of negotiating to open. It gave at last. The figure waiting on the the doorstep was not the newspaperman, but Widmerpool. He did not seem in the least surprised that I should be the person to admit him.
‘I expect you’re here on business about the magazine, Nicholas?’
‘Delivering a book to be reviewed, as a matter of fact.’
‘I’m rather glad to find you on the premises. Don’t go away from a mistaken sense of delicacy. Matters of a rather personal nature are likely to be discussed. I am quite glad to have a witness, especially one conversant with the circumstances, connected, I mean, by ties of business, albeit literary business. Where is Trapnel? This way, I take it?’
The light shining through the sitting-room door showed Widmerpool where to go. He took off his hat, crossed the boards of the hall, and over the threshold of the flat. It had at least been unnecessary to announce him. In fact he announced himself.
‘Good evening. I have come to talk about some things.’
Pamela, hands stuck in the pockets of her trousers, was still standing, with her peculiar stillness of poise, in front of the gas fire. If Widmerpool had shown lack of surprise at my opening the door to him, he had at least expressed what seemed to him an adequate explanation as to why I should be with Trapnel. I arranged reviewing at Fission; Trapnel reviewed books. That was sufficient reason for my presence. The fact that Trapnel had run away with Widmerpool’s wife had nothing to do with the business relationship between Trapnel and myself. To disregard it was almost something to approve. That view was no doubt more especially acceptable in the light of propaganda put about by Widmerpool himself.
Pamela, on the other hand, except insomuch as having left her husband, he might, in one sense, be expected to come and look for her, in another, could scarcely have been prepared for his arrival. So far from showing any wonder, she made no sign whatever of being even aware that an additional person had entered the room. She did not permit herself so much as a glance in Widmerpool’s direction. Her expression, one of slight, though not severe displeasure, did not alter in the smallest degree. She seemed to be concentrating on a tear in the wallpaper opposite that ran in a great jagged parabola through a pattern of red parrots and blue storks, freak birds of the same size.
Widmerpool did not speak immediately after his first announcement. He went rather red. He put his hat on top of Trapnel’s manuscript, where it lay on the table. Trapnel himself was now sitting bolt upright on the divan. This must, in a way, have been the moment he had been awaiting all his life: a truly dramatic occasion. That he was determined to rise to it was shown at once by the tone of his voice when he spoke.
‘Would you oblige me by removing your hat from off my book?’
Widmerpool, whatever else he had taken in his stride, was astonished by this request. No doubt it presupposed an altogether unforeseen, alien area of sensibility. Picking up the hat again, he replaced it on one of the suitcases.
Trapnel maintained a tone of dramatically cold politeness. His voice trembled a little when he spoke again.
‘I’m sorry. I must have sounded rude. I did not mean to be that. I have a special thing about my manuscripts — that is, I hate them being treated like any old pile of waste paper. Please take your coat off and sit down.’
‘Thank you, I prefer to stand. I shall not be staying long, so that it is not worth my taking off my coat.’
Widmerpool gazed round the room. It was clearly worse, far worse, than he had ever dreamed; if he had thought at all about what he was likely to run to earth. His face showed that, considered in the light of housing insufficiencies inspected in his own constituency, the flat was horrific. Trapnel, possibly remembering the talk they had exchanged on such deplorable conditions, noticed this survey. He almost grinned. Then his manner changed.
‘How did you find the house?’
This time Trapnel spoke with the hollow faraway voice of a horror film. He was determined to remain master of the situation. Widmerpool was quite equal to the manoeuvring.
‘I came by taxi.’
‘I mean how did you discover where I was living?’
‘There are such aids as private detectives.’
Widmerpool said that with disdain. Trapnel laughed. The laughter too was of the kind associated with a horror film.
‘I always wanted to meet someone who employed a private detective.’
Widmerpool did not answer at once. He appeared to be jockeying for position, taking up action stations before the contest really broke into flame. He cleared his throat.
‘I have come here to clarify the situation. By arrival in person, some people might judge that I have put myself in a false position. Such is not my own opinion. A person of your kind, Trapnel, has neither the opportunity to observe, nor capacity to understand, the demands laid on a man who takes up the burden of public life. It is therefore necessary that certain facts should be plainly stated. The best person to state them is myself.’
Trapnel listened to this with the air of an accomplished actor. His ‘hollow’ laughter was now followed by a ‘grim’ smile. It was still a performance. Widmerpool had not got him, so to speak, out in the open yet.
‘First,’ said Widmerpool, ‘you borrow money from me.’
Trapnel’s defiance had not been geared to that particular form of attack at that moment. He dropped his acting and looked very angry, quite unsimulated rage.
‘Then you lampoon me in a magazine of which I am one of the chief supporters.’
Trapnel began to smile again at that. If the first accusation put him in a weak position, the second to some extent restored equilibrium.
‘Finally, my wife comes to live with you.’
Widmerpool paused. He too was being melodramatic now. Trapnel had ceased to smile. He was very white. He had lost command of his role as actor. Pamela watched them, still showing no change of expression. Widmerpool must have been to some extent aware that by making Trapnel angry, dislodging him from playing a part, he was moving towards ascendancy.
‘You can keep my pound. Do not bother, when you are next paid for some paltry piece of journalism, to make another attempt to return it — which was, so I understand, your subterfuge for insinuating yourself into my house. The pound does not matter. Forget about it. I make you a present of it.’
Trapnel did not speak.
‘Secondly, I want to express quite clearly my own indifference to your efforts to ridicule my economic theories. Some people might have thought that an act of ungratefulness on your part. Your own ignorance of the elementary principles of economics makes it not even that. Your so-called parody is a failure. Not funny. Several people have told me so. And at the same time I recognize it as a deliberate insult. That is a matter between the board and Bagshaw — ’