‘I respected the man more than his work. He became a legend in his own lifetime. He often said so himself, and with truth. Sometimes my students ask me to tell them about him — and did you once see Trapnel plain? I reply “I did”, and often stopped and spoke with him. At the same time I am put in a quandary. These young people find the intellectual climate of Camel Ride to the Tomb unsatisfying. I cannot in all fairness blame them. Where, they say, is the social conscience? I have to reply, they look in vain.’
At the time of his death, Trapnel’s oeuvre, so far as I knew, consisted of the Camel; the selection of short stories published as Bin Ends; a fair amount of additional stories, never yet collected, some dating back to his early days as a writer before the war (when he had kept himself alive by all sorts of odd employments); a miscellany of occasional pieces, criticism (some of it quite good), articles, parodies, stuff written for papers like Fission, and never brought together; finally the conte (unpublished in Trapnel’s lifetime on account of some legal battle over ‘rights’) Dogs Have No Uncles. A work in Trapnel’s liveliest manner, almost long enough to be called a novel, its posthumous appearance with Salvidge’s Introduction had done something to prevent Trapnel’s reputation from slumping too severely after his death. All this did not constitute a large aggregate of work, but, together with what was available in other material, should make a respectable critical biography. In any case, Trapnel’s was still an unexplored period. Gwinnett added another item.
‘Did you know he kept a Commonplace Book during his last years?’
‘Where is it?’
‘I have it myself.’
Gwinnett seemed for a moment uncertain as to what he was prepared to say on the subject. Then, after this hesitation, described how the librarian of his university, knowing about Gwinnett’s interest in Trapnel, had drawn attention to an English bookseller’s catalogue, which listed, among other manuscripts offered for sale, certain papers of Trapnel’s come on the market. The price was not high, the College authorities uninterested. Gwinnett acquired these odds and ends himself. None of them turned out of startling interest, even the Commonplace Book, though there was enough there to make its purchase worth while to a potential biographer. That was Gwinnett’s own account.
‘I’ll show you the book. Some of the notes — they’re all abbreviated, almost a code — are surely about the castrating girl. You say she’s married to — is the name Widmerpool?’
‘Yes, she’s still married to him.’
That was strange enough. In the course of a dozen years or more of the Widmerpools’ married life many stories had gone round, the least of them lurid enough to imply the union could scarcely persist a week longer, yet it had persisted. They remained together; anyway to the extent of living under the same roof. That phrase did not, in fact, define the situation realistically. Each was usually under the different roof of one or other of Widmerpool’s two places of residence. There was the flat in Westminster (one of a large block near the River), and his mother’s former cottage in the Stourwater neighbourhood, which (Widmerpool mentioned when we met) had been ‘enlarged and improved’.
Stourwater Castle was now a girls’ school; rather a fashionable one. The Quiggin twins, Amanda and Belinda, were being educated there.
The existence of these two separate Widmerpool establishments was sometimes offered as explanation of a capacity to remain undivorced, which certainly required elucidation. Pamela would disappear now and then with other men, behaviour apparently accepted by Widmerpool himself, so that it became, as it were, accepted by everyone else, a matter of comparatively little interest. People recently returned from abroad would report that Pamela Widmerpool had been seen in Spain with an ambitious journalist; among the islands of the Ægean with a fashionable don; that one of the generals at a NATO headquarters had fallen out with another senior officer, when she was staying with him; that her visit to an embassy in Asia had resulted in a reshuffle of diplomatic personnel; that the TUC had been put in a flutter one year at their conference by her presence with a delegate at a local hotel. A Pamela Widmerpool anecdote might stop the gap in a languishing dinner-table conversation, but, unless highly spiced, was by now unlikely to hold the attention of the company for long.
‘My wife loves travel,’ said Widmerpool. ‘She likes seeing how other people live.’
No convincing answer had been offered to the question why she did not leave him for one of her many, if soon disillusioned lovers; nor why Widmerpool himself never chose his moment to divorce her. For some reason the status quo seemed to suit both. Trapnel, alleging the Widmerpool marriage to exclude sexual relationship (scarcely even tried out), had also spoken in a few tortured sentences of the frustration, agony, alienation, inspired in himself — though he loved her — by Pamela’s blend of frigidity with insatiable desire. People who went in for more precise ascriptions m such matters, especially far-fetched or eccentric ones, explained this matrimonial paradox by the theory that Widmerpool actually took pleasure in his wife’s infidelities, derived masochistic satisfaction, at the very least felt flattered, by the agitation she inspired. Pamela too, so these amateurs of psychology concluded, on her own side luxuriated no less in enjoyment of a recurrent thrill at being unfaithful. Another husband, less tolerant, could prove less satisfactory. Such hypotheses, if not widely accepted, remained comparatively unchallenged by more convincing speculation. At least they attempted to make sense of an otherwise inexplicable situation. They even offered a dim outline of a genuine, if macabre, bond of union; one very different from Trapnel’s enslavement. Even Dicky Umfraville’s comment had a certain force.
‘Anyway they’ve remained married. Took me five attempts, even if I placed the right bet in the end.’
Loss of his seat in the Commons did not prevent Widmerpool from remaining a fairly prominent figure in public affairs, though there was some surprise when (a few weeks before the Conference opened in Venice) he was created a Life Peer. This advancement, proceeding through the medium of a Conservative Government, must undoubtedly have been conferred after consultation with Labour sources of authority, then in Opposition. Roddy Cutts, who held a minor post in the Tory administration, agreed that Widmerpool’s elevation to the Lords had aroused adverse comment on both sides of the House. At the same time, Cutts was sure the recommendation must have been cleared with the Leader of the Opposition, in spite of his reputed dislike for Widmerpool himself. Cutts was inclined to dismiss talk, such as Bagshaw’s, of Widmerpool’s fellow-travelling.
‘After all, if you’re on the Left, you have to take a Leftward line in public. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a Communist. Widmerpool may have had leanings in that direction once — certainly his own side thought so — but after all he’s not the only one. Personally I’m inclined to think all that’s over and done with. There was a story about his being mixed up with Maclean and Burgess. I can’t remember which. It was even said he lent a hand in tipping them off. Somebody did, but I’m sure it wasn’t Widmerpool. Besides, I don’t believe the man’s a bugger for a moment. Labour peers had to be created. It wasn’t at all easy to settle on suitable names. Not everyone wants to be kicked upstairs to the Lords. Widmerpool lost his seat. He’d made himself very useful on the financial side at one time or another, no matter what the talk about fellow-travelling. Yes, I mean contribution to Party funds. Why not? The money’s got to come from somewhere. Probably undisclosed inner workings of the Labour Party machine played a role too. Patronage? Might be. These things happen. No different to ourselves in that respect. A political party has to be operated. The PM would never have gone over Hugh’s head. When Widmerpool arrived in the House I found him abrasive about marginal issues. Latterly we’ve got on pretty well. We may be opponents, that’s no reason why one should doubt his sincerity. What is true — probably played a part in the peerage — is the active manner Widmerpool’s promoted East/West trade, naturally a sphere where some community of political thought, anyway outward acceptance of the other fellow’s point of view, is likely to oil the wheels. Whatever he did in that direction had, of course, the blessing of the Board of Trade. He must have made a packet too. Do you ever drink that wine from round the Black Sea? We don’t at all despise it at home. Tastes a bit sultry at times, but has the merit of being cheap. Kenneth Widmerpool’s got to do something to bring the pennies in with a wife like that. I daresay he wanted the peerage to induce her to stay.’