Books Do Furnish a Room by Anthony Powell

Author:Anthony Powell [Powell, Anthony]
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Heinemann
Published: 1971-01-14T15:00:00+00:00

4

In the new year, without further compromise, Dickensian winter set in. Snow fell, east winds blew, pipes froze, the water main (located next door in a house bombed out and long deserted) passed beyond insulation or control. The public supply of electricity broke down. Baths became a fabled luxury of the past. Humps and cavities of frozen snow, superimposed on the pavement, formed an almost impassable barrier of sooty heaps at the gutters of every crossing, in the network of arctic trails. Bagshaw sat in his overcoat, the collar turned up round a woollen muffler, from which a small red nose appeared above a gelid moustache. Ada’s protuberant layers of clothing travestied pregnancy. Only Trapnel, in his tropical suit and dyed greatcoat, seemed unaware of the cold. He complained about other things: lack of ideas: emotional setbacks: financial worries. Climate did not affect him. The weather showed no sign of changing. It encouraged staying indoors. I worked away at Burton.

On the whole Bagshaw’s tortuous, bantering strategy, which had seen him through so many tussles with employers and wives (the latest one kept rigorously in the background), was designed to conceal hard-and-fast lines of opinion – assuming Bagshaw still held anything of the sort – so that, in case of sudden showdown, he could without prejudice give support wherever most convenient to himself. Even so, he allowed certain assessments to let fall touching on the fierce internal polemics that raged under the surface at Quiggin & Craggs; by association, at Fission too. Such domestic conflict, common enough in all businesses, took a peculiarly virulent form in this orbit, according to Bagshaw, on account of political undercurrents concerned.

‘There are daily rows about what books are taken on. JG’s not keen on frank propaganda, especially in translation. The current trouble’s about a novel called The Pistons of Our Locomotives Sing the Songs of Our Workers. JG thinks the title too long, and that it won’t sell anyway. No doubt the party will see there’s no serious deficit, but JG fears that sort of book clogs the wheels – the pistons in this case – of the non-political side of the list. He’s nervous in certain other respects too. He doesn’t mind inconspicuous fraternal writings inculcating the message in quiet ways. He rather likes that. What he doesn’t want is for the firm to get a name for peddling the Party Line.’

‘Craggs takes another view?’

‘Howard’s an old fellow-traveller of long standing. He hardly notices the books are propaganda. It all gives him a nostalgic feeling that he’s young again, running the Vox Populi Press, having the girls from the 1917 Club. All the same, he probably wouldn’t argue with JG so much if he wasn’t being prodded all the time by Gypsy.’

‘And Widmerpool?’

‘All I’m certain about is he wants to winkle me out of the editorship. As I’ve said, he behaves at times like a crypto, but I suspect he’s still waiting to see which way the cat will jump – and of course he doesn’t want to get too far the wrong side of his Labour bosses in the House.

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