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biographer?’
    ‘Myself.’
    ‘Fine.’
    ‘You think it right?’
    ‘Quite right.’
    Gwinnett nodded his
head.
    ‘I ought to say I’d
already planned to get in touch with you, Mr Jenkins – among others who’d known
Trapnel – when I reached England after this Conference. I’d never have expected
to find you here.’
    After the statement
of Gwinnett’s Trapnel project relations might have been on the way to becoming
easier. That did not happen; at least easing was by no means immediate. For a
minute or two he seemed even to regret the headlong nature of the confession.
Then he recovered some of the earlier more amenable manner.
    ‘You did not go on
seeing Trapnel right up to his death, I guess?’
    ‘Not for about four
or five years before that. It must be the best part of ten years now since I
talked to him – though he once sent me a note asking the date when some book
had been published, the actual month, I mean. He went completely underground
latterly.’
    ‘What book was that –
the one he wanted to know about?’
    ‘A collection of
essays by L. O. Salvidge called
Paper Wine
. There had
been some question of Trapnel reviewing it, but the notice never got written.’
    ‘Where was Trapnel
living when he wrote you?’
    ‘He only gave an
accommodation address. A newspaper shop in the Islington part of the world.
    ‘I want to see Mr
Salvidge too when I get to London.’
    ‘As you know, he
contributed an Introduction to a posthumous work of Trapnel’s called
Dogs
Have No Uncle
.’
    ‘It’s good. Not as
great as
Camel Ride to the Tomb
, but good. What a sense of doom that other
tide gives.’
    In contrast with the
passing of a prolific writer like Ferrand-Sénéschal, Trapnel’s end, in spite of
aptness of circumstances, took place unnoticed by the press. That was not
surprising. He had produced no ‘serious’ work during his latter days.
Throughout his life he had been accustomed to ‘go underground’ intermittently,
when things took an unfavourable turn; the underground state becoming permanent
after the Pamela Widmerpool affair, her destruction of his manuscript, return
to her husband. That was when Trapnel disappeared for good. I knew no one who
continued to hobnob with him. He must have made business contacts from time to
time. His name would occasionally appear in print, or on the air, in connexion
with hack work of one kind or another. This was usually radio or television
collaboration with a partner, a professional, safely established, to whom
Trapnel had passed on a saleable idea he himself lacked energy or will to
hammer out to the end. In these exchanges he must have inclined to avoid former
friendly affiliations, reminders of ‘happier days’. It had to be admitted
Trapnel had known ‘happier days’, even if of a rather special order.
    Bagshaw was a case in
point of Trapnel deliberately rejecting overtures from an old acquaintance. As
he had himself planned after the liquidation of
Fission
, when such
fiefs were comparatively easy to seize, Bagshaw had carved out for himself an
obscure, but apparently fairly prosperous, little realm in the unruly world of
television. Now he was known as ‘Lindsay Bagshaw’, the first name latent until
this coming into his own. I never saw much of him after the magazine ceased
publication, though we would run across each other occasionally. Once we met in
the lift at Broadcasting House, and he began to speak of Trapnel. Even by then
Bagshaw had become rather a changed man. Success, even moderate success, had
left a mark.
    ‘I’d have liked
Trappy to appear in one of my programmes. Quite impossible to run him to earth.
I caught sight of him one day from the top of a 137 bus. It wasn’t so much the
beard and the long black greatcoat, as that melancholy distinguished air Trappy
always had. I couldn’t jump off in full flight. It was one of those misty
evenings in Langham Place. The lights were