Loitering With Intent Page 10

  ‘All Souls’ Day,’ I said.

  ‘All Souls’ Day, yes, oh, quite.’ He seemed to be amused at this, and I took advantage of his little laugh to ask him what was wrong with Warrender Chase.

  ‘We can’t publish it,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Fortunately for us we’ve discovered in time that it bears the fault of most first novels, alas, it is too close to real life. Why, look, you know, these characters of yours are lifted clean from that Autobiographical Association you work for. We have, really we have, looked into the matter and we have a number of testimonies to the likeness. And now your employer, Sir Quentin Oliver, is threatening to sue. He sent to us for a set of the proofs and naturally we gave him a set. You make them out to be sinister, you make them out to be feeble, hypnotized creatures and you make Sir Quentin out to be an evil manipulator and hater of women. He drives one woman to drink and an-other—’

  ‘My novel was started before I met Sir Quentin Oliver. The man must be mad.’

  ‘He’s threatening to sue if we publish. Sir Quentin Oliver is a man of substance. We can’t afford to risk a libel suit. The very idea …’ He put his hand over his eyes for a moment. Then he said, ‘It’s out of the question. But we do value your potentialities as a writer very highly, Miss Talbot—Fleur, if I may—and if we could offer you some guidance with your second novel from our fund of experience, it may be possible to switch the contract—’

  ‘I don’t need your guidance.’

  ‘You would be the first author I’ve known who could not, between ourselves, do with a little editorial help. You must remember,’ said he, for all the world as if I were incapable of disgust, ‘that an author is a publisher’s raw material.’

  I said I would have to consult my advisers and got up to leave. ‘We are very unhappy about this, most unhappy,’ he said. I never saw him again.

  It wasn’t till after I got home that I realized he had my only copy of the typescript of Warrender Chase. I didn’t want to ask for it back until I had consulted Solly Mendelssohn, lest I should jeopardize the contract; I half hoped that Solly would suggest some way in which they could be induced to change their minds; but at the same time I knew I couldn’t deal any more with Park and Revisson Doe. The shock and disappointment had been too sudden for me to plunge into the final reality of taking the physical book away from them. But I did, when I got home, ring up Revisson Doe. I got his secretary. He was engaged, could she help me? I said I would be obliged if she could send me a spare set of proofs as I had mislaid my original manuscript and I wanted to look through my Warrender Chase. ‘Hold on, please,’ she said politely and went off the line, I presumed for further instructions, for some minutes. She came back and said, ‘I’m so sorry, but the type has been distributed.’

  Ignorant as I was then of printers’ jargon I said, ‘Distributed to whom?’

  ‘Distributed—broken up. We are not printing the book, Miss Talbot.’

  ‘And what happened to the proofs?’

  ‘Oh, those have been destroyed, naturally.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I was able to get Solly on the phone at his office the next night. He told me to meet him at a pub in Fleet Street, and came down from his office for a quick conference.

  ‘It’s not them sue you for libel,’ Sally mused, ‘it’s you sue them for saying your book’s libellous. That’s if they put it in writing. But it would cost you a fortune. Better get your typescript back and tell them to wipe their arse with the contract. Don’t give them your next novel. Don’t worry. We’ll get another publisher. But get the typescript back. It’s yours by rights. By legal rights. You’re a bloody fool not to have kept a copy.’

  ‘Well, I had the original manuscript. How could I know that Dottie, or whoever it was, would steal it?’

  ‘I would say,’ said Solly, ‘that it was Dottie, all right. She’s been acting like a fool over your novel. However, it’s a good sign when people act like fools over a piece of work, a good sign.’

  I couldn’t see how it was a good sign. I got home just before ten. I made plans to retrieve my typescript from the publisher the next day and also to make it my business to get back my manuscript from Dottie. The possibility that all copies of my Warrender Chase had been destroyed was one I couldn’t face clearly that night, but it hung around me nightmarishly—the possibility that nowhere, nowhere in the world, did my Warrender Chase exist any more.

  Then the telephone rang. It was Lady Edwina’s nurse.

  ‘I’ve been trying to get you all afternoon,’ she said. ‘Lady Edwina’s asking for you. We’ve had a terrible time all day. Mrs Tims and Sir Quentin were called out early this morning because his poor friend Lady Bernice Gilbert passed away. Then they came back and asked for you. Then they went out again. Lady Edwina’s been laughing her head off. Hysterics. She’s just dropping off now. I gave her a dose. But she wants to see you as soon— ‘What did Lady Bernice die of?’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ said the nurse with a quivering voice, ‘she took her own life.’

  Chapter Nine

  There and then the determination took me that, whatever Sir Quentin was up to, for myself, I was not any sort of a victim; I was simply not constituted for the role. The news of Bernice Gilbert’s suicide horrified but toughened me.

  I went along to Hallam Street next morning. I felt sure, now, that not only was Sir Quentin exerting his influence to suppress my Warrender Chase but he was using, stealing, my myth. Without a mythology, a novel is nothing. The true novelist, one who understands the work as a continuous poem, is a myth-maker, and the wonder of the art resides in the endless different ways of telling a story, and the methods are mythological by nature.

  I was sure, and it turned out that I was right, that Dottie had obtained for Sir Quentin a set of the proofs of Warrender Chase to read. I had been too free with that novel, I should never have made it known to Dottie in the first place. Never since have I shown my work to my friends or read it aloud to them before it has been published. However, it was our general custom at that time to read our work to each other, or send it to be read, and to discuss our work with each other; that was literary life as I then knew it.

  At the flat in Hallam Street Mrs Tims was dabbing the corners of her eyes with a white handkerchief. ‘Where were you yesterday? Just when we needed you,’ she said. ‘Sir Quentin was most distressed.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  She was startled by my tone. ‘He had to go out. The inquest is this afternoon. The poor—’

  But I had gone into his study, shutting the door with a firm, sharp click. I went straight to the drawer where I had seen the proofs. The drawer was empty except for a set of keys. The other drawers were locked.

  I went next to Edwina’s room. She was sitting up in bed with her breakfast tray. The nurse was in Edwina’s bathroom which led off from the bedroom, washing something. She put her head round the door.

  Edwina was in a rational state, for her. She said, ‘Suicide. Just like the woman in your novel.’

  ‘I know.’

  I sat on the edge of her bed and telephoned to Park and Revisson Doe to ask them to send me the typescript of my Warrender Chase.

  ‘Hold on, please.’ The girl was away for some long minutes during which I told Edwina that my book wasn’t going to be published.

  ‘Oh yes it is,’ said Edwina, ‘I shall see to it. My friend—’ The secretary had come back on the phone. ‘I’m afraid the copy we had has been destroyed. Mr Doe put it on his desk for you to take, and you didn’t take it away. He thought you didn’t want it.’

  ‘I didn’t see it on his desk. I’m sure it wasn’t there.’

  ‘Well, Mr Doe says he had it out for you. He says he threw it out. We haven’t room to store manuscripts, Miss Talbot. Mr Doe says we take no responsibility for the manuscripts. It is stated in the contract.’

  ‘Tell Mr Doe I’ll see my lawyer.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Edwina, whe
n I had hung up, ‘tell them you’ll see your lawyer.’

  ‘I haven’t got a lawyer. And it would be no use.

  ‘But you’ve given them something to think about,’ Edwina said. She had buttered a piece of crisp toast from her breakfast tray, and handed it to me. I munched it, thinking how I could go about writing Warrender Chase all over again. But I knew I couldn’t. Something spontaneous had gone for ever if it were true that all the copies were destroyed including the proofs Sir Quentin had got hold of. I didn’t tell Edwina that Sir Quentin had been the cause of my losing my publisher; on the whole, the old lady bore very well the fact that she had spawned a rotter; it wouldn’t have done to rub it in. I thought of Edwina’s courageous facing of facts again, later on, when she sat in her wheel-chair in her pearls and black satin, quiet but fully alive, at Sir Quentin’s funeral.

  It did me good to sit on Edwina’s bed that morning, eating the toast that she continued to butter and jam for me, with those ancient star-spangled banners, her long bejewelled hands, fluttering among the small porcelain dishes.

  Beryl Tims came in once ‘to see if everything was all right’. The nurse, a kindly soul called Miss Fisher, came out of the bathroom to assure her on this point. Edwina glared at Beryl Tims. I went on munching.

  ‘I think,’ said Miss Fisher, ‘a fresh pot of tea might be called for and an extra cup.’

  ‘Oh, Fleur can come to the kitchen and have her morning coffee with me.’

  ‘Nurse said tea,’ said Edwina. ‘We want it brought in here.’

  ‘Fleur has her work to do. We wouldn’t want to keep Fleur back from her work, would we?’ said the English Rose. ‘And you know that Miss Fisher didn’t get her afternoon-off yesterday. We’re hoping Fleur will hold the fort this afternoon, aren’t we? I shall be at the inquest with Sir Quentin this afternoon. So you and Fleur can have your tea together, can’t you?’

  Not a word of this was addressed to me, but I had a plan in mind which made this opportunity of spending some hours in the flat with no one except Edwina an exciting prospect. When Miss Fisher said, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t dream of leaving Lady Edwina at a time like this,’ I quickly put in that I’d be delighted to make afternoon tea and generally look after Lady Edwina.

  ‘Miss Fisher needs a rest,’ said Beryl Tims.

  ‘I quite agree with Mrs Tims,’ I said, and probably it was the first and only time I ever said such a thing.

  So it was agreed. Miss Fisher with a bowl of washing followed Mrs Tims out of the room. I got on the phone, now, to Solly Mendelssohn.

  I didn’t like phoning Solly during the day, for he slept most of the morning after his long night-duty. I always supposed, too, that he had some other private life, a woman we never met but who occupied his spare time; it wasn’t the sort of thing one would want to find out and there was always something about Solly into which no real friend of his could intrude. But at least I knew he wouldn’t have the phone off the hook in case of a call from the news-room at his paper, and in the emergency of the occasion I chanced it. He answered, half-asleep. But when he heard my urgent voice making of him a few brief requests, Solly agreed to do exactly what I asked without further explanations.

  Solly arrived at a quarter to four at Hallam Street, big, bulky and unshaven, wrapped in scarves. He looked very much like a burglar with his big, brown travelling bag. Edwina was sitting up in her chair in the drawing-room.

  Sir Quentin had not returned to the flat; he was to meet Beryl Tims at the Coroner’s Inquest on Bernice Gilbert’s suicide while of unsound mind. But as soon as Beryl Tims had left I had made a good snoop around Sir Quentin’s study. The proofs of Warrender Chase were nowhere to be found. But the keys in the unlocked drawer of his desk opened the cabinet wherein, as Sir Quentin always said, ‘were secrets’.

  One after the other of the drawers contained the files, Sir Quentin’s notes of the members of the Autobiographical Association. Mrs Wilks was there, the Baronne Clotilde du Loiret, Miss Maisie Young, Father Egbert Delaney, Sir Eric Findlay and the late Bernice ‘Bucks’ Gilbert, widow of the former chargé d’affaires in San Salvador, Sir Alfred Gilbert … These were the files I was interested in. There was a file marked ‘Beryl, Mrs Tims,’ which I ignored. I had decided to take these files as hostages for my Warrender Chase which I was perfectly sure Sir Quentin had arranged with Dottie to steal from my room.

  But as I had waited for Solly’s arrival I had also flicked through one of the memoirs, for I was curious to see what had been added under Sir Quentin’s management since he had taken them out of my hands. And I had time enough to see, as I turned over one file after another, that, although nothing had been added in the form of memoirs, sheets of notes, some typed, some in Sir Quentin’s hand had been inserted, familiar passages; they were lifted more or less directly from my Warrender Chase.

  I closed the cabinet again with its secrets when Solly rang the door bell. Edwina, dressed in her full regalia, exclaimed her joy to see him. I sat him down beside her, rather bewildered as he was, and I explained to them both: ‘I’m going to take away the memoirs of the Autobiographical Association to work on at home. Those biographies do need a literary touch.’

  Solly seemed to begin to understand. Edwina uncannily seemed to perceive something that even I did not, for she said, ‘What a splendid idea! That will save more of ‘these tragedies. Poor Bucks Gilbert!’

  I told Solly, then, that Lady Bernice had committed suicide, and that the inquest was proceeding at that moment. And I took his bag, leaving him with Edwina.

  I put the files in Solly’s bag. It was an exhilarating affair. I thought how easy it was to steal, and I thought of Sir Quentin stealing my book, not only the physical copies, but the very words, phrases, ideas. Even from the brief look I had taken I could see he had even stolen a letter I had invented, written from my Warrender Chase to my character Marjorie. The bag was heavy. I lugged it into the hall and put it by the front door.

  When I got back to the drawing-room, Solly had lit the pretty silver spirit-stove under the kettle which Edwina liked to use for her afternoon tea. It was a bit early for tea-time but Edwina was always ‘weary for tea’ as she put it. There were some buttered scones, some biscuits, which Solly had already started to help himself to. Edwina said, ‘Where are the files? Have you put them in that bag?’

  I said I had. I said Sir Quentin would not miss them right away, no doubt, but he would realize I was really in better condition working on them at home.

  ‘Take them away, darling,’ shrieked Edwina. Then she came out with, ‘You’ll never get your novel back if you don’t do something about it.’

  Solly then said to me, ‘Haven’t you managed to find a copy?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘the whole book’s disappeared.’

  ‘I knew it,’ said Edwina. ‘Somehow I knew it. They think I don’t know what’s going on in this house because I’m asleep most of the time. But I’m not asleep.’

  She went on to list the names of the publishers she knew personally whom she could get to publish my book should she but crook her little finger. Some of them, it is true, had been dead half a century. But we let that go and made ourselves very optimistic over our tea.

  Sir Quentin and Mrs Tims came in rather earlier than I had expected, before Solly left.

  ‘To whom,’ said Sir Quentin as he came into the room, ‘does that bag in the hall belong?’

  ‘It’s mine,’ said Solly, getting up.

  ‘Baron von Mendelssohn,’ I said, ‘is only passing through. May I introduce, Sir Quentin Oliver—the Baron von—’

  ‘Oh, please, please, dear Baron, do sit down …‘. Sir Quentin in his usual orgasm over a title fussed round unshaven Solly, begging him to sit down, to stay, not to leave.

  But Solly, solid and unshaken by his new-found title, said polite good-byes all round and limped off, staggering a little at the door under the unexpected weight of the bag.

  ‘Suicide while of unsound mind,’ said Sir Quentin when he
came back into the room. ‘An overdose of sleeping pills knocked back by a pint of whisky. I really must see that something more seemly goes on the death certificate.’

  ‘Tell them,’ yelled Edwina, ‘to wipe their arse with the death certificate.’

  ‘Mummy!’

  I left shortly afterwards, and took an expensive taxi home to catch up with Solly.

  Chapter Ten

  It is not to be supposed that the stamp and feeling of a novel can be conveyed by an intellectual summary. My references to the book have been scrappy: I couldn’t reproduce my Warrender Chase in a few words; and anyhow, an attempt to save, or not save, anyone the trouble of reading it would be simply beside the point.

  But I can certainly meet my essential purpose, which is to tell how Sir Quentin Oliver tried to arrange for the destruction of Warrender Chase as a novel at the same time as he appropriated the spirit of my legend for his own use. I can show how he actually plagiarized my text. And so I am writing about the cause of an effect.

  I remember as a young child being obliged to write out in my copy-book, Necessity is the Mother of Invention. The sample had already been effected in beautiful copperplate on the first line, and to improve our handwriting it was our task to copy out this maxim on the lines below, which I duly did, all unaware that I was not merely acquiring an improved calligraphy but imbibing at the same time a subliminal lesson in social ethics. Another maxim was All is not Gold that Glisters, and another was Honesty is the Best Policy, and I also recall Discretion is the Better Part of Valour. And I have to testify that these precepts, which I was too flighty-minded to actually ponder at the time, but around which I dutifully curled my cursive Ps and my Vs, have turned out to my astonishment to be absolutely true. They may lack the grandeur of the Ten Commandments but they are more to the point.