Loitering With Intent (11 page)

‘For the future I’m well provided for, thank you,’ I slammed in. ‘And for the past, present and future I don’t take payment for friendship.’

‘You have matrimonial prospects?’ he said.

I went berserk. I said, ‘I have written a novel that’s going to be a success. It’s to be published in June.’ I don’t know whys I said this, except that I was beside myself with rage. In reality I had no hopes of success of any kind for my
Warrender Chase.
The new novel I was working on—my second, my
All Souls’ Day
—occupied my best brains now, my sweetest hopes. I thought that
Warrender Chase
might do respectably well as an introduction to my second book. I didn’t know then, as I know now, that it’s always the book I am working on that takes precedence in my esteem.

However, I was in no mood for the delicacies of my own opinions at that moment when out I spat the words, ‘I have written a novel …’

‘Now my dear Miss Talbot, let us be perfectly frank. Don’t you think you’ve had delusions of grandeur?’

I perceived four things simultaneously: Beryl Tims came hammering with her heels, and, opening the door, simpered that Lady Bernice was waiting; Sir Quentin opened the deep right-hand drawer of his desk with a smile; and, still at the same time, I was rehearing his words, ‘Don’t you think you’ve had delusions of grandeur?’ which all in a mental moment I noticed was a use of the past tense—why didn’t he say, ‘You’re having delusions … ‘? — and finally as the fourth element in this total set of impressions I recognized that his words ‘Don’t you think you’ve had delusions of grandeur?’ were the very words of my Warrender Chase; in his letter to my fictional English Rose, Charlotte, when he advises her how to question Marjorie, he actually writes, ‘Put it to her like this: “Don’t you think you’ve had delusions of grandeur?” And then when my ancient Prudence is trying to recall to my scholar Proudie what happened about the Greek girl at the prayer meeting who later committed suicide, I make my Prudence say, ‘Oh, Warrender was aware she was in a very bad way. Only a few days before he had said to her, “Don’t you think you’ve had delusions of grandeur?”‘

I noticed these four things together, still fuming as I was. I think my fury put me in a state of heightened perception, for standing up to go I caught a glimpse into the drawer Sir Quentin had opened. In a flash he had shut it again. Now, in the drawer I had seen a bundle of galley proofs, and by the light of reason I should have assumed they were those from the Settle-bury Paint Company, founded 1 850, their Centenary book. I only had a distant and quick glimpse of the folded proofs in the drawer. I wasn’t near enough to identify the typeface or the spacing or any of the words. Why then did it go through me that those were the proofs of my
Warrender Chase?
The thought went through me but I let it go, remembering about the paint people. Sir Quentin’s two sets of proofs were about equal to one set of my novel.

It all happened very quickly. I stood, furious with Sir Quentin, ready to walk out. Beryl Tims hovered for instructions and Sir Quentin, when he had shut the drawer, said, ‘Sit down, Mrs Tims. Miss Talbot, be seated a moment.’ I refused to be seated. I said, ‘I’m leaving.’ I noticed that Beryl Tims was wearing the brooch I had given her; she fingered it and said, ‘Shall I tell Lady Bernice—’

‘Mrs Tims,’ said Sir Quentin, ‘let me inform you that you are in the presence of an authoress.’

‘Pardon?’

‘An authoress of a best-selling novel.’

‘Lady Bernice seems to be very upset. She must see you, Sir Quentin. I said—’

By this time I had gathered my things and had left the room. Out bounded Sir Quentin after me. ‘My dear Miss Talbot, you mustn’t, you simply mustn’t leave.

I spoke for the best. Mummy would be devastated. Mrs Tims—I ask you—Miss Talbot has taken offence.’

I said good-night and went off, too enraged to says more. But as I left I saw Lady Bernice standing in the doorway of the drawing-room with a really distraught look on her face, not at all her dominant self; she was dressed-up as usual but the glimpse I got as I passed her by impressed on me the picture of fashionable clothes all awry and make-up daubed and smeared about her eyes. It was the last time I ever saw her. I heard Sir Quentin say, ‘Why, Bucks, whatever …’ just as I left, and I was far too wrapped up in my own grievances to dwell on that last look which imprinted itself on my mind so that I can see it now.

I was anxious to get home and was still amazed at my stupidity in making that large prophecy for my
Warrender Chase,
and I wondered where the words had come from, ‘… a novel that’s going to be a success. I had placed myself at the man’s mercy by saying this; not that I regarded success as a disgrace, but that I wasn’t thinking of
Warrender Chase
in that light just then, and also, I had known for a long time that success could not be my profession in life, nor failure a calling for that matter. These were by-products. Why, then, I was asking myself all the ways home, had I fallen into Sir Quentin’s trap? For that was how I saw it. He had been able, then, to bring out those very words of Warrender Chase, ‘Don’t you think you’ve had delusions of grandeur?’

I had put away my copy of
Warrender Chase.
It was my manuscript copy, written on foolscap pages, from which I had typed the copy that went to the publishers. I hadn’t taken a carbon copy of the typescript, not seeing any point in wasting paper. But I had made a parcel of my manuscript, marked it on the outside, ‘Warrender Chase by Fleur Talbot’ and put it on the floor of my clothes cupboard.

When I got home, to make sure I wasn’t mistaken about Sir Quentin’s use of Warrender’s actual words, I decided to get the book out and look up the two passages. I was in a flutter, feeling partly that I had in fact some delusions of grandeur or of persecution or some other symptom of paranoia. I couldn’t have felt more paranoiac when I discovered that my copy of
Warrender Chase
was not in the cupboard where it should have been. The package, about the dimensions of a London telephone directory, was not there.

I started to search my room. I began by absurdly turning things over, the new pages of my current work
All Souls’ Day
included. No sign of
Warrender Chase.
I sat down and thought. Nothing came of my frantic thinking. I got up and started to tidy the room very carefully, very meticulously, shifting every piece of furniture, every book. I did it all rather slowly, moving everything first into the middle of the room, then moving everything back, piece by piece, book by book; pencils, typewriter, food stores, everything. This activity was pure superstition for it was obvious at a few glances that the package was not in the room, but so minute was my search I might have been looking for a lost diamond. I found many lost things, old letters, half-a-crown, old poems and stories but no
Warrender Chase.
I opened every other package that I had pushed into an old suitcase: nothing.

I poured some whisky into a tumbler, in a very careful and stunned manner, added some water from the tap, and sat sipping it. The cleaning woman must have thrown it out. But how? It had been left in the cupboard. She had worked in the place for years, she never opened people’s cupboards or drawers, never took anything. Besides, I had always asked her to be careful about my papers and packages and she always had been careful, not even dusting the table my work was lying on lest she should disarrange it. She grumbled so much about the mess in my room, she hardly flicked a duster anywhere. I started going over in my mind who had been in my room since last I had seen
Warrender Chase
in the cupboard. Wally had been briefly but only to pick me up to go out somewhere one evening. I thought, could the Alexanders have come rummaging? That was absurd. Leslie? Dottie? I passed them all over, forgetting completely for the moment that Dottie had in fact been in my room during my absence that first evening I went dancing at Quaglino’s with Wally. But I didn’t think of this till later. At the time I sat and wondered if I were going mad, if
Warrender Chase
existed or had I imagined the book.

I took up the phone to ring Wally. The switchboard was off; I saw it was already nearly midnight.

But the very act of thinking about Wally put me to rights; it didn’t matter so very much after all what had happened to my manuscript. The typescript and the proofs were safely with the publishers. I could get back my typescript from Revisson Doe.

I went to bed, and to take my mind off my troubles I started to flick the pages of my beloved Cellini. The charm worked, as I read the snatches of his adventures of art and of Renaissance virility, his love for the goblets and the statues he made out of materials he adored, his imprisonments, his escapes, his dealings with his fellow goldsmiths and sculptors, his homicides and brawls, and again his delight in every aspect of his craft. Every page I turned was, to me, as it still is, sheer magic:

… Sure, therefore, that I could trust them, I gave my attention to the furnace, which I had filled up with pigs of copper and pieces of bronze, laid one on top of the other, according to the rules of the craft—that is, not pressing closely one on the other, but arranged so that the flames could make their way freely about them; for in this manner the metal is more quickly affected by the heat and liquefied. Then in great excitement I ordered them to light the furnace. They piled on the pine logs; and between the unctuous pine resin and the well-contrived draught of the furnace, the fire burned so splendidly that I had to feed it now on one side and now on the other. The effort was almost intolerable, yet I forced myself to keep it up.

On top of all this the shop took fire, and we feared lest the roof should fall upon us. Then, too …

I flicked over the pages, back and forth, reflecting how Cellini had enjoyed a long love affair with his art, how Cellini was comically contradictory in his actions, how boastful he was about his work.

… When I reached Piacenza, I met Duke Pier Luigi in the street, who stared me up and down, and recognized me. He had been the sole cause of all the wrong I had suffered in the castle of St Angelo; and now I fumed at the sight of him. But not knowing any way of avoiding him, I made up my mind to go and pay him a visit. I arrived at the palace just as the table was being cleared. With him were some men of the house of Landi, those who were afterwards his murderers. When I came in, he received me with the utmost effusiveness; and among other pleasant things which fell from his lips was his declaration to those who were present that I was the greatest man in all the world in my profession …

And so, forgetting my troubles, I flicked back to the opening page, the opening paragraph of this magnificent autobiography:

All men, whatever be their condition, who have done anything of merit, or which verily has a semblance of merit, if so be they are men of truth and good repute, should write the tale of their life with their own hand.

One day, I thought, I’ll write the tale of my life. But first I have to live.

… In truth it seems to me I have greater content of mind and health of body than at any time in the past. Some pleasant happenings I recall, and, again, some unspeakable misfortunes which, when I remember, strike terror into me and wonder that I have, indeed, come to this age of fifty-eight, from which, by God’s grace, I am now going on my way rejoicing.

The other day, while I was working on this account of that small part of my life and all that happened in the middle of the twentieth century, those months of 1949—5 0, I read this last-quoted passage and went back in my thoughts to the spring of 1950 when I lay reading it in bed in my room in Kensington. I was reflecting that one could take endless enchanting poems out of this book simply by flicking over the pages, back and forth, and extracting for oneself a page here, a paragraph there, and while I was playing with this idea it came to me with all apparent irrelevance that Dottie, who knew very well how my possessions were disposed in my room, had certainly taken my package that night the house-boy had let her in to wait for me.

It was after two in the morning. I jumped out of bed and put on my clothes. While dressing I remembered those proofs in Sir Quentin’s desk and my curious passing notion that they were mine. Out I plunged into the cold night and trudged round to Dottie’s. I don’t know if it was raining, I noticed rain very little in those days. But I was cold, standing under her window singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’. I was afraid of waking the neighbourhood but I was fairly enraged; I sang in as low a voice as I felt would penetrate Dottie’s bedroom window, but persistently. A light went on in someone else’s window, the sash went up and a head looked out. ‘Stop your bloody row at this time of night.’ I moved out of the light of the street-lamp and as I did so I saw the curtain in Dottie’s room pulled aside. By the streetlight I saw a head, not Dottie’s, peering through the pane. It became apparent as I kept watch from the pavement that it was a man’s head. I assumed it was Leslie. Dottie’s outraged neighbour had withdrawn and slammed down the sash, and as the light went out in his window I saw more clearly, but only for a brief flash, that the head in Dottie’s room was not Leslie’s; it was a square face with a hairless head, and elderly; it seemed to me to be the face of Revisson Doe, my publisher.

I made quickly for home, convincing myself I had been mistaken. It is true I had
Warrender Chase
on my mind; it was altogether possible, considering the loss of my manuscript, that I had it on my brain.

Now Dottie, English Rose as she was, had always demonstrated herself to be a very pious, old-fashioned Catholic. I was convinced she had taken my
Warrender Chase,
but I still wasn’t sure if she had done it as a half-joke or in one of her fits of righteousness; she was perfectly capable of burning a book she considered evil but I felt she would hardly go so far with my foolscap sheets. All my experience of Dottie was that she was basically harmless and, so far as she herself was conscious of sincerity, sincere. I wondered, too, if she had taken the novel to show to someone—some Carmelite divine to ask his no doubt adverse opinion of it, or Leslie, to curry favour with him by showing him the last part which he had never seen. I wondered everything. What I wondered most after I got home was who could be spending the night with Dottie. It wasn’t her father, for I had met him. I thought perhaps it could be an elderly uncle. But back I came always to that glimpse I had got of the square face and bald head of Revisson Doe.