Loitering With Intent (16 page)

‘Who took me there in the first place?’ said Dottie. ‘I did, I’m sorry to say. But I tore up your biography as soon as I realized there was something wrong.’

Dottie said, ‘I enjoy sleeping with Revisson Doe.’

‘Get out, I’ve got work to do. It’s late.’

‘Have you got a cup of cocoa?’

I made her a cup of cocoa. I gave her the embroidered silk handkerchief-case that I hadn’t left at her flat.

‘Why don’t you give up the idea of being an author? ‘said the English Rose. ‘Everything used to be all right between us and Leslie was your friend too. But that mad novel of yours — Sir Quentin says—’

‘Out,’ I breathed, so as not to wake the house. This time she went.

It was not many hours before Dottie discovered that the handwritten copy of my
Warrender Chase
she had seen that night in my room was in fact the one she had stolen; she found the ream of typing paper in her bag under her knitting. She rang me up the next afternoon.

‘How did you get into my flat?’ she said.

I had already returned the key to Gray Mauser. I didn’t answer her question, I didn’t even ask how my novel got into her flat. I hung up.

An hour later she rang again. ‘Listen, Fleur, Sir Quentin is anxious to have a chat with you.’

‘Where are you speaking from?’

‘I’m at home. I don’t think I can manage the job.’

‘You’ve fallen out with Sir Quentin.’

‘Well, not exactly, but—’

‘He’s furious because you didn’t destroys my manuscript.’

‘Well, it deserves to be destroyed.’

That evening I finished typing
Warrender Chase.
I had been typing steadily all day; my shoulders ached and I lay on my bed reading it through for typing errors. I could see its defects as a novel but they weren’t the sort of defects that could be removed without removing the entire essence. It’s often like that with a novel or a story. One sees a fault or a blemish, perhaps in the portrayal of a character, but cosmetic treatment won’t serve; change the setting of a scene and the balance of the whole work is adversely affected. So I left my
Warrender Chase
as it was.

Solly looked in for a drink before he went to his night-work and took away two typed copies of my book, one to send to a publisher and the other to keep in the safe at the office. He said, ‘You could sue them all, you could give them in charge.’

‘Would it do my book any good?’ I said.

‘No,’ said Solly, ‘it would only make false publicity. Your novel has to stand on its merits, especially a first novel.’

‘What should I do with the biographies?’

‘Destroy the bits he’s lifted from your novel and give him back the rest.’

I told Solly that was what I intended to do. But first I was interested to see what use Sir Quentin had put my work to. ‘I think he’s putting my
Warrender Chase
into practice. He’s trying to live out my story. I haven’t had time to look at the files properly, but that’s what I think.’

‘You can’t control his actions,’ said Solly. ‘Don’t let these people get on your nerves. Just give him back what’s his and let him put it away for seventy years. Who cares? You’ll get another job, you’ll write another book and forget them.’

When I lugged out the bag full of the Autobiographical Association files later that night, and opened it, I began to feel hysterical. The very touch of them seemed to be radioactive with harm. I shuffled through the folders till I came to Lady Bernice ‘Bucks’ Gilbert.

Then the phone rang. What instinct urged me at first not to answer it? It was only eight twenty-five. It rang. It persisted. The house-boy must have known I was in. Possibly he thought I had just gone out to the lavatory and would presently be back in the room. On rang the piercing one-tone signal from the household exchange downstairs. I answered it. I heard the boy say, ‘Here she is for you.’ A click, and, ‘Oh Fleur, ‘said Mrs Tims, ‘I’m so glad I caught you in. Something has occurred. It’s to do with Lady Edwina, she Wants to see you.’

‘Is she ill?’

‘I wouldn’t say she was well. It’s a delicate matter. Can you come at once? Sir Quentin will of course pay for the taxi.’

‘Put me through to Lady Edwina,’ I said.

‘Oh, I can’t do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘She’s not in a state.’

I asked then, to speak to Miss Fisher.

‘Nurse Fisher’s gone to her sister’s.’

‘Have you called the doctor?’

‘Well,’ said Beryl Tims, ‘we were debating … ‘.

‘Don’t debate. Send for the doctor,’ I said.

‘But she wants you, Fleur.’

‘Pass me Sir Quentin.’

‘I doubt he would have anything to say to you, Fleur. Sir Quentin is very offended.’

‘He owes me my pay and a lot of explanations,’ I said.

There was a pause while the English Rose evidently covered the receiver to speak to Sir Quentin, for eventually he came on the phone.

‘You would do me a great favour,’ he said, ‘if you would come and see Mummy. It is quite urgent. Whatever has gone wrong between us, I assure you, Miss Talbot, I don’t want to come between you and Mummy.’

‘I want to speak to her.’

‘Alas, that is not possible.’

In the end I went, having first bundled the autobiographies back into my clothes cupboard and locked it. Anyone who has read
Warrender Chase
will know what happened to those autobiographies during my absence. In fact, the possibility was already half in my mind that I was falling into the same trap as Marjorie in my novel when she was called away from Warrender’s papers on the pretext that the ancient Prudence needed her. But the very fact that it was half in my mind almost, to the other half of my mind, precluded the possibility that my suspicions cold be valid. It seemed quite unlikely that my own novel could be entering into my life to such an extent. I very often err by taking the side of rationality in my distrust of suspicions.

I reached Hallam Street within half an hour.

‘Miss Talbot,’ said Sir Quentin, ‘would you step into my study for a moment? Mummy has fortunately, most fortunately, dropped off to sleep. It would be such a pity to disturb her after all this, after all this …’

‘Well, that’s all right, then,’ I said. ‘I don’t need to stay.’

But he had me by the arm and was propelling me into the study. ‘Take off your coat, please do, Miss Talbot,’ said Sir Quentin. ‘There are just one or two small items we have to discuss.’

‘If you mean the files of your Association,’ I said, ‘I’ll discuss them when I’ve studied them better. So far as I can see you’ve plagiarized my novel
Warrender Chase.
I assure you that I’ll sue.’

‘Ah, your novel, your novel, I don’t know anything about that. I don’t wonder you’ve been unable to give your full attention to your job here with us when you’ve been scribbling novels at the same time. Delusions of grandeur.’

From the other end of the house came a crash and a shriek. ‘Fleur! Is that you, Fleur? Leave me alone, Tims you bitch. I want to see Fleur. I know she’s here. I know that Fleur’s in the house.’

Sir Quentin continued, ‘It is I who shall sue.’

I sat still, as if agreeing to ignore Edwina’s noise.

‘The question arises,’ I said, ‘why Bernice Gilbert took her life.’

‘It is I who shall—’

But I had leapt up and got out into the passage where Edwina was trying to rid herself of Beryl Tims’s restraint.

‘Fleur, how wonderful to see you, what a surprise,’ croaked Edwina. ‘Come along to my room.’

I shoved Beryl Tims out of the ways and followed Edwina. From the other end of the passage came Sir Quentin’s frail cry, ‘Mummy!’

Before I left Hallam Street that night I got my pay and my employment cards. I also got an envelope from Edwina which she cunningly drew out of her pillowcase and crammed into my coat-pocket, shrieking the while; so that Beryl Tims, who had gone into Edwina’s bathroom to get some water for Edwina to take with her sleeping pill, wasn’t aware of our transaction.

I promised Edwina I would drop in and see her again very soon. There was always some reason why I couldn’t break with Hallam Street once and for all. This put me in mind of those scenes in
Warrender Chase
where my character, the scholar Proudie, repeatedly comes across letters from Marjorie to Warrender making excuses for not being able to come to see him in the country, and yet obviously she has continued to do so right up to the time of Warrender’s death in the car crash. When Proudie asks Marjorie why she went back to the house continually, Marjorie says, ‘I wanted to break. But the Greek girl was helpless there. And Prudence, I had to see Prudence.’

I thought of this as I sat in the taxi going home. I remembered the opening scene of my novel, how the group of people are waiting for Warrender to join them. He is late. He doesn’t come. He has been killed in a car crash.

My thoughts went like this: Warrender Chase was killed in a car crash while everyone is assembled, waiting for him. Quentin Oliver’s destiny, if he wants to enact Warrender Chase, would be the same. It was a frightening thought but at the same time external to me, as if I were watching a play I had no power to stop. It then came to me again, there in the taxi, what a wonderful thing it was to be a woman and an artist in the twentieth century. It was almost as if Sir Quentin was unreal and I had merely invented him, Warrender Chase being a man, a real man on whom I had partly based Sir Quentin. It is true that I felt tight-strung, but I remember those sensations very clearly.

That Sir Quentin was real became obvious when I got back to my room. Nothing seemed amiss, it is true. I got the key of the cupboard out of my bag and opened it. Solly’s hold-all was in its place. I opened it and gazed into its emptiness, hypnotized by my predicted loss and the extent of my own folly in not having followed my instinct. The mouth of the bag gaped at me, ha-ha. It had been a professional job. There was no sign of a tampering with the lock of my door, no scratches of a bungling amateur on the cupboard. I had to wait till the morning to confirm with the house-boys that nobody to his knowledge had been to see me. No callers in the house at all? He replied with a lot of thunder, from which there flashed like sheet-lightning in my mind the simple fact that I knew already: a professional thief had been employed to come to the house, straight to the spot where I kept the biographies. The lays-out was known to Dottie, and plainly it was she who, unwittingly perhaps, had provided the information. That night, I looked for my
Warrender Chase
in a suitcase under the bed where I now kept it. In my anxious state I had forgotten that I had abstracted the original manuscript before I had gone out; I had put this under my pillow.

So that in the suitcase I found only the spare copy of the new transcript, the two others of which I had given to Solly. But where, where, were my foolscap manuscript pages? I searched my room for an hour and it wasn’t till I got into bed that I felt them under my pillow.

This brought to mind the envelope Edwina had thrust into my coat-pocket. I jumped out of bed, quite refreshed and strengthened by this exciting recollection; I’m one of those people who can quickly recover from physical exhaustion if they are in the least stimulated mentally. The blank and crumpled envelope contained some handwritten pages evidently torn out of a diary. They had been torn roughly, so that some of the words at the beginning of each line were partly missing and equally at the end of the lines on the reverse sides. It seemed to me that the handwriting was Sir Quentin’s and as I read the first page it was plain that the diary entries were his.

This is the document, which I’ve kept ever since in memory of marvellous Edwina:

26th April, 1950.

 I have gained the confidence

 Miss Talbot’s friend, Dorothy

ottie’, Mrs Carpenter, with

whose husband, Leslie, Miss Talbot

 ad an affair.

‘Dottie’ has obtained for

the printed proofs of a novel

titled ‘Warrender Chase’ as an

 xample of a morbid literary pro-

duction which in her (‘Dottie’s’)

 pinion should be suppressed.

 I have read this production

 Miss Talbot’s inflamed and in-

ne imagination. That such an one

hould have entered my ken!!

 The book is an attempted
roman

à clef
if ever there was one!

 Query: Is Miss T. a mind-reader?

a medium?

?Evil

I turned over the page:

28th April, 1950

‘Dottie’ informed me that tw

Authors, Theodore Clairmont an

his wife Audrey (N.B. not list

in ‘Who’s Who’) have read the

so-called novel. They vehementl

disapprove of that same. I was