Loitering With Intent (19 page)

Roland comes back: ‘He’s dead.’

Wally’s car pulled up and he came in smiling. ‘Mrs Richards had an op. Good thing I called round. She can’t work for a few weeks yet. She’s awfully reliable, I knew something had happened. Nothing serious, anyway, she didn’t show me the op. The men always do.’

I said, ‘Did I tell you the Autobiographical Association has moved to Northumberland to Sir Quentin’s house?’

‘Oh, forget them, Fleur. It was a lousy job. Not your thing at all from the sound of it. Edwina’s well out of it too. Awful for her, having a crackpot for a son. Maybe she’s too old to care.’

Now I decided to force
Warrender Chase
out of my mind. To do so I began to tell Wally about my new novel,
All Souls’ Day.
I think he was fairly interested. After supper we went down to the pub for a drink. We walked home by the river and so to bed. It was simply no good. Anxious not to be abstracted and ‘not there’ with Wally, my mind was now only too deliberately concentrated on the actuality of the occasion. I found myself vigilant of every detail in Wally’s lovemaking, I was noticing, I was
counting.
I was single-mindedly conscious. In desperation I tried thinking of General die Gaulle, which made matters worse, far, far, worse.

‘I’m afraid I’ve had too much beer,’ said poor Wally.

Next morning we went out on the river for an hour. After lunch we tidied up the cottage and set off early for London. Wally dropped me at my house just after five in the afternoon.

Dottie again, at midnight. I put on my dressing-gown and let her in. ‘Sir Quentin’s been killed in a car accident. A head-on collision last night,’ she said.

‘What about the other car? Anyone hurt? ‘‘Oh, they were killed too,’ said Dottie with the impatience that denoted she was dealing with an imbecile who couldn’t distinguish the kernel from the nutshell.

‘How many in the other car?’

‘Two, I think, but the point is—’

‘Thank God he’s dead,’ I said.

‘So that it proves your
Warrender Chase
to be valid.’

‘Nothing to do with my
Warrender Chase.
Quite a different situation. The man was pure evil.’

‘They were all waiting for him to join them,’ Dottie said. I got rid of Dottie.

The theme of
Warrender Chase
was indeed valid. Such events as I’d portrayed, even in a different way from the reality, could happen. My
Warrender Chase
was valid, and I decided that my Chapter One, which had haunted me at Wally’s cottage, could very well stand as it was.

At ten the next morning I rang Miss Fisher at Hallam Street. Edwina, she said, had taken the news very bravely. The doctor had been to see her. Everything was all right, and Edwina was keeping very quiet.

After the funeral Beryl Tims caught up with me and said, in Edwina’s hearing, ‘You’ll have to work out something with Lady Edwina. Sir Quentin’s property reverts to her and I have no settlement.’

‘Edwina,’ I said, ‘Mrs Tims is here to present her condolences.’

‘I noticed her,’ said Edwina.

I wheeled her away, upright as she was, in her glittering black. What shocked me was that Beryl Tims had used almost the very words of my Charlotte, at Warrender’s funeral.

From the day of the funeral to the day at the end of June when I sat in the graveyard writing my poem, Dottie kept me abundantly informed about the members of the disbanded Association.

‘We were wondering,’ Dottie said, ‘what had happened to the biographies. They never got a chance to read them.’

‘Edwina destroyed them.’

‘Had she a right to do that?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘She wasn’t by any chance influenced by you?’

‘No, she just told me she’d got Miss Fisher to destroys the papers. Nothing of any interest, and she hadn’t the space to hoard them.’

‘Poor Beryl Tims. He promised to make a settlement on her. Do you know that Eric Findlay has gone back to his wife?’

‘I didn’t know he’d left her.’

‘Well, Fleur, he left her for you. It was in his autobiography. You had an affair with him, Fleur. I saw it written down in black and white. Sir Quentin showed it to me.’

‘Was it written in his own hand?’

‘No, well of course, Sir Quentin took it down verbally. He wrote it for Eric.’

‘Well, it wasn’t true. He invented it.’

‘It’s just possible,’ said Dottie, ‘that it wasn’t true. On the other hand—’

‘Get out.’

So it went on. Maisie Young had a nervous breakdown and got over it, all in those few weeks between the funeral and my special day in the graveyard. Clotilde du Loiret had gone to stay at a convent in France to find her soul, which she felt she had lost. Dottie was seeing a lot of Father Delaney who enjoyed taking her to wrestling matches and who was still consuming Dexedrine. Mrs Wilks had gone back to her family, but visited Sir Quentin’s grave every day, where she conversed with him. When I asked Dottie if anyone visited Bucks Gilbert’s grave, she said, ‘Oh, well, suicide’s a mortal sin. She shouldn’t have had a Christian burial.’

I saw Edwina frequently all that month of June. And Wally, too; he wanted to take me back to Marlow for a better week-end. But I had to work all my weekends at my reviewing and my new novel, knowing that soon I would have to take a full-time job.

The day after I met the policeman at the Kensington graveyard was Saturday the first of July. Now began my new life. I got a letter from the great and glorious Triad Press, an old establishment which specialized in publishing books of good quality. It was a simple letter:

Dear Miss Talbot,

We would be grateful if you would make an appointment to visit us here, at your earliest convenience.

Yours sincerely,

Cynthia Somerville

The Triad Press.

Now, Edwina had rambled about the Somervilles of Triad, whose great-uncle she had known. She had thought I might get a job there. Solly, it now came to mind, had also said to me, ‘You might get a job at Triad.’ It occurred to me that either Edwina or Solly had recommended me for a job. I checked with both of them the next afternoon. We didn’t take Edwina out for a walk that Sunday. I think it rained. We had tea at Hallam Street. Edwina had now added to her staff a handsome, sturdy manservant, a widower called Rudder, who had been a butler in a grand house before the war and a sergeant-major in the army. He managed the rations so well that Edwina was able to offer us teas on a grand scale.

‘No, I haven’t said anything to Triad,’ said Solly, turning over the letter as if it held some secret code. Nor did Edwina seem to know anything about it.

‘Maybe it’s about that book of yours, Miss Fleur,’ said Rudder, who was quite one of the family. Indeed, according to Dottie, he was getting ‘very thick’ with Miss Fisher and both of them were quite milking Edwina; that was according to Dottie, but I didn’t see that it mattered since Edwina was so well suited by them both. Rudder now had the letter in his hand. ‘It looks to me like they want your book. You see, they say grateful. Now, if you go after a position it’s never the employer that’s grateful, it’s you that’s grateful. You see, here, they’ve written “We would be grateful if you would make—”’

‘My God,’ said Solly, ‘I sent them
Warrender Chase
four, five weeks ago. I forgot.’

‘I hope they’re grateful enough,’ Edwina croaked.

For the rest of the tea Solly described the Triad trio. Two brothers and a sister. They did everything in unison.

‘But you’d better not build up your hopes,’ Solly said. ‘It could be only about a job. They might have heard from someone you’re looking for a job and there might just be a vacancy.’

‘Well, even that would be something,’ I said.

It wasn’t about a job. It was about
Warrender Chase.
The famous trio were sitting side by side at a desk.

They were Leopold, Cynthia and Claude Somerville themselves, arbiters of taste and of
belles-lettres.
I think they shared a soul. Their mournful grey-green eyes were identical, their long oval faces very similar. Leopold, the youngest, in his early thirties, gave a little jump in his chair when he had something to say which excited him. Cynthia sat perfectly still with her hands clasped before her. She wore a grey-green dress which picked up the colour of the six Somerville eyes; her sleeves were wide, with a mediæval look. Claude was the eldest, with greying hair; it fell to Claude to discuss the business side which he did with such an air of apologetic and timid regret as to make it positively cruel to question or discuss the terms of the contract which I rejoiced to notice he had ready on the desk before him.

Their long desk was sheer and shiny, no blotting pads, no pen-stands, no In and Out trays. Only my
Warrender Chase
lying in front of Cynthia, a file which contained readers’ reports in front of Leopold and the contract in front of Claude. They were ready for their portrait to be painted. They had everything except a
Brandenburg Concerto
in the background. But I’m sure they didn’t arrange themselves as consciously as appeared. There was indeed a certain amount of stage-production about the Triad, but as I came to learn throughout the years, their joint and public face was sheer instinct, even genius.

They rose to greet me and sat down again, Leopold with an extra little jump.

‘We would be happy to publish your novel,’ said Cynthia. The siblings smiled in unison, not a wide smile but a kindly one.

It would have been difficult for me to realize at that moment that Cynthia was in fact having an affair with a fruit-loader at Covent Garden, Leopold was chasing a band-leader and Claude was already married to a rich American widow with four children of her own and two of his. To me it seemed the Triad had come into being out of nothing and, when I should depart, to nothing they would return.

Leopold, patting the file of readers’ reports, assured me that these were so mixed as to be stimulating from a publisher’s point of view. He jumped in his chair and said, ‘Some readers hated it but some readers loved it.’ ‘So we think it will have a small cult-following,’ said Cynthia. ‘It will not be a commercial venture, of course,’ added Claude. ‘The general consensus,’ said Leopold, ‘is that although the evil of Warrender is a shade over-accentuated, you have a universal theme.’ (Jump.)

I said I thought it possible that there were people like Warrender Chase in real life.

The three assented to this in unison. I felt sure that among the readers who had hated the book were Theo and Audrey Clairmont who sometimes read for the Triad Press; and years later I found that the very excess of their attempts to suppress
Warrender Chase
had finally persuaded the Triad in its favour.

I wanted to take the contract away to study it, a reasonable desire. But it would have been beyond me, beyond anyone I knew, to stab gentle, tentative Claude with so profound a knife-wound. I signed it on the spot, only checking first to see if there was an option clause. Claude noticed my glance. ‘The option is on terms to be agreed,’ he murmured, as if with breathless hope that I wouldn’t change my mind. And he added, ‘We consider that wording to be the most tactful.’ He stressed the word ‘tactful’, with the result that tact was temporarily cancelled from the contract-signing scene.

But in fact it was a good contract. The advance on royalties was an unheard-of hundred pounds, which I needed. I addressed Cynthia as I told them about my forthcoming
All Souls’ Day
and the novel I had planned to follow it,
The English Rose.
She looked at me with her grey-green eyes, Claude sighed with wonder and Leopold jumped twice. So began my long career as a novelist with the Triad Press.

I spun out the money till November when
Warrender Chase
was to be published. A bad month for publishing, but first novels of uncertain futures had to give precedence to certainties. I had corrected the proofs of the book, feeling altogether bored with it. I had nearly finished my
All Souls’ Day
which I loved with all my heart in those months.

I think it was in September that Wally took me on a visit to Cambridge. We went to Grantchester, the home of Rupert Brooke. ‘Stands the church clock at ten to three?’ The Church clock
stood
at ten to three. By order of the management. I had a sudden revulsion against the clock, Grantchester, Rupert Brooke and the ethos of honey still for tea, and I said so at length to Wally. He was not altogether insensitive. He said, ‘I hope you don’t include me in the whole shooting-match.’

Wally eventually married an English Rose who knew all about
placement
and protocol and was admired by everybody including the children’s nanny. In time Wally became an ambassador with a swimming pool which was always surrounded by notable people and their consorts to whom Wally would descend from time to time: ‘I’ve just got away.’

The Triad Press had printed a thousand copies of
Warrender Chase,
reckoning to sell five hundred. ‘But we can count on some nice reviews,’ said Cynthia on the telephone. They sent a photographer to my room to take my picture for the back of the jacket.

In late October Leslie’s novel,
Two Ways,
appeared. It had a portrait of a hard-hearted woman conflicting with a poor Cockney boy for the affections of our hero. My main objection to it was the diction. Leslie was so hard pressed for ways in which to express an idiom that he had fallen back on phonetic spelling, always a literary defect in my opinion. “Ow can yer do this tier me, guv’ner?’ pleads Leslie’s young Cockney. When all he had to say (since the reader already knows he’s a Cockney) is, ‘You can’t do this.’ Which is far more authentic to the ear than all the “ows,’ ‘yers’ and ‘tiers.’