A Man Over Forty (17 page)

‘Then what's in your mind?'

Balintore went to his bedroom to take off his damp coat, and came back wearing a red silk dressing-gown. He took a cigarette from the large silver box and said, ‘You're my friend, Guy, and a damned good friend you've been. No one could wish for better, and nothing of what I'm going to say contains any suggestion that our friendship's wearing thin – it will never do that – nor any thought, on my part, that there should be any change in our more formal association. But the fact is that in certain circumstances a man of my sort needs a female secretary.'

‘That I can understand,' said Palladis.

‘Now don't misjudge me! Or rather, don't pre-judge me. The fact is—'

‘Something very different from what you're going to tell me.'

‘My intention,' said Balintore with dignity, ‘is to write my autobiography. Or, for a start, to explore the possibility of
autobiography. I shall call it, I think,
Landscape with a Figure in the Middle Distance
. I mean to be fairly impersonal. I want to show myself in relation to the world I've lived in. I shall try to be objective. But objectivity, however rigorous, can't exclude emotion – that wouldn't serve truth – and I think the presence of a sympathetic girl – a girl like Polly Newton, for example – would help to release emotion. In a minor degree – a very minor degree – she will be my collaborator as well as my secretary.'

‘Have you persuaded her to leave poor Mr Evershrub?'

‘No, not yet. But it may be a week before he sends for her, and in that time—'

‘The Figure in the Middle Distance will come into the foreground?'

‘If, in the course of a few days, I make such progress that the value of what I'm doing becomes obvious – and if she's really helpful – then I'll have good reason for asking her to leave Evershrub and work for me.'

‘Do you think she will?'

‘I've spent half the day with her,' said Balintore. ‘She's living in reasonable comfort, with a private sitting-room. I talked to her, I told her something about myself, and it was she, in fact, who said I ought to write the story of my life. I owe the suggestion to her – though the tide is my own – and I feel it won't be impossible to persuade her that it may be her duty to work for me.'

‘In which case,' said Palladis, ‘you won't need me.'

‘I shall always need you! That's the simple truth, and you must believe it. But it did occur to me that you might like a holiday.'

‘As it happens, I very much want to go to Ireland for a few weeks.'

‘Everything is falling into place! There's inevitability in this – I felt it as soon as I went round to see Polly – but why Ireland? What are you going to do there?'

‘Help my cousin Honoria, if I can.'

‘Should I know about her?'

‘I did speak of her. In Jamaica. She's Honoria O'Turk, and her son, who's at school, is The Turk of Mayo. From what she
says – though she may be exaggerating – his inheritance is in danger.'

‘I remember now. They're threatened by a mad geologist.'

‘I said an Irish geologist.'

‘And you're going to lead a counter-attack?'

‘I really don't know what she expects me to do.'

‘But you must help her if you can.'

‘That's what I feel.'

‘Good luck to you,' said Balintore. ‘But leave your address, in case I want you.'

‘Here it is,' said Palladis.

Between Piccadilly and Burlington Gardens – bounded on one side by Sackville Street, on the other by Burlington House – lay the enclosure of silence and decorum where in their day – or their several days – Byron and Gladstone, Monk Lewis and Canning and Macaulay had lived in their several habits of life; and where now Edward Balintore, nervous and simmering with impatience, stood at his sitting-room window looking at his watch, and then, but without much interest in what he saw, at that small portion of the Rope Walk which his window commanded – he was on the ground floor – and the occasional figures who slowly trod its private pavement.

A youngish publisher, impeccably dressed – bowler-hatted, umbrella neatly rolled – went gravely by, pondering gravely the current state and cost of literature; an elderly, red-faced man in tweed, with a leather case hanging from his shoulders, was apparently going racing – in April the little two-year-olds were beginning to run five furlongs – and Dame Ethelinda Rooke was going nowhere at all, but walking up and down for exercise.

Balintore looked at his watch again. It was five minutes to eleven, and from his bathroom where Mrs Bint, again belated, was still swabbing or polishing taps, came a noise at odds with
the peace and dignity of her surroundings. She was singing a lugubrious ballad:

‘
She was so innocent and youthful,

That what I did fills me with shame,

But I can't lie, I must be truthful,

Though babies unborn will curse my name
…'

‘Mrs Bint!' he shouted. ‘How much longer are you going to be? It's nearly eleven o'clock and I want to get to work. I can't work with all that noise going on.'

‘Another two minutes,' she answered. ‘Two minutes more and I'll have my skates on.' Without pity she continued to sing:

‘
So put me down with a painless killer,

And tell my mother she'll find me here;

Leave me on ice in the deep chiller,

And she'll still recognize her dear'

It was ten minutes past eleven before she left, and as soon as she had gone Balintore went to the Piccadilly entrance, where the tall, top-hatted porter greeted him with the cheerful observation, ‘No reporters today, Mr Balintore. No reporters, no photographers – life's back to normal.'

‘So it seems.'

‘Nothing holds their attention very long nowadays, does it? One day you're famous, the next you're forgotten: that's the way it goes now.'

‘I'm waiting,' said Balintore, a little sharply, ‘for my new secretary. I thought she might be nervous about coming here for the first time.'

‘You haven't parted company with Mr Palladis, have you, sir?'

‘Oh, no. I wouldn't do that. But he's taking a holiday, he's going to Ireland, and I've been lucky enough to engage a welltrained girl, a very nice girl too, on a temporary basis. – And there she is!'

He ran eagerly down the steps to meet Polly Newton in the courtyard, and taking her by the arm, in a proprietary way, introduced her to the porter.

‘Miss Newton will be coming every day,' he said, ‘and now that you know who she is, you won't have any hesitation about letting her in, will you?'

‘She'll be made welcome, sir, like everybody who comes to see you – except photographers, of course.'

‘Made welcome to Albany!' said Balintore impressively. ‘And that, I assure you, is a privilege reserved for very few.'

He took her arm again – clasping her left elbow in a firm right hand – and slowly pacing the Rope Walk showed her where Gladstone and Byron had lived, mentioned some more recent celebrities, and bowed to Dame Ethelinda Rooke.

Going up the shallow steps to his own set of chambers he said, ‘The spare bedroom's through there, where you can make yourself comfortable – the bathroom's on the left – and when you're quite ready, but don't hurry, I'll be waiting for you in my sitting-room.'

He considered, for a moment, the propriety of welcoming her with a glass of sherry, but on second thoughts decided against it. It would be better to let her grow familiar with her surroundings as a place of business. Strictly as a place of business.

She came into the room with a serious mien, and, as he observed, her professional insignia: a thick notebook and a yellow pencil clasped in her right hand. But how pretty she was! It was very difficult to think primarily of her notebook.

He made a fuss about seating her in proper comfort: the light must come over her shoulder, and would she prefer to sit at the table – or should he move this small table?

‘I'm quite happy here,' she said, and in a large leather chair, with a wing back that cast shadow on her face, neatly crossed her legs and resting her notebook on her knee, held her yellow pencil poised above it.

He turned away, and looking through the window made desperate search in his mind for the proper beginning – or any beginning – of an autobiography. The narrow view did nothing to help him. A clipped and mottled laurel in a tub, and primly drawn white curtains: a conventional view of no assistance. But at last, a little hoarsely, he said, ‘Well, I suppose we
should make a start, quite formally, with the title. So, for a beginning, write Landscape with a Figure in the Middle Distance, an Essay in Autobiography by Edward Balintore. And a damned good title it is, though I say it myself! Well, now, they all admit there's nothing so difficult as a beginning, and as we've managed to make a beginning, I think we're due a little reward, don't you? I fancy we're entitled to a glass of sherry now. I certainly need one.'

‘We haven't done very much yet.'

‘Not quantitatively, perhaps, but qualitatively – well, enough to have earned some sherry.'

Here in his rooms she was more reserved than she had been among the neutral furniture of Brown's Hotel. There she had shown a lively interest in the work he had offered her. She had even preened herself a little at the thought that it was she who had first suggested the writing of a book which might well achieve distinguished and popular success. But now she maintained a professional silence, she waited calmly to record his words, and offered none of her own.

She had, however, dressed with some care, and looked much smarter than the frightened girl he had comforted in an aeroplane high above the Atlantic. She wore a close-fitting dress of fine wool girdled by a broad leather belt, and admirable shoes and stockings: all, manifestly, bought in New York. Her makeup and manicure were unassertive, her hair was set firmly enough for an advertisement. Despite her silence Balintore grew more cheerful, and poured himself a second glass of sherry.

‘I'm afraid you'll have to be very patient with me,' he said. ‘The task I've set myself is to project an experience of life – my experience of life – and to do that effectively I have to decide on the pattern, the proper colours, the proper palette to use – or, perhaps more accurately, the appropriate key on which to play my narrative.'

‘You should begin at the beginning,' she said.

‘That's more difficult than you think—

‘Ma jeunesse ne fut qu'un ténébreux orage,

Traversé ça et là par de brillants soleils
.'

From the window he looked round to see if she was impressed by his gift of happy quotation, but Polly in a noncommittal voice said only, ‘I'm afraid I can't take French in short-hand.'

‘No, no, I don't expect that, I was only saying – well, that sometimes it isn't easy to find a true beginning. Even a novelist doesn't really devise his own plots; they're forced upon him by what he has to say, and the end he wants to reach. Well, if I'm to write my autobiography, what's to be the end I aim at?'

‘I suppose,' she said, ‘you'll have to find an explanation.'

‘Of what I was, or what I have become?'

‘Of both.'

He went to a tall book-case and from a high shelf took a volume in orange boards in which, after a little while, he found a marked poem that he read:

‘There is rain in me

running down, running down, trickling

away from memory
.

There is ocean in me

swaying, swaying, O so deep

so fathomlessly black
…'

‘Who wrote that?'

‘D. H. Lawrence.'

‘I think,' she said carefully, ‘that you'll have to go into more detail if you want anyone to read your autobiography.'

He looked at her suspiciously, but saw she was wholly serious. She was thinking earnestly about a literary problem. ‘Ordinary people,' she said, ‘and that means most people, like a lot of detail.'

‘What I pay for my shirts?'

‘I don't think shirts are important, but the things you've done, and why you did them – everyone would like to know that.'

He put the book back on its shelf, and standing before her, took her by the wrists. In her right hand she still held her
yellow pencil. ‘
Das Ewig-Weibliche,'
he said,
‘zieht uns
– no, not
hinan
, but back to earth.'

He stooped and lightly kissed the top of her head.

‘No, no!' she said, and thrusting him away, stood up. ‘That's not what I came here for – and if you want to write a good book, you shouldn't fill it up with a lot of quotations which most people won't understand.'

‘How wise you are! Much wiser than I was at your age. Perhaps I ought to listen to you, rather than dictate to you?'

‘If you're not going to be serious —'

‘I'm perfectly serious. You've discovered, already, one of my weaknesses: I've a good memory, and I fall back on quotations when I haven't a ready-made opinion, or when, for some reason, I'm feeling nervous.'

‘You're never nervous!'

‘I've learnt how to conceal it. And you have to admit that quotations can be very useful. It was Bertrand Russell who said that the opinions of the average man are less foolish than they would be if he thought for himself.'

‘That's another!'

‘Because you have unnerved me, and I'm in no state for work today.'

‘If that's the effect I'm going to have on you, there's no point in my trying to be your secretary.'

‘You're going to be of great service to me, of infinite help: I'm sure of that. But not today. Today – oh, let's go for a walk, and then have lunch somewhere.'