Far Cry from Kensington (7 page)

I had some savings and a small pension, so I had no need to find
another job immediately. In the months between my abrupt departure from the Ullswater
Press and Martin York’s arrest I wasted my time with a sense of justified
guilt. I enjoy a puritanical and moralistic nature; it is my happy element to judge
between right and wrong, regardless of what I might actually do. At the same time,
the wreaking of vengeance and imposing of justice on others and myself are not at all
in my line. It is enough for me to discriminate mentally and leave the rest to God.

‘Commercial life cannot be carried on unless people are honest.’ But no
life can be carried on satisfactorily unless people are honest. About the time that
the Ullswater Press folded up I recall reading a book about one of the martyred
Elizabethan recusant priests. The author wrote, ‘He was accused of lying,
stealing and even immorality.’ I noted the quaint statement because although by
immorality he meant sex as many people do, I had always thought that lying and
stealing, no less, constituted immorality.

In those months before his arrest Martin York telephoned me, at first frequently. He
needed someone to whom to say ‘I must restore confidence in the business.
Credibility, Mrs Hawkins. I must find other avenues. If I might say so without
exaggeration I have a first-rate brain, some say brilliant.’

To answer the telephone in Milly’s house one had to stand in the hallway. There
was no chair. It was not a suitable place for long conversations, especially with my
great weight on my legs. I felt uncomfortable in every way, now, talking to him. It
is not because we are rats that we tend to abandon people who are down, it is because
we are embarrassed.

‘What good has he ever done you?’ Milly said. ‘Giving you the sack
on the spot after all your work and overtime, and owing you your pay.’ He
stopped telephoning after a while, perhaps not insensitive to my discomfort. But in
the first weeks of my idleness I was incessantly called to the phone by the rest of
the office about books in production left lying where I had left off, and the panic
of their knowing that no one was coming to replace me. Cathy the book-keeper rang me.

‘You have to realize’, I said, ‘that the firm is broke. It’s
only a matter of time. Why don’t you all look for another job?’

‘Another job I never find,’ Cathy said. ‘Where is another job for
me? I know exclusively the Ullswater Press. Without the job I put my head in the gas
oven.’

This was something I felt she would never do. It is true that survivors from the
death-camps had been known to inflict on themselves later in life the very death they
had escaped, but these were few. Cathy’s experience had made of her a natural
survivor. Besides, I reflected, no one seriously talks of suicide in a special form
unless they have envisaged it; in Cathy’s case I knew she had no gas stove. The
room in Golders Green where she lived was one of ten in a converted house; each was
equally fitted with an electric fire, an electric hot-plate and a meter. There was no
housekeeper’s flat: Cathy paid her rent to an agency. I had been to supper with
Cathy. She cooked on a many-tiered type of pot on the
bain-marie
principle,
the lower pot being filled with water and gradually heating the others. From this
contraption she had produced an impressive meal. But there was no gas-oven, no gas at
all in the house, a fact that Cathy lamented. I promised to let her know if I heard
of a job suitable for her. There was small hope that anyone would employ Cathy.

‘A job in publishing,’ specified Cathy with determination.

‘Why?’ I said.

‘I don’t want to come down in life,’ said this brave woman.

It was likewise with the rest of the staff of the Ullswater Press. Ivy, whose total
office experience was less than eighteen months, told me, ‘I look up the wanted
secretarial in the papers every day but there’s nothing in publishing, Mrs
Hawkins.’

Mabel, Patrick’s fraught wife, telephoned me.

‘Mrs Hawkins, is it true that the Press is busting up?’

‘I think so, Mabel,’ I said severely, not wishing her to overlook and
forget her jealous scenes in the office.

‘And what is Patrick going to do, may I ask?’

‘You may ask,’ I said. ‘But ask Patrick, not me.’

‘But he has to have a job with books. He’s writing a book, Mrs
Hawkins.’

‘Well, tell him to try a book warehouse or a bookshop. I’m afraid I have
to go, I’ve got something on the stove.’

It was a relief one evening to be called to the phone, not the one in the hall but
young Isobel’s private phone. She knocked at my door. ‘I’ve got
Daddy on the line, Mrs Hawkins. He wants to speak to you.’ He wanted to ask me
to dinner at the Savoy next Saturday, and I accepted with pleasure and joy. He said,
‘I look forward to that very much, Mrs Hawkins. I’ll pick you up at
seven-thirty, all right?’

‘Seven-thirty, Mr Lederer.’

I, too, looked forward to that very much. I sat chatting for a while in Isobel’s
neat attic room, and would have chatted on had her telephone not begun to squeal
again; some boyfriend or other.

Isobel was fair in colouring. The father was grey-haired, not old. I would have liked
to know more about him, but I left Isobel to her phone calls. When we had all had
lunch together after church the previous Sunday we hadn’t touched on anything
so private as his wife, whether she was at home, dead or divorced. This was, in
theory, something I should have known before accepting a dinner date with him. But
only in theory. Nobody except mad Mabel would have put me in the husband-snatching
class: I was Mrs Hawkins. I put my mind to what I would wear. For special occasions I
had my black lace dress and my fur cape. I busied myself with shaking out the fur and
pressing the dress. It was five years old but I didn’t want to dip into my good
nest-egg for a new party dress in haste, and with all the difficulties of my size,
simply on the strength of dinner at the Savoy.

‘He must be well-to-do, Mrs Hawkins,’ said Milly. ‘See how he
provides for Isobel, her phone and her toll-calls every day, and look at her clothes.
She takes a taxi when she wants.’

‘Where’s the wife?’ I said.

‘I’ll find out from Isobel,’ Milly said.

I begged her not to question Isobel just at this time. Isobel would know exactly why
she was being questioned.

Milly said, ‘When I met him I thought he was a lovely gentleman. He would do
lovely for you, Mrs Hawkins.’

‘I can’t forget the past,’ I said, for I had loved my late husband
most dearly. I said, it could never be quite the same.’ But in cases like this,
we never want it to be quite the same.

That week I was called downstairs to the phone by Emma Loy.

‘Yes, Mrs Loy?’

‘Oh, Mrs Hawkins, I just wanted you to know that I’ve no ill-feelings. I
understand you left Ullswater Press, am I right?’

‘Yes, I lost my job.’

‘I want you to know that I wouldn’t, myself, dream of giving Hector an
introduction to Martin York’s uncle. Hector is not to be trusted. As for the
film of any of my novels, I’ve no need whatsoever for introductions. I’m
not even sure that Hector is quite the person to adapt them. It was only that I
thought it strange, the objection coming from you, and Hector was offended. I had to
say a word.’

‘He is a
pisseur de copie
,’ I said.

‘Jobs in publishing, Mrs Hawkins, are very hard to come by. You might bear that
in mind. I could put in a word for you in many quarters. Only you must, simply must,
retract.’

‘I’ve got something boiling over, Mrs Loy.’

Saturday night, there I sat at the Savoy, by candlelight, eating their speciality of
salmon mousse and sipping white wine, opposite Hugh Lederer, feeling quite as well
turned-out as anyone else in the room.

I forget what we ordered next: something exotic. This was in the last few weeks of all
food-rationing and the Savoy was making an anticipatory splash. But I ate very little
of the exotic dish because it was at this point that Hugh Lederer leaned forward and
put his hand on mine. ‘Mrs Hawkins,’ he said, with a change of voice.

He had a good voice, full of deep modulations. In appearance-and I try to see him as I
had seen him so far-he was very well built, not fat, but large and slightly taller
than I. He had that sort of tanned and lined face I had always associated with
retired civil servants from the Colonies and with secretaries of golf clubs.

‘Mrs Hawkins,’ he said, ‘I can see you are a very understanding
woman.’

I didn’t care greatly for this; I thought the gesture came too soon and the
words made me out to be some kind of a comforter, if not an outright madam. I said
absolutely nothing and he took his hand away. I felt rather sorry for him, then, and
supposed he was only a bit awkward. During the mousse he had told me he was in the
porcelain business and had plans for opening up a trading line in Czechoslovakia and
Bavaria. I had told him in return that I liked fine china and admired old
Czechoslovakian glass.

I hadn’t had time to tell him I had lost my job. Only the Sunday before, when I
had lunch with him and Isobel after church, I had been saying how interesting it was
to work in publishing.

He said, now, ‘I wonder if my daughter Isobel would do well in publishing? She
had a very good education.’

‘It’s difficult’, I said, ‘to get into publishing. What is she
doing now?’

‘Secretary,’ he said. ‘In a chartered accountants’ office,
Gray’s Inn. But I’d like to get her into publishing. She’d meet
more cultured people, nicer people.’

‘Cultured people are not necessarily nicer people,’ I told him.
‘Frequently, the reverse.’

‘Oh,’ he said,’ but surely in publishing you get to meet authors,
artists, people of that kind? Interesting people, I mean.’

‘Yes, that’s true. But it’s mostly dealing with books, not
people.’

‘I want Isobel to meet a better sort of people. Like yourself, Mrs Hawkins. I
value your friendship with Isobel very much.’

Now, I had only a rooming-house acquaintance with young Isobel; and I could see that
at least a part of dinner at the Savoy was in aid of my getting Isobel a job in
publishing.

‘I’ve lost my job in publishing,’ I said. ‘So I can’t
help.’

‘Oh, you no longer work for that firm you were working for last week?’

‘No longer. Anyway, I don’t recommend publishing for your daughter. The
secretaries are underpaid; everyone’s underpaid.’

‘Well, it’s a sort of privilege job, isn’t it?’ he said.

Whatever it was we were eating I wasn’t enjoying it. The candlelight and the wine
and my black lace dress, Mr Lederer’s white cuffs with gold cuff-links and his
tanned, lined face seemed to accuse me of being there under false pretences. I began
to remind myself that I was Mrs Hawkins and I didn’t need a dinner at the
Savoy, while Hugh Lederer proceeded with his protest to the effect that in a
privileged job like publishing one didn’t care about the pay.

‘In Isobel’s case the salary is a secondary consideration,’ he said.
‘It’s a question of the elements. I’d like her to meet certain
literary elements, more above the commercial, you realize, Mrs Hawkins. If you should
hear of an opening —’

‘I’ll let you know if I hear of anything for Isobel but I’m looking
for a job myself.’

The people at the other tables, in twos, fours, sixes, were having a good time. So I
supposed. The people at the other tables always look happy by soft lights in those
restaurants where the talk and tinkle are not too loud. I thought I, too, ought to
feel tranquil with that looked-after sensation that good restaurants bring about. But
I was uneasy, and perceived that Mr Lederer was aware of it. And at the same time, I
must say, I felt sorry for him, with Isobel so much on his mind that he had to dine
out so ambiguously for her.

‘How did you come to lose your job so suddenly, Mrs Hawkins?’

I told him the story, across the elegant table.

‘And what was that French name that you called the man? I didn’t catch
—’

‘Pisseur de copie.’

‘Which means?’

He knew what it meant but was hoping he was wrong.

I told him. And I said, ‘In the literary world there are many
pisseurs de
copie.
’

He was smiling feebly, overcome with great embarrassment. Which gave me a certain
satisfaction.

‘But Hector Bartlett is the top
pisseur
of our literary scene,’
I said; and I only mentioned the name, Hector Bartlett, to give authenticity to my
tale. I didn’t expect him to know the name, but he did.

‘Hector Bartlett. But Isobel knows him. She met him at a party or in a pub with
some friends, and he’s trying to get her a job in publishing, too. I
haven’t met him personally, but he has a certain influence. Only I thought that
you, Mrs Hawkins, might be more in the know. Poor fellow, does he have a real problem
of the bladder, then?’