It Was the Nightingale (27 page)

Nevertheless, he considered that the editors were missing something when they turned down his later, and better, short stories.
Looking at printed stories in American and English magazines, comparing them critically and with detachment for excitement, colour and originality with his own rejected stories, he had given a few contemptuous snorts and realised that his stuff had no hope with such editors; or perhaps such a magazine public. The English magazines, particularly, printed feeble, false, conventional stuff, and were obviously so out of touch with the rise of modern feeling, that surely they could not last for many years. Even so, he must earn some money; he had less than five pounds in the bank.

He went to see Anders Norse in the Adelphi, who suggested that he call on the editor who, having accepted half a dozen of his earlier yarns, had rejected the later ‘more realistic’ stories.

“Well, the later ones are more truthful, you know, Anders.”

“Why not go and see Teddy Dock, Phillip? You’ll find him a very nice person. Right! I’ll give him a ring that you’ll go round straight away.”

“Ah,” Mr. Dock began earnestly, “the very young fellow I want to see! Come in and sit down! Now tell me—when am I going to have some more good stories from you?”

He was a kindly man, his manner was encouraging. Phillip told him that he was going to be married. Mr. Dock listened carefully; and then, pursing his lips, he said, “Now look here, Maddison, I am really concerned about you! You say your writings earn for you what must be little more than the wages of an agricultural labourer. A man with your ability ought to have a big reputation, which means a big public. Yet you are wasting your powers of perception, your sense of narrative, your faculty of observation on—what? On
animal
stories! No no, hear me out, wait a minute! I know I am right, man! Take those stories of an otter your agent sent me—how many people are interested, frankly, in the rather humdrum details of an otter’s life? Besides, your otter is not a very pleasant creature, judging solely by what you have written! And again, the animal-story public is a very small and limited one. Now take my advice, and write about human beings! There must be romances in the country where you live! Write stories which please the average man and woman, that take them out of their surroundings—romantic, clean stories about human life. Now just a moment! I know what you are going to say. Now don’t be offended——”

“I’m not offended. Do please say exactly what you think——”

“Very well, I will, Maddison! Don’t write about sordid things! That little story your agent sent me about a mouse, for instance! It was well-written, I admit, but aren’t you aware of a misplacement of your talents in writing such a thing? Why bother to do it at all?”

*

… Donkin observing the skeleton of the mouse in the jam-jar, amidst a few grains of rice, on the larder shelf: Donkin fully aware that
all
living was based on the dead—moths flying down to lay their eggs, the grubs consuming fur and skin, spiders descending delicately on their life-lines to climb up again with fragments for their egg-nests: all patient removal and use of the dead until only the little bones were left; shadows in the eye-sockets of the fragile white skull; yellow bones of tiny paws, lying so silent and quiet, so peaceful behind the bubble-flawed glass, after the hours of jumping up the walls of a waterless prison; even as Donkin’s own mind, after …

*

“Now I am telling you exactly what I think, mind! You’re not offended, are you?” went on Mr. Dock.

“No, not at all.”

“Very well, you have no sense of humour! Now take that story of the hare being hunted in Surrey. Why harrow people’s feelings unnecessarily? Frankly, I can’t see any point in it!”

*

… hare in a chalky field near Cross Aulton dragging stiff limbs, straining for its life from beagles in a wheat-field whose green blades were not yet shining with the late winter sunshine. A heavy City man running slowly past, white stock round thick and ruddy neck, yelling at hounds with excitement. The great vein of his neck swelled. So were the eyes of the hare as it limped into a garden of one of the new houses of the new road made through the cornfield. A thin froth on the sportsman’s heavy lower lip which soon would be pressed against the rim of a large glass of whisky-and-soda, this Saturday morning sportsman of the City of London.

Donkin, a stranger come among them, stood apart observing the scene and all it implied; hating nothing, despising nothing, but looking at these things as they happened: looking at the truth: and trying afterwards to convey it in words …

Almost pleadingly, Teddy Dock was saying, “People don’t want to be made melancholy, my dear boy. There is enough sadness, God knows, in the world already. And it is my opinion—and I know I am right!—that a kink in you prevents you from writing as you ought to write! Something in you has checked your life, your youthful exuberance. What is it? Or is it just perversity? I know! You say to yourself scornfully, ‘The public—Why should I write for clods!’ Well, why do you not say something?”

*

… le Labyrinthe was made in the town long before the soldiers were burrowing into the chalk of Artois and the rats and grubs and worms were burrowing into the soldiers to make the soil for the corn which will belong to the financial forces of the towns which will send another generation into the earth. Donkin praying,
I
would
to
God
that
the
green-corn
spirit
of
truth
rise
from
the
clods.
Streets,
houses,
pavements,
the
pressure
of
city
work,
the
pressure
overlaying
the
green
spirit
of
earth,
will
finally
kill
the
truth
if
there
is
no
clarity.

*

“Find some joy in life, man! Get out of your moodiness! Look on the bright side!”

“I don’t think of people as clods,” he replied, dreading lest the editor think him scornful of his friendly intentions. “I honestly do try to write as I see and feel things. May I read you what I wrote in the train coming up today? It may explain things better.”

“Just as you like.”

“‘My words are part of me, both my spoken and my written words. A man sees with his two eyes, and he sees the world, the moving shapes, the people in the streets, the sun and the sky, everything—he sees the changing and ever-moving world as one immense hollow, filled with what his senses perceive, a hollow existing above and around and below the orbits of his two eyes. Every man perceives a world in the hollow fixed to his open eyes. And that world, his world, fades as his senses fade; and when they fade forever, where is his world?

“‘Is one man’s world the same as another man’s world? How can it be? There are seven million people in London, there are seven million worlds. There are many unhappy people who are unhappy because they strive to enter the world of the beloved, to mingle in spirit in that other world, to change that world into their
own world—that world into which others can never wholly enter. Even the mother is no more in her son’s world when once he has awakened to himself.’”

When he had ceased reading, Mr. Dock stared at him across the desk with intentness and perplexity. After a pause, his expression cleared, and a light came into his eyes.

“I see! You’ve gone all highbrow! That explains it! What a pity! I was prepared to back you against any other writer whose stuff I print—but you’ve gone highbrow, Maddison!”

After another puzzled look at the young man before him, Mr. Dock went on, “Very well, here’s something else for you to consider, though I suggest it without much hope. You tell me you must have money before you can marry. Then write the kind of stories that people want to read!” The editor’s manner changed. “You
can
do it
if
you want to; but you
don’t
want to! Am I right? Of course I am right! My dear boy, I am quite upset about it—it is absolutely a case of leaving your talents buried! Do you know, and I say this in all seriousness, you
could
be another Kipling? That astonishes you, doesn’t it? But you won’t be, as you are going on! And shall I tell you why? It is because you have a kink! Now go away and think things over. Write good, clean, healthy stories about human life! People will always want to read about romance, despite all fads, fashions, cubism, and all this Vorticist nonsense. Now go to it!”

After shaking his hand and thanking Mr. Dock, Phillip went along a corridor, passing a boy who had been waiting to go into the editor’s room with a cup of dark brown, half-cold tea, some of it slopped into the saucer. He remembered Martin Beausire: how welcome his face would be!

*

He wandered through Covent Garden market, among broken cabbage leaves and dropped flowers, thinking of a small oval face, of dark hair over shoulders in the early morning when Lucy had come across the lawn shyly to kiss him on the cheek or forehead as he lay in bed in the chalet. He longed for her clasp and warmth—waiting for him, far away from this glittering Strand.

One day, one day, they would know! A
kink
, had he? So they had said, nearly all of them, from boyhood up: morbid!—perverse!—slack-twisted!—egotistical! One day—their children perhaps—would see with new eyes.

The flow of unknown people, each with a world that would break like a bubble when its owner was earth again, was going—where? Abraded by the dark and deadly pressures of urban life to another Concentration Graveyard in a few years’ time? Aroused by internecine financial forces, as Willie had prophesied, to counter the spirit of revenge, of blood calling to blood? If only the dead could speak: but the dead did speak: and their spokesman was Christ. But did the meek inherit the earth? Other than the white chalk of the Concentration Graveyard?

He thought to go into the crypt of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, where perhaps he would see Dick Sheppard; but Martin Beausire, who knew him, had said that he was ill with asthma … the effect of death and derision in his life?
For
love
of
God
seems
dying
, Wilfred Owen had written—not ironically, for there was no irony on the battlefield; only iron and flesh. No, he could not bother Dick Sheppard, with nothing in his hands.

He crossed Trafalgar Square, meaning to call at his publisher’s office in Pall Mall. Outside the door he hesitated. Would he be welcome, with five books, all failures? He went up the stairs, and was taken into the inner office, where the manager, a young man, courteously arose from a desk to greet him. While he was talking to him an older man wearing a morning coat, high stiff collar with cravat, and spats over his boots came in and was introduced as Sir Godber Hollins. Phillip remembered him from J. D. Woodford’s party in Inverness Terrace on the night before he went down to Devon, nearly five years ago now. After a cursory greeting Sir Godber pressed a bell, and a woman secretary hurried in.

“Bring the Sales Book, will you?”

Sir Godber laid the ledger on the marble shelf above the fire and flipped the pages; studied a page for a few moments, then turning to his manager asked if they had got the American rights. No? Then why not?

“They were reserved by Mr. Maddison’s agent, Sir Godber.”

The publisher turned away and began to pace the room, his hands under his coat-tails. Abruptly he turned to Phillip.

“Can you come back another day? I am due at the House shortly, and want to speak to my manager on urgent business.”

Phillip left at once, followed out of the room by the manager, who, fumbling in his pocket, produced a crumpled packet of Gold Flake cigarettes and shook out a cigarette, saying, “Have a
gasper? Don’t take any notice of the old boy, there’s a division in the House tonight, and he’s the Party Whip, you know.”

“I quite understand. Sorry about my poor sales. I’m writing a book now which I think will sell.”

“Good for you. You had some good reviews, they ought to get you some journalism. Up for long? Call in again when you’re passing, won’t you?”

Phillip ran down the stairs, and saw outside a yellow Rolls-Royce drawing up. Once it had belonged to the famous sportsman and coal-owner, Lord Lonsdale. Out got a slim dark man whom he recognised as the famous Armenian writer of romantic stories, Dikran Michaelis. After hesitation he went to Michaelis.

“May I say how much I like
The
London
Idyll,
and all your short stories? I’m a writer, too—of sorts.”

“You look as though you’ve seen Christ crucified,” replied the small dark man. “Come and have a drink in the long bar at the pub round the corner.” They drove to the Carlton. “Tell me about yourself. Whisky? What are you writing now?”

“I’m writing a novel about a man called Donkin who saw Christ crucified.”

“You were a soldier in the Guards?”

“I served in the First Brigade beside the Grenadiers and the Coldstream at First Ypres.”

When they had finished their drinks Dikran Michaelis said, “I’m going to Victoria Station to meet the boat-train. Can I give you a lift, if you’re going that way?”

“Thank you, I wanted to go to that station, as it happens.”

“To meet someone?”

“I’ve already met her. She used to go back to her school in Paris from there.”

The other asked no more questions.

“You must have hundreds of friends,” said Phillip.

“I have none. People despise me, they think of me as the Armenian Cad who dodged the war, fakes all his characters, remains ‘every other inch a gentleman’, and whose books are ‘not so much brilliant as brilliantine’.”

“I know how you feel, for I feel exactly the same. We forget the nine and ninety, and think only of the one lost sheep.”

“You are at least English, or shall I say British? I am a damned outsider! Oh yes, I am!”