Loitering With Intent (12 page)

But it seemed impossible both that Dottie had a lover and that Revisson Doe could, at his age, be one.

I sat up all that night bothering myself over these two apparent impossibilities. On the part of Dottie I saw lying on the table the evidence of a little folded card she had once left me, and which had turned up in the course of my search for my package. It was typical of Dottie. She had paid two shillings and sixpence to enrol me in something with this card. ‘Guild of Our Lady of Ransom’ it was headed, going on to explain ‘for the Conversion of England. Jesus convert England. Under the Heavenly Patronage of
Our Lady, St Gregory, and the Blessed English Martyrs.’
I sat and looked at this, drinking in Dottie’s piety. ‘Motto,’ it announced on the inside; ‘For God, Our Lady, and the Catholic Faith.’ This was followed by ‘Obligations.

1.
To say the Daily Prayer for the Intentions of the Guild. 2. To work for the objects of the Guild. 3. To subscribe at least Two Shillings and Sixpence a year to the Ransom Fund. Fleur Talbot [in Dottie’s handwriting] is hereby enrolled a Red Cross Ransomer. Partial Indulgences. 1.
Seven Years and Seven Quarantines.
2.
One Hundred Days.’

And so it went on, with its bureaucratic Indulgences, its Souls in Purgatory and all the rest of Dottie’s usual claptrap.

I too was a Catholic believer but not that sort, not that sort at all. And if it was true, as Dottie always said, that I was taking terrible risks with my immortal soul, I would have been incapable of caution on those grounds. I had an art to practise and a life to live, and faith abounding; and I simply didn’t have the time or the mentality for guilds and indulgences, fasts and feasts and observances. I’ve never held it right to create more difficulties in matters of religion than already exist.

I say this, because it struck me as strange that a man’s head which was not Leslie’s should appear at Dottie’s bedroom window at two-thirty in the night. Again, as I pondered, I caught in my mind’s eye the head of Revisson Doe. I had only seen him a few times. Could it be possible? I began to feel I had perhaps misjudged his age. I had thought him about sixty. In fact, I was sure he was about sixty. The impossible, as I thought on and on, became possible. I hadn’t got an impression of a sexually active man, but then I hadn’t really looked at him from that point of view. The possibility existed, except, of course, that Dottie would die rather than be unfaithful to a living husband; she would consider it a mortal sin, she would sink straight to hell if she were run over in the street unabsolved. I knew Dottie’s way of thinking. It was impossible. And yet, as the birds of Kensington began to chirp in the early spring dawn outside my window, Dottie’s infidelity piped up its entire possibility.

I thought it possible she had made a point of meeting Revisson Doe with a view to getting Leslie’s novel published. It was possible she was immolating herself on the altar of Leslie’s book. She was a pretty woman and it was possible that Revisson Doe, sixty or seventy as he might be, should go to bed with her. It was all unlikely but it was all quite possible. I concluded my due process of induction with the thought that it was not very unlikely, and really quite probable; and I was left with the fact I still didn’t know for certain if Dottie had taken my
Warrender Chase,
and, if so, why. It was five in the morning. I set my alarm for eight and went to bed.

I got a letter by the first post in a Park and Revisson Doe Co. Ltd envelope, which I opened bleary-eyed.

Dear Fleur (if I may),

A small problem has cropped up with regard to your novel
Warrender Chase.

I think we should talk this over face to face before proceeding further, as the details are too complicated to explain by letter.

Please ring me at your earliest opportunity to make an appointment for us to meet, to think out this delicate matter.

Always,

Revisson.

This letter appalled me. It is typical of a state of anxiety that it seems to attract ever more disaster. It was a quarter to nine. Park and Revisson Doe didn’t start business till ten. I decided to ring at half-past ten. I read the letter over and over again, each time with greater foreboding. What was wrong with my
Warrender Chase?
I took the letter sentence by sentence; each one looked worse than the other. After half an hour I decided I had to talk to somebody. I had no intention of returning to the Hallam Street carnival. Even before the letter arrived I had made up my mind only to wander in later in the days, collect some things that I had left behind, say good-bye to Edwina and look for another job.

I made an appointment with Revisson Doe for three-thirty that day. I tried to pump him on the phone, whether there was ‘something wrong’ with my
Warrender Chase
but he wouldn’t be drawn into any discussion. He sounded edgy, rather unfriendly. He addressed me as Miss Talbot, forgetting about Fleur if he might. I didn’t know then, as I know now, that the traditional paranoia of authors is as nothing compared to the inalienable schizophrenia of publishers.

Revisson Doe on the phone was plainly nervous about something, I supposed about the loss of money my book was likely to incur, I supposed he wanted to revise the terms of the contract, I supposed he might want me to change something vital in the novel and I decided throughout all this supposing that I would refuse to make any changes in the book. I wondered, then, if Theo and Audrey had expressed their adverse opinions on the book to my publisher when they had sent back the proofs. I had written a note to thank them for the proof-reading and had been inclined not to believe Dottie when she had reported with such ferocity what Theo and Audrey, always so good to me, had said.

But that morning, sleepless, and with a terrible yesterday behind me, I was fairly at my wits’ end. I rang up the Clairmont house; their maid answered and I asked for either Theo or Audrey. The maid came back to say they were both busy in their studies.

I went back to bed and by the afternoon felt ready for my interview with Revisson Doe. I was so far refreshed that I was able to rather look forward to the meeting, anxious to have another look at him from the point of view of his possibly being Dottie’s or anyone else’s bedfellow. I just had time on the way to stop at Kensington Public Library to look up his age in
Who’s Who.
Born 1884. He had been married twice, one son, two daughters. I got on the bus calculating that he was sixty-six. It seemed older to me in those days than it does now. When I saw Revisson Doe there in his office, I was sure that his was the head I had seen at Dottie’s window. I took the chair he waved me into, wondering if Dottie had told the old goat that it was probably I who had been singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at two in the morning. At the same time I thought, whatever Dottie saw in him it was not sex-appeal.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘I want you to know that we value your work highly.’ I noticed the ‘we’ and felt uneasy. At the time when he had been considering
Warrender Chase
he had dithered between ‘I’ and ‘we’ quite a lot. To express his enthusiasm and keenness for the book as a new young piece of writing he had used ‘I’ both in his letters and conversations; to signify the risk of a loss on the deal he had always put it down to ‘we’. Now we were back at ‘we’ again.

‘We understand you’re working on a new novel?’

I said yes, it was to be entitled
All Souls’ Day.

He said it didn’t sound a very selling title. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘we can change the title.’

I said that was to be the title.

‘Oh, well, we have an option on it. We can discuss the title later. We were debating whether it wouldn’t perhaps be preferable to leave
Warrender Chase
aside for the time being. You see, a first novel is after all a pure experiment, isn’t it? Whereas we were going to suggest if you would let us see the opening chapters of the second novel, your
All Fools’ Day—’

‘All Souls’ Day,’
I said.

‘All Souls’ Day,
yes, oh, quite.’ He seemed to be amused at this, and I took advantage of his little laugh to ask him what was wrong with
Warrender Chase.

‘We can’t publish it,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘Fortunately for us we’ve discovered in time that it bears the fault of most first novels, alas, it is too close to real life. Why, look, you know, these characters of yours are lifted clean from that Autobiographical Association you work for. We have, really we have, looked into the matter and we have a number of testimonies to the likeness. And now your employer, Sir Quentin Oliver, is threatening to sue. He sent to us for a set of the proofs and naturally we gave him a set. You make them out to be sinister, you make them out to be feeble, hypnotized creatures and you make Sir Quentin out to be an evil manipulator and hater of women. He drives one woman to drink and an-other—’

‘My novel was started before I met Sir Quentin Oliver. The man must be mad.’

‘He’s threatening to sue if we publish. Sir Quentin Oliver is a man of substance. We can’t afford to risk a libel suit. The very idea …’ He put his hand over his eyes for a moment. Then he said, ‘It’s out of the question. But we do value your potentialities as a writer very highly, Miss Talbot—Fleur, if I may—and if we could offer you some guidance with your second novel from our fund of experience, it may be possible to switch the contract—’

‘I don’t need your guidance.’

‘You would be the first author I’ve known who could not, between ourselves, do with a little editorial help. You must remember,’ said he, for all the world as if I were incapable of disgust, ‘that an author is a publisher’s raw material.’

I said I would have to consult my advisers and got up to leave. ‘We are very unhappy about this, most unhappy,’ he said. I never saw him again.

It wasn’t till after I got home that I realized he had my only copy of the typescript of
Warrender Chase.
I didn’t want to ask for it back until I had consulted Solly Mendelssohn, lest I should jeopardize the contract; I half hoped that Solly would suggest some way in which they could be induced to change their minds; but at the same time I knew I couldn’t deal any more with Park and Revisson Doe. The shock and disappointment had been too sudden for me to plunge into the final reality of taking the physical book away from them. But I did, when I got home, ring up Revisson Doe. I got his secretary. He was engaged, could she help me? I said I would be obliged if she could send me a spare set of proofs as I had mislaid my original manuscript and I wanted to look through my
Warrender Chase.
‘Hold on, please,’ she said politely and went off the line, I presumed for further instructions, for some minutes. She came back and said, ‘I’m so sorry, but the type has been distributed.’

Ignorant as I was then of printers’ jargon I said, ‘Distributed to whom?’

‘Distributed—broken up. We are not printing the book, Miss Talbot.’

‘And what happened to the proofs?’

‘Oh, those have been destroyed, naturally.’

‘Thank you.’

I was able to get Solly on the phone at his office the next night. He told me to meet him at a pub in Fleet Street, and came down from his office for a quick conference.

‘It’s not them sue you for libel,’ Sally mused, ‘it’s you sue them for saying your book’s libellous. That’s if they put it in writing. But it would cost you a fortune. Better get your typescript back and tell them to wipe their arse with the contract. Don’t give them your next novel. Don’t worry. We’ll get another publisher. But get the typescript back. It’s yours by rights. By legal rights. You’re a bloody fool not to have kept a copy.’

‘Well, I had the original manuscript. How could I know that Dottie, or whoever it was, would steal it?’

‘I would say,’ said Solly, ‘that it was Dottie, all right. She’s been acting like a fool over your novel. However, it’s a good sign when people act like fools over a piece of work, a good sign.’

I couldn’t see how it was a good sign. I got home just before ten. I made plans to retrieve my typescript from the publisher the next day and also to make it my business to get back my manuscript from Dottie. The possibility that all copies of my
Warrender Chase
had been destroyed was one I couldn’t face clearly that night, but it hung around me nightmarishly—the possibility that nowhere, nowhere in the world, did my
Warrender Chase
exist any more.

Then the telephone rang. It was Lady Edwina’s nurse.

‘I’ve been trying to get you all afternoon,’ she said. ‘Lady Edwina’s asking for you. We’ve had a terrible time all day. Mrs Tims and Sir Quentin were called out early this morning because his poor friend Lady Bernice Gilbert passed away. Then they came back and asked for you. Then they went out again. Lady Edwina’s been laughing her head off. Hysterics. She’s just dropping off now. I gave her a dose. But she wants to see you as soon— ‘What did Lady Bernice die of?’

‘I’m afraid,’ said the nurse with a quivering voice, ‘she took her own life.’

There and then the determination took me that, whatever Sir Quentin was up to, for myself, I was not any sort of a victim; I was simply not constituted for the role. The news of Bernice Gilbert’s suicide horrified but toughened me.

I went along to Hallam Street next morning. I felt sure, now, that not only was Sir Quentin exerting his influence to suppress my
Warrender Chase
but he was using, stealing, my myth. Without a mythology, a novel is nothing. The true novelist, one who understands the work as a continuous poem, is a myth-maker, and the wonder of the art resides in the endless different ways of telling a story, and the methods are mythological by nature.