Poor Caroline (35 page)

The situation was awkward, but not irremediable.

'You told me that if I sent you £25,' Miss Weller sobbed,
'you would make it fit for publication. That was seven
months ago. I've written and written. Why don't you
answer my letters? What's happened to my novel? Don't
the publishers like it? Have you tried them all? Where have
you sent it? Oh God!' She was working herself up to a fit
of hysteria. 'It's awful,' she gulped. 'It's been awful waiting
every day for the post. Listening for the flutter of letters into
the box. And then never a line. Day after day. I've got to have my royalties. I've got to. Or you must give me my
money back.'

'But, my dear child, you can't do things like that.'

'But you must, or I shall go to prison. I took that money.
You don't understand. I took that money. It was the petty
cash for the month. I thought you said . . .'

'Oh, now. now, now. You don't mean that. You don't
mean that.' Good Lord! The little fool! If this were true,
and hysterical girls of her type could do anything, then
there would be a police-court case, with inquiries about the
M
etropolitan School, and his revision service, and his
method of handling manuscripts. And that was not at all
what he desired. His patronage turned to paternal asperity,
until his questioning extracted sentence by sentence the girl's
story. She was plain. She was lonely. She was misunder
stood. Nobody loved her. Her sisters married right under
her very nose. Her brothers laughed at her. And all the
rime, she knew that she was talented.

'I know here!' she cried, striking with an ink-stained hand
the flat breast under her brown coat-frock. 'I know here!
I wrote poetry. I wrote plays. But nobody would look at
them. Then I saw your advertisement. You said, do you
remember? "You can make the world laugh and cry. You
can pluck a leaf from Balzac's laurels. You!"
She did not
know much about Balzac, but she starved for laurels. She
saw herself rewarded, rich, acclaimed, talking eloquently at
the PEN Club, dressed in night-blue velvet and pearls, a
famous novelist. She saw; 'The Book of the Year -
Destinies,
by Doreen Weller.' And her picture in the paper, without her pince-nez, and her hair nicely waved.

But tw
enty-five pounds was enormous, grotesque, im
possible. How could she get hold of twenty-five pounds?
She had five pounds of her own in post-office savings certifi
cates. She was earning 30
s.
a week and paying out of that 10
s,
towards the housekeeping expenses; 5
s.
went on fares,
and another 5
s.
on lunch out and incidentals. How could she save £20, save or borrow or make it?

Then her employer sent her as usual to the bank to draw
£50 for the month's petty cash. And as usual, he did not ask
her how much already lay in the box. She knew. She knew
that the previous month had been unusually slack, that
postage and messengers and incidental expenses had fallen
off, and that a cheque of
£
10,
paid in for a special purpose,
had not been used. Twenty-three pounds already lay in the
cash-box. If she took out her twenty, nobody would notice
until the books went to the auditors, and that was, not for another seven months And by that time she would be rich,
she would be famous, she would have repaid the paltry
twenty pounds, ten times over if necessary, and would have
left the office for ever.

It was providential; it was obvious: it was ordained of
God. She sent Mr. Johnson the twenty-five pounds and sat down to await her triumph. But triumph had not come; her
letters remained unanswered.

And now confronting Johnson himself, alternatively fierce
and apologetic, shuddering with fear, misery and appre
hension, she delivered her tremulous ultimatum.

'If you don't let me have the twenty pounds by quarter
day, I shall go to the police,' she said. "I shall give myself
up. But I shall tell them about you too. I shall tell them to
find out what happened to my manuscript. What if you've
sold it and kept the royalties yourself?'

This fearful, yet somewhat consoling thought had only
just occurred to her. She sat with wild staring eyes watching for its effect.

But Mr. Johnson only smiled
at
her and patted her on the
shoulder. He knew now what line to take.

'You little fool. You poor little silly fool. So, driven like
a trapped animal you turn and bite the hand of the only
friend who can help you. eh? Now, look here, look here. If
you think we've got anything to fear from the police, you
just go and
tell 'em whatever you like. You just go an' con
fide in 'em an' tell 'em all about everything. And don't be
surprised if it all works out different to what you expect.
My dear girl. The
Metropolitan and Professional
welcomes
auditors and police inspections. If any of our clients are
dissatisfied, we
invite
them to investigate our books. 'Smy belief there's not an establishment in London or New York
with a cleaner record. But never mind that, The question
for the moment is you, not us. Of course, you know, my
dear girl, you've done a very, very silly thing'. I'm not sure if for your own sake I ought not to let justice take its own course. It would be a lesson to you - a harsh lesson, I know.

'But I'll look into the business and think about it. You'd better come and see me. now let me see - quarter day'
s the
25th. Come on the 23rd. 267 Battersea Park Crescent Man
sions. Come about half-past eight, and I'll see what I can
do. I can't bear to see a woman in the dock - butterfly on
the wheel. Woman, woman,
Femina variens.
Well, well. I'll
see what I can do.'

He dismissed her on a high note of masculine unction, and
watched her take her way down the steps, then returned to
the chair by his desk and swore. For he had not twenty
pounds in the world, and did not know at the moment
where to lay his hands on it. Yet he did not want Miss
Doreen Weller to go confessing her guilt hysterically all over
London.

§2

The rain poured down. After the storm of the two
previous nights, the broken clouds accumulated and spilled themselves over London. A silvery curtain obliterated Bat
tersea Park. Rain pricked the flat grey surface of the river.
Along the road umbrellas bobbed ridiculously.

It would rain. It would rain. Johnson thought of California on a spring morning. He thought of sunlit snow in
Canada. He thought of the glowing, stinging warmth of hot
sand on a beach washed by the Pacific. Here in London it
would rain. Hell!

He stood by his window, a dilapidated brown dressing-
gown folded round his rumpled pyjamas, stroking his
bristled chin for the sake of the odd prickling discomfort
which was more in keeping with his present mood than
smooth silkiness. His head ached. Last night he had tried
to drown his worries in cheap whisky; but like kittens they
had nine lives and would not drown.

The post had brought him nothing but further food for
melancholy. Bolivian Central Stock was down again. Rex
Buckler wrote to say that if his loan of £500 was not repaid
before the end of the month, he would take out a writ - a
nice action from a friend to a friend. And to crown every
thing, Mollie had written one of her querulous, long, I'm-very-unhappy-but-I-mean-to-be-brave letters.

'Darling, I know of course you can't be expected to give up your work just when the book is getting on so well. But of course it is lonely here and I think little Knud misses you too. He says "Dad, Dad!" ever so often. Darling, don't think I'm complaining for I'm not, but it is lonely here in
the evenings and I do wonder if I'm going to feel sick right
on up to the time with this one.'

Hell, what a day, what a life, what a world! And then
Doreen Weller went and got herself into police-court trouble
for twenty pounds, to line the pockets of that swine Osborne.

'If I ever catch that son of a . . .' Johnson exclaimed
aloud, but the shrill insistence of the telephone cut short his threat. Hitching his dressing-gown round him, he went into
the dark stuffy hall.

'Hullo. Hullo. Hullo, blast you. Hullo.'

'Hullo. Good morning. You do sound bright and merry,'
cried a rich lazy voice.

'Gloria. My dear. An angel told you I was gonna pass
right away unless something nice happened. You've rung
up to tell me I can take you outa lunch.'

'Have I? I didn't know it. I really rang you up to ask
you to help me.'

'Help you? Ask? Don't think of asking; just say-"Clif
ton Roderick Johnson, come right over here," an' I'm
there.'

'Oh no, you're not. At least not at the moment. Now
listen. You know Basil hasn't been a bit well lately. What?
No he hasn't. And I think the only thing for him is a spell
in the South of France. But he's all worried up about this
Cinema Company, and Caroline's been bothering him a lot
because it seems that the wind blew in that old factory roof
right on top of Macafee's laboratory two nights ago. and
just at this very moment a man you'll know - Brooks, his
name is -'

'Brooks - not Simon L. Brooks?'

'That's the creature - well, apparently he'd just been
down to the studio and taken a fancy to the Tona Perfecta or
something. Anyway, life being what it is, everything seems
to have happened at once, and what I wondered is whether
you, being a dear, wouldn't just trot round and find what
has happened and come up to-morrow night and tell us all about it, because I want Basil to keep quiet until he sails -
yes - yes, he's going by boat. It's more restful. No, I'm not
sure which day. I'm at Hanover Square where I work, so
you can't come and see me. I'm supposed at this moment
to be receiving particulars of a very exclusive order from a
duchess.'

'Am I a duchess?'

'You're a duchess, and you'll be a duke too if you'll hop
along and see what's doing.'

She had gone, The telephone clicked and crackled, and
the air was robbed of the richness of her voice. Delia?
Pshaw! Mollie? Hell! There was only one woman in the world, and she could turn a wet London
morning into a
golden day. She was regal
and human and splendid. She
was colour and warmth and light. She was worth even the
discomfort of turning out into that rain to discover what had
happened to the Christian Cinema Company.