Poor Caroline (36 page)

Johnson made no attempt to go to the School in Essex Street. Newspapers commonly demanded cash in advance
for advertisements and recently he had been able to afford
no insertions. Without advertisements, his clientèle declined
immediately. He was in debt for the rent. His letter-box
would be full of bills, Life simply was not worth living if
one went to an empty office to read bills on a wet March
day.

Instead he shaved and dressed and made himself a cup
of coffee, and went round to the garage for his
car. Half
way round he remembered, with a queer shock of relief, that
the car was his no
longer. There comes a time when even a
long suffering dealer takes action if his instalments are not
paid.

'After all I was always scared of the darn thing,' philoso
phized Johnson, and caught a bus for Annerley. He was in
a less desolate mood, because Gloria had rung him up, and
because he was going to see her to-morrow night. In the bus
he noticed a young girl with dark bright laughing eyes and
a scarlet beret pulled down over her black curling hair, a
young Jewess, ardently and charmingly alive. He contrived to share her seat, and the contact with her warm firm young
body cheered him. After all, there were compensations in
the world. Even the chill of the rain on his face was quite agreeable
when at last he jumped down from his bus and strode along the pavement to the place where Macafee's
hoarding sagged below the weight of its damp flapping
posters. A policeman stood outside the hole where Macafee
usually entered.

'Greetings, Pyramus,' roared Johnson. 'Where's Thisbe?'

The policeman eyed him with the tolerant impartiality of
the law. So early in the morning to be merry, thought he,
and an American too. What price prohibition now?

'Can't I go in?' asked Johnson. 'I want to see Mr. Maca
fee.'

'What paper do you represent?' asked the policeman.

Taper? I'm a friend.'

'Ho - well - I don't know there's any harm in going
in.
But you mustn't go beyond the ropes. It's not safe. Might
all come down any minute.'

'Righto. I know. Sign along the dotted line, eh? Pass, friend, all's well.' And Johnson squeezed his huge bulk
through the hole in the hoarding.

He saw an odd sight. The factory itself looked merely
more ruinous than ever, but round its debris a rope had
been drawn, with large boards marked 'Danger' hung
along it at intervals. Inside the rope were housebreakers,
working cautiously at the task of removing Macafee's
precious apparatus from under the fallen masonry. Beyond
the rope small boys, with their strange gift of ubiquity,
scuffled in the mud, watching a little knot of people grouped
round one diminutive gesticulating figure.

It was Caroline, and she had at length achieved one of her
life's ambitions; she had captured the ear of the London
Press. When Johnson came up to her, he heard her hurrying
excited voice.

'And so he worked just in the old laboratory. Yes, on the
Tona Perfecta, which belongs to the Christian Cinema Com
pany - Cinema with the
C
hard as in the Greek
K.
Yes -
yes, that's
most
important- to reform the moral and aesthetic
standard of the British cinema.'

The rain poured down upon her feathered hat. It dripped
on to her nose, her draggled fur, the large embroidered bag in which she carried papers, keys, smelling salts, lozenges and writing-blocks. She did not notice the rain. She did not
notice the mud into which her small, ill-shod feet sank
slowly, until it began to trickle over the tops of her battered
shoes. She did not notice the covert smile of the reporters,
who had rarely in all their experience come upon so odd a
figure.

She was touching glory. She had told her tale to four different young men, and 'saw the fame of the Christian
Cinema Company spreading from pole to pole. Glory
burned in her eyes. Glory loosened her tongue. Glory lent
lyrical rapture to her words.

'The Church? Yes, of course the Church is interested.
Wouldn't you be interested if you saw a movement for reviv
ing the Golden Age of Athens, the Diamond Age of the Renaissance, empurpled with the solemn pall of Christianity?'

The young men were growing bored. It was cold, and
they had heard all this before. They were polite, but the old
lady was obviously a little cracked and the person whom
they really wanted to see was the inventor himself.

'Now this Mr. Macafee?' asked one.

The flood-gates of another stream were loosened.

'Oh, he's a
most
interesting young man with such a roman
tic career, a crofter's son from Scotland where I always
think they have such wonderful educational opportunities.'

She was muddling it, of course. Johnson, who thought in
headlines and spoke in captions, grieved over her amateurish
workmanship. She had not recognized him. Her short-sighted
eyes saw only one more figure augment the group before her. Johnson knew as well as she did that there are
few more exhilarating experiences than that of opening one's
heart to the Press. The secrecy of the Confessional contains no comfort like the publicity of the Sunday paper. Caroline
was visualizing front page after front page, blazoned with
the sensational story of the Christian Cinema Company.
She saw herself photographed impressively against the ruins.
She saw her beloved Father Mortimer hailed as the hero of an exciting rescue. She saw the faces of the Marshington
Smiths, blanching with disappointment as they realized that
their interest in the Company had come too late. By the
time they wrote from Yorkshire asking for shares, the capital
of three hundred thousand - Caroline's present estimate -
would have been over-subscribed. The days of hunger and
fatigue and disillusionment no longer mattered. Nothing
mattered except the opportunity to convert these young men
and send them forth into the world as missionaries for the
Christian Cinema Company.

She spoke of Father Mortimer and of how he had been
injured trying to rescue Mr. Macafee's work. She spoke of
Eleanor, and the part which she had played. In her excite
ment she flew from point to point of her story, growing less
and less coherent, until the four young men began to close
their note-books and shift their cameras, and hope for a
moment favourable to polite departure.

Then Johnson could bear it no longer. He stepped for
ward into the circle and raised his broad-brimmed hat.

'Good morning, gentlemen. Good morning, Miss Denton-
Smyth. My name's Johnson. Clifton Roderick Johnson -
proprietor of the Anglo-American School of Scenario writ
ing, and one of the directors of the Christian Cinema Company. Now if there are any other questions you would like
to ask, without keeping this lady standing here in the rain
much longer, I am at your service. I'm prepared to answer any question,
any question at all, about the company, or ourselves, or the Tona Perfecta Film.'

'Well, thank you very much, sir. But I think really Miss
Den ton-Smyth has told us everything.' The young man
from the Penge and Annerley
Observer
was due at a local
wedding in twenty minutes and wanted to catch his bus.
The others were glad enough to follow his example. Indig
nant, with the chagrin of an outraged craftsman, Johnson
watched the Ear of the Press vanish from before him.

But Caroline was in no mood for sorrow. She turned to
him with a radiant face.

'Oh, Mr. Johnson, wasn't it
too
wonderful? I always knew an opportunity would come. But to come just
now,
when we so much needed something to uplift us. I can't
tell
you what
I felt like yesterday, when I heard that the factory had
fallen in, and the laboratory was ruined and
not
insured, and
poor Father Mortimer in hospital. It just seemed as though
everything were at an end. And then this morning
suddenly
everything begins to move. Mr. Brooks has sent for Mr.
Macafee. The Press wants the whole story. Brooks will
finance us I know and the Press will give us all the advertise
ment we could
possibly
want, and I am going back to the office now to get out some new circulars and deal with the correspondence.'

'Have you seen St. Denis?'

'No. Didn't you
know?
He's ill again, poor man, at least not so very seriously I hope, but he has to go abroad, that's
why I'm so
very
glad you've come because what I feel is that
we must all get to work, and then about the signing of the
cheques, that's another thing I wanted to say. You know
that Mr. St. Denis and I had to sign everything that we paid
out, but may I ask if while he is away
you
would do it,
because Mr. Guerdon is very good, but he does rather fuss,
you know, I don't think he's really
accustomed
to business
methods and doing things quickly on a big scale.'

Johnson's quick brain was investigating possibilities. The signing of cheques for other people's money always offers
opportunities for private enterprise. Things, as Caroline
said, were certainly moving. At any moment aid might
come from some unexpected source.

'Now you just leave everything to me,' he said. 'I can
handle Macafee. I'll deal with the Press. I'll just see to
everything. You get right back home an' get your wet
things off, for we can't let you catch cold just now.'

'Well, that is kind. I
knew
you'd help me. Really it is a comfort, because single handed the responsibility really is
rather great, and I've been so worried about Father Morti
mer - you know he might so easily have been
killed, I
lay awake all last night shuddering to think of those
dreadful
walls. I can't bear to look at them.'

They were walking towards the buses. The rain still
danced vindictively upon the shining street and pavement,
but Caroline did not care.

'How soon do you think the Press will get out our story?
Will it be in the lunch-hour edition? I can hardly bear to
wait to see what they say. Oh, it's
too
marvellous.'

'Well, that depends on what papers you saw. I was gonna
ask. What did those young men represent?'