The Paper Lovers

by Gerard Woodward

  ‘Of course not, I’ll look forward to hearing from you.’

  This was in the days when computers were still in their infancy, all the information was kept in folders held in filing cabinets. She could find no trace of anyone called Arnold Proctor.

  She found the head of publicity, having had to wait for her to come out of a meeting.

  ‘I’ve had a phone call from someone wanting publicity information about a writer called Arnold Broccoli. I mean Proctor. Arnold Proctor.’

  ‘Are you sure he’s one of ours?’

  There were other publishers under the same umbrella company, occupying different floors of the one building. She phoned upstairs and downstairs, but no one had heard of Arnold Proctor. She wondered if she should phone the W. H. Auden Awards to make sure they had the right poet, or publisher. But then she found one of the senior editors.

  ‘You should ask Vita, she does the poetry list.’

  ‘Vita?’

  ‘Vita Cartwright. She doesn’t come in much, once a month to have a long lunch with her old Bloomsbury friends, less so now that we’ve moved out of Bloomsbury. If she remembers she pops in here to look at the submissions, usually leaves without opening anything. She used to be a poet herself, but nothing published since about 1938.’

  She went to Vita’s desk, which had somehow escaped the new management broom. There was simply a heap of stuff on it, roughly conical in form, consisting of manuscripts, envelopes, magazines, pictures, dried flowers and box files. She couldn’t touch anything for fear of causing an avalanche. Vita’s filing cabinet contained no files but instead ornate and empty wine bottles, articles of clothing and an empty bird cage. She asked another editor, at the neighbouring desk,

  ‘Do you have Vita Cartwright’s phone number?’

  ‘Oh no, she doesn’t use the phone. She only responds to letters.’

  ‘Does she live in London?’

  ‘Somewhere in Surrey, I think.’

  She had no choice in the end but go into the managing director’s office, Miranda Mulholland, the only person in the company to have her own door, which was nearly always closed.

  ‘I’m trying to contact Vita Cartwright, one of her authors is up for a prize.’

  ‘Oh, Vita’s dead dear. Who is the author you are talking about?’

  ‘Arnold Proctor.’

  Mulholland looked blank. ‘It does ring a bell. What is the prize he has won?’

  ‘He’s been shortlisted for the W. H. Auden Award.’

  ‘Oh, that’s quite good. We should let him know as soon as possible. He’d be very happy.’

  ‘That’s what I was wanting to contact Vita for – I’m so sorry she’s dead.’ Without warning, and without feeling at all sad, Polly felt the seep of tears.

  ‘I’m sorry, dear. I forget there may be people in the office who have known Vita. She was such a secretive old sweetheart. I thought to make a proper announcement but she was here so rarely I truly forgot all about it. Did you know her well?’

  ‘Not at all, actually. I hadn’t heard her name until today.’

  The thought that Arnold might be having an affair occurred to her now and then. In the past there had been one or two occasions when she had had cause to wonder – when she caught the way he was looking at a woman or, more rarely, the other way round. He claimed invisibility as far as the opposite sex was concerned, but she knew there was a certain type of woman who found him attractive. Women like her, for example. She couldn’t be unique. This time she doubted it because she detected little sign of unhappiness or guilt in him. He seemed blasé and calm in everything he did. Their lovemaking continued in the precautionary and routine way they had adapted since the birth of their daughter – nothing too elaborate or extravagant that couldn’t be instantly covered up if their child intruded, which she often did. She read that one of the first signs that a man was having an affair was the sudden appearance of new sexual techniques or interests in the bedroom. Well, there certainly hadn’t been any of those. But then she read somewhere else that a certain man is duplicitous and conscientious enough to make sure he doesn’t bring any new habits into a well-established lovemaking routine. She strongly doubted whether Arnold was duplicitous and conscientious enough.

  She thought about the time she finally met him, at the awards ceremony. It was a tight-lipped do, the award presented by a celebrated poet she was embarrassed to find she’d never heard of. She saw her own poet standing awkwardly, a little drunkenly, with the other shortlisted authors. Something about the awkwardness attracted her. She went over to him.

  ‘You must be Arnold, I’m Polly.’

  She had grown used to meeting distinguished authors, so meeting an unknown poet was easy enough to handle.

  ‘Hello, Polly.’

  ‘I’m one of the publicity assistants at Carpenter’s. We’ve spoken on the phone.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘Many congratulations.’ She felt suddenly tongue-tied.

  ‘Thanks. Is anyone else here? From Carpenter’s, I mean.’

  ‘No, but they all send their warmest congratulations, I’m afraid they are tied up with other things tonight.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘Yes, except me.’

  ‘Even the poetry editor?’

  ‘Oh, didn’t you know?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Your editor is dead.’

  Arnold gave a shrugging laugh, as if to say, That’s all I needed.

  ‘I’m so sorry – someone should have informed you, I can’t believe they haven’t. Did you know her well?’

  ‘I never met her actually, so no, I didn’t know her at all.’

  ‘That’s good. No one in the office seems to have known her either. But she must have had a great affection for your work, she would have been so pleased that your book is on this shortlist, I’m sure.’

  ‘Actually, I’m beginning to wonder if she published me by mistake. She may have thought I was someone else.’

  ‘Oh I’m sure that’s not the case.’

  ‘There is another poet, called Andrew Porter. He has been very successful in the magazines and with the competitions, but he has never had a book published. I wondered if she got our names mixed up. She was very old, and she once called me Andrew, in one of her letters.’

  ‘Well, you can rest assured, all of us at Carpenter’s know you are Arnold Broccoli, not Andrew Porter, and that you are a much better poet.’ She put forward a jokingly clenched, comradely fist.

  ‘Did you say Broccoli?’

  ‘No, I said Proctor. Andrew Proctor. Arnold Proctor.’

  ‘Now that the poetry editor is dead, will they carry on publishing poetry?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Arnold. I expect so.’

  ‘The rumour is that they were running down the poetry list anyway. Now that Vita’s gone, they have the perfect opportunity to dump the list.’

  He was quite drunk, and his teeth were stained with red wine. They slept together that night, literally, as Arnold went out like a light as soon as he was under the covers. Polly had never slept with a man so soon after meeting them even though, as a frequent attender of literary events like this one, she had been given countless opportunities. Perhaps it was that he, unlike the other men, had made so little effort in trying to impress her. In fact, she found it so hard to keep his attention or interest, she wondered at first if he was gay. No, he wasn’t gay, instead he seemed to live in a state of permanent distraction. Even so, she soon found that he would, without showing any obvious signs of affection, do absolutely anything for her. He would heel, or roll over like a dog. One phone call and he would drop everything to be by her side. The devotion baffled her. And he seemed almost painfully honest and trustworthy. The idea of him deceiving her, it was too troubling to even contemplate.

  She sometimes wondered, on the mornings when it was quiet in the shop and she was alone in the back with her tanks of pulp, lifting pages out of the stewed fibres, if what she was doing
bore any relationship at all to what happens in a church. She had read the lazy articles about artists in their studios, and writers at their desks, talking about sacred spaces. The cave of making. Arnold’s desk was such a space, but one that was unadorned and unritualized. He was not the kind of writer who filled his space with mementoes and talismans. His desk was little more than a pile of rubbish, somewhere in the midst of which art was being slowly put together. Yet even in that seemingly random configuration of codexes, mugs of pens, newspapers and half-eaten food, there seemed a kind of precious order of things. Then she realized what it was – in giving no thought to how things were arranged, Arnold’s placement of objects was perfectly aligned with his thought processes – when he finished reading something, he placed it somewhere, in relation to all the other things he had placed. In this way, the desk was an extension of his mind. It was his consciousness solidified. And that was what made it seem precious, or sacred.

  Her own space was more ordered – the long benches for working and cutting, the drying racks, the shelves of inks, dyes and glues, the pulp tanks, the sink area, the storage bins with their bales of materials, the tubs of dried rose petals, leaves, bark. It was a space dedicated to a process of production that reminded her, in the very few times in her life she’d been to church, of the careful and considered orderliness of the Christian sacrament. When she lowered a frame into the pulp, it sank into an impenetrable morass of broken-down matter, and when she lifted it out, a perfect rectangle of paper held within the frame, dripping. It had to be treated as carefully and as respectfully as new-born life. If she thought about its origins, from the unstitching of the carbon dioxide molecule to the felling of an elderly tree, it seemed a miracle more wonderful than anything dreamt up by religion.

  She hardly saw Vera now. The sewing evenings had petered out over the summer with few people able to make the commitment, and Vera had stopped attending before then anyway. Evelyn and Irina’s always turbulent relationship seemed to have passed a point of redemption and the regular invitations to stay at Irina’s house were no longer offered, and Evelyn had no inclination to invite Irina to hers. The mothers in Evelyn’s year no longer waited in the school playground but saw their children off at the gates. They were old enough now to find their own way into the school. So the little community that came into existence for ten or fifteen minutes every morning had ended, except for those with children in a lower year. She missed it. It was a chore that had become a special part of her life, and its passing marked another small moment of transition, another step taken in Evelyn’s progress towards independent adulthood, which had once seemed impossibly remote. And the thread that connected her to the community of other mothers had become ever so slightly weaker.

  She did try to find out if something had happened between Evelyn and Vera’s daughter, but no amount of questions brought any satisfactory answers.

  ‘Aren’t you friends with Irina any more?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did something happen between you? Did she upset you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you upset her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why then? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Mother – don’t you know anything about relationships? For God’s sake!’

  She managed to catch Vera at the school gates one morning. They had walked past each other, Vera showing no sign of recognition. On an impulse Polly turned and ran to catch up.

  ‘I’m so sorry about Evelyn and Irina, they seem to have fallen out.’

  ‘Yes,’ Vera said thoughtfully, as though she hadn’t noticed before, and had just been made aware of the fact, ‘it’s a shame.’

  ‘I wonder what happened. Evelyn doesn’t seem to know . . .’

  ‘Well, Irina has stopped talking to me about anything to do with her personal life.’

  ‘Isn’t it strange? They seem to have decided to become teenagers before their time – over the summer holiday, just like that. The things Evelyn comes out with, I can’t help laughing at her.’

  ‘Irina’s the same. They are growing up fast.’

  ‘It’s a pity when that happens – it means we have less chance to meet for a chat.’

  Vera agreed in a non-committal sort of way. ‘Yes, we should still meet up, but without the children.’

  She started moving away. Polly understood that the promise to meet up was an empty one. As their conversation had progressed, she saw that their friendship was over. There was a new and uneasy formality to how they spoke. They spoke in generalizations and clichés, not the intimate language of friendship. They no longer spoke with the expectation of mutual comprehension. They spoke, she later realized, like former lovers who meet unexpectedly.

  She also realized that she had to grab this moment, so before Vera was fully on her way, she held on to her physically, laying a hand on her forearm.

  ‘You are aware of Arnold’s situation, aren’t you?’

  ‘Situation?’

  ‘I mean the fact that he is doing research for a novel. That is why he is going to your church, he is writing about it.’

  Vera looked confused, in a genuine way. She gave a short, uncomfortable laugh and set her head quizzically aslant. ‘I’m sorry, Polly. Where has this come from? What are you saying about Arnold?’

  ‘Your church, whatever it is . . . Arnold is researching a novel with a religious theme, that’s why he’s attending. He’s not a believer, not a convert.’

  ‘Oka-ay . . .’ Vera said, drawing the word out with a querying cautiousness, as though she was unsure if she was talking to someone who was mad. ‘I’m not sure what this . . .’

  ‘If he is pretending he is there for religious reasons, I don’t think it’s fair of him to deceive you. If he joins in, if he prays and sings and kneels and gives thanks to the creator of all things or whatever it is you do, then I think he is being too devious for anyone’s good. I just don’t think it’s on, that’s all. There are limits. There are boundaries. I think you should know.’

  There was a pause, during which it was clearly Vera’s turn to say something, but she seemed to be waiting for more from Polly. So she said, ‘I’m probably speaking out of turn. It’s nothing really.’

  ‘No, it’s OK. I’m glad you’ve said something. Arnold has taken a lot of interest in us. Perhaps things will be clarified at the retreat.’

  It took a moment for Polly to realize she didn’t understand that last remark.

  ‘I’m sorry? What retreat?’

  Vera looked uncomfortable again, as if she had said something she shouldn’t.

  ‘Oh – just this thing we are having at the end of the month. We go to Wales, some of us. For a weekend of prayer and reflection.’

  ‘And Arnold’s going on this, is he?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Polly. I thought he would have told you.’

  That evening, with Evelyn in bed, she confronted him in his study. He spent all his time in there now, giving them rare opportunities to talk freely.

  ‘How long are you going to go on pretending,’ she said to him.

  ‘Pretending what?’ He had turned round in the black Mastermind armchair they had bought in Ikea.

  ‘That you haven’t become a Christian.’

  He closed his eyes and shook his head sadly, as if to say, not that old chestnut.

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you, I’m not a Christian, I’m not thinking of becoming a Christian, I’m not even thinking of thinking of it.’

  ‘I spoke to Vera this morning. She said you’d booked yourself in for some sort of religious retreat?’

  ‘Oh that. What about it?’

  ‘Weren’t you going to tell me?’

  ‘Of course, when I had a moment. It’s not something that’s at the top of my mind.’

  ‘You’re going on a religious retreat, you’ll be praying and singing and praising the Lord.’

  ‘Like everything else, it’s
just for research.’

  ‘Vera didn’t seem to think you were doing research. She seems to think you’re a believer.’

  ‘Did she say that?’

  ‘No, but I could see it in her face, the look of discomfort when I said why you were really there.’

  ‘She already knows why I’m there. You don’t think I’d really lie to them about it, do you? I’ve told them I just want to observe, for research purposes. You were making a fool of yourself.’

  He added that last comment under his breath. She chose to ignore it.

  ‘I’ve come up here to tell you that you aren’t going.’

  ‘Aren’t I?’

  ‘No. I’ve had enough, Arnold. You’re definitely not going to that retreat, it’s just a step too far. And you can stop going to that church now as well. You’ve been going for months. How much research do you need to do for God’s sake? You must know more about that church than the regular believers by now.’

  Arnold didn’t say anything but sat in his chair sulkily, swinging gently on the pivot.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ he said quietly, ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Got to? Got to? What does that mean?’

  As though snapping himself out of something he said, ‘It’s too good an opportunity. They only do it once a year. I need to see what happens there.’

  Polly felt weakened slightly in her resolve. But she couldn’t just let him go to the retreat, she had to have something in return.

  ‘This novel of yours,’ she said, ‘tell me about it.’

  He looked at her in shock. ‘You know I can’t do that.’

  ‘Then show it to me. I don’t need to read it, just show me the pages you’ve written, show me the computer files. Show me the notes.’

  Arnold looked at his laptop, tapped tentatively at the touchpad, stirred the cursor around the screen.

  ‘I can’t really even do that, I’m sorry. What is it? Don’t you believe I’m writing a novel?’

  What she wanted to say was – no one is entitled to that amount of privacy, in a marriage. You can have your separate space, your study, your notebooks, but you can’t have places from which I’m totally banned. I don’t care if you are a writer, I have a right to know what you are doing in here. I have a right to see the evidence. What other type of man would claim such privilege? Not even the obsessive railway modellers or woodworkers would shut their wives out completely. But this claim to artistic privacy put Arnold – it came to Polly in a sudden flash of unwanted inspiration – in the same category as the husbands who mined new cellarage beneath their houses and lived secret lives there. She had recently read about one such who had kept a place like that for years. Or worse, it put him in league with the dungeon-keepers who raise whole families enslaved in a secret basement. But it was an unsayable thought – to liken the profession of writing to the worst of human behaviour – it would have been a terrible insult. Yet she could not help thinking it, and after she left the study in exasperation, she continually had the thought that Arnold was constructing such a space in their lives. Invisibly, he was working at some sort of structure that she could only sense as an architectural presence. And one day, it would be revealed, a gleaming towering church in her back garden.