Don't Look At Me Like That

by Diana Athill

  It was raining on the day of my appointment, and my portfolio was so big that when I held it under my arm the tips of my fingers would only just curl round under it to support it. Queuing for a bus, I almost decided to give up, but the thought of Tinka questioning me after lunch prevented me. I was hungry—there would be time only for a cup of coffee and a bun on the way back to the studio—water was running down inside my collar from my hair, my arm was aching, and I imagined the art editor of Hargreaves and Blunt as a business executive out of an American film.

  The shabbiness of the firm’s entrance was a surprise: worn linoleum, scratched brown paint, and a display unit on which a dozen warped copies of books were arranged. The receptionist was eating a tomato sandwich in a sort of rabbit hutch. “Miss Kleinfeld,” she said into the telephone, “there’s a young lady to see you—I think she’s got some drawings.” Pause. Then, “Have you an appointment?” My heart sank. The decor might be reassuring, but here was the indifference I was expecting. When I said that I had she answered, “That’s all right then—yes, she has, Miss Kleinfeld—go up to the top, turn left, three doors along on your right.”

  “Oh dear, you poor thing,” said Miss Kleinfeld when I reached her office. “You’re soaked. Take off your coat and put it here—no, sorry, here I think, on this chair.” There was little space in the room on which to put anything—it was the untidiest room I had ever seen. “Now let me see,” she went on, “these portfolios—such a nuisance, so big. Perhaps if I move these papers over here we can make a little space.”

  “I could open it here, on the floor,” I said, feeling better, “and hand the drawings to you one by one?”

  “What a good idea,” she said with relief, but when she sat down behind her desk she looked less of a fool than she sounded: a thin humorous face, whispy grey hair, a brooch in the shape of a silver hand at the neck of a smart black-and-white blouse. Not a business executive out of an American film, but not a ninny.

  She looked at each of the drawings for only a few seconds, and she said nothing. She was dismissing them as useless, I was sure, and I began watching the blistered stucco of the house opposite her window. Then, when she put down the last of them, she said, “Oh dear, I never offered you a cigarette. Do you smoke? There’s a packet somewhere….”

  “I’ve got some in my bag,” I said and began to grope for them, surprised that the interview was not, after all, over.

  “Which art school did you go to?” she asked; then whether I had yet sold any work; and as she spoke she began sorting through the drawings again, putting some of them, including those I had done for Lucy’s children, to one side.

  “These,” she said. “These are really very charming. What did you do them for?”

  As I told her I tried to check the startled pleasure lit in me by the words “very charming.” She was only being kind.

  “I suppose it must be lunch-time by now?” she said. “Bother, I wonder whether—excuse me a moment,” and she picked up the inter-office telephone. “Juliet? Oh good, you haven’t gone out yet. I’ve got a Miss Bailey here with me, with some work I’d like you to see. Can you come in?”

  The second woman was younger, and pretty. She smiled at me, took the drawings for Adam’s story from Miss Kleinfeld, and exclaimed, “But these are delightful!”

  “Aren’t they nice,” said Miss Kleinfeld. “We haven’t got anything lined up for the Pilkington yet, have we?”

  I was beginning to blush with excitement.

  “No, and these do have rather his feeling for fantasy—he’d have to see them, of course. Would you mind very much, Miss Bailey, coming in again some time next week to show these to an author of ours? I think this style of drawing might be the thing, but he’s one of those tiresome authors with big sales and strong feelings, so we have to consult him.”

  “Well now, isn’t that satisfactory,” said Miss Kleinfeld when the girl called Juliet had gone. “It’s so rare for the right thing to turn up at the right time.” She went on to crossexamine me shrewdly on technicalities, pointing out that art-school experience was often inadequate when it came to working for specific methods of reproduction, but in theory at least I knew what the problems were, and I was able to feel fairly confident when I assured her I could manage them. If Mr. Pilkington approved of me, she said, I could submit two or three sample illustrations for his new book.

  Although I was hardly able to believe what had happened and had never heard of Peter Pilkington, so that I was still unaware of the occasion’s full importance, I was elated when I left her office.

  Peter Pilkington turned out to be almost famous: a newcomer to children’s books, but one who had caught on quickly. He had invented a detective called Professor Pootle, and his stories chronicled the Professor’s adventures, which were not realistic. The books had a fairy-story flavour and were often comic in a way which made adults laugh as well as children. He didn’t “write down,” and I could remember enjoying books which were funny in this way when I was small.

  He was not a prepossessing man: conceited and bumptious, the sort of person who will say something rude and then be scornful if you are offended, claiming that he had only been speaking the truth bluntly; but he did this defiantly, looking at you sideways with an eye like a parrot’s, and you could tell that he was not simply speaking as he felt (as Henry did) but was deliberately prodding you, challenging you to dislike him. He rattled Miss Kleinfeld, who treated him almost deferentially—her indulging him seemed to irritate him rather than mollify him, and he bullied her. He bullied me too, a bit, but threw in a heavy-handed gallantry as well, clumsy and silly, so that it was easy not to take him seriously. Being shy myself, I understood quite soon that he was someone who wasn’t much good at life: his stories were his way of escaping, as my drawings were, and once we were discussing them we were both on familiar territory.

  Peter had disliked the illustrations provided for his first three books because they were of the fashionable kind which, he said, adults thought children ought to like: simplified and flat. He said children preferred pictures they could read much as they read a text. They liked illustrations with a great deal going on in them, details you had to hunt for, events and jokes and surprises. And they liked prettiness. “Children like colours which remind them of sweets and flowers,” he said, “and they like glossiness and softness and elaboration. Their taste is atrocious, thank God”—this was directed at Miss Kleinfeld—“they see what’s happening in a drawing, not whether the composition is good or bad.” Because my drawings were of this kind he took to them. “Yes, young Bailey, if you can hit Pootle off I think you and I shall agree.”

  I did hit Pootle off, by making him look like Peter Pilkington (“Why Miss Bailey,” said Miss Kleinfeld when she saw the samples, “what a sly girl you are!”), and although we had a lot of trouble on the first book because I wasn’t used to working in only four colours, everyone was pleased. The advance they paid me was small, but I was cut in on the royalties. I became a “team” with Peter Pilkington for his subsequent books, and I have never had much trouble finding work as an illustrator since then.

  To begin with, of course, it seemed no more than an enjoyable stroke of luck; I didn’t realize that I was going to be able to earn my living by it. It was delightful to be paid even a little money for doing in the evenings and at weekends the kind of thing I had enjoyed doing during Mrs. Fitz’s drawing lessons at school, and I didn’t think much further than that. It took me a long time to think like a professional—if I ever have.

  * * *

  Three days after my first roughs had been approved by Peter Pilkington and Miss Kleinfeld, Dick Sherlock telephoned me at Lucy’s house. He was in London on business, and Roxane had asked him to deliver my birthday present because it was difficult to pack—a little round looking-glass in a gilt frame, my first piece of furniture. “Where shall I pick you up?” he asked when he invited me to have dinner with him, and I suggested that he should come to Fulham Road to ha
ve a drink. I was still proud of my room, and of the house and its goings-on, and I wanted him to report on Meg-in-London to Roxane and Mrs. Weaver.

  It was agreeable to go up the stairs with a man who smelt nice. Henry’s smells had been suggestive of decay, Rodney often smelt of sweat, and Peter Pilkington might have been pickled in the smoke of Gauloise cigarettes. Dick used an after-shave lotion which reminded me of the smell of lemons. His physical elegance—fine bones and warm, brown skin which was an integral part of his body rather than a thin covering containing veins and intestines, like my father’s or Henry’s—was set off by his fastidious taste in clothes. Even while he was still at Oxford he had developed a distinct style. All his shirts were white, and his other colours were dark grey, camel, or black. He never wore blue jeans for messing about in, only black ones. When I saw him in my room, dandified in his dark town suit and his narrow shoes, I became aware that the divan cover had never been hemmed. But he seemed to like my room, and even more so my own appearance. I had bought only one dress and one pair of shoes since coming to London, but they were a landmark. They had nothing to do with my mother’s ideal of “good” tweeds and twin-sets, and they steered clear of Lucy’s vague artiness: they were the first signs of my own style, and I knew it.

  “Stand against that blue wall and let me look at you,” Dick said. “Why Meg, what a glamorous puss you’re getting to be! I do like this bizarre house—how did you find it?”

  Lucy came up with glasses, and I poured red wine, pleased that she happened to be looking her oddest and that a few minutes later Tomas came thumping up the stairs on all fours wearing nothing but a scarlet triangle. I was showing off. Usually I felt the house simply as one in which it was easy to live, but now I was seeing it and wanting to display it as unconventional, warm and—as Dick had said—bizarre. I hoped that Adam would turn up so that I could explain later that he was Lucy’s lover, or even that Paulo would telephone and precipitate drama.

  Neither of these things happened, but the house didn’t let me down. We were still on our first drink, with Tomas on the floor looking at my drawings (his asking for “Pootle pictures” had solved the problem of displaying them to Dick without boasting), when the front-door bell rang. Lucy went down to answer it, and ten minutes later Kate appeared, saying, “Meg, Mummy says please come.” On the way downstairs I asked what had happened, but all Kate could tell me before bolting back to her room and her comics was, “I don’t know—it’s a man.”

  Sandy hair and the built-out shoulders of a blue suit were all I could see at first of the man sitting at the kitchen table. Lucy was opposite him, her back unnaturally straight and her hands clasped nervously in front of her. “Oh Meg …” she said, staring at me intently, obviously trying to convey something with her look, “I thought you’d bring Dick. I can’t make out what this—this gentleman wants.” She was trying to sound natural.

  I went round the table and looked inquiringly at the man. He was a stranger, shabby and odd-looking. His forehead was flushed, and his eyes were puzzled. He said nothing.

  “He just came in,” said Lucy.

  “I rang the bell,” muttered the man.

  “Yes, of course you did—but what I mean is, I don’t think it can be us you want.”

  “Mabel Thompson?” said the man. A shadow of a leer crossed his face, but the puzzled look returned at once.

  “There’s no one called Thompson here,” I said. “What address are you looking for?”

  “I keep asking him,” whispered Lucy. “He doesn’t seem to know. He doesn’t seem to know where he comes from or anything.”

  “Stop whispering about me like that,” said the man. “You want to get rid of me.”

  “No, no, of course we don’t,” said Lucy quickly. “We’re only trying to help.”

  I suddenly understood that she was frightened, and that the man was mad—or perhaps drunk, but there was no smell of liquor—and I saw that by going to Lucy’s side of the table I had made an easy retreat impossible: he was between us and the door to the stairs. We both gazed at him helplessly. He didn’t look threatening, only half dazed, but he sat heavily, as though he would stay there forever, and his right hand was in his pocket. The kitchen was very quiet. It was nonsensical to imagine that the hand in his pocket was closed on a knife or a razor-blade, but glancing at Lucy I saw that her eyes were fixed on it—she had had the same thought.

  “If you could remember Mabel Thompson’s address,” I said, hearing the nervousness in my voice, “I’m sure we’d be able to tell you how to get there.”

  He gave me a blank look, then said, “They’re scared—they’re all scared.”

  “I’ve tried and tried,” whispered Lucy. I could see that the ten minutes she had already been with him had exhausted her ingenuity, and that now I ought to take over. It would be no good shouting for Dick, he couldn’t hear us from the basement, and anyway a shout might set the man off. Be natural, be ordinary, I thought, and said brightly, “Why don’t we all have a cigarette?” It was not until the words were spoken that I saw the opening they gave me for getting out of the room and fetching Dick. Lucy turned towards the dresser, where there was usually a packet, but I kicked her ankle under the table and said, “Oh bother, I’ve left them upstairs, I won’t be a minute.” The man didn’t even look round as I left the room.

  “Be careful,” I said to the startled Dick as we hurried downstairs. “I think he’s quite mad and it might be dangerous to frighten him.”

  The man stood up when he saw Dick, and backed away, but he still looked confused rather than frightened or angry. And Lucy, sidling round the table to us, clutched our arms and whispered, “He said something about the police just now—I think he may be hiding from them.”

  “The police haven’t got nothing on me,” said the man indignantly. “What are you talking about the police for?”

  “We’ll be talking to them in a minute,” said Dick, “if you don’t get out of here at once.”

  “Oh no!” exclaimed Lucy, and I too was shocked by the words. He was a shrunken-looking little man, his baggy suit out-of-date with a waisted jacket, and whatever was wrong with him he was in a muddle. Perhaps he had been banged on the head and was suffering from concussion—perhaps we ought to call a doctor, not the police.

  “Well, we can’t stand here all night staring at each other,” said Dick. “Come on now, get moving.”

  “You could go out of the garden door,” said Lucy. “We’re only two gardens from the end and the walls are quite low. You could probably get out that way without anyone seeing.”

  “It’ll be dark soon,” I said. “He could wait till it’s dark.”

  But Dick, disregarding our conspiracy against the police conjured up by Lucy, pulled away from us and crossed the room to the man. He was pale. How horrible to be a man, I thought suddenly, and to have to deal with situations however scared you are, just because you are supposed to.

  “Come along,” he said loudly, gripping the man’s arm. “You’ve got to go now.” I held my breath, waiting for some explosion of violence, but after flinching at Dick’s touch the man bent his head and allowed himself, with pathetic docility, to be steered out of the kitchen door and up the area steps.

  “Christ!” said Lucy, “Where’s that wine? If Kate hadn’t come in to look for her comics I’d have been sitting there all night with him and you’d never have known!”

  “We’d have probably found you with your throat slit,” said Dick. “Really, you two! If he was a nut, you’re both nuttier. ‘Go out of the garden door’! ‘Wait till it’s dark’! How do you know he wasn’t a homicidal maniac?”

  “But to hand him over to the police?” said Lucy. “He really was burbling about them, and it seemed the only sensible reason why he should come in and behave like that….” I knew what she meant. If we had been sure that he was a dangerous criminal I supposed we would have had to do it; but even then, to see two policemen put handcuffs on that dazed little man because
of us … And as it was, we knew nothing against him, only that he seemed mad or ill. I was thankful that Dick had been there to make him go away, but about the police I was on Lucy’s side, and like her I felt uneasy at having turned the man out instead of helping him.

  We finished the bottle of wine and ended by drinking another and eating an omelet with Lucy instead of going out, all of us giggly from the shock of the incident, and Dick somehow part of the household for having shared it. Gradually I realized that he had been more struck by our reaction to the word “police” than by anything else in my new circumstances. “You nut!” he said again, later in the evening, teasingly but admiringly. A foolish girl, but reckless and generous-hearted, on the side of the outlaw … I suddenly remembered telling Wilfred Yardley that I hated school and would vote Labour when I was old enough, and how he had disapproved and admired at the same time. Wilfred and Dick: what an odd resemblance!

  10

  It was a long time before I could visit the Sherlocks in their new house because I could only afford a train fare about once every six weeks and my parents were hurt if I spent a weekend out of London anywhere but with them. Roxane rarely came to London, but at that time Dick’s job was bringing him up once a fortnight, and he usually telephoned me. Sometimes we went to a theatre or the cinema, but more often we ate together, either picnicking at Fulham Road or going to grand restaurants on his expense account.