The Life Situation

by Rosemary Friedman

  He flung the paper on the floor and dialled a recipe. The dish of the day was tomato lamb cutlets. He listened, hypnotized, to the list of ingredients, from ‘two tablespoons oil’ to ‘salt and black pepper’, read out at dictation speed. When the refined voice said ‘soak the breadcrumbs in the milk then squeeze out’ he replaced the reciever. It was too early for the FT index and business summary, and he did not want the weather forecast. He tried gardening information and was advised to prune his orange-ball tree after flowering and to sow his swedes at the weekend. He wondered what would happen if he was audacious enough to sow them on Wednesday or on Friday. He decided to join the 331 million who dialled the speaking clock in any one year. It was exciting to think that it sat there in Judd Street, a table-top affair with a perspex lid. There was an oscillator in the oven (constant temperature), and the thing which might get itself as much as eight thousandths of a second slow in a day was automatically put right on a time signal from Rugby, which got it from the Royal Observatory at Hurstmonceux, which got it from the universe itself. He wondered idly, as he listened, always fascinated by the clean, crisp delivery of the word ‘precisely’, what the lady who spoke to the 331 million people a year looked like. Some mornings he said obscene things to her but never succeeded in shaking her equilibrium.

  He tried the teletourist service. The day before he had been told enthusiastically about the organ recital at St Michael’s, Cornhill. Today he was a Frenchman and, dialling the appropriate number, was advised to see le batte du célèbre joueur du cricket, W G Grace, and the parapluie de Wellington, not to mention the more obvious attractions such as the changing of the guard and visits to the clutch of churches for which the man who compiled these scripts seemed to have a penchant.

  He reckoned that was that. He could see the weather from his window and the motoring services did not tempt him. There were always the Samaritans as a last resort but he was not, at the present time, that desperate.

  The white copy paper stared at him. He stared back. He started the electric typewriter and typed a sentence.

  ‘Marie-Céleste got undressed.’

  He looked at what he had written and allowed his mind to wander. She was small-breasted and he liked bosoms – large, maternal ones, milk-giving. He reminded himself it was coffee time and went down to the kitchen.

  He saw her face as on a television screen.

  ‘Marie-Céleste likes Nescafé best.’

  He carried the mug upstairs and cleared a small space on the desk. The telephone rang.

  “Yes?”

  “Mr John?”

  “Who wants him?”

  “He won’t know me. I’m Kate Smith from the Literary Club for the Disabled.”

  His heart sank.

  “Carry on. This is he.”

  “Oh, Mr John, I do hope you won’t mind my phoning like this, just out of the blue I mean but we run this club, disabled you see and they come to the library once a month in a special bus. They all love your books and I rather wondered…you see we try to get…someone to give a little talk…”

  He wondered whether he was going to say yes or no. He hated public speaking, hated it, yet when he had done it, which he usually did, successfully, he felt about ten feet tall and castigated himself for worrying about it. It wasn’t the talk, it was the preparation thereof which took up his valuable time. Afraid to speak extempore he always wrote down every word. He could, he supposed, use the one he had given to the Rotary Club, altered only slightly, or the Townswomen’s Guild, if he could find it.

  “…it need only be a short talk, they’d be terribly attentive and then perhaps ask questions, some of them try to write a bit themselves…”

  He asked her the date and looked hopefully at his diary. No get-out there.

  “We start promptly at three and at four o’clock we have a cup of tea at which you could meet the people individually and home-made cakes which they don’t get very often so you see it needn’t take too much of your time?”

  He asked himself whether or not he was selfish. Told himself that it was better to get on with the writing than go around talking about it.

  “I am frightfully busy…” He stared at the blank page.

  “I knew it was an imposition but I just thought…”

  “All right,” he said.

  “I’m afraid we don’t pay our speakers very much; we’re a very small organization you see.”

  “Don’t worry about that, Mrs Smith…”

  “Miss. Well just Kate would do. Everyone knows me as Kate.”

  “Kate then. I’ll be happy to oblige.”

  “Oh I am grateful. We all are; the committee I mean and the members will really love you. They’re so pleased to meet anyone and especially someone as famous as yourself…”

  He stuck out his chest.

  “…so if you could be there about five to three I’ll meet you in the entrance hall of the library. And thank you! Really thank you, I know how valuable your time…”

  He wrote the details in his diary and hoped he’d remember to look at it.

  He was about to run a row of little x’s over ‘Marie-Céleste got undressed.’ Instead he added: ‘…and put her lover to the test.’ He could not leave it there.

  While she with sounds of passion cried

  The lover put his prick inside.

  He would have to tell Dr Adler. He wondered whether he would be amused. Not that one would ever know. He picked up The Times again and turned to ‘Country Properties’. He could have a house in Snowdonia National Park, a fully equipped outdoor sports centre; an interesting farm near Battle, a superior architect-designed residence on the Wilts/Glos border, handy for the Beaufort Hunt. A bungalow in Beckenham did not appeal, neither did an end-of-terrace in the Cotswolds nor a family flat in the Fisheries. Nothing appealed; nothing would ever appeal. If he was in the country he wished himself in town; if by the river he yearned for the open sea. According to Dr Adler he was searching not for another house but another self. It made sense anyway, which was more than some of his pronouncements did. Within him was more than something of the Walter Mitty, and in fantasy he possessed the chameleon-like ability to blend in with his surroundings. He could at any time, and with little effort, become country squire; bank clerk (nine till five short back and sides each morning carefully shutting his suburban gate against the dog’s escape); slouching tube train guard from Trinidad with racing results and dented tin mug of tea; or Bertie Wooster, manservant at his side, the bachelor eternal whom in his youth he had every intention of emulating.

  Life had worked out differently. Sixteen years ago while still struggling with moderate success at the bar he had met and married Karen.

  Having toyed for some time with the idea of writing he had enroled at an evening institute, class 340, ‘Writing for Pleasure’. The teacher, very young and seeming not to know what to do with her handbag, her hands and her papers, turned out to be surprisingly competent; the pupils surprisingly stupid. Each week, after talking about some particular aspect of writing, Miss Wickham, fresh from Lady Margaret Hall, set them a small piece for homework; a paragraph, a character study, an essay. As the weeks went by he became aware that his offerings were streets ahead of the rest of the class. They took it in turns to read aloud what they had written. While his efforts shone like a star in the firmament Miss Wickham remained scrupulously fair. She gave as much attention to the almost illiterate ramblings of an elderly man in a cloth cap, and the precise moribund prose of a fat-legged, grey-haired civil servant as she did to the gems he produced for her each week, aware always of a frisson making its way round the classroom in the total silence that followed the speaking of his words.

  He could not say when it was that he had begun to watch Miss Wickham, but at the same time he brushed his hair more carefully on a Tuesday night, shaved, sometimes for the second time in a day, realized that there was something special about Tuesdays. To say that he dressed more carefully would not be true. He always wore th
e black jacket and striped trousers of his calling.

  Miss Wickham had light brown hair and long, beautiful legs which she crossed and uncrossed with mesmerizing frequency beneath the open panel of her desk on the raised lecture dais. Sometimes she would tug at her skirt in an attempt to cover her knees, but that was usually early in the evening, before she became properly absorbed in her subject. Judging by her shoes she was not terribly well off; but then if she had been she wouldn’t have been teaching in evening classes, which he did himself on Friday nights, where the pay was abysmal.

  Often she put on huge glasses which he swore she did not need. They gave her the youthful appeal of Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday. When she wanted to look at anything she took them off again. As the Tuesdays went by he found himself growing angry at the attention she paid to the other members of the class, totally unpartisan, seemingly unaware that not six feet away sat a budding genius, so patently the only pupil who would ever repay her attentions, so obviously several cuts above the others.

  He remembered quite clearly the Tuesday on which she had devoted her lecture to the importance of ‘titles’ which, she said, could often make or break a work. On that day she wore a tartan skirt and black sweater; her large round spectacles were on the end of her nose. Her hair fell softly over her face. She explained, while he watched her, that authors differed widely in their attitude towards titles. Some couldn’t begin writing until they had one; some made long lists of ‘possibles’, others left the whole matter to their publishers or agents. He was fascinated to hear that David Copperfield was originally Old Saying and then The Copperfield Survey; that The Three Musketeers started life as Athos, Porthos, and Aramis; that The Great Gatsby was almost The Highest Bouncing Lover.

  She continued to title sources and, after culling some of the plums from the Old Testament, in particular the Song of Songs, surprised many of them with The Voice of the Turtle, Our Vines have Tender Grapes, The Little Foxes. She went on to poetry and in particular one short verse from a poem of John Donne which had yielded two bestselling titles.

  She pushed the glasses up her nose and read from the slim volume in front of her, marked as were her other source books with strips of folded newspaper.

  No man is an Island entire of itself

  Every man is a piece of the continent

  A part of the main.

  Any man’s death diminishes me

  Because I am involved in Mankind.

  And therefore never send to know for

  Whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

  Into the silence that followed the reading Oscar said: “Sentimental crap!”

  Miss Wickham flushed, he was sure, to her navel. When she recovered her composure she chose to ignore the remark. When the bell went, marking the end of the class, Oscar remained behind to apologise and invite her to have dinner with him before next Tuesday’s class.

  It was in the days before the bistro, the trattoria, and the ubiquitous Chinese. They had plaice and chips in Tottenham Court Road. She wore the same plaid skirt and jumper (not sweaters then) covered with a camel coat. On her engagement finger was a twisted gold ring in the centre of which, set in sapphires, was a tiny diamond. He had not noticed it before. (Pace Dr Adler.) “I wanted to say how sorry I was; about last Tuesday. It was unforgiveable.”

  “I’ve got over it. It’s my first evening class. I’m a bit nervous.”

  “You do it very well. I’ve learned a lot.”

  “You don’t need to. You’re a born writer.”

  “You think so?”

  “You must know it. Those others, they’ll never write anything more than a letter if they live to be a hundred.”

  “Miss Wickham, I love you!” He kissed her hand. “I must explain about John Donne.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “I want to. My cousin, Arthur, was killed in the war. He was my hero. When the telegram came I was not diminished. It was like losing an arm or a leg, something you had grown up with, but I was not diminished. I thought – poor Arthur, he’ll never be a writer, a poet, an actor, a doctor…only a corner of a foreign field…it was he who was diminished, annihilated while I remained alive. It was for him the bell tolled; do you see, Miss Wickham, dammit what’s your name?”

  “Karen. And I see.”

  They had dinner every Tuesday before the class. He learned she was engaged to an officer in the Scots Guards and shared a flat with two other girls in Chelsea. Her parents were dead.

  It took him three weeks to persuade her to return the twisted gold ring to the Guards officer. He replaced it with a garnet left to him by his grandmother. He promised her a diamond ‘as big as the Ritz’ (just to prove he had done his homework) with the proceeds of his first bestseller and stopped going to the Tuesday classes.

  His first book, completed a year after their marriage, in which he spent pages getting the characters in and out of rooms, they had kissed excitedly for luck, wrapped in too much brown paper and sent to the publishers by special messenger. He did not trust the post. After two months it was returned together with a printed rejection slip.

  “Don’t suppose they even troubled to read it,” Oscar said. “It’s a bloody impertinence to keep it for so long.”

  With somehat less excitement they re-packed it. By the time it was on its tenth journey the binding of the manuscript was the worse for wear.

  “This is IT,” Oscar said. He could not really convince himself, so he didn’t look at Karen.

  A week later, having moped for hours round Primrose Hill, he returned to find Karen mad with excitement. He refused to allow himself to think that it had really happened.

  “He phoned,” Karen said, “he wants to meet you.”

  “Is he going to publish it?”

  “Didn’t say.” She waved a piece of paper. “Quickly!”

  He dialled the number and when he spoke tried to control the trembling in his voice. Mr Bright, of Bright and Pritchard, gave nothing away. He had read Mr John’s manuscript and felt that it might be in the author’s interest to meet him for lunch over which they could discuss it. What day would suit?

  Any bloody day in the middle of the night.

  “Would Monday do?”

  It was Thursday. How would he exist until Monday? By Saturday night they had in theory spent the whacking advance they were to give him and were arguing about the royalties.

  “Acapulco,” Karen said.

  “I fancy Florida.”

  “Winter sports; I’ve often wanted to try.”

  “One of those manic ski-instructors would have you for breakfast.”

  “I could think of worse fates.”

  “Could you now?” He smacked her bottom and the argument ended on the floor of the furnished flat they had rented.

  Mr Bright was already seated at the table. The head waiter took Oscar to him. Mr Bright stood and shook his hand then, motioning him to the opposite chair, sat down again and opened his mouth.

  I have waited long for this moment, Oscar thought.

  Mr Bright took an insufflator from his pocket and squirted it several times into his mouth.

  “Asthma,” he said when he had put it away and picked up the menu. “What are we going to have?”

  Oscar felt he couldn’t eat one mouthful until he heard about his book but ordered steak, medium rare, with pommes frites and a salad. Mr Bright merely asked for the ‘usual’, which turned out to be a Dover sole grilled and tenderly filleted so that not one bone remained.

  “Did you have far to come?” he said by way of conversation.

  “Not really. I tok a bus to Golders Green and then the Northern line to Goodge Street.” What a fatuous conversation.

  “I always walk; everywhere. Keeps me fit. People don’t walk enough. Get sluggish. Important you know.”

  On Saturday Oscar had bought a new sports jacket. Looking at Bright’s shiny suit and striped shirt, the collar of which he had put on inside out, he thought he need not have bothered.<
br />
  Not until the aperitifs had come – whisky, neat, for Oscar, and tomato juice for Mr Bright (‘never touch alcohol’) – did he mention the manuscript.

  “About your book, John.”

  “Oscar. Oscar John.”

  “Yes…well…it’s of no importance. I liked it.”

  Oscar held his breath. A house of their own and Acapulco swam before his eyes.

  “I liked it very much. It showed considerable promise.”

  Promise!

  “Considerable promise.” He began to wheeze and the ritual of the insufflator was performed again while Oscar dug his nails into the palms of his hands.

  “I think, well Mr Pritchard and I both think that one day you may make a writer.”

  Oscar poured the whisky all at once down his throat.

  “You’re not going to publish it, then?”

  “Publish? Good gracious no. The idea is good but it’s far too long, cumbersome. Too many characters clumsily manipulated. Good idea – doesn’t quite come off.”

  The waiter brought his steak and Mr Bright’s Dover sole. Mr Bright explained that he never talked while eating. Oscar ate his steak in silence and could have sworn that Mr Bright divided his fish into a thousand different portions. When his plate was clean he wiped his mouth on the white napkin and said: “Very good, that was very good. They know me here… We, Bright and Pritchard I should say, cannot publish your book. I recommend the crême caramel…”

  Oscar was long past caring and nodded, although he hated the stuff which made him think of nurseries.

  Mr Bright beckoned the waiter. “Two crêmes caramel and tell chef the sole was excellent as usual… We suggest, that is Mr Pritchard and I suggest, that you hurry along home, after the crême caramel that is, ha-ha-ha…”