Death of a Literary Widow

by Robert Barnard

  ‘They’re very good,’ said Greg appreciatively. ‘Very lively. I wonder they were ever forgotten.’

  ‘They never were. Not by me, at any rate. I remember reading The Factory Whistle when it first came out. I’d been teaching in Preston it must have been three years then, and when I read that book I suddenly realized I knew nothing about Lancashire at all–not the real Lancashire. It told me things about life in the mills and factories I’d never have found out for myself in a thousand years. That one you’ve got there–Cotton Town–that came out just before I got called up. I kept it with me all through the war–Crete, North Africa. I read it every time I wanted to think of home–the tears used to come to my eyes.’

  ‘It seems a very different world to me.’

  ‘Oh, it would. It’s a lost world now–lost as Conan Doyle’s! When I got back from the war it was all gone–destroyed by full employment–not that I’m regretting that, you understand. But something went with it, too!’

  ‘What was it he had that made him mean so much to you in the war?’ asked Greg.

  ‘Ee–he was a born story-teller. Just like a lot of these chaps in pubs. I’ll tell you this, my lad: he made a Lancashire man out of me!’

  At the next station he got out, and Greg settled down to read more of the stories.

  • • •

  Cyril Causeley, Walter Machin’s editor at Jackson’s, was hospitality itself. He was in his forties, wore a decrepit old blazer and flannels, and had rabbity teeth and a foolish expression. Only a sharp expression in the eyes suggested how he had made his way in the do-or-die world of modern publishing, where niceness gets you nowhere.

  ‘Oh I say, wonderful to see you!’ he said, bumbling forward and pointing his teeth in Greg’s direction. ‘Walter Machin’s townsman, eh? Genuine article, what? Well, I found a little room for you–attic, I’m afraid, hope you don’t mind–and I’ve put everything up there. Like to come along, eh? I’ll show you the way–watch your step, it’s a bit of a difficult climb.’

  As they made their way up precipitous staircases and winding corridors, Mr Causeley went on talking: ‘Remarkable this new interest in Machin. Not entirely unexpected, but still remarkable. Marvellous reviews for the reissue of his first book–expect you saw them. We’ve had tons of letters–you know the sort of thing: people who say they knew the originals of the characters in Cotton Town, people who say he said “bobbinwaggler” when he should have said “throcket-shuttle”. It all keeps the interest up! It’s been quite fantastic. We’re reprinting already.’

  ‘How did you get on to him?’ asked Greg, threading his bulky self through the labyrinth of curving stairs and looking towards his guide apprehensively. ‘I mean, what was it made you decide to bring the books out again?’

  A glint of bright intelligence appeared in Cyril Causeley’s eyes as he stopped for a moment in his upward progress, and looked down at Greg: ‘Ah, well–in this business you have to see the way the wind is blowing. What’s in, what’s out. Not just with the new things, but with the old as well. The student market–that’s the one to get into. Not many people buy books nowadays, but students have to. So even if they haven’t much money, they’ve no choice but to buy. What they want nowadays is stuff about the working-class–sociological stuff, of course, but also novels and plays. “The Working-Class in Literature”–that’s the sort of course they want to take. Well, of course, you’re in the racket, aren’t you? You’d know all about that. Anyway, that’s the sort of market we’re aiming at. I say, here we are at last.’

  He pushed open the door, and they came into a tiny attic, with several large piles of typescript, and several files, neatly set out on the table.

  ‘This looks marvellous,’ said Greg. ‘You’ve really been very kind.’ Then, unwilling to let the subject of the rediscovery of Walter Machin drop, he said: ‘You were saying–about how you got on to him.’

  ‘Ah yes, well, there’s this market, you see, waiting to be supplied. And not just in Britain. Socially aware Scandinavians, earnest Germans, dotty revolutionary Italians–all wanting stuff on the working classes. Especially if it’s written by one of them. Because if it’s written by the bourgeoisie, it hasn’t got the authentic whiff–what? So we were looking around for interesting stuff to push–sounds like drugs, eh?–he-he-he!–and someone mentions Walter Machin. Genuinely working-class, writing in the ‘thirties, when there’s not as much interesting stuff as you might think. Plugs a gap, you see? So we contact the widow, take over the rights from the original publishers, and bingo! Then we find there’s masses of stuff still unpublished. Rapture redoubled! We start a big publicity campaign (we’re good at that), and now we’re raking it in!’ He concluded his little lecture with jovial self-approval, and then, standing by the open door, he paused for a second and said: ‘Sounds cynical, all that, I suppose. Idealistic young chap like you. And of course we’re pleased as Punch to put him in print again. We believe in him as much as anybody. Still, when all’s said–we are in this to make money! Cheery-pip!’

  Left alone at the table, with the faint shadow of daylight peering through the filthy window in the sloping roof, and with a bare bulb in the wall behind him, Greg looked at the piles of material before him, and his heart sank. Oh, the exhaustive beavering of Mr Kronweiser! Once settled into the unaccustomed work, Greg found that things began to come more into perspective. The greatest masses of material were in fact the published fictional works of Walter Machin: the yellowing typescripts of The Factory Whistle and Cotton Town, retrieved from their original publishers, and a collection of miscellaneous stories and articles from newspapers which eventually would be published in book form.

  Most of this Greg felt he could ignore: either he had read it, or could read it in more convenient circumstances. However, he tried some of the journalistic pieces in what was to be the second posthumous volume. They were all written in nineteen thirty-nine or nineteen forty, and though they all concerned Walter Machin and his writing, or the industrial environment in which he lived and had grown up, they nevertheless contrived to be oddly impersonal and unrevealing. There was one piece of a mildly political nature: it had been contributed to the Daily Herald in October nineteen thirty-nine, and was called ‘The Workers and the War’. The arguments had not stood the test of time too well, but it ended pithily enough: ‘What the working man wants from the war is work.’

  Putting this mass of stuff aside, Greg was left with two very manageable files filled with photocopies and carbon copies. One contained business matters of the sort that households–even households in the depression years–tend to accumulate over the years. There were gas and electricity bills, primitive hire-purchase agreements, insurance policies and such-like, all religiously photocopied by Mr Kronweiser. He had also managed to get hold of, and copy, all Machin’s correspondence with Mattlock’s, his original publishers. This started with a short note, dated October nineteen thirty-eight, agreeing to their terms for The Factory Whistle. For a time the correspondence was brief and businesslike, but it became more expansive after the book had received good reviews: there were thanks for entertainment, and enquiries about reprinting dates. The expansiveness came to an end in the middle of 1940, when he demanded better terms for Cotton Town than had been offered: ‘The first book did well for you (for me too, I readily admit), and since I may soon be called up, and have a wife and child to support, I should like to leave them as well provided for as possible.’ This request was refused, and the correspondence thereafter was perfunctory. Mattlock’s business judgement was vindicated by Cotton Town’s sales: it only went into one printing. By the end of that same year Walter Machin was in uniform. Thereafter there was no correspondence, only a dribble of royalties statements, which ceased entirely in ’42.

  The other file was of personal correspondence and papers. Of this, comparatively little was from Walter Machin himself, and some of these Greg had already seen in the Sunday paper articles. There was a fairly large number of letters about him,
sent in the last few months both to Jackson’s and to Viola Machin by people who had known him at one time or another. There were school-friends, work-mates and (reading between the lines) girls whom he had made love to (who had, for the most part, sent their reminiscences to Jackson’s rather than to Viola). All these reminiscences told the same story: a big, healthy, gregarious man, full of fun and sport, always living life to the full and extracting from it all the juice it contained, and more. ‘He could always make you tingle, just being near him,’ wrote one old woman who had worked with him in Bury as a girl in 1929. ‘Just a few minutes alone with him was like a tonic. I only wish there had been more like him in my life.’

  Then there were letters to Walter, particularly from his two wives. The first of those from Viola was addressed in fact to ‘Dear Walter and Hilda’, but it was not difficult to guess that it was intended primarily for Walter’s eyes. It was dated early in 1940:

  How is the war affecting you up there? Is it true there is more work to be had? If so, it’s the only blessing I can discern in it. I am convinced it will be over in a matter of months. But if the worst comes to the worst and you are called up, Walter, remember there is always a spare bedroom here. Gerald seconds this warmly. He will not be called up, owing to his dicky heart (which I have never truly believed in until now, but which turns out to be genuine). However, he has joined the fire service, and is called out most nights, so he too must be said to be doing his bit.

  The other, even more revealing letter, was written early in 1945, after Walter had spent part of a long leave with Viola and the children (now alone, with divorce a matter of months away) in their London flat. The letter had not been shown to the newspaper men. Part of it read:

  The children talk about you all the time: when we are down in the shelter, which we still are, often, they keep saying they wish Uncle Walter was here, to make it entertaining. They miss you, Walter. You’ve become part of their lives. As you have of mine, darling. Sometimes I wake up at night, crying for loneliness. If I could only know–for certain–that you would be coming back to me as soon as this is over, I could bear it. Couldn’t you phone me? I wouldn’t press you for a decision, I promise you. I am not a nagging type, or possessive–even Gerald would admit that, I think. Above all I don’t want to worry you: I’d feel like hell on earth if you crashed on a mission and I thought it might be my fault, even to the tiniest degree. But just to hear your voice, my darling–as the next best thing to having you here in bed beside me. Such a small thing for you, such a big one for me. Try, Walter, please.

  This was the latest in date from Viola to Walter. If there were any subsequent ones, she had clearly felt them to be too revealing, too pathetic, or conceivably too shrill in tone to be shared even with Mr Kronweiser.

  Hilda Machin’s letters to her husband were unremarkable. Clearly they were not the sort of married couple that was used to communicating by letter, and when they did it was only rarely that anything illuminating was said. They were written either while he was on solo trips to London or elsewhere, or in the early days of the war when he was in the RAF. They contained news of Rose, details of life in wartime Oswaldston, stories from her daily work in teaching, which she had gone back to. They were, in fact, nothing but trivialities. Nor were the comparatively few letters of Walter Machin himself much more revealing. There were some letters to his mother, widowed and living in Bury–some phrases from which had been plundered for the article in the Sunday Chronicle. For the most part the letters were dutiful, full of domestic detail, and perfunctory. There were some brief notes to Rose–from Sheffield, Newcastle and other Northern towns. Only one of the letters was of any length: like the others it was typewritten, and was labelled by Mr Kronweiser: ‘Given me by Mrs Hilda Machin, 21 April 1978.’ It read:

  Mornington Hotel,

  Stephenson St., W.C.I

  2 June 1939

  Dear Hilda,

  Well, I got here all right! I’m at the same hotel as we stayed at last time–but it’s not the same without you and Rosie. How’s my girls? As you can imagine, I’ve been along to Mattlock’s. They’re twice as polite now–since that review in the Observer. They ask about the short stories as if they really want them–none of that toffee-nosed ‘we might conceivably’ stuff we had last time. They took me out to dinner too –lunch they called it. All sorts of things I didn’t know how to eat. I thought: ‘Well, you wanted a working-class original, and that’s what you’ve got,’ and I ate it all the best way I could–fingers and all. You should have seen their faces! Had a good pub-crawl last night. Everyone talking about war–jolly topic for a night out. ‘Look on the bright side,’ I kept saying: ‘They’ll need munitions.’ Will go to Viola and Gerald tonight and hope they talk of something else. Have been walking around London all day. Was going through Admiralty Arch to the park when the King and Queen drove by! What guys! I had intended to go to Downing Street, but then I thought I couldn’t bear it if old Chamberlain came out waving a bit of paper and smiling his death’s head smile, so I just lay down in the park instead. I’ll be with you on Sunday night, love. Love and kisses for Rosie, and tell her I’ll bring her something good. What the hell does one buy for a two year old?

  Love,

  Walter.

  It was the nearest Greg had come, he felt, to the real Walter Machin. The war letters, in comparison, were far less real and warm. As he closed the file, he was struck by an oddity of the collection: there were no love-letters from Walter to Viola. No letters at all. Had she never had any? Had she destroyed them in the period of bitterness towards Walter after his death? If so, she must be kicking herself now!

  On the way out, Greg popped his head round the door of Cyril Causeley’s office, to thank him.

  ‘Oh I say, nothing at all. Really. You’re welcome any time. Just wait till you read the second novel. We’re going to do marvellously with it. It’s the real thing! Authentic!’

  Greg forbore to ask how someone with an accent like that would know, and said instead: ‘It’ll bring in a tidy sum if it’s a best-seller, I suppose.’

  ‘An absolutely cracking sum! Marvellous thing for the two old ladies!’

  ‘One,’ said Greg.

  ‘Oh, that’s right. One died, didn’t she? Well, that’s the way the world goes, isn’t it?’

  Yes, agreed Greg, that was the way the world went.

  CHAPTER XV

  POSSIBILITIES

  THERE IS SOMETHING in the motion of a train stimulating to sleep or thought. Being disinclined to sleep, Greg sat in the second-class compartment of the train returning him to Manchester, alone apart from a commercial traveller who seemed miraculously disinclined for conversation, and tried to think the case through.

  He had now been through, albeit superficially, the Walter Machin papers. So far as he knew, everything that had been transcribed had been lodged with Jackson’s, in copy. If that was so, it was difficult to believe that anyone started the fire with a view to destroying some secret in the papers. It was too late for that, and nothing discreditable had leapt out from Greg’s perusal. The clue to the crime, if crime there was, must be in the human beings themselves, and in their relationships with each other.

  On any reasonable assessment of motive and opportunity, Viola Machin must surely stand high. She had recently quarrelled with Hilda, who was the only person who stood in the way of Viola imposing her own version of people and events on posterity. And to an old person, ‘setting the record straight’, or straight as they saw it, could be very important. The two of them–as far as was known–were alone in the house. There was also the possibility of sexual jealousy, going way back, but Greg had thought that over a lot, and still did not feel inclined to take the possibility seriously. As far as he could see, Viola Machin’s marriage had followed a familiar pattern: begun from sheer sexual passion, aggravated by loneliness and perhaps desertion, it had quickly gone sour; it sounded as if Viola had suffered disillusion and frustration–the sexual side had not proved eno
ugh, and other aspirations, social ones perhaps, or aspirations of Walter making a mark in the literary world, had not been fulfilled. This pattern, clear enough at the time, had been obscured by the revival of Walter Machin’s reputation, and Viola’s desire to rewrite history, to have her marriage accepted as perfect, if tragically brief. But sexual jealousy of an unsatisfactory husband’s former wife–this didn’t seem likely: Viola’s own love-life, Greg guessed, had been varied enough for her to ignore any previous entanglements of her second husband’s. Hilda, for her, simply represented another point of view, which she did not want to get a hearing.

  About the opportunity, Greg was less than happy: if the fire, designed to cover up the murder (which it so successfully had), was started in the attic, could Viola have done it? With difficulty, perhaps–slowly and heavily. But surely it would have been both noisy and dangerous?

  The financial motive was looking stronger all the time. Those books represented money–a lot of money. If the agreement between Viola and Hilda was to hold–as apparently it had held after the murder–then Rose was the principal beneficiary. Also interested in Rose’s financial position would be her husband and–if his suspicions were correct–Hilary Seymour-Strachey. How much did these people know about the likely profitability of the books? Rose, he had discovered, knew quite a lot–because Hilda had told her. The others, presumably, would have known just as much as she cared to tell them.

  Financially, the elder son of Viola, and his wife, seemed the best bet, if character were taken into account, too. They seemed to love money, want it, need it. Yet the fact was, they had not benefited by the death, nor would they necessarily do so. Now if it had been Viola that had died . . . An interesting thought. . . If it had been Viola. And then there was another interesting thought: if it had been Viola as well. As it very easily might have been. Would Desmond Seymour-Strachey have honoured any agreement his mother had come to with Hilda, would he have considered himself obliged to pay half the royalties to Rose?