Poor Caroline

by Winifred Holtby

  His breast expanded to the thought, of culture and his eyes glowed. He soared high on the wind of his own words. His borrowed Americanisms infected him with a Great Glad sense of Pep and Progress. He forgot the unfortunate slump in Bolivian Minerals, the return of his latest scenario from his agent, with a brief note to say that he had exhausted all possible markets, the gnawing worry of accumulating debts, and the thought that Mollie was going to have another child.

  It was so like Mollie to hang always a little behind his evolution. When he met her he was floundering splendidly in the shallows of a Back to Nature Phase He had been working on a pioneer film of the 'Covered Wagon' type, and saw himself as the strong virile man in the sheepskin coat, accompanied by his broad-hipped, broad-bosomed woman, mother of many children. Mollie had indeed followed him with daring confidence to the experimental pioneer life in a two-roomed flatlet at Haverstock Hill and their first child arrived with flattering promptitude. Johnson invented quite fascinating theories about child psychology and infant education. But after cluttering the living room with coloured cubes and squares, intended to teach the small thing how to appreciate tone and form values, he retreated to the office in Essex Street, and finally rented the flat in Battersea. For the Haverstock Hill establishment cramped not only his educational system, which required a background of great open spaces, but also his style of thinking, since a creative artist cannot afford broken nights with a wailing child, and days wasted in nursery disorder.

  It was just then that he met Delia and began to create for her a scenario of London and Paris night life, with a background of cocktail parties and orchids and fashion shows and the Croydon Aerodrome.

  Delia complicated everything, for Mollie grew less and less like his ideal Soul Mate the more she fulfilled the role he had designed for her, Johnson began to realize the difference between the economic situation of the pioneer patriarch, enriched increasingly by each addition to his family, and the city father, whose more numerous offspring simply result in larger bills. Moreover, Delia was extravagant. The best alone was good enough for her. Johnson began to feel a little tired of her. His imagination was already turning towards a new enchantment and the thought of a long epic poem embodying the Dream Woman of the centuries.

  For he had met another woman, the perfect fulfilment of all his ideals in one. Strong as a pioneer, sophisticated as a cocktail, majestic, confident, splendid and conquering, Gloria St. Denis.

  Because he was feeling good after the lecture, warmed with the heady wine of his own eloquence, Johnson let his thoughts dwell upon her — her slow indifferent smile, the rich curving lines of her body, her fund of admirably chosen anecdotes. He was thinking of her when he heard a knock on the door.

  He glanced up, suddenly a little pale, for behind his rapturous dreams lurked the smothered subconscious worry of his financial difficulties. There were so many visitors whom it might be inconvenient to receive.

  He sat for a moment, wondering if the caller would go away if he kept quite still and pretended that he had left the office.

  But the Knock came again, and the voice of Mrs. Franley, the office cleaner, shouted: 'Mr. Johnson, Mr. Johnson!'

  'Oh, come in, Mrs. Franley,' he cried, relieved. 'I've been taking a class and I'm a bit late.'

  'There's a young lady to see you, Mr. Johnson. I told her it was past your hours, but she said she saw your light in the window and knew you was still here, and she won't go away.'

  "The devil she won't!' thought Johnson. 'Who is it?' he asked. 'Anyone you know?'

  'Not that I know of. Not one of your regulars.'

  'Oh, all right, all right; ii you're going down you might ask her to come up. It's probably someone come to join the school.'

  But within himself he thought that it was more likely to be Delia. They had had a tiff two nights ago at Pinaldi's. He had ordered the three-shilling table d'hote in an unwonted panic of economy, and she, with angry hauteur, had messed up the hors d'æuvres with her fork and declared she never saw such muck in her life. What did he take her for? A servant girl on her night cut? What did he think she wanted to eat: Herring bones in oil and some vegetables saved from other people's plate-sweepings? And up she got, and into her fur coat she wriggled, and out of the building she flounced, the little devil! Johnson had been left to pay, without rancour, the bill for her uneaten dinner. It would be just like her, he though:, if she came again to-night, and nestled up to him and begged him to take her to that nice, nice restaurant where the hors d'æuvres were made of herring bones and all the waiters had flat feet. Well, well, he would take her if she asked him, for in a melting kittenish mood she was delicious.

  But the girl who came nervously through the open door was neither the petted Delia nor the splendid Gloria. She glanced with scared, red-rimmed eyes through her pince-nez, and clutched a shabby dispatch-case as though it contained the secret of the universe. She was like the thousands of girls whom Johnson saw swinging daily down to City offices on trams and buses, narrow-chested, drooping, creatures with mud-splashed stockings, unbecoming brown felt hats and deplorable coats trimmed with worn fur. She looked at Johnson as though she thought that he might swallow her.

  'Mr. - Mr. Johnson?'

  'At your service.' He bowed, with his theatrical exaggeration. 'And what is there that I can do for you?'

  'You won't know my face,' she stammered. 'But you will know my name. It's Miss Weller. Doreen Weller.'

  A faint recollection of some slight discomfort stirred at the back of his mind.

  'I'm very pleased to meet you, Miss Weller. This isn't the time I generally see clients, you know, but I stayed a little late after a special tutorial class, and as you are here, you might as well tell me what I can do for you. Sit down, won't you?'

  She sat, drooping and unattractive, while he tried to remember which of the stupid girls who wrote to the school from time to time she might be.

  'Mr. Johnson,' she said at last, with a sort of desperate rush. 'Why don't you answer my letters?5

  'Ah, letters! letters! There, my dear young lady, you unhappily hit upon one of my congenital failings. I can't answer letters. I mean to. I mean to. I compose in my head wonderful phrases to dictate to my secretary. And they just fade away. They fade away.'

  'Yes, yes,' she interrupted. 'But what about my novel? What's happened to my novel?' And without warning Miss Weller dropped her face in her hands and began to cry.

  He stared at her with increasing disgust, but his voice was bracing and avuncular.

  'Now, now, you're tired, I expect. What's gone wrong, eh? Oh, you city girls! You city girls. It's a sin - forcing the sweet flower of girlhood to fade in the dark offices. Distorting the natural function of womanhood. Now, try to pull yourself together and tell me what's the trouble.'

  Who the devil was she? What the devil was she?

  Miss Weller removed her pince-nez and dabbed her streaming eyes. Johnson rose from his chair by the desk and began to walk the room with a lecturer's strides, giving her time to recover her composure.

  'We call it progress, ye gods: we call it progress. We force our women to do things they were never meant to do. We wrench !em away from their sacred tasks. We waste their lives. We waste their lives. And we call it progress!'

  'But, Mr. Johnson,' gulped the girl, past all concern for the welfare of her sex. 'I must know about my novel.'

  'Well, now, Miss Weller, I confess I don't at the moment recall exactly what it is about this novel.'

  He had to go carefully, for the girl might have a real grievance. She might even, disquieting thought, have a legal case.

  It happened that Johnson was not only the director of the Anglo-American School of Scenario Writing. He was also proprietor of the Metropolitan and Professional Correspondence School of Journalism. This school had been for a time a lucrative little venture. Johnson ran it with the aid of a man called Osborne, a broken-down journalist, a clever man but irresponsible and an intermittent and furious drinker. The c
orrespondence school conducted its beneficent operations along the simplest lines. Johnson inserted from time to time in various papers his characteristically ingenious advertisements. 'Every Man, Woman or Child can sell at least One Story, if they know how.' 'There would never have been a Mute Inglorious Milton if he had known the Metropolitan and Professional.' 'You can make people laugh and cry and make them pay you for it.' 'Manuscripts read free.' And so on. In response to these advertisements from Bath and Huddersfield, Peebles and Penzance, came poems, short stories, essays, plays and scenarios. To each correspondent Johnson dispatched, after a suitable interval, his standardized reply. The work submitted, he declared, was hardly marketable, but it showed undoubted promise.

  The one thing needed to enable the writer to produce saleable stuff was an intensive study of his little volume, 'How to make threepence into three thousand pounds,' to be obtained from the school at the trifling price of six and six, post free. As a matter of fact, the school had been designed largely as a convenient way of turning to profit the 1,786 remainder copies of his book which Johnson had been forced under his contract with his publisher to purchase. All manuscripts sent to the school were passed on at the rate of 2s. 6d. a manuscript to Mr. Osborne who, in his capacity as Director of Studies, glanced through the MSS. and scribbled half-legible remarks along their margins. But Osborne went off one day, as he always went sooner or later, with the Lord alone knew how many MSS. in his trunk; since that time Johnson had been too much preoccupied with his urgent private affairs to do more than cash the cheques and send off the books, and toss the MSS. as they arrived into a big tin box at the Battersea flat, to be handled by Osborne's successor, whoever he might be.

  Among these papers, or among the papers irretrievably lost when Osborne decamped, it appeared probable that Miss Doreen Weller's novel lay.

  The situation was awkward, but not irremediable.

  'You told me that if I sent you £25,' Miss Weller sobbed, 'you would make it fit for publication. That was seven months ago. I've written and written. Why don't you answer my letters? What's happened to my novel? Don't the publishers like it? Have you tried them all? Where have you sent it? Oh God!' She was working herself up to a fit of hysteria. 'It's awful,' she gulped. 'It's been awful waiting every day for the post. Listening for the flutter of letters into the box. And then never a line. Day after day. I've got to have my royalties. I've got to. Or you must give me my money back.'

  'But, my dear child, you can't do things like that.'

  'But you must, or I shall go to prison. I took that money. You don't understand. I took that money. It was the petty cash for the month. I thought you said . . .'

  'Oh, now. now, now. You don't mean that. You don't mean that.' Good Lord! The little fool! If this were true, and hysterical girls of her type could do anything, then there would be a police-court case, with inquiries about the Metropolitan School, and his revision service, and his method of handling manuscripts. And that was not at all what he desired. His patronage turned to paternal asperity, until his questioning extracted sentence by sentence the girl's story. She was plain. She was lonely. She was misunderstood. Nobody loved her. Her sisters married right under her very nose. Her brothers laughed at her. And all the rime, she knew that she was talented.

  'I know here!' she cried, striking with an ink-stained hand the flat breast under her brown coat-frock. 'I know here! I wrote poetry. I wrote plays. But nobody would look at them. Then I saw your advertisement. You said, do you remember? "You can make the world laugh and cry. You can pluck a leaf from Balzac's laurels. You!" She did not know much about Balzac, but she starved for laurels. She saw herself rewarded, rich, acclaimed, talking eloquently at the PEN Club, dressed in night-blue velvet and pearls, a famous novelist. She saw; 'The Book of the Year - Destinies, by Doreen Weller.' And her picture in the paper, without her pince-nez, and her hair nicely waved.

  But twenty-five pounds was enormous, grotesque, impossible. How could she get hold of twenty-five pounds? She had five pounds of her own in post-office savings certificates. She was earning 30s. a week and paying out of that 10s, towards the housekeeping expenses; 5s. went on fares, and another 5s. on lunch out and incidentals. How could she save £20, save or borrow or make it?

  Then her employer sent her as usual to the bank to draw £50 for the month's petty cash. And as usual, he did not ask her how much already lay in the box. She knew. She knew that the previous month had been unusually slack, that postage and messengers and incidental expenses had fallen off, and that a cheque of £10, paid in for a special purpose, had not been used. Twenty-three pounds already lay in the cash-box. If she took out her twenty, nobody would notice until the books went to the auditors, and that was, not for another seven months And by that time she would be rich, she would be famous, she would have repaid the paltry twenty pounds, ten times over if necessary, and would have left the office for ever.

  It was providential; it was obvious: it was ordained of God. She sent Mr. Johnson the twenty-five pounds and sat down to await her triumph. But triumph had not come; her letters remained unanswered.

  And now confronting Johnson himself, alternatively fierce and apologetic, shuddering with fear, misery and apprehension, she delivered her tremulous ultimatum.

  'If you don't let me have the twenty pounds by quarter day, I shall go to the police,' she said. "I shall give myself up. But I shall tell them about you too. I shall tell them to find out what happened to my manuscript. What if you've sold it and kept the royalties yourself?'

  This fearful, yet somewhat consoling thought had only just occurred to her. She sat with wild staring eyes watching for its effect.

  But Mr. Johnson only smiled at her and patted her on the shoulder. He knew now what line to take.

  'You little fool. You poor little silly fool. So, driven like a trapped animal you turn and bite the hand of the only friend who can help you. eh? Now, look here, look here. If you think we've got anything to fear from the police, you just go and tell 'em whatever you like. You just go an' confide in 'em an' tell 'em all about everything. And don't be surprised if it all works out different to what you expect. My dear girl. The Metropolitan and Professional welcomes auditors and police inspections. If any of our clients are dissatisfied, we invite them to investigate our books. 'Smy belief there's not an establishment in London or New York with a cleaner record. But never mind that, The question for the moment is you, not us. Of course, you know, my dear girl, you've done a very, very silly thing'. I'm not sure if for your own sake I ought not to let justice take its own course. It would be a lesson to you - a harsh lesson, I know.

  'But I'll look into the business and think about it. You'd better come and see me. now let me see - quarter day's the 25th. Come on the 23rd. 267 Battersea Park Crescent Mansions. Come about half-past eight, and I'll see what I can do. I can't bear to see a woman in the dock - butterfly on the wheel. Woman, woman, Femina variens. Well, well. I'll see what I can do.'

  He dismissed her on a high note of masculine unction, and watched her take her way down the steps, then returned to the chair by his desk and swore. For he had not twenty pounds in the world, and did not know at the moment where to lay his hands on it. Yet he did not want Miss Doreen Weller to go confessing her guilt hysterically all over London.

  §2

  The rain poured down. After the storm of the two previous nights, the broken clouds accumulated and spilled themselves over London. A silvery curtain obliterated Battersea Park. Rain pricked the flat grey surface of the river. Along the road umbrellas bobbed ridiculously.

  It would rain. It would rain. Johnson thought of California on a spring morning. He thought of sunlit snow in Canada. He thought of the glowing, stinging warmth of hot sand on a beach washed by the Pacific. Here in London it would rain. Hell!

  He stood by his window, a dilapidated brown dressing-gown folded round his rumpled pyjamas, stroking his bristled chin for the sake of the odd prickling discomfort which was more in keeping with his presen
t mood than smooth silkiness. His head ached. Last night he had tried to drown his worries in cheap whisky; but like kittens they had nine lives and would not drown.

  The post had brought him nothing but further food for melancholy. Bolivian Central Stock was down again. Rex Buckler wrote to say that if his loan of £500 was not repaid before the end of the month, he would take out a writ - a nice action from a friend to a friend. And to crown everything, Mollie had written one of her querulous, long, I'm-very-unhappy-but-I-mean-to-be-brave letters.

  'Darling, I know of course you can't be expected to give up your work just when the book is getting on so well. But of course it is lonely here and I think little Knud misses you too. He says "Dad, Dad!" ever so often. Darling, don't think I'm complaining for I'm not, but it is lonely here in the evenings and I do wonder if I'm going to feel sick right on up to the time with this one.'

  Hell, what a day, what a life, what a world! And then Doreen Weller went and got herself into police-court trouble for twenty pounds, to line the pockets of that swine Osborne.