by Muriel Spark
Necessity, therefore, being the mother of invention, it was not surprising that the first thing I did after Solly had left me with the heavy bag of troubles I had taken from Hallam Street was to ring up a number of friends and alert them that I was now looking for another job.
When these seeds had been sown I heaved the bag of biographies into the bottom of my clothes cupboard for the time being. I started to lay plans for the retrievement of my stolen manuscript of Warrender Chase. I was tempted to ring up Dottie and confront her with the theft. Discretion is the better part of valour; with difficulty I restrained myself. I felt she wasn’t quite the same Dottie with whom I had been basically friendly with an occasional blazing row. Something had happened to change her; almost certainly Sir Quentin’s influence. I had torn up her biography; I hoped she had taken my advice and refused to take further part in memoir-writing for Sir Quentin.
I began to brood on the outrages perpetrated upon me and my novel by Dottie, Sir Quentin, Revisson Doe; I tried to imagine the justifications they could have variously produced: that I was mad, the book was mad, it was evil, it was libellous, it ought to be suppressed. There came to my mind a phrase of John Henry Newman’s in his journals: ‘… the thousand whisperings against me…’ No sooner had I thought of this than I decided to put an end to my brooding. Finish. Cut it out.
In the meantime, as often happens when I brood, a plan of action had been forming in my mind. I didn’t think Dottie would be so far gone under Sir Quentin’s hypnotic influence as to have destroyed my book, but I wasn’t prepared to take the risk of alarming her to the extent that she might have time to do so. I determined somehow or other to retrieve my Warrender Chase by stealth. For which I would need to get the key of Dottie’s flat and I would need to get her out of her flat for some hours without fear of her returning. Furthermore I would have to be sure that Leslie shouldn’t burst in on me while I was searching the flat. I felt quite excited. It was like writing the pages of a novel, and I consciously kept these plans fixed in another part of my brain to transform into the last chapters of All Souls’ Day, as I eventually did in my own shadowy way. People often ask me where I get ideas for my novels; I can only say that my life is like that, it turns into some other experience of fiction, recognizable only to myself.
And part of my indignation at having been accused of libelling the Autobiographical Association in my Warrender Chase was this, that even if I had invented the characters after, not before, I had gone to work at Sir Quentin’s, even if I had been moved to portray those poor people in fictional form, they would not have been recognizable, even to themselves—even in that case, there would have been no question of libel. Such as I am, I’m an artist, not a reporter.
To return to my plan. I needed an accomplice, maybe two. I needed the sort of accomplices who were either completely faithful to the idea that what I was doing was legitimate, or else were not entirely aware of what my plan consisted of.
I wondered, first, if I could somehow wheedle the key to the flat out of Leslie. I could have done so, I think. I’m sure my sexual attraction for Leslie alone would have been strong enough to have brought off some design of that kind. It would have taken time, it would have taken an effort on my part. It was the effort that finally put me right off the idea. Not that I couldn’t imagine, in the situation I could have arranged, finding Leslie quite possible to go to bed with, for he really had a great deal of masculine charm. I could see that I could ask him to come round with a book that I needed, as in past times I used so often to do; I could say I needed some help with a passage in Newman, as I did so often in the past when I needed a reference book for those long, devoted, underpaid but often well-appreciated articles I wrote for church newspapers and literary magazines, so making myself into a wayside authority on Newman that I always got Newman books to write about. But the fact that I couldn’t just ask Leslie for a loan of the key—that I couldn’t trust him merely with my story, and engage him on my side—put me quite off the idea. Absolutely I would have had to go to bed with him again, work up to the old intimacy, before I could confide, or half-confide, my predicament. Nothing doing, I thought. Even though it would have been the natural thing to let him stay the night if I were going to spend an evening with him, nothing doing. I let his handsome young face recede from my thoughts, far handsomer than Wally McConnachie’s. Wally’s face was big-boned and Wally was built on the heavy side, not quite squat but nothing like so lithe as Leslie. However, Wally’s face took shape in my mind’s eye as Leslie’s receded. I was growing rather fond of Wally.
Now another reflection took hold of me: It is strange how one knows one’s friends more clearly as one sees them imaginatively in various situations. The moment I thought of Wally—how it should be if I were to tell him about my Warrender Chase, how Dottie (whom he didn’t know) had said it was mad, how Theo and Audrey Clairmont (whom he knew) had behaved so oddly, how my publisher had cancelled the contract on an unverified suspicion of libel—if I should tell Wally all this story, and the story of Sir Quentin’s plagiarizing my novel, and the story of Dottie’s probably stealing my novel, and how I had stolen the biographies—it seemed unfeasible that I should tell Wally all that. One item, perhaps, but not the lot. I ruled Wally out because I knew instinctively how he would react. I could imagine my saying, ‘And Wally, you know, Bernice Gilbert’s suicide is so like the suicide of a character in my novel.’ And Wally would say, ‘Look, Fleur, this is all a bit fantastic, you know. Poor Bucks Gilbert has always been a bit, well …’ And all the time would be working at the back of his mind a word to himself, in relation to his own life, his job, his place in society, a word of caution: Don’t get mixed up in this, Wally. He would say to himself, These authors, these bohemians. He would say to me, ‘I’d let it rest, Fleur, I really would. I daresay your manuscript will turn up. Or suppose I said (as I thought it possible I might), ‘Wally, please will you take my friend Dottie to the theatre? I’ll arrange it. I want to go and search her flat for my novel.’ Then Wally would probably say, ‘I wouldn’t take that risk if I were you, Fleur dear,’ meaning, I don’t want to take the risk of being implicated myself … a scandal …
I can never know how it would have gone in reality. But in reality I didn’t apply to Wally for help. Wally was a love, and I wanted to keep him for the fun that we had and might have together. It involved keeping him in that compartment of life in which it had pleased God to place him, set apart from my present most mysterious, slightly hallucinatory concerns.
Wally rang me just as I had come to this point in my reflections. He had ‘just got away,’ was I doing anything? ‘Just got away’ was one of Wally’s frequent phrases, it might have been from his office, from a party; I never asked him, but I’ve noticed throughout my life that Foreign Office people are generally wont to put in their appearance with the words, I’ve just got away; one dares not ask from where, it might be Top Secret. Anyway, I said no, I wasn’t doing anything, no, I hadn’t dined, I had barely touched my tea. It was agreed between us that it was a brilliant idea for me to be ready in half an hour, he would pick me up and we would go to eat in Soho. Wasn’t it awful, he said before he hung up, about Bucks Gilbert?
I said it was ghastly.
Before I left I locked the door of my clothes cupboard and took the key.
Wally spoke of Bucks Gilbert at dinner.
‘Had you seen her since her party?’
‘Only once, very briefly, the same day that she died. She came to Hallam Street. She looked a bit upset.’
‘What about?’ said Wally.
‘Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know at all.’
‘I feel rather guilty,’ said Wally. ‘I suppose everyone does when a friend takes their life. One feels one could have done more. One could have done something if only one had known.’
‘Well, you didn’t know.’
‘I could have known. She rang me up and left a message. It was a few days after the party. A fellow in the office took the
message, I was to ring her back. He said she sounded awfully frantic. That rather put me off, I’m afraid. I wasn’t really up to coping. Bucks was a clinging sort of woman, you know, she used to cling. I wasn’t up to it.’
‘Maybe someone was getting her down.’
‘That’s what I’ve been wondering—what makes you say that?’
‘An intuition. I’m a novelist, you know.’
‘Well, you may be right,’ he said. ‘Because she rang up some other friends in those days after the party. Three people that I know of. Naturally, they’re shattered. In each case they either didn’t ring back or made an excuse.’
‘Were they people who were at the party?’ I said.
He thought for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said then, ‘they were. Why d’you ask that?’
‘Maybe she was putting them to the test, to see if she really had any friends. Maybe that’s why she gave the party. Someone could have put her up to it, to undermine her, convincing her she had no real friends.’
‘Oh, God, Fleur, I says, now you really are romancing. Oh, God, I hope it isn’t true. I only went to the party, because, well, one does look in on a cocktail party. If one can get away. Oh, God, surely she wasn’t putting me to a test.’
I was sorry for Wally. I regretted having spoken my thoughts. I was thinking of the Greek girl who committed suicide in my Warrender Chase. But I said that, obviously, Bernice Gilbert had some private mental anxiety. ‘Nobody can help such people, nobody,’ I said. ‘The verdict was suicide while of unsound mind, Wally,’ I said. ‘Like most suicides. One can’t do a thing about them, Wally.’
‘I wondered, in fact,’ Wally went on, ‘how she was able to lay on such a sumptuous reception, it really was rather grand, wasn’t it? She wasn’t a bit well-off, you know. Half of the stuff must have come off the black market. There must have been three hundred people, you remember more were arriving when we left.’ Then Wally immediately pulled himself together, and smiled at me. He leant over the table and took my hand. ‘We mustn’t get morbid. Let’s snap out of it,’ he said. ‘After all, it was at poor Bucks’s party that we got together, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, that’s true.’
‘So I can’t regret having gone.’
I told Wally I was leaving my job, looking for another.
‘That calls for a drink. Will you come back to Ebury Street for a drink?’
I said I wasn’t really up to a late night. I meant all night.
‘Well, we can go to the Gargoyle. What about the Gargoyle?’
I hesitated. Then I said yes, but first I’d have to go home and get something. Wally agreed, making so little matter of it that I supposed he thought it was my monthly period. In reality I wanted to look in at my room to see that the bag of biographies in my hanging-cupboard was still there. It would have been easy for Dottie to coax her way into my room. She had already got into the good favour of the house-boy by giving him holy pictures of the Little Flower. I knew Sir Quentin would soon discover the loss of the biographies.
Wally waited in the taxi while I dashed indoors.
My room was as usual. Nothing had been touched. The biographies were still there. I felt foolish for my nerviness. I locked the cupboard again and was leaving the room when the house-boy appeared before me. Yes, indeed Dottie had been round to see me.
‘Did she wait in my room?’
‘No, Miss. Yourself told me the last time the lady was here to wait for you that nobody was to be let in your room again.’
‘Oh, thanks very much, Harry. I forgot I’d told you. It was quite right of you. Thanks very much.’ I gave him two shillings to ease the affront, which amazed him. As I ran out to the taxi, I thought again how nervy I was becoming. After the loss of my Warrender Chase I had told not only Harry, but the maid and the landlord, very firmly that no one should be allowed into my room while I wasn’t there. I decided to suppress my nerves and take courage.
We went to the Gargoyle. I had a crème de menthe, Wally a whisky. There were three groups of people, none of whom we knew, and one wispy young man all alone in a shadowy corner with a drink in front of him. I looked at him again; it was Grays Mauser.
‘The boy in the corner,’ I said to Wally, ‘is called Grays Mauser.’
This cheered Wally immensely.
‘He writes under the name of Leander. He’s a poet. ‘As I spoke Gray looked over to me and I gave him a little wave.
‘Would you like him to join us?’ said Wally.
‘Yes, I would.’
Gray set in immediately to make eyes at Wally, and he flicked his weak little wrists around, and wriggled somewhat. Wally took this in good part.
‘My friend,’ Gray said, ‘has gone to Ireland for three weeks.’ He sat so that he was three-quarters facing Wally with the same amount of his back to me. Wally shifted quietly so that Gray had to face us both. ‘He gave me this tie, my friend. Do you like it?’
‘Very effective,’ said Wally, and went on talking affably, so arranging things that Gray was forced to give a little attention to me. Gray was totally unaware of these manoeuvres, for he was genuinely well-meaning but at the same time overwhelmingly taken with Wally.
But when I got Gray’s attention I took advantage of the moment to say right out, ‘Grays, I wonder if Leslie took the key of Dottie’s flat to Ireland with him?’
‘No darling,’ said Gray. ‘It’s on our dressing-table at this moment, right where he left it. Why?’
So I explained to them both how I needed to borrow that key, as a secret, because I wanted to go to Dottie’s flat to leave a surprise for her. I explained to Wally that Gray’s friend was an old friend of mine whose wife, Dottie, was also a friend of mine. By the time we had finished our drinks, and Wally and I had made simultaneous ‘Let’s-go’ signs to each other, Grays had promised to lend me the key and keep it ever such a secret. I was to pick up the key the following afternoon.
I fell asleep that night while I was still trying to think of people I could induce to take Dottie to the theatre. I thought of Solly. He had two nights off a week. My dear Solly, he was always so good, I didn’t want to become a weight on him. He probably wanted his two nights to himself. Besides he was a poet, and a real one. Then I remembered something that made me exclude Solly, anyway. Dottie disliked him. She would hardly be persuaded to go to the theatre with Solly. I remembered on the two occasions she had met Solly she had asked me afterwards what I saw in him. I thought this strange because everybody else I knew, including Leslie, loved Solly. She had said she thought Solly attractive but vulgar. Solly had not given her the slightest provocation for thinking so. He always kept his invectives and profanities for his nearest and trusted friends and had said nothing Dottie could take exception to. I said he was the least vulgar-spirited of men. ‘Oh,’ said Dottie, ‘I don’t mean spiritual vulgarity.’ ‘What other sort of vulgarity can there be?’ I said, which was perhaps arguable. But Dottie had left it at that, since she evidently felt I might win the argument, if by word only.
So I dropped off to sleep musing on the fact that Solly wasn’t at all vulgar in the same sense that Dottie was. Dottie, the English Rose.
I woke next morning knowing exactly what to do.
I had twice decided not to return to Hallam Street, and now for the second time I was obliged to go back.
I wanted to get to Edwina. It was unlikely that I should get through to her on the telephone. Always, when I phoned her in my private time, Beryl Tims or Sir Quentin would make some excuse, usually that she was sleeping or not very well. If she herself wanted to get in touch with me at week-ends it was easy. She had a phone at her bedside, or sometimes the nurse would convey a message.
Now I wanted to see Edwina. I had a good excuse, too, for calling at Hallam Street, for I could then hand in a proper letter of resignation and collect my pay, my health card with the stamps that papered its folding walls as in a doll’s house, and other bureaucratic evidence of my reality, like my pay-as-you-earn tax paper,
all of which I had intended to arrange by post, before I woke up with my certainty that I had to see Edwina.
It was a rainy morning, rather cold, and a Saturdays. ‘Sir Quentin has left for his property in Northumberland,’ Beryl Tims announced when I arrived about ten o’clock. Sir Quentin always referred to people’s houses in the country or abroad as their property. ‘He left by car at eight-thirty,’ she added, pompously.
‘Where did he get the petrol?’ I said sharply. Petrol was still rationed; it would not be off the ration till later in the month, the twenty-sixth to be precise; I remember the date because I had promised Wally to go down for the week-end of the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth to his cottage at Marlow in his car, to celebrate the end of petrol-rationing. But the petrol-rationing laws still in force were very strict; some prominent people had gone to prison for transgressing them. So my question ‘Where did he get the petrol?’ was a nasty little question, containing a menace of that citizens’ righteousness which was quite rife in those days amongst ill-natured or grievance-burdened people. Beryl Tims was flustered. ‘I’m sure, I’m quite positive,’ said she, ‘that Sir Quentin has Supplementary. He would have to do, I mean, wouldn’t he, for his poor mother?’
‘Oh, has he taken Lady Edwina?’
‘No, she’s having her breakfast.’
‘Then he shouldn’t be using her petrol coupons, should he?’ I said. ‘We’ll have to look into this,’ I went on in a voice which fairly took even myself aback. ‘Is his journey really necessary? We’ll see.’ I walked past Beryl to the study door. The door, the stable-door, was locked.
‘Sir Quentin,’ said the English Rose—she was wearing a shocking-pink twin set she had got for Easter— ‘has left instructions that you are not, definitely, to enter the study. Sir Quentin, I believe, has written you a letter of dismissal. He has appointed a certain new lady assistant to commence on Mondays.’
