Loitering With Intent

by Muriel Spark

Now I decided to force Warrender Chase out of my mind. To do so I began to tell Wally about my new novel, All Souls’ Day. I think he was fairly interested. After supper we went down to the pub for a drink. We walked home by the river and so to bed. It was simply no good. Anxious not to be abstracted and ‘not there’ with Wally, my mind was now only too deliberately concentrated on the actuality of the occasion. I found myself vigilant of every detail in Wally’s lovemaking, I was noticing, I was counting. I was single-mindedly conscious. In desperation I tried thinking of General die Gaulle, which made matters worse, far, far, worse.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve had too much beer,’ said poor Wally.

  Next morning we went out on the river for an hour. After lunch we tidied up the cottage and set off early for London. Wally dropped me at my house just after five in the afternoon.

  Dottie again, at midnight. I put on my dressing-gown and let her in. ‘Sir Quentin’s been killed in a car accident. A head-on collision last night,’ she said.

  ‘What about the other car? Anyone hurt? ‘‘Oh, they were killed too,’ said Dottie with the impatience that denoted she was dealing with an imbecile who couldn’t distinguish the kernel from the nutshell.

  ‘How many in the other car?’

  ‘Two, I think, but the point is—’

  ‘Thank God he’s dead,’ I said.

  ‘So that it proves your Warrender Chase to be valid.’

  ‘Nothing to do with my Warrender Chase. Quite a different situation. The man was pure evil.’

  ‘They were all waiting for him to join them,’ Dottie said. I got rid of Dottie.

  The theme of Warrender Chase was indeed valid. Such events as I’d portrayed, even in a different way from the reality, could happen. My Warrender Chase was valid, and I decided that my Chapter One, which had haunted me at Wally’s cottage, could very well stand as it was.

  At ten the next morning I rang Miss Fisher at Hallam Street. Edwina, she said, had taken the news very bravely. The doctor had been to see her. Everything was all right, and Edwina was keeping very quiet.

  After the funeral Beryl Tims caught up with me and said, in Edwina’s hearing, ‘You’ll have to work out something with Lady Edwina. Sir Quentin’s property reverts to her and I have no settlement.’

  ‘Edwina,’ I said, ‘Mrs Tims is here to present her condolences.’

  ‘I noticed her,’ said Edwina.

  I wheeled her away, upright as she was, in her glittering black. What shocked me was that Beryl Tims had used almost the very words of my Charlotte, at Warrender’s funeral.

  From the day of the funeral to the day at the end of June when I sat in the graveyard writing my poem, Dottie kept me abundantly informed about the members of the disbanded Association.

  ‘We were wondering,’ Dottie said, ‘what had happened to the biographies. They never got a chance to read them.’

  ‘Edwina destroyed them.’

  ‘Had she a right to do that?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘She wasn’t by any chance influenced by you?’

  ‘No, she just told me she’d got Miss Fisher to destroys the papers. Nothing of any interest, and she hadn’t the space to hoard them.’

  ‘Poor Beryl Tims. He promised to make a settlement on her. Do you know that Eric Findlay has gone back to his wife?’

  ‘I didn’t know he’d left her.’

  ‘Well, Fleur, he left her for you. It was in his autobiography. You had an affair with him, Fleur. I saw it written down in black and white. Sir Quentin showed it to me.’

  ‘Was it written in his own hand?’

  ‘No, well of course, Sir Quentin took it down verbally. He wrote it for Eric.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t true. He invented it.’

  ‘It’s just possible,’ said Dottie, ‘that it wasn’t true. On the other hand—’

  ‘Get out.’

  So it went on. Maisie Young had a nervous breakdown and got over it, all in those few weeks between the funeral and my special day in the graveyard. Clotilde du Loiret had gone to stay at a convent in France to find her soul, which she felt she had lost. Dottie was seeing a lot of Father Delaney who enjoyed taking her to wrestling matches and who was still consuming Dexedrine. Mrs Wilks had gone back to her family, but visited Sir Quentin’s grave every day, where she conversed with him. When I asked Dottie if anyone visited Bucks Gilbert’s grave, she said, ‘Oh, well, suicide’s a mortal sin. She shouldn’t have had a Christian burial.’

  I saw Edwina frequently all that month of June. And Wally, too; he wanted to take me back to Marlow for a better week-end. But I had to work all my weekends at my reviewing and my new novel, knowing that soon I would have to take a full-time job.

  The day after I met the policeman at the Kensington graveyard was Saturday the first of July. Now began my new life. I got a letter from the great and glorious Triad Press, an old establishment which specialized in publishing books of good quality. It was a simple letter:

  Dear Miss Talbot,

  We would be grateful if you would make an appointment to visit us here, at your earliest convenience.

  Yours sincerely,

  Cynthia Somerville

  The Triad Press.

  Now, Edwina had rambled about the Somervilles of Triad, whose great-uncle she had known. She had thought I might get a job there. Solly, it now came to mind, had also said to me, ‘You might get a job at Triad.’ It occurred to me that either Edwina or Solly had recommended me for a job. I checked with both of them the next afternoon. We didn’t take Edwina out for a walk that Sunday. I think it rained. We had tea at Hallam Street. Edwina had now added to her staff a handsome, sturdy manservant, a widower called Rudder, who had been a butler in a grand house before the war and a sergeant-major in the army. He managed the rations so well that Edwina was able to offer us teas on a grand scale.

  ‘No, I haven’t said anything to Triad,’ said Solly, turning over the letter as if it held some secret code. Nor did Edwina seem to know anything about it.

  ‘Maybe it’s about that book of yours, Miss Fleur,’ said Rudder, who was quite one of the family. Indeed, according to Dottie, he was getting ‘very thick’ with Miss Fisher and both of them were quite milking Edwina; that was according to Dottie, but I didn’t see that it mattered since Edwina was so well suited by them both. Rudder now had the letter in his hand. ‘It looks to me like they want your book. You see, they say grateful. Now, if you go after a position it’s never the employer that’s grateful, it’s you that’s grateful. You see, here, they’ve written “We would be grateful if you would make—”’

  ‘My God,’ said Solly, ‘I sent them Warrender Chase four, five weeks ago. I forgot.’

  ‘I hope they’re grateful enough,’ Edwina croaked.

  For the rest of the tea Solly described the Triad trio. Two brothers and a sister. They did everything in unison.

  ‘But you’d better not build up your hopes,’ Solly said. ‘It could be only about a job. They might have heard from someone you’re looking for a job and there might just be a vacancy.’

  ‘Well, even that would be something,’ I said.

  It wasn’t about a job. It was about Warrender Chase. The famous trio were sitting side by side at a desk.

  They were Leopold, Cynthia and Claude Somerville themselves, arbiters of taste and of belles-lettres. I think they shared a soul. Their mournful grey-green eyes were identical, their long oval faces very similar. Leopold, the youngest, in his early thirties, gave a little jump in his chair when he had something to say which excited him. Cynthia sat perfectly still with her hands clasped before her. She wore a grey-green dress which picked up the colour of the six Somerville eyes; her sleeves were wide, with a mediæval look. Claude was the eldest, with greying hair; it fell to Claude to discuss the business side which he did with such an air of apologetic and timid regret as to make it positively cruel to question or discuss the terms of the contract which I rejoiced to notice he had ready on the desk before him. />
  Their long desk was sheer and shiny, no blotting pads, no pen-stands, no In and Out trays. Only my Warrender Chase lying in front of Cynthia, a file which contained readers’ reports in front of Leopold and the contract in front of Claude. They were ready for their portrait to be painted. They had everything except a Brandenburg Concerto in the background. But I’m sure they didn’t arrange themselves as consciously as appeared. There was indeed a certain amount of stage-production about the Triad, but as I came to learn throughout the years, their joint and public face was sheer instinct, even genius.

  They rose to greet me and sat down again, Leopold with an extra little jump.

  ‘We would be happy to publish your novel,’ said Cynthia. The siblings smiled in unison, not a wide smile but a kindly one.

  It would have been difficult for me to realize at that moment that Cynthia was in fact having an affair with a fruit-loader at Covent Garden, Leopold was chasing a band-leader and Claude was already married to a rich American widow with four children of her own and two of his. To me it seemed the Triad had come into being out of nothing and, when I should depart, to nothing they would return.

  Leopold, patting the file of readers’ reports, assured me that these were so mixed as to be stimulating from a publisher’s point of view. He jumped in his chair and said, ‘Some readers hated it but some readers loved it.’ ‘So we think it will have a small cult-following,’ said Cynthia. ‘It will not be a commercial venture, of course,’ added Claude. ‘The general consensus,’ said Leopold, ‘is that although the evil of Warrender is a shade over-accentuated, you have a universal theme.’ (Jump.)

  I said I thought it possible that there were people like Warrender Chase in real life.

  The three assented to this in unison. I felt sure that among the readers who had hated the book were Theo and Audrey Clairmont who sometimes read for the Triad Press; and years later I found that the very excess of their attempts to suppress Warrender Chase had finally persuaded the Triad in its favour.

  I wanted to take the contract away to study it, a reasonable desire. But it would have been beyond me, beyond anyone I knew, to stab gentle, tentative Claude with so profound a knife-wound. I signed it on the spot, only checking first to see if there was an option clause. Claude noticed my glance. ‘The option is on terms to be agreed,’ he murmured, as if with breathless hope that I wouldn’t change my mind. And he added, ‘We consider that wording to be the most tactful.’ He stressed the word ‘tactful’, with the result that tact was temporarily cancelled from the contract-signing scene.

  But in fact it was a good contract. The advance on royalties was an unheard-of hundred pounds, which I needed. I addressed Cynthia as I told them about my forthcoming All Souls’ Day and the novel I had planned to follow it, The English Rose. She looked at me with her grey-green eyes, Claude sighed with wonder and Leopold jumped twice. So began my long career as a novelist with the Triad Press.

  I spun out the money till November when Warrender Chase was to be published. A bad month for publishing, but first novels of uncertain futures had to give precedence to certainties. I had corrected the proofs of the book, feeling altogether bored with it. I had nearly finished my All Souls’ Day which I loved with all my heart in those months.

  I think it was in September that Wally took me on a visit to Cambridge. We went to Grantchester, the home of Rupert Brooke. ‘Stands the church clock at ten to three?’ The Church clock stood at ten to three. By order of the management. I had a sudden revulsion against the clock, Grantchester, Rupert Brooke and the ethos of honey still for tea, and I said so at length to Wally. He was not altogether insensitive. He said, ‘I hope you don’t include me in the whole shooting-match.’

  Wally eventually married an English Rose who knew all about placement and protocol and was admired by everybody including the children’s nanny. In time Wally became an ambassador with a swimming pool which was always surrounded by notable people and their consorts to whom Wally would descend from time to time: ‘I’ve just got away.’

  The Triad Press had printed a thousand copies of Warrender Chase, reckoning to sell five hundred. ‘But we can count on some nice reviews,’ said Cynthia on the telephone. They sent a photographer to my room to take my picture for the back of the jacket.

  In late October Leslie’s novel, Two Ways, appeared. It had a portrait of a hard-hearted woman conflicting with a poor Cockney boy for the affections of our hero. My main objection to it was the diction. Leslie was so hard pressed for ways in which to express an idiom that he had fallen back on phonetic spelling, always a literary defect in my opinion. “Ow can yer do this tier me, guv’ner?’ pleads Leslie’s young Cockney. When all he had to say (since the reader already knows he’s a Cockney) is, ‘You can’t do this.’ Which is far more authentic to the ear than all the “ows,’ ‘yers’ and ‘tiers.’

  Anyway, Leslie’s book got two reviews which Dottie brought round to display to me. They were rather feeble, but better than nothing.

  Nothing is what happened to Warrender Chase for the first two weeks after it was published. I was saddened by this silence, but not very deeply, for I had half forgotten the book, so much did I prize my new work.

  I went over to Solly one Thursday afternoon. He had promised to lend me some money to pay my rent, for I was waiting to be paid for some reviews and articles. In fact I also owed money to a dentist whose receptionist was beginning to lose patience; I had refused to answer the telephone all day, convinced as I was that the persistent calls were from her. The house-boy was quite offended when I told him on the switchboard to say I was out to everybody. He said he didn’t like telling lies. I told him that Not at Home wasn’t a lie. He agreed, technically, but he sounded sulky.

  Solly was sitting among his usual mess of newspapers and journals. I said, ‘I don’t like having to borrow. But I’ll pay you back soon.’

  ‘You should worry,’ said Solly. He was smiling in the midst of the papers spread out on his desk and on the chair. There were several weeklies. I saw the Evening Standard, too, and then I saw my photograph. Reviews of Warrender Chase had appeared all over the place, all quite favourable, all very large. Solly said he had advance information from the Sunday papers that the same thing was going to happen there. The Evening Standard picture had the caption, ‘Fleur Talbot in the book-lined study of her town house’. It was all a long time ago.

  I recall that Theo Clairmont was one of the Sunday reviewers. He said it was undoubtedly an important book, but the author would probably never be able to write another. The prophecy didn’t come to pass, for All Souls’ Day gave as much pleasure as Warrender Chase, and after that, The English Rose and others, some more, some less.

  Another thing I recall, that day when I went over to Solly to borrow the money for my rent: on my return there was Mr Alexander at the door to greet me with a great welcome and a copy of the Evening Standard in his hand. He asked me in to have a drink with his wife. I said, another time. The house-boy was also very agitated, not knowing what to do with the phone messages and yet mesmerized by my picture in the paper. He was not quite convinced that I wasn’t involved in some wrong-doing.

  And I remember Leslie paid me a visit that evening. He congratulated me on my piece of luck. He said, ‘Of course, a popular success …’ and didn’t finish the sentence. He said, ‘Well, I’ll always be your friend,’ as if I were out on bail.

  The telephone messages had been mounting up. I had a bunch of them from the house-boy, and yet another bunch by nine o’clock that night. I took them to bed with me, feeling somewhat bewildered. I looked them over one by one. Some of the people I was to ring back were Miss Maisie Young, Mrs Beryl Tims, Miss Cynthia Somerville of the Triad Press, Mr Gray Mauser, the features editor of Good Housekeeping, the literary editor of the Evening News, Mr Tim Sutcliffe of the Third Programme, B.B.C., Mr Revisson Doe; and there were many others including Dottie.

  I rang Dottie back. She accused me of having plotted and planned it all. ‘You
knew what you were doing,’ she said. I agreed I had been loitering with intent and said I was leaving for Paris in the morning.

  In fact, I took refuge with Edwina in Hallam Street for a few weeks till the fuss died down. I had work to do. Success is a subject like any other subject, and I knew too little about it, just then, to be able to discuss it and answer questions about it. In those weeks the Triad sold the American rights, the paperback rights, the film rights, and most of the foreign rights of Warrender Chase. Good-bye, my poverty. Good-bye, my youth.

  It was a long time ago. I’ve been writing ever since with great care. I always hope the readers of my novels are of good quality. I wouldn’t like to think of anyone cheap reading my books.

  Edwina died at the age of ninety-eight. Her manservant Rudder had married Miss Fisher and they inherited her fortune.

  Maisie Young opened a vegetarian restaurant which has flourished under the management of Beryl Tims.

  Father Egbert Delaney was arrested in the park for exposing himself and then sent to a rehabilitation centre. Dottie, who is my chief informant on all these people, lost track of him after that.

  Sir Eric Findlay died on good terms with his family, having lived long enough to earn the reputation of an eccentric rather than a nut.

  The Baronne Clotilde du Loiret also died some time in the sixties, in California, where she had joined a highly-organized religious sect. According to Dottie she died in the arms of her spiritual leader, an oriental mystic.

  I have no idea whatsoever what happened to Mrs Wilks.

  But it is Solly Mendelssohn I mourn for. Solly, clumping and limping over Hampstead Heath with his large night-pale face. Oh Solly, my friend, my friend.

  Dottie has been divorced and married so many times I forget what her name is now. I live in Paris; and Dottie’s present husband who is a journalist brought her to Paris a few years ago. She has problems with her children. She has the ugliest grandchild I have ever seen but she loves it. Dottie, under stress, stands under my window late at night singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’, a ditty that the French fail to relish at one twenty-five in the morning.