VI
Tom had been right about the hangovers. It was worse because the next day, Friday, was press day and there were proofs to read. We hung around and waited for them to arrive from the printers. Brian Naylor seemed to have made a bad impression on everyone, even Bruce Fischer, whom I’d stupidly assumed to be rather the same kind of person because they came from the same sort of provincial lower-middle-class background. Then Ronnie found a review of Uncle Tosh in the Spectator and I took it away to my desk outside Mrs Clarke’s room to read and re-read. It was only six lines at the end of a much longer review of Stephen Potter’s One-Upmanship but I didn’t mind. The man said it had made him laugh. I thought it was such a silly little book (no I didn’t, but I assumed everyone else would) that it was terrific to have it reviewed at all.
When Mrs Clarke came through I jumped up and started to try and apologise for Mummy being foul to her about the photograph. She looked puzzled.
‘I am quite used to people being a little eccentric, my dear,’ she said. ‘It’s their privilege, I always say. I thought it was a very lively party. Isn’t it surprising what a mixture will go, sometimes? Did you meet this Mr Naylor?’
‘A bit of a skeleton at the feast, I thought.’
‘Oh, I do so agree.’
‘None of us are what you might call enthusiastic.’
‘Such a pity. I wonder if it mightn’t be possible for someone to explain to Mr Brierley what a mistake he’s making.’
‘Oh. It would be difficult. Once he’s made up his mind. I imagine.’
She didn’t seem to notice my stammerings.
‘Such a pity,’ she said. ‘Quite the wrong person.’
‘Perhaps he’ll learn.’
‘Let us hope so. But oh, my dear, I’m so pleased for you that your book has turned out so popular.’
‘Isn’t it lovely? Absolutely super, in fact. Would you like a signed copy?’
‘That would be very touching, if you can spare one.’
‘You can keep it in the loo to show people what you think of it.’
‘I shall keep it among my proudest possessions.’
Being an author was turning out an expensive affair. You get six free copies, and at least twenty people seem to expect you to give them one. So you keep having to buy your own book to give away. We smiled at each other through our hangovers and I felt I’d partly made up for Mummy’s beastliness about the photograph. Actually I doubt if Mrs Clarke had a hangover—she was far too experienced a party-goer—but she didn’t look well. She was wearing her powder like snowfall on the Pennines, deep drifts softening the ridges and wrinkles, but they were still much more obviously there than usual. If I hadn’t been so preoccupied with my own inner weather I might have realised that she’d had a bad night, or something, and so was less in control than usual. She half turned as if to go on to her room, but then faced me again.
‘My dear,’ she said. ‘I have become very fond of you. I think you are a sweet, clever girl. But I think I must say this. It is very important to know where money comes from.’
‘Are we talking about a friend of mine?’
‘I believe so. You see, everything that we care about depends on the right people having the money. The world you and I value will cease to exist without that.’
‘Do you think so? I mean it’s often all started with wrong people, hasn’t it? The original Millett was a master dyer, but he really made his pile out of loot when the monasteries were dissolved. And even now, well, look at the Lanners. So respectable you could stuff sofas with them. But old Greg Lanner was just a South African bandit who was lucky not to get himself hanged several times before he found that gold-mine. I bet you half the people you write about in the Round really owe their money to ancestors who weren’t much better than him.’
‘I do not think it is fair to hold that against the present Lord and Lady Lanner.’
‘But it’s still where the money came from, isn’t it? I suppose you could say the system’s a bit like a glorified sewage farm. You put in dirty money one end and as it washes through the generations—you know, like filter-beds, with those arm things going round and round—it gradually gets cleaner and cleaner until it’s fit to set before the king.’
I thought this was a lovely image—it had come to me on the spur of the moment. Pity I’d finished Uncle Tosh. It would have been just right for him. Mrs Clarke sighed.
‘My late husband was very clever about money,’ she said. ‘He had a lot of excellent friends in the City. Naturally, I have been asking them what they know about the gentleman of whom we are speaking.’
‘I thought it was sugar. Something to do with by-products. And before that there was a plantation in Barbados. I thought.’
‘I know Barbados quite well. I go to the West Indies most winters. They like to read my accounts of their doings. But I can tell you that although there was some money to be made from plantations during the war, since then it has been very difficult. And in any case it was only the well-managed estates . . . There is some very strange blood, besides . . .’
She was obviously finding it difficult. So was I. Luckily at that moment the boy arrived from the printers with several pages of achingly tiny type about next week’s cinemas and theatres for me to check and correct.
B had said nothing to me about Mummy after the party and I hadn’t asked. We’d talked about other things, but I’d known from small signs that he felt I’d gone beyond the terms of our contract. Mummy had left without saying goodbye. I’d have liked to try and make contact with Jane, but she was going down to Cheadle for the weekend, while B and I were off to a bridge congress in Hastings.
This turned out totally dire. It sheeted with rain. B was playing with an unfamiliar partner and they kept having misunderstandings which he couldn’t grumble to me about because I wouldn’t have understood a word. There were no reviews of Uncle Tosh in any of the Sunday papers. We got back to London, both in a vile mood, at three o’clock on Monday morning. B got up at six to do his exercises, so out of sheer obstinacy I went up to my flat to write. I’d started straight off on another book as soon as I’d finished Uncle Tosh, not because I had a passion to write it but simply out of the habit of doing that sort of thing then. It had begun as a kind of cod romance, set in Edwardian times, strongly influenced by Cold Comfort Farm but peopled with marchionesses and sinister millionaires; then, mysteriously, I’d found myself actually believing more and more in my own grotesques and I was beginning to think that I would have to take the leg-pulling element out and turn it into a proper novel.
There was a folded scrap of paper on my doormat. Jane’s writing. A page from a pocket diary.
‘Where are you? Must talk. Can’t ring from Ch. St. Will come to N & D 10.30 Monday.’
Blearily I settled down at my typewriter, but I’d done less than a couple of pages when the telephone rang. It was B.
‘You’re early,’ I said.
‘Can you come down? Now.’