We were almost out of money after paying the fares via Hendaye, Dieppe and Newhaven, and several hundred pesetas on excess luggage. Ruth’s parents welcomed us in Hove on Saturday night of 22nd March, and it was a relief to know that we could stay with them before deciding what to do. I spent some days in the living room, finishing the story about the long distance runner in Borstal.
Ruth’s Outposts booklet A Forecast, a Fable was published, and she was busy despatching subscribers’ copies. Rosica telephoned me with the news that Saturday Night and Sunday Morning had been sent back to her again, and that trying to place it was beginning to seem hopeless. She also informed me that The General had been rejected, that A Stay of Some Time had now been turned down by a total of six publishers, The Palisade by seven, and The Bandstand by two. She added, however, that she had posted Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, as a kind of forlorn hope, to W. H. Allen. If it came back, perhaps I ought to put it away and get on with something else — a reasonable suggestion in view of all she had done.
Towards the end of the month I went to Nottingham for a few days, then came back to Hove, where I wrote ‘Picture of Loot’, a poem later included by Philip Larkin in The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse. My pension wasn’t enough to live on, and resources were dwindling, in spite of the Fainlight tolerance and generosity. Some humorous articles, written to try and earn money, came back from Lilliput and Punch, as did a batch of work from Poetry Chicago.
The novels Rosica hadn’t been able to do anything with arrived in one big parcel, as if I were Fate’s dustbin for my own work. The notion of teaching English to foreign students was as far as it went, though maybe various language schools were written to because several addresses and telephone numbers had been copied into a notebook. Dramatizing some of my stories for a play competition announced by Granada Television was a possibility, but nothing was done about that, either. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, after being finally polished (though it had needed very little) and sent to a magazine, was rejected almost by return of post.
Ebullient rather than depressed, I enjoyed rummaging in secondhand bookshops, where you could find something good for as little as sixpence. Walking along the Brighton front with Ruth, the sea air induced an unjustifiable euphoria, and there were interesting foreign films to see at the Classic Cinema in Kemptown, as well as numerous cafés where we could sit and talk. The future seemed to rear up in front like a concrete wall, and so didn’t figure much in our conversation.
A letter from Rosica said that ‘as luck would have it, Jeffrey Simmons of W. H. Allen is very impressed with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. He does not want to make any promises or to give false encouragement, but would like to talk to you about it.’ She went on to say that if I gave him an option on my next two novels, and let him arrange a sale of the book in the United States, he would do his best with other directors of the firm to get the book taken. If this happened, she said, I would have ‘terrific promotion and publicity’.
She made an appointment for me to see Simmons at the W. H. Allen offices on Tuesday 15th April. Such a letter meant only one thing, yet it was impossible to feel any happiness, in case I was wrong, though it hardly seemed they would want to see me without intending to publish the book. On asking Ruth if she would like to come with me, she suggested I go on my own. I was calm, almost nonchalant, on getting the midday train from Brighton, and watching the delightful Sussex landscape go by.
There seemed to be a fine grit in the air, as if from a mist just lifted, while walking up Essex Street from the Temple tube station. The house was a Dickensian kind of rookery, and at the top of some steep narrow stairs I was greeted by Jeffrey Simmons, a tall somewhat saturnine man, and son of the managing director. Jeffrey told me that one of his readers, Otto Strawson, had read the book and was enthusiastic. He too liked it, and as we sat in his office he asked what else I had written. They didn’t want to take one book, was the implication, and then find that nothing more would be forthcoming. After telling him briefly about Key to the Door, which was written but still in a formless state, I took a typescript of The General from a briefcase lent by Ruth’s father. ‘You can look at this for my second novel, although it might need a little more revision.’
Jeffrey introduced me to Mark Goulden, the head of the house, a compact and dynamic man. ‘They tell me you’ve written a masterpiece,’ he said, which I found an amusing conceit, while liking his sense of humour. ‘We’ll see what we can do with it. If you put yourself in my hands, I’ll make a lot of money for you. I’ll talk to Rosica about the advance.’
In his autobiography Mark was to recall my stammered thanks, and my apparent incredulity at his claim, but appreciation is certainly owed for much that he did. In the 1930s he had been the first publisher to print Dylan Thomas, and also, as editor of the Sunday Referee (which I occasionally saw at my grandparents’) he had, before any other British newspaper, taken on the whole gang of Nazi thugs who governed Germany. As a publisher of books after the war he wouldn’t have anything to do with that country, on the grounds of its insufficient and as yet unacknowledged guilt, an attitude he maintained to the end of his life.
Walking along the Strand, steeped in a compound of gloom and optimism, it was hard to understand what I had let myself in for but, whatever it was, I had been working towards it for ten years, perhaps for the whole of my life, certainly for what had seemed at times like a century. I probably appeared mindless to those passing by, if they noticed me at all, but thoughts crowded in of those absent people who were nevertheless with me, including Ruth who had known me much of that decade; her parents who were helping us so selflessly; her Aunt Ann in America who had sent food, clothes and often money; my own family who had contributed food parcels from time to time; Robert and Beryl Graves; and last but not least Rosica Colin who had persisted with my work for so long. I wanted to talk to them and explain my feelings, even perhaps to boast a little and show my joy.
Laughing inwardly (and a smile may have been on my face by now) the much desired seemed to have occurred. My book would be printed, and perhaps earn as much as two hundred pounds, which would allow Ruth and myself to live, modestly still, in Majorca while we went on writing. The future didn’t delineate itself beyond that basic hope, for I was taken up with the moment, walking as light as air and unwilling to speculate further on what had happened because it already had, and I had learned to waste nothing.
For a moment I recalled the day thirteen years before, also in April, when I had passed the aircrew selection board to be trained as a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm. That incident too, insignificant as may be, had set me apart from people in a way I wanted to be, which was a strange aim perhaps in someone who would write as if he belonged to them more than they did themselves. I had not removed myself half as effectively in 1945 as by the present achievement, but the desire to escape the crowd didn’t mean that I despised it. Though part of it from every point of view, I could only write about the individuals that make up the crowd by living apart from them, because solitude enhances the power of judgement and reflection.