‘They happen to be a respectable married couple, although I can’t think why she chose the pen-name of Constance Kent,’ said Niobe, going off at a tangent, as women will.
‘Oh, I can,’ I said. ‘The instinct for self-martyrdom is strong in some people. She probably sees Constance Kent, the real one, as her alter ego.’
‘Constance Kent was a murderess.’
‘Nonsense! She decided to carry the can for her father.’
‘I won’t argue with you. I am certain to get the worst of it. What have you against these people?’ Niobe’s voice had become slightly shrill and, as so often, there were tears in her eyes. ‘What’s wrong with them, I say?’
‘Nothing at all, provided they pay their rent and behave themselves,’ I said, weakly giving ground.
‘Why shouldn’t they?’ Her tone still had a sharp edge. Apparently I was supposed to approve her choice of tenants.
‘I have no idea. I’ll take your word for them,’ I said.
‘Well, then!’
‘Oh, let it go,’ I said.
(2)
As I had told Niobe, I had never intended to live in the house. A bachelor flat in Mayfair, with a manservant to cook, clean and act as my valet (a romantic dream engendered by the stories of P.G. Wodehouse) had been the target on which I had set my sights. When I saw the apartment which Niobe had set aside for me, I changed my mind.
This apartment was on the ground floor and comprised the entrance hall and its noble Jacobean staircase, together with two large, handsome rooms, one of which had an overmantel carved by Grinling Gibbons.
Niobe had contrived a luxurious bathroom for me in what had been the garden-room of the original mansion, the room, that is to say, where the cut blooms were placed ready to be sorted over so that a choice could be made for the drawing-room and dining-room vases. There was no kitchen as part of my flat, although everybody else had one, but when I pointed this out to Niobe she had a ready answer. My meals were to be cooked in the kitchen of the original owner and were to be served in a little dining-room Niobe had contrived out of what had been the game larder. A resident cook was already installed and she and her kitchenmaid had bedrooms up in the attics.
‘You can afford it, can’t you?’ said Niobe. ‘You and I will eat together. To share your cook will be one of my perks. I’ve gone to a great deal of trouble on your behalf, you know. In return i expect free board and lodging and the same pay I was getting at the pool. I am prepared to run this place for you. Everything will go like clockwork. I’ve found my métier.’
The idea of having her permanenty round my neck appalled me. For three meals a day I was doomed, it seemed, to sit at table with her and, apart from this, to me, most undesirable propinquity, it meant that the meals would be served at regular and stated times, I attempted to hedge.
‘I don’t think the mealtimes will work,’ I said. ‘I can’t be tied down to regular hours like that. No writer can.’
‘You have only to say you’re working,’ said Niobe. ‘I can manage the kitchen staff, you’ll find.’
There seemed no more to be said. Short of turning her out of the house altogether and sacking the cook and the kitchen maid and foraging for myself (which would be a more serious interruption of my writing than sitting down to regular meals with Niobe) there was no self-assertive attitude I could take.
‘Now I’ll show you my quarters,’ she said blithely. ‘Are we agreed upon my wages?’
‘They are not exactly excessive. You might have done better if you had brought a breach of promise case!’ I laughed as I said it, but she remained grave.
‘That isn’t a nice thing to say, Chelion. You must know there could never be any question of that. I have my pride and some self-respect.’
Her own apartments were also on the ground floor. She had converted what had been the housekeeper’s dayroom, the butler’s pantry and the servants’ hall into a very cosy little flat which she showed me with pride. What pleased me less, since it brought her into closer contact with my own little realm than I deemed advisable, was that she had allocated to herself as an office – ‘I must have a room to which they can come to pay their rent and bring their complaints, Chelion’ – the room to the right of the front door opposite to that which I had decided to use as my library and study. However, since she was willing – eager, in fact – to take the whole running of the venture off my hands, it seemed unreasonable to cavil at what was, after all, a perfectly sensible arrangement, so I assented to it without argument except to query the word complaints.
‘What the hell would they have to complain about?’ I asked.
‘One another, mostly, I expect,’ said Niobe composedly. ‘Did you ever know a collection of writers who didn’t hate each other’s guts?’
‘I don’t know a collection of writers.’ It was true. In spite of my year in Paris, I had not finished my novel, let alone sold it, and therefore I was not eligible to join any literary society except a local one which did not expect many of its members to achieve publication unless they paid for it themselves.
As for my tenants, their talents proved to be so various that, with unconscious snobbery (as I see it now), I would hardly have called some of them writers at all, although there is no denying that every one of them did actually write for a living and, what is more, made enough money to pay the rent.
To take them in my own order of importance: at the top of the list came Evesham Evans. He was a not very successful member of the Ernest Hemingway school of fiction and looked and dressed for what he saw as the part. He was untidy, gruff, bluff and self-consciously addicted to the bottle and the four-letter word. When he roamed the grounds in search of inspiration he habitually carried a sporting-rifle over his arm although, except for some grey squirrels and a colony of rooks, there was nothing to shoot in my park. I think he put on an act to bolster up his ego because his wife earned more than he did.
Next in my order of meritorious authorship came Mandrake Shard. That this was his real name seems open to doubt, but all his letters, both business and personal, were addressed to him under this cognomen. He wrote highly successful spy stories and an occasional play of the same nature for the BBC. He was a mild, almost furtive, tiny little character; he dressed like an undertaker and was a Methodist lay preacher. I went to hear him once and was surprised and immensely (although secretly amused by his doctrine of hell fire and his promises of a heaven, which seemed a combination of Blackpool on a bank holiday and a recital by a Welsh male-voice choir. There was no doubt, however, of his financial success as a author. By accident I once saw his royalties statement and was staggered.
Although Evesham Evans’s tough novels had their small following, from the money point of view, as I have said, he was less successful than was Constance Kent, his wife. She was a grim, soldierly woman, older, I think, than he was, and, of all things, she specialised in would-be sultry love-stories which, however, remained so definitely within the bounds of an almost Puritan propriety that it might be said of any heroine of hers: ‘Kind are her answers, but her performance keeps no day.’ However, many women must have found vicarious satisfaction in her work, for once, out of curiosity, I went to the public library for a copy of one of her books and discovered that, although more than a score were in the catalogue, not one was left on the shelves.
We had three other couples on the hooks, but they came low on my list. I place above them a bachelor whose pen-name was Latimer Targe. He wrote up real-life crimes, especially murders, in a form which the masses could assimilate without effort. Privately I thought of him as Mr Sunday Papers and there was no doubt that, although his syntax was shaky and his style deplorable, he was not only readable but, in his obvious affection for his murderers, definitely endearing. I suppose that among all my tenants, he was, perhaps, my favourite, although that is not saying much.