She had achieved some success with the very intellectual author of The Symbolism of Louisa May Alcott, which George was now selling very well and fast in certain quarters, since it had a big lesbian theme. She had achieved some success with Rudi Bittesch, the Rumanian who called on her frequently at the club.
But Nicholas had produced a more upsetting effect than usual on George, who was moreover torn between his attraction to a book he could not understand and his fear of its failure. George handed him over to Jane for treatment and meanwhile complained nightly to Tilly that he was in the hands of a writer, lazy, irresponsible, insufferable and cunning.
Inspired by a brain-wave, Jane’s first approach to a writer had been, ‘What is your raison d’être?’ It had worked marvellously. She tried it on Nicholas Farringdon when he called to the office about his manuscript one day when George was ‘at a meeting’, which was to say, hiding in the back office. ‘What is your raison d’être, Mr Farringdon?’
He frowned at her in an abstract sort of way, as if she were a speaking machine that had gone wrong.
Inspired by another brain-wave Jane invited him to dine at the May of Teck Club. He accepted with a special modesty, plainly from concern for his book. It had been rejected by ten publishers al-ready, as had most of the books that came to George.
His visit put Jane up in the estimation of the club. She had not expected him to react so eagerly to everything. Sipping black Nescafé in the drawing-room with Jane, Selina, dark little Judy Redwood and Anne, he had looked round with a faint, con-tented smile. Jane had chosen her companions for the evening with the instinct of an experimental procuress which, when she perceived the extent of its success, she partly regretted and partly congratulated herself on, since she had not been sure from various reports whether Nicholas preferred men, and now she concluded that he at least liked both sexes. Selina’s long unsurpassable legs arranged themselves diagonally from the deep chair where she lolled in the distinct attitude of being the only woman present who could afford to loll. There was something about Selina’s lolling which gave her a queenly eminence. She visibly appraised Nicholas, while he continued to glance here and there at the several groups of chattering girls in other parts of the room. The terrace doors stood wide open to the cool night and presently from the recreation room there came, by way of the terrace, the sound of Joanna in the process of an elocution lesson.
I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,
The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride;
Of Him who walked in glory and in joy
Following his plough, along the mountain-side;
By our own spirits are we deified:
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.
‘I wish she would stick to The Wreck of the Deutschland,’ Judy Redwood said. ‘She’s marvellous with Hopkins.’
Joanna’s voice was saying, ‘Remember the stress on Chatterton and the slight pause to follow.’
Joanna’s pupil recited:
I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,
*
The excitement over the slit window went on for the rest of the afternoon. Jane’s brain-work proceeded against the background echoes of voices from the large wash-room where the lavatories were. The two other occupants of the top floor had returned, having been to their homes in the country for the week-end: Dorothy Markham, the impoverished niece of Lady Julia Markham who was chairwoman of the club’s management committee, and Nancy Riddle, one of the club’s many clergymen’s daughters. Nancy was trying to overcome her Midlands accent, and took lessons in elocution from Joanna with this end in view.
Jane, at her brain-work, heard from the direction of the wash-room the success of Dorothy Markham’s climb through the window. Dorothy’s hips were thirty-six and a half inches; her bust measurement was only thirty-one, a fact which did not dismay her, as she intended to many one of three young men out of her extensive acquaintance who happened to find themselves drawn to boyish figures, and although she did not know about such things as precisely as did her aunt, Dorothy knew well enough that her hipless and breastless shape would always attract the sort of young man who felt at home with it. Dorothy could emit, at any hour of the day or night, a waterfall of débutante chatter, which rightly gave the impression that on any occasion between talking, eating and sleeping, she did not think, except in terms of these phrase-ripples of hers: ‘Filthy lunch.’ ‘The most gorgeous wedding.’ ‘He actually raped her, she was amazed.’ ‘Ghastly film.’ ‘I’m desperately well, thanks, how are you?’
Her voice from the wash-room distracted Jane:
‘Oh hell, I’m black with soot, I’m absolutely filthington.’ She opened Jane’s door without knocking and put in her head. ‘Got any soapyjo?’ It was some months before she was to put her head round Jane’s door and announce, ‘Filthy luck. I’m preggers. Come to the wedding.’
Jane said, on being asked for the use of her soap, ‘Can you lend me fifteen shillings till next Friday?’ It was her final resort for getting rid of people when she was doing brain-work.
Evidently, from the sound of things, Nancy Riddle was stuck in the window. Nancy was getting hysterical. Finally, Nancy was released and calmed, as was betokened by the gradual replacement of Midlands vowels with standard English ones issuing from the wash-room.
Jane continued with her work, describing her effort to herself as pressing on regardless. All the club, infected by the Air Force idiom current amongst the dormitory virgins, used this phrase continually.
She had put aside Nicholas’s manuscript for the time being, as it was a sticky proposition; she had not yet, in fact, grasped the theme of the book, as was necessary before deciding on a significant passage to cast doubt upon, although she had already thought of the comment she would recommend George to make: ‘Don’t you think this part is a bit derivative?’ Jane had thought of it in a brain-wave.
She had put the book aside. She was at work, now, on some serious spare-time work for which she was paid. This came into the department of her life that had to do with Rudi Bittesch whom she hated, at this stage in her life, for his unattractive appearance. He was too old for her, besides everything else. When in a depressed state of mind, she found it useful to remember that she was only twenty-two, for the fact cheered her up. She looked down Rudi’s list of famous authors and their respective addresses to see who still remained to be done. She took a sheet of writing paper and wrote her great-aunt’s address in the country, followed by the date. She then wrote:
Dear Mr Hemingway,
I am addressing this letter to you care of your publisher in the confidence that it will be sent on to you.
This was an advisable preliminary, Rudi said, because sometimes publishers were instructed to open authors’ letters and throw them away if not of sufficient business importance, but this approach, if it got into the publishers’ hands, ‘might touch their heart’. The rest of the letter was entirely Jane’s province. She paused to await a small brain-wave, and after a moment continued:
I am sure you receive many admiring letters, and have hesitated to add yet another to your post-bag. But since my release from prison, where I have been for the past two years and four months, I have felt more . and more that I want you to know how much your novels meant to me during that time. I had few visitors. My allotted weekly hours of leisure were spent in the Library. It was unheated alas, but I did not notice the cold as I read on. Nothing I read gave me so much courage to face the future and to build a new future on my release as For Whom The Bell Tolls. The novel gave me back my faith in life.