Far Cry from Kensington (11 page)

In those sad days of early December I began to compare in my mind the two publishing
houses that fate had led me to. Before I fell asleep at Church End Villas, South
Kensington, I would lie, looking at the darkness for at least an hour, recalling the
noise, and the frantic, fugitive atmosphere of Ullswater Press. Cathy the
book-keeper, Ivy the telephonist and typist, Patrick the packer and his visiting wife
Mabel, wild-eyed and accusing. The wear and tumble of a sinking firm, and Martin York
sitting in his chair, needing company. There had been a great deal wrong with the
business, but was there anything more wrong with the people themselves than there was
with the élite company at the far grander and money-stable Mackintosh &
Tooley? It seemed to me more than ever that the staff at Mackintosh & Tooley had
been deliberately chosen for some slightly grotesque quality; and although these were
all much better qualified, educated, and led more facilitated and privileged lives
than those poorly paid hands at the late Ullswater Press, there was really something
saner and healthier about the Ullswater staff. They had their oddities but they had
been chosen in spite of, not because of them.

Reflecting thus, one night I was suddenly moved to switch on the light, get out of bed
and look at myself in the long glass on the inside of my clothes cupboard. I stood
there, massive in my loose, warm nightdress. What was wrong with me? Why had I been
chosen by Mackintosh & Tooley? It was then the reason dawned on me: I was
immensely too fat. I was overweight, I thought, to the point that anyone employing me
must be kinky. It was plain to me that no-one who had a complaint to utter or
anything against the firm, especially an aggrieved author, could express themselves
strongly to me. It would have been unkind. It would have been like attacking their
mother. Above all, it would have looked bad. I was one of the Mackintosh & Tooley
alibis.

From that night I decided to eat and drink half. Only half of everything I normally
ate, in any circumstances. And I decided to tell nobody at all about my plan. Just to
say, if pressed, that I’d had enough. And just to consume half, or perhaps even
a quarter, until I reached a reasonable weight and size. And I started next morning
eating less, drinking less.

The act fitted in with my sadness in those early days of December 1954. Not many days
later, just as I was leaving the office, came a screaming phone call from Mabel with
her usual accusations. Patrick evidently came into the room from where she was
phoning, for he shouted above her voice into the phone. ‘Take no notice, Mrs
Hawkins. Please take no offence. Mabel’s not well.’

I thought he meant not well in the head, which she obviously wasn’t. I said,
‘Mabel must see a psychiatrist.’

‘I’m going into hospital tomorrow,’ Mabel said, more quietly.
‘And, Mrs Hawkins, you’ve been so good to Patrick. I only wish you
wouldn’t sleep with him in your spare time.’

She was operated on next day, poor young woman, but nothing could have saved her from
the galloping malignant disease that she died of within a week. I visited her twice
in the hospital. She recognized me, but was glazed and doped. I went to her cremation
at Golders Green and seeing her coffin slide away, I regretted I had ever thought ill
of Mabel, or treated her like the nuisance she had been. Oh Mabel, come back; come
back, Mabel, and persecute me again. Patrick cried all the way through. He told me,
‘I knew she had mental trouble. But she was always all right physically. This
came on so quick, so quick, Mrs Hawkins.’

To my great joy my black lace evening dress needed to be taken in a
good inch both sides when, in January of 1955, I tried it on with a view to wearing
it at a smart dinner party, how smart, I did not quite know until I got there. In
fact, until I got there I didn’t realize it was my first smart London dinner
party. Up to that time I had been out to dinner a great many times, at friends’
private houses or in restaurants. But never, so far, on such a formal occasion.

The invitation card was on my desk one morning, ‘Mr Ian and Lady Philippa Tooley
request the pleasure of the company of Mrs Hawkins …’ At the lower
corner were the words ‘Black tie’, which I knew to mean I had to wear an
evening dress; but that was all I knew. I explained to Milly, who handled the
invitation with interest, that the black tie was what the men had to wear. I replied
that Mrs Hawkins had pleasure in accepting Mr Ian and Lady Philippa Tooley’s
kind invitation … And there I was in Wanda’s room, having my black lace
dress pinned and tucked, and the neckline cut low, with a view to its being reduced
to my latest size and remodelled, as Wanda put it, to bring it up to date.

Wanda’s room was still the workshop of old. Piles of clothes to be altered, and
among them another dress of mine. She often altered dresses for me, but this was the
first time she had to take one in.

‘I have such terrible rheumatism,’ said Wanda, who was on her knees, with
her pins, sticking them abundantly into my dress. T’m behind with my
work.’ I told her the lace dress was urgent.

It was difficult for her to move. She was having treatment, she said.

‘What treatment are you getting?’

Wanda evaded the question; and perhaps, I felt, I was too inquisitive. All Wanda said
was, ‘It takes time… got to have faith.’

But I couldn’t forbear to pass her a piece of advice. ‘Rheumatism,
Wanda,’ I said, ‘takes many forms. I hope you’ve got a good doctor.
However, whatever it is you’re taking for your rheumatism, believe me,
it’s a great help to eat a banana a day.’ I myself had suffered attacks
of rheumatic pain two years before and on the advice of an American negress whom I
met in the bus, I had started on the cure of a banana every day, since when I had
felt no further pains in my legs. All this I told to Wanda while she was snipping
round my neckline. (I omitted to tell her that for the past six weeks I had eaten but
half a banana a day.) But Wanda only frowned, creaking herself to her feet. I noticed
her head shifted jerkily towards a point on the floor below the window. Wanda was
still haunted; all her old confidence and tranquillity had left her. Now, as I turned
round at her request for some further pinning-up, I saw, under the window on the
floor, a black leather-covered case, very much resembling Ian Tooley’s radionic
Box. I thought it so unlikely that Wanda, a fervent cult-Catholic, would have any
traffic with the Box that I felt this was some other container with fittings, some
sewing or dressing-case.

Wanda said, ‘How did you come to lose the inches, Mrs Hawkins?’

‘Nature is adjusting itself,’ I said. ‘And not before time.’

I was still automatically studying the black case under the window; Wanda’s
hands trembled a little with her pins. This was unlike her.

On the chance that Wanda’s box was truly the Box, I said, ‘You work the
Box?’

‘What box?’ said Wanda. She had turned scared. I thought she was going to
give that cry of hers.

‘I mean a box that is used in what people call radionics. They claim to cure
people, and presumably do other things.’

‘Other things?’

‘One would suppose … But anyhow, I don’t believe in it.’

‘I don’t know about Box. Maybe you get a bit thinner still, Mrs
Hawkins?’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘I hope to lose a lot more weight.’ I felt
quite hungry as I said it with the prospect of months ahead of eating half. But I
didn’t tell Wanda my secret, and she didn’t tell me any more of hers.

I gave the Box a rather contemptuous glance when I left, dramatically hoping Wanda
would notice it. It seemed to me that Wanda was now afraid of me and regretted her
half-confidence.

‘I need another fitting for your dress, Mrs Hawkins. I promise it comes out
lovely. Another fitting, tomorrow night. Keep well.’

What did she mean: keep well?

I was touchy at that time. Who should ring me up, just as I was
getting ready to go to the Tooleys’ dinner party, but Isobel’s Daddy?

‘Good evening, Mrs Hawkins, Hugh Lederer speaking.’

‘Yes, Mr Lederer?’

‘You sound as if you’re in a hurry.’

‘I am, rather. I’m going out to dinner.’

‘Well, lucky man, whoever he is. I saw you in church last Sunday but you
didn’t see me.’

‘No, I didn’t see you.’

‘You were in a hurry, then, too. And if I might say so you were looking very
pretty.’

It was true that the loss of ten pounds’ weight was beginning to give my
bone-structure a chance. I was glad to hear this speech of Hugh Lederer, but I had a
good idea what he was ringing me about: Isobel’s problem.

‘I really am in rather a hurry, now, Mr Lederer. I have to get dressed, and
—’

‘Mrs Hawkins, will you dine with me tomorrow?’

‘I’m afraid ‘I’m can’t,’

‘Friday, then?’

‘Is it about Isobel?’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s one of the things.’

‘I really can’t help you, Mr Lederer. I found her a job with a chemical
export firm but she didn’t want it. There are very few jobs in publishing.
I’ve already told you.’

‘It’s a personal problem. Isobel has a difficulty.’

I said, ‘Why don’t you let her solve her own problems?’

‘Oh, Mrs Hawkins.’

‘I’ ve got to go, now.’

‘But Isobel apart, can’t we meet and talk? And I wish you’d call me
Hugh.’

‘I’ll have to ring you back. What’s your number, Mr Lederer?’

He gave me a number and I repeated it slowly enough to make out I was writing it down,
which I wasn’t.

*          *          *

The Tooleys’ house in Lord North Street was one of a row near
enough to the Houses of Parliament to contain an old bell for members. It was, in
fact, narrower and smaller than Milly’s Victorian dwelling. The door was opened
by a manservant in such an ordinary brown suit that it seemed to mean to tell you
that his employers moved with the times. I was greatly taken by the charm of the
interior. I had expected something larger and more imposing: something of a
challenge, and here there was none. But there was no time for me to take in more
impressions, for a few people were arriving behind me, and when I had left my coat I
was waved upstairs where the social noise was going on. Ian Tooley met me on the
threshold of the drawing-room and introduced me to his wife, Lady Philippa, and the
other guests, and put in my hand the dry sherry I asked for.

Two of the guests already present I knew by name and newspaper pictures: Sir Arthur
Cary, the tycoon, who stood somewhat apart, and his vivacious wife who loquaciously
held court in a group at the other end of the room.

‘Mrs Hawkins was an editor at Ullswater Press,’ said Ian Tooley, urging
Sir Arthur towards me. ‘And now we are so fortunate as to have her with
us.’

‘Ullswater Press …’ said Sir Arthur, and gave a gurgle of laughter.
‘Well, Martin York certainly took me for a ride.’ He continued to laugh
so much that I wondered how seriously he had been taken for a ride, and, if it was
such a light-hearted matter, why he had caused Martin York to go to prison for seven
years.

We sat down fourteen for dinner, in a dining-room with rose-pink walls and a ceiling
of a terracotta colour. The pictures were flower paintings in oils, good but not
moving, and one portrait of a man, early Victorian, who resembled neither Ian Tooley
nor Lady Philippa although he did look like somebody’s ancestor. Lady Philippa
wore a black lace dress, slightly old-fashioned, remarkably like mine. This made me
feel relaxed, it confirmed that I was suitably dressed, and I sensed from her swift
sweeping glance that Lady Philippa was mildly amused to find herself dressed
virtually the same as another woman in the room.

I sat between one of their cousins, a young man named Aubrey who worked at
Sotheby’s and a red-faced retired Brigadier General. The candles duly twinkled,
the silver glowed and the chatter went on. I made some headway with Aubrey on the
subject of
Lucky Jim,
not long published, but when it came to the Brigadier
I found him difficult at first. He seemed to glare at me, with watery small eyes, out
of his very red face. But his glare was evidently only a mannerism, or perhaps
something medical, for although he didn’t cease to glare he came round to a
conversation when I said something to the effect that he must have had an interesting
life.

‘Could write a book,’ he said.

‘Why don’t you?’

’Can’t concentrate.’

‘For concentration,’ I said, ‘you need a cat. Do you happen to have
a cat?’

‘Cat? No. No cats. Two dogs. Quite enough.’

So I passed him some very good advice, that if you want to concentrate deeply on some
problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a
cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work, I explained, the cat will
invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk-lamp. The light
from a lamp, I explained, gives a cat great satisfaction. The cat will settle down
and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding. And the tranquillity of
the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all
the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give
your mind back the self-command it has lost. You need not watch the cat all the time.
Its presence alone is enough. The effect of a cat on your concentration is
remarkable, very mysterious.