Far Cry from Kensington (6 page)

But more serious for the failing firm were the hangers-on who now got round Martin
York to agree to publish their frightful books.

Sometimes, I think, his desire to sign up these books for his publishing house was not
due to a lack of discrimination so much as to the common fallacy which assumes that
if a person is a good, vivacious talker he is bound to be a good writer. This is by
no means the case. But Martin York had another, special illusion: he felt that men or
women of upper-class background and education were bound to have advantages of talent
over writers of modest origins. In 1954 quite a few bright publishers secretly
believed this.

Publishers, for obvious reasons, attempt to make friends with their authors; Martin
York tried to make authors of his friends. He promised contracts to the most
talkative, gossipy, amusing members of his own class, his old schoolfellows, their
wives, his former army companions and their wives.

This was where I had to intervene. It often fell to me to turn down a book for which
Martin York, during a drinking session, had offered a contract, without even looking
at the work. His friends would know where Martin York spent his after-office hours,
between six and nine. They went there shamelessly to listen to his woes, and although
everyone in the publishing and literary worlds knew that the Ullswater Press was
falling to bits, the flocks of carrion crow descended on Martin for the last-minute
pickings. I had to shoo them off the next day.

At this point the man whom I came to call the
pisseur de copie
enters my
story. I forget which of the French symbolist writers of the late nineteenth century
denounced a hack writer as a urinator of journalistic copy in the phrase
‘pisseur de copie’,
but the description remained in my
mind, and I attached it to a great many of the writers who hung around or wanted to
meet Martin York; and finally I attached it for life to one man alone, Hector
Bartlett.

The term ‘upper class’ in those days meant more than it does now. Hector
Bartlett claimed at every opportunity, both directly and by implication, to be upper
class, to the effect that I presumed him to be rather low-born; in fact, I was right,
and I wasn’t alone in my suppositions. But a great many people fell in with
Hector’s pretensions, a surprising number, especially those simple souls who
quell their doubts because they cannot bring themselves to discern a blatant pose;
the effort would be too wearing and wearying, and might call for an open challenge,
and lead to unpleasantness.

He used to waylay me in Green Park on my way to work or on my way home. Occasionally
this amused me, for I might egg him on to show off his social superiority, and, not
less, the superior learning that he claimed. For he knew the titles of all the right
books, and the names of the authors, but it amounted to nothing; he had read very
little.

What he wanted from me was an introduction to Martin York and through him to his
uncle, a film producer.

Pisseur de copie!
Hector Bartlett, it seemed to me, vomited literary matter,
he urinated and sweated, he excreted it.

‘Mrs Hawkins, I take incalculable pains with my prose style.’

He did indeed. The pains showed. His writings writhed and ached with twists and turns
and tergiversations, inept words, fanciful repetitions, far-fetched verbosity and
long, Latin-based words.

I became aware one morning that his meeting me in Green Park on my way to the office
was not by chance. He had met me once too often. It was a clear day in June, and that
it was a Monday I know from the fact that I was thinking with a happiness, new to me
for many years, of young Isobel’s Daddy to whom she telephoned from her room in
our house every night, and whom I had met, in church, the day before. It was an
Anglo-Catholic church in Queen’s Gate. As I stood for the ‘Kyrie
Eleison’ I noticed Isobel with an older man two rows in front. I assumed it was
her father and so it proved to be when we came out of church and Isobel introduced
him. Hugh Lederer. I had thought for the first time for the many years of my
widowhood, when I had seen him with Isobel to the sweet music of the
‘Kyrie’: there’s an attractive man. And now, crossing Green Park on
this fresh Monday morning in June, the ‘Kyrie’ sang in my head, and the
meeting in church, and the unpremeditated lunch to follow, and the rest of the sweet
Sunday afternoon retold itself to my mind. It was no pleasure at all to see Hector
Bartlett hovering in my path, I didn’t feel in the mood to humour him that
morning. He had seen me approaching before I had seen him, and now he stood by a
bench affecting to wonder whether to sit down on it. He stood there, at nine-fifteen
in the morning, the last person I wanted to enter into my sensations just then, but
emphatically determined to do so. Red hair
en brosse,
brown corduroy
trousers, tweed coat with leather patches on the sleeves, a yellow tie and a green
check shirt: this was gaudy for those days, and Hector Bartlett was always dressed in
bright colours. He was tall, with a pronounced stoop of the shoulders which made him
seem older than he was — I imagine, at that time, he would be in his
mid-thirties. His face was round with a second fat chin. He had a small but full
baby-mouth as if forever asking to suck a dummy tit.

On the path, walking in front of me, was a young couple with their arms affectionately
round each other’s waists. They blocked Hector, the
pisseur de copie,
from my view. They looked as if they were on their way to work, probably in the same
office, for this was the hour of the office-workers. When they passed the park-bench
around which Hector Bartlett had been hovering I saw that he had sat down; he was
waiting for me, and now rose to meet me.

‘Good morning, Mrs Hawkins, what a pleasant surprise!’ He indicated the
two lovers who had passed. ‘Dalliance!’ he said.

I don’t know what got into me, for I said, not to myself as usual, but out loud,
‘Pisseur de copie!’

‘What was that, Mrs Hawkins?’ He looked dismayed, then incredulous, and
finally he decided not to believe his ears. He didn’t wait for me to answer or
explain but gave a little joyless laugh and said, ‘Beautiful
morning.’

‘Aren’t you working to-day?’ I said.

I forget what he replied. He had no regular job that I was aware of. He sometimes
reviewed books in provincial papers and lived mostly on his wits and a novelist
called Emma Loy. But I had nothing against him on that score. I knew a great many
obscure writers, it is true mostly younger than Hector Bartlett, who had to scrub
around for a living and share their casual earnings with a partner, or who lived on
other writers more fortunate than themselves. And as for Hector Bartlett, I had once,
some years before, put him in the way of a job that would have suited him very well:
door-to-door encyclopaedia-pushing in the suburbs. He would have been able to blab
and enthuse about the encyclopaedias, and impress the housewives. But he turned down
the job, as he had every right to do. What I found so frightful about him was that he
was always trying to use me, or further some scheme of his through my presumed
influence with Martin York.

That morning, he walked with me as far as the office door, pressing on me an idea he
had to turn a novel into a film. Martin York’s uncle was a film producer, a
very rich man, all of whose riches however could not, in the end, save Martin York
from gaol. At the moment this was not to be foreseen, and Hector Bartlett was
spoiling my fresh June morning with his unwanted company, aggravating the situation
by starting to describe the novel which he wanted to adapt.

‘I know the novel,’ I said.

It was one of Emma Loy’s novels. She was then already in her forties, a
well-known writer. Hector Bartlett had recently established himself as her hanger-on.
Wherever she went these days he had to go. It was a phenomenon nobody could explain.
Emma Loy was a beautiful writer, and had enough sense to know that he was not. Yet
she tried to get him published by all the magazines and publishers who wanted her
work. She introduced him to everyone she knew who might be influential and they,
amazed, did nothing for him whatsoever.

Emma Loy was a striking woman with a strong face and light brown hair combed back off
her face. She always wore grey, and it suited her. I had known her for some time. I
don’t know what had got into her head when she took up Hector Bartlett. It
probably flattered her to have a man nearly ten years her junior in constant
attention. I don’t believe she was in love with him. How could she have been?
She was a sensible and imaginative woman, she had wit, on some occasions magic.
Later, when it became too embarrassing for her to carry her world-wide reputation, a
new and real man in her life, and the
Pisseur
as well, she wriggled out of
the relationship. But she had to pay for it.

That time had not yet come and here was Hector Bartlett with her permission to make a
film-script out of her novel.

‘I have the exclusive rights from Emma,’ he said. It’s a must for S.
T. York.’

‘Then write to S. T. York,’ I said.

‘It would be preferable to procure an introduction from Martin York,’ he
said. ‘It would be let us say a decided feather in Martin’s cap. You
yourself should have a word in Martin’s ear with regard to the possibility of
transmuting this fine work of fiction to a saga of the silver screen. Nepotism is
still I believe the order of the day.’

How could Emma Loy stand him? We got as far as the office door. It was just before
nine-thirty. He wanted to come upstairs with me and continue his ‘talk about
the film-script’.

‘I’m afraid it isn’t convenient. Good-bye, Mr Bartlett.’

‘Won’t you call me Hector?’

To my own astonishment I said, ‘No, I call you
Pisseur de
copie
.’

The morning noise of the office took over. I remember it now in these sweet waking
hours of the night that I still treasure so much, here far away from the scene of my
life in those days, far away in time.

The morning clattered on, with the sound of Ivy’s typewriter and Cathy the
book-keeper’s muttering, the sound of all our shoes on the bare boards of the
office floor and the rattle of cups as one of us made the tea. There was also the
usual visit of Patrick’s wife, Mabel, who that morning had found someone other
than me to make a scene about, and whose noise-creating was indirect, consisting of
the efforts of the others to reason her out of her fit. The outside telephone
shrilled and the intercom buzzed. Ivy responded superciliously.

‘Mr York is in a meeting. May I take a message?’ — ‘Mr
Ullswater is out of London for a few days. Who is calling? Can you spell that name,
please?’ (Ivy’s ‘n’s sounded ’d’ so that
’name’ sounded like ’dame’) — ‘Mrs Hawkins is in
a meeting. Oh, I don’t know when she’ll be free, would you like to try
again?’ — ‘I’m afraid that Mrs Hawkins …’

Out of this general din, I heard my name wanted on the phone rather more frequently
than usual.

‘Who are the people on the phone for me, Ivy?’ I said.

It’s one lady only. A Mrs Emma Loy. She’ll ring again, it’s
urgent.’

Everyone who rang our office was always urgent, but Emma Loy was important even though
she didn’t publish her books with the likes of us. I told Ivy, ‘Next time
she rings I’ll take the call.’

She rang on the stroke of twelve. I remember this fact because it was my habit to
silently recite the Angelus at twelve noon, and even if I was interrupted in the
middle of it, the phrases went on in my head.

The angel of the Lord brought the tidings to Mary …

‘It’s Mrs Loy for you, Mrs Hawkins,’ Ivy sang out.

And she conceived by the Holy Ghost …

‘Hallo, Mrs Loy. How are you?’

‘I’m very worried. About Hector. What exactly did you do to him this
morning?’

‘Me? Nothing. He wants to make a film out of one of your novels.’

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord …

‘He said you called him something, some very, very, strange epithet.’

… is with thee, blessed art thou …

‘All I said was
“pisseur de copie”.
It’s the absolute
truth. Now, isn’t it?’

She must have known that it was. ‘Mrs Hawkins!’ she said, and rang off.

And the Word was made flesh …

That day I lost my job with the Ullswater Press. Martin York was in tears when he told
me I had to go. Emma Loy had powerful friends in publishing and printing and, even
worse, in the whisky business that Martin York was desperately trying to retrieve his
fortunes by.

‘Why did you say it? What made you? It was a disastrous thing to say to anyone,
Mrs Hawkins, especially to a close friend, and such a close friend, of Emma
Loy.’

The late afternoon sun touched lovingly on the rooftops reminding me of time past and
time to come, making light of the moment. I had really wanted to go. Really, I had.
‘I’ll send you your paypacket,’ said Martin York in a broken voice.
And I wasn’t in the least surprised that he didn’t.

He was tried in October on eight charges of uttering forged bankers’ documents
and intent to defraud. The case was all over the papers. Martin York pleaded guilty
and was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment, a stiff term even for those
days. ‘Commercial life’, said the judge, ‘cannot be carried on
unless people are honest;’ which simple sentiment was almost word for word what
I had once told him myself. Only, I wouldn’t have jailed him for seven years on
the strength of it.

After the sentence Hector Bartlett wrote numerous gloating articles about Martin York,
full of vindictive and invented anecdotes which implied a close acquaintance. They
appeared in some of the popular papers and got lost with the rest of the newspaper
pulp. It wasn’t till many years later that the
Pisseur
himself
resurrected them, added to and embroidered them, in his ridiculous old-age memoirs
printed at his own expense, subtitled
Farewell, Leicester Square.
I read
them only a few years ago, having picked up the book quite by chance on a remainder
bookstall.