Poor Caroline (34 page)

It was so like Mollie to hang always a little behind his
evolution. When he met her he was floundering splendidly
in the shallows of a Back to Nature Phase He had been
working on a pioneer film of the 'Covered Wagon' type, and
saw himself as the strong virile man in the sheepskin coat,
accompanied by his broad-hipped, broad-bosomed woman,
mother of many children. Mollie had indeed followed him
with daring confidence to the experimental pioneer life in a
two-roomed flatlet at Haverstock Hill and their first child arrived with flattering promptitude. Johnson invented quite
fascinating theories about child psychology and infant edu
cation. But after cluttering the living room with coloured
cubes and squares, intended to teach the small thing how to
appreciate tone and form values, he retreated to the office
in Essex Street, and finally rented the flat in Battersea. For
the Haverstock Hill establishment cramped not only his
educational system, which required a background of great
open spaces, but also his style of thinking, since a creative
artist cannot afford broken nights with a wailing child, and
days wasted in nursery disorder.

It was just then that he met Delia and began to create for her a scenario of London and Paris night life, with a back
ground of cocktail parties and orchids and fashion shows
and the Croydon Aerodrome.

Delia complicated everything, for Mollie grew less and
less like his ideal Soul Mate the more she fulfilled the role
he had designed for her, Johnson began to realize the differ
ence between the economic situation of the pioneer patriarch, enriched increasingly by each addition to his family,
and the city father, whose more numerous offspring simply
result in larger bills. Moreover, Delia was extravagant.
The best alone was good enough for her. Johnson began to feel a little tired of her. His imagination was already turn
ing towards a new enchantment and the thought of a long
epic poem embodying the Dream Woman of the centuries.

For he had met another woman, the perfect fulfilment of
all his ideals in one. Strong as a pioneer, sophisticated as
a cocktail, majestic, confident, splendid and conquering,
Gloria St. Denis.

Because he was feeling good after the lecture, warmed
with the heady wine of his own eloquence,
Johnson let his thoughts dwell upon her — her slow indifferent smile, the
rich curving lines of her body, her fund of admirably chosen
anecdotes. He was thinking of her when he heard a knock
on the door.

He glanced up, suddenly a little pale, for behind his rap
turous dreams lurked the smothered subconscious worry
of his financial difficulties. There were so many visitors
whom it might be inconvenient to receive.

He sat for a moment, wondering if the caller would go
away if he kept quite still and pretended that he had left
the office.

But the Knock came again, and the voice of Mrs. Franley,
the office cleaner, shouted: 'Mr. Johnson, Mr. Johnson!'

'Oh, come in, Mrs. Franley,' he cried, relieved. 'I've been
taking a class and I'm a bit late.'

'There's a young lady to see you, Mr. Johnson. I told h
er it was past your hours, but she said she saw your light in the window and knew you was still here, and she won't
go away.'

"The devil she won't!' thought Johnson. 'Who is it?' he
asked. 'Anyone you know?'

'Not that I know of. Not one of your regulars.'

'Oh, all right, all right; ii you're going down you might
ask her to come up.
It's
probably someone come to join the
school.'

But within himself he thought that it was more likely to
be Delia. They had had a tiff two nights ago at Pinaldi's. H
e had ordered the three-shilling table d'hote in an un
wonted panic of economy, and she, with angry hauteur, had
messed up
the
hors d'
æ
uvres
with her fork and declared she
never saw such muck in her life. What did he take her for?
A servant girl on her night cut? What did he think she
wanted to eat: Herring bones in oil and some vegetables
saved from other people's plate-sweepings? And up she got,
and into her fur coat she wriggled, and out of the building she flounced, the little devil! Johnson had been left to pay,
without rancour, the bill for her uneaten dinner. It would b
e just like her, he though:, if she came again to-night,
and
nestled up to him and begged him to take her to that nice,
nice restaurant where the
hors d'
æ
uvres
were made of herring
bones and all the waiters had flat feet. Well, well, he would
take her if she asked him, for in a melting kittenish mood
she was delicious.

But the girl who came nervously through the open door
was neither the petted Delia nor the splendid Gloria. She glanced with scared, red-rimmed eyes through her pince-
nez, and clutched a shabby dispatch-case as though it con
tained the secret of the universe. She was like the thousands
of girls whom Johnson saw swinging daily down to City
offices on trams and buses, narrow-chested, drooping, creatures with mud-splashed stockings, unbecoming brown felt
hats and deplorable coats trimmed with worn fur. She
looked at Johnson as though she thought that he might
swallow her.

'Mr. - Mr. Johnson?'

'At your service.' He bowed, with his theatrical exaggera
tion. 'And what is there that I can do for you?'

'You won't know my face,' she stammered. 'But you will
know my name. It's Miss Weller. Doreen Weller.'

A faint recollection of some slight discomfort stirred at the
back of his mind.

'I'm very pleased to meet you, Miss Weller. This isn't the
time I generally see clients, you know, but I stayed a little
late after a special tutorial class, and as you are here, you
might as well tell me what I can do for you. Sit down,
won't you?'

She sat, drooping and unattractive, while he tried to re
member which of the stupid girls who wrote to the school
from time to time she might be.

'Mr. Johnson,' she said at last, with a sort of desperate rush. 'Why don't you answer my letters?
⁵

'Ah, letters! letters! There, my dear young lady, you unhappily hit upon one of my congenital failings. I can't
answer letters. I mean to. I mean to. I compose in my
head wonderful phrases to dictate to my secretary. And
they just fade away. They fade away.'

'Yes, yes,' she interrupted. 'But what about my novel?
What's happened to my novel?' And without warning
Miss Weller dropped her face in her hands and began to
cry.

He stared at her with increasing disgust, but his voice was bracing and avuncular.

'Now, now, you're tired, I expect. What's gone wrong,
eh? Oh, you city girls! You city girls. It's a sin - forcing
the sweet flower of girlhood to fade in the dark offices. Dis
torting the natural function of womanhood. Now, try to pull yourself together and tell me what's the trouble.'

Who the devil was she? What the devil was she?

Miss Weller removed her pince-nez and dabbed her
streaming eyes. Johnson rose from his chair by the desk
and began to walk the room with a lecturer's strides, giving
her time to recover her composure.

'We call it progress, ye gods: we call it progress. We force
our women to do things they were never meant to do. We
wrench
^!
em away from their sacred tasks. We waste their
lives. We waste their lives. And we call it progress!'

'But, Mr. Johnson,' gulped the girl, past all concern for
the welfare of her sex. 'I
must
know about my novel.'

'Well, now, Miss Weller, I confess I don't at the moment
recall exactly what it is about this novel.'

He had to go carefully, for the girl might have a real
grievance. She might even, disquieting thought, have a
legal case.

It happened that Johnson was not only the director of the Anglo-American School of Scenario Writing. He was also
proprietor of the Metropolitan and Professional Corre
spondence School of Journalism. This school had been for a
time a lucrative little venture. Johnson ran it with the aid
of a man called Osborne, a broken-down journalist, a clever
man but irresponsible and an intermittent and furious
drinker. The correspondence school conducted its beneficent operations along the simplest lines. Johnson inserted
from
time to time in various papers his characteristically
ingenious advertisements. 'Every Man, Woman or Child
can sell at least
One
Story, if they know how.' 'There would never have been a Mute Inglorious Milton if he had known the Metropolitan and Professional.'
'You
can make people laugh and cry and make them pay you for it.' 'Manuscripts read free.' And so on. In response to these advertisements
from Bath and Huddersfield, Peebles and Penzance, came
poems, short stories, essays, plays and scenarios. To each correspondent Johnson dispatched, after a suitable interval,
his standardized reply. The work submitted, he declared, was hardly marketable, but it showed undoubted promise.

The one thing needed to enable the writer to produce sale
able stuff was an intensive study of his little volume, 'How
to make threepence into three thousand pounds,' to be obtained from the school at the trifling price of six and six,
post free. As a matter of fact, the school had been designed largely as a convenient way of turning to profit the 1,786
remainder copies of his book which Johnson had been forced
under his contract with his publisher to purchase. All manu
scripts sent to the school were passed on at the rate of 2
s.
6
d.
a
manuscript to Mr. Osborne who, in his capacity as Direc
tor of Studies, glanced through the MSS. and scribbled half-
legible remarks along their margins. But Osborne went off
one day, as he always went sooner or later, with the Lord
alone knew how many MSS. in his trunk; since that time
Johnson had been too much preoccupied with his urgent
private affairs to do more than cash the cheques and send
off the books, and toss the MSS. as they arrived into a big tin box at the Battersea flat, to be handled by Osborne's
successor, whoever he might be.

Among these papers, or among the papers irretrievably
lost when Osborne decamped, it appeared probable that
Miss Doreen Weller's novel lay.