Vile Bodies Page 3

  “Do you know, I rather think I’m going to be sick again?”

  “Oh, Miles!”

  (Oh, Bright Young People!)

  Packed all together in a second-class carriage, the angels were late in recovering their good humor.

  “She’s taken Prudence off in her car again,” said Divine Discontent, who once, for one delirious fortnight, had been Mrs. Ape’s favorite girl. “Can’t see what she sees in her. What’s London like, Fortitude? I never been there but once.”

  “Just exactly heaven. Shops and all.”

  “What are the men like, Fortitude?”

  “Say, don’t you never think of nothing but men, Chastity?”

  “I should say I do. I was only asking.”

  “Well, they ain’t much to look at, not after the shops. But they has their uses.”

  “Say, did you hear that? You’re a cute one, Fortitude. Did you hear what Fortitude said? She said ‘they have their uses.’ ”

  “What, shops?”

  “No, silly, men.”

  “Men. That’s a good one, I should say.”

  Presently the train arrived at Victoria, and all these passengers were scattered all over London.

  Adam left his bag at Shepheard’s Hotel, and drove straight to Henrietta Street to see his publishers. It was nearly closing time, so that most of the staff had packed up and gone home, but by good fortune Mr. Sam Benfleet, the junior director with whom Adam always did his business, was still in his room correcting proofs for one of his women novelists. He was a competent young man, with a restrained elegance of appearance (the stenographer always trembled slightly when she brought him his cup of tea).

  “No, she can’t print that,” he kept saying, endorsing one after another of the printer’s protests. “No, damn it, she can’t print that. She’ll have us all in prison.” For it was one of his most exacting duties to “ginger up” the more reticent of the manuscripts submitted and “tone down” the more “outspoken” until he had reduced them all to the acceptable moral standard of his day.

  He greeted Adam with the utmost cordiality.

  “Well, well, Adam, how are you? This is nice. Sit down. Have a cigarette. What a day to arrive in London. Did you have a good crossing?”

  “Not too good.”

  “I say, I am sorry. Nothing so beastly as a beastly crossing, is there? Why don’t you come round to dinner at Wimpole Street tonight? I’ve got some rather nice Americans coming. Where are you staying?”

  “At ‘Shepheard’s’—Lottie Crump’s.”

  “Well, that’s always fun. I’ve been trying to get an autobiography out of Lottie for ten years. And that reminds me. You’re bringing us your manuscript, aren’t you? Old Rampole was asking about it only the other day. It’s a week overdue, you know. I hope you’ll like the preliminary notices we’ve sent out. We’ve fixed the day of publication for the second week in December, so as to give it a fortnight’s run before Johnnie Hoop’s autobiography. That’s going to be a seller. Sails a bit near the wind in places. We had to cut out some things—you know what old Rampole is. Johnnie didn’t like it a bit. But I’m looking forward terribly to reading yours.”

  “Well, Sam, rather an awful thing happened about that…”

  “I say, I hope you’re not going to say it’s not finished. The date on the contract, you know…”

  “Oh, it’s finished all right. Burned.”

  “Burned?”

  “Burned.”

  “What an awful thing. I hope you are insured.”

  Adam explained the circumstances of the destruction of his autobiography. There was a longish pause while Sam Benfleet thought.

  “What worries me is how are we going to make that sound convincing to old Rampole.”

  “I should think it sounded convincing enough.”

  “You don’t know old Rampole. It’s sometimes very difficult for me, Adam, working under him. Now if I had my own way I’d say, ‘Take your own time. Start again. Don’t worry…’ But there’s old Rampole. He’s a devil for contracts, you know, and you did say, didn’t you…? It’s all very difficult. You know, I wish it hadn’t happened.”

  “So do I, oddly enough,” said Adam.

  “There’s another difficulty. You’ve had an advance already, haven’t you? Fifty pounds, wasn’t it? Well, you know, that makes things very difficult. Old Rampole never likes big advances like that to young authors. You know I hate to say it, but I can’t help feeling that the best thing would be for you to repay the advance—plus interest, of course, old Rampole would insist on that—and cancel the contract. Then if you ever thought of rewriting the book, well, of course, we should be delighted to consider it. I suppose that—well, I mean, it would be quite convenient, and all that, to repay the advance?”

  “Not only inconvenient, but impossible,” said Adam in no particular manner.

  There was another pause.

  “Deuced awkward,” said Sam Benfleet. “It’s a shame the way the Customs House officers are allowed to take the law into their own hands. Quite ignorant men, too. Liberty of the subject, I mean, and all that. I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll start a correspondence about it in the New Statesman… It is all so deuced awkward. But I think I can see a way out. I suppose you could get the book rewritten in time for the Spring List? Well, we’ll cancel the contract and forget all about the advance. No, no, my dear fellow, don’t thank me. If only I was alone here I’d be doing that kind of thing all day. Now instead we’ll have a new contract. It won’t be quite so good as the last, I’m afraid. Old Rampole wouldn’t stand for that. I’ll tell you what, we’ll give you our standard first-novel contract. I’ve got a printed form here. It won’t take a minute to fill up. Just sign here.”

  “May I just see the terms?”

  “Of course, my dear fellow. They look a bit hard at first, I know, but it’s our usual form. We made a very special case for you, you know. It’s very simple. No royalty on the first two thousand, then a royalty of two and a half percent, rising to five percent on the tenth thousand. We retain serial, cinema, dramatic, American, Colonial and translation rights, of course. And, of course, an option on your next twelve books on the same terms. It’s a very straightforward arrangement really. Doesn’t leave room for any of the disputes which embitter the relations of author and publisher. Most of our authors are working on a contract like that… Splendid. Now don’t you bother any more about that advance. I understand perfectly, and I’ll square old Rampole somehow, even if it comes out of my director’s fees.”

  “Square old Rampole,” repeated Mr. Benfleet thoughtfully as Adam went downstairs. It was fortunate, he reflected, that none of the authors ever came across the senior partner, that benign old gentleman, who once a week drove up to board meetings from the country, whose chief interest in the business was confined to the progress of a little book of his own about beekeeping, which they had published twenty years ago and, though he did not know it, allowed long ago to drop out of print. He often wondered in his uneasy moments what he would find to say when Rampole died.

  It was about now that Adam remembered that he was engaged to be married. The name of his young lady was Nina Blount. So he went into a tube station to a telephone box, which smelled rather nasty, and rang her up.

  “Hullo.”

  “Hullo.”

  “May I speak to Miss Blount, please?”

  “I’ll just see if she’s in,” said Miss Blount’s voice. “Who’s speaking, please?” She was always rather snobbish about the fiction of having someone to answer the telephone.

  “Mr. Fenwick-Symes.”

  “Oh.”

  “Adam, you know… How are you, Nina?”

  “Well, I’ve got rather a pain just at present.”

  “Poor Nina. Shall I come round and see you?”

  “No, don’t do that, darling, because I’m just going to have a bath. Why don’t we dine together?”

  “Well, I asked Agatha Runcible to dinner.”

/>   “Why?”

  “She’d just had all her clothes taken off by some sailors.”

  “Yes, I know, it’s all in the evening paper tonight… Well, I’ll tell you what. Let’s meet at Archie Schwert’s party. Are you going?”

  “I rather said I would.”

  “That’s all right, then. Don’t dress up. No one will, except Archie.”

  “Oh, I say, Nina, there’s one thing—I don’t think I shall be able to marry you after all.”

  “Oh, Adam, you are a bore. Why not?”

  “They burned my book.”

  “Beasts. Who did?”

  “I’ll tell you about it tonight.”

  “Yes, do. Good-bye, darling.”

  “Good-bye, my sweet.”

  He hung up the receiver and left the telephone box. People had crowded into the Underground station for shelter from the rain, and were shaking their umbrellas and reading their evening papers. Adam could see the headlines over their shoulders.

  PEER’S DAUGHTER’S DOVER ORDEAL

  SERIOUS ALLEGATIONS BY

  SOCIETY BEAUTY

  HON. A. RUNCIBLE SAYS

  “TOO SHAMING”

  “Poor pretty,” said an indignant old woman at his elbow. “Disgraceful, I calls it. And such a good sweet face. I see her picture in the papers only yesterday. Nasty prying minds. That’s what they got. And her poor father and all. Look, Jane, there’s a piece about him, too. ‘Interviewed at the Carlton Club this evening, Lord Chasm,’ that’s her dad, ‘refused to make a definite statement. “The matter shall not be allowed to rest here,” he said.’ And quite right, too, I says. You know I feels about that girl just as though it was me own daughter. Seeing her picture so often and our Sarah having done the back stairs, Tuesdays, at them flats where her aunt used to live—the one as had that ’orrible divorce last year.”

  Adam bought a paper. He had just ten shillings left in the world. It was too wet to walk, so he took a very crowded tube train to Dover Street and hurried across in the rain to Shepheard’s Hotel (which, for the purposes of the narrative, may be assumed to stand at the corner of Hay Hill).

  Three

  Lottie Crump, proprietress of Shepheard’s Hotel, Dover Street, attended invariably by two Cairn terriers, is a happy reminder to us that the splendors of the Edwardian era were not entirely confined to Lady Anchorage or Mrs. Blackwater. She is a fine figure of a woman, singularly unscathed by any sort of misfortune and superbly oblivious of those changes in the social order which agitate the more observant grandes dames of her period. When the war broke out she took down the signed photograph of the Kaiser and, with some solemnity, hung it in the menservants’ lavatory; it was her one combative action; since then she has had her worries—income-tax forms and drink restrictions and young men whose fathers she used to know, who give her bad checks, but these have been soon forgotten; one can go to Shepheard’s parched with modernity any day, if Lottie likes one’s face, and still draw up, cool and uncontaminated, great, healing draughts from the well of Edwardian certainty.

  Shepheard’s has a plain, neatly pointed brick front and large, plain doorway. Inside it is like a country house. Lottie is a great one for sales, and likes, whenever one of the great houses of her day is being sold up, to take away something for old times’ sake. There is a good deal too much furniture at Shepheard’s, some of it rare, some of it hideous beyond description; there is plenty of red plush and red morocco and innumerable wedding presents of the ’eighties; in particular many of those massive, mechanical devices covered with crests and monograms, and associated in some way with cigars. It is the sort of house in which one expects to find croquet mallets and polo sticks in the bathroom, and children’s toys at the bottom of one’s chest of drawers, and an estate map and an archery target—exuding straw—and a bicycle and one of those walking sticks which turn into saws, somewhere in passages, between baize doors, smelling of damp. (As a matter of fact, all you are likely to find in your room at Lottie’s is an empty champagne bottle or two and a crumpled camisole.)

  The servants, like the furniture, are old and have seen aristocratic service. Doge, the head waiter, who is hard of hearing, partially blind, and tortured with gout, was once a Rothschild’s butler. He had, in fact, on more than one occasion in Father Rothschild’s youth, dandled him on his knee, when he came with his father (at one time the fifteenth richest man in the world) to visit his still richer cousins, but it would be unlike him to pretend that he ever really liked the embryo Jesuit who was “too clever by half,” given to asking extraordinary questions, and endowed with a penetrating acumen in the detection of falsehood and exaggeration.

  Besides Doge, there are innumerable old housemaids always trotting about with cans of hot water and clean towels. There is also a young Italian who does most of the work and gets horribly insulted by Lottie, who once caught him powdering his nose, and will not let him forget it. Indeed, it is one of the few facts in Lottie’s recent experience that seems always accessible.

  Lottie’s parlor, in which most of the life of Shepheard’s centers, contains a comprehensive collection of signed photographs. Most of the male members of the royal families of Europe are represented (except the ex-Emperor of Germany, who has not been reinstated, although there was a distinct return of sentiment towards him on the occasion of his second marriage). There are photographs of young men on horses riding in steeplechases, of elderly men leading in the winners of “classic” races, of horses alone and of young men alone, dressed in tight, white collars or in the uniform of the Brigade of Guards. There are caricatures by “Spy,” and photographs cut from illustrated papers, many of them with brief obituary notices, “killed in action.” There are photographs of yachts in full sail and of elderly men in yachting caps; there are some funny pictures of the earliest kind of motor car. There are very few writers or painters and no actors, for Lottie is true to the sound old snobbery of pound sterling and strawberry leaves.

  Lottie was standing in the hall abusing the Italian waiter when Adam arrived.

  “Well,” she said, “you are a stranger. Come along in. We were just thinking about having a little drink. You’ll find a lot of your friends here.”

  She led Adam into the parlor, where they found several men, none of whom Adam had ever seen before.

  “You all know Lord Thingummy, don’t you?” said Lottie.

  “Mr. Symes,” said Adam.

  “Yes, dear, that’s what I said. Bless you, I knew you before you were born. How’s your father? Not dead, is he?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid he is.”

  “Well, I never. I could tell you some things about him. Now let me introduce you—that’s Mr. What’s-his-name, you remember him, don’t you? And over there in the corner, that’s the Major, and there’s Mr. What-d’you-call-him, and that’s an American, and there’s the King of Ruritania.”

  “Alas, no longer,” said a sad, bearded man.

  “Poor chap,” said Lottie Crump, who always had a weak spot for royalty, even when deposed. “It’s a shame. They gave him the boot after the war. Hasn’t got a penny. Not that he ever did have much. His wife’s locked up in a loony house, too.”

  “Poor Maria Christina. It is true how Mrs. Crump says. Her brains, they are quite gone out. All the time she thinks everyone is a bomb.”

  “It’s perfectly true, poor old girl,” said Lottie with relish. “I drove the King down Saturday to see her… (I won’t have him traveling third class). It fair brought tears to my eyes. Kept skipping about all the time, she did, dodging. Thought they were throwing things at her.”

  “It is one strange thing, too,” said the King. “All my family they have bombs thrown at them, but the Queen, never. My poor Uncle Joseph he blow all to bits one night at the opera, and my sister she find three bombs in her bed. But my wife, never. But one day her maid is brushing her hair before dinner, and she said, ‘Madam,’ she said, ‘the cook has had lesson from the cook at the French Legation’—the food at my home
was not what you call chic. One day it was mutton hot, then mutton cold, then the same mutton hot again, but less nicer, not chic, you understand me—‘he has had lesson from the French cook,’ the maid say, ‘and he has made one big bomb as a surprise for your dinner party tonight for the Swedish Minister.’ Then the poor Queen say ‘Oh,’ like so, and since then always her poor brains has was all no-how.”

  The ex-King of Ruritania sighed heavily and lit a cigar.

  “Well,” said Lottie, brushing aside a tear, “what about a little drink? Here, you over there, your Honor Judge What’s-your-name, how about a drink for the gentlemen?”

  The American, who, like all the listeners, had been profoundly moved by the ex-King’s recitation, roused himself to bow and say, “I shall esteem it a great honor if His Majesty and yourself, Mrs. Crump, and these other good gentlemen…”

  “That’s the way,” said Lottie. “Hi, there, where’s my Fairy Prince? Powdering hisself again, I suppose. Come here, Nancy, and put away the beauty cream.”

  In came the waiter.

  “Bottle of wine,” said Lottie, “with Judge Thingummy there.”

  (Unless specified in detail, all drinks are champagne in Lottie’s parlor. There is also a mysterious game played with dice which always ends with someone giving a bottle of wine to everyone in the room, but Lottie has an equitable soul and she generally sees to it, in making up the bills, that the richest people pay for everything.)

  After the third or fourth bottle of wine Lottie said, “Who d’you think we’ve got dining upstairs tonight? Prime Minister.”

  “Me, I have never liked Prime Ministers. They talk and talk and then they talk more. ‘Sir, you must sign that.’ ‘Sir, you must go here and there.’ ‘Sir, you must do up that button before you give audience to the black plenipotentiary from Liberia.’ Pah! After the war my people give me the bird, yes, but they throw my Prime Minister out of the window, bump right bang on the floor. Ha, ha.”