‘The book,’ said my uncle.
The sea had calmed down a little, the surges rolled more steadily and more sensibly, as if ashamed of their drunken excesses of the night before.
‘It seems to me I have a soul for music, that possibly I had better chuck the book and start on a sonata, but the thought of crochets, quavers, demi-semi-quavers and what not, necessitates my keeping all my musical emotion to myself.’
‘There is no money in music,’ she said coldly.
‘Or I may conceivably become a psycho-analyst, an architect, a boxer, or a furniture-designer.’
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘The book. The book.’
‘The book,’ said my uncle.
Well, writing has its compensations. For if you cannot put the fire into your manuscript, you can always put your manuscript into the fire. You have written one novel, and you are writing another. Your own particular publisher writes to you at intervals: ‘How goes it? How is the spirit moving you?’ And you reply, with the expression of a hen hatching a rare egg: ‘I think it is all right … I think it is coming out all right. I think we are saved.’ And he retires on tiptoe, frightened, frightened lest he frighten you off this precious gold egg. And then he comes again: ‘How goes it? Nearly ready?’
‘Not yet.’
And he goes and buys the paper and the cardboard and the necessary implements in anticipation of your work which is now ‘in preparation’.
Writing has its compensations. The misguided reviewers who have damned my last book, and who will damn this one, I damn in advance. My last one was a macédoine of vegetables. The critics — big dogs, small dogs, hounds and pekingese, came up and sniffed at an unfamiliar vegetable dish, and went away, wagging their tails confusedly. But this should be more beefy. Shall I write it as a moral story with a lesson: pointing out what happens when a selfish aunt is allowed to have it all her own evil way? Or shall I—? No matter. I am not — you won’t misunderstand me — writing a noveclass="underline" I am asking: will this do for a novel?
Suddenly I was seized with energy, filled with dread lest I should lose another moment. After all these months of indolence I suddenly conceived that I was in a hurry. It was as if these wasted months had tumbled over me and were pressing me down with their weight. I longed to see it finished, printed, an accomplished task embodied in between two cardboard sheets of binding, wrapped in a striking yellow jacket, and sold at so much net. This old decrepit ship was so intolerably slow. She literally went to sleep. I wanted to do things, to live, to work, to build, to shout. To promote companies, conduct a symphony orchestra, organize open-air meetings, paint pictures, preach sermons, act Hamlet, work in a coal mine, write to the Press. And then Sylvia comes and tells me that my aunt is again as sick as a cat. Gustave — the lucky dog. How I envied him, and how stupid it was that at this very moment, perhaps, he might be envying me.
Bah!
I am mortally sick of them, of immoral old uncles, insatiable women, Belgian duds, impecunious captains, insane generals, stink-making majors, pyramidon-taking aunts! Of aspirin, tisane, eau-de-Cologne. Of the scent of powder, of Mon Boudoir aroma. And when Sylvia steals at night into my cabin and talks of divorce in order that we may consolidate our union, I visualize the camisole and knickers, my head goes round from her scent Cœur de Jeanette, and though I still feel she is very beautiful I say ‘What of it?’ and my thoughts go out to my unfortunate Uncle Lucy with a dawning understanding.
And the end? you will ask. For you may have a morbid taste for a strong dramatic ending which may seem to you appropriate to anv kind of book. I say to you: ‘Bunkum!’ The end? I don’t know and I don’t care. The end depends on what you choose to make it. And I invite the reader to co-operate with me in a spirit of good will to make the end a happy one for all concerned: buy this book. If you have already bought it, buy it again, and get your brother and mother to buy it. And the end, for Aunt Teresa and Aunt Molly and the Negodyaev family, will be different — very different — from what it might otherwise become. So tell your friends, tell all your friends — my aunt wants you to.
‘By tomorrow evening we shall see the English coast lights.’ I was thrilled at the prospect, and Aunt Teresa — after all, my aunt was born in Manchester — was also thrilled. She had begun a Russian novel about a woman with six husbands, all living. Three husbands, or even four — she could have stood, perhaps. But six! — It was too much. ‘I can’t read this,’ she said.
‘Ma tante, your attitude to literature is as though you were doing it a favour by touching it at all.’
‘Talking of literature, have you read in yesterday’s Daily Mail,’ Sylvia said—‘Is Woman’s Love Selfish?’
I looked at the horizon. ‘No land in sight?’ she questioned.
The Spanish Fleet thou canst not see, because
It is not yet in sight.
‘What Spanish Fleet are you talking of?’ said Aunt Teresa. My familiarity with quotable literature seems to constrain my family.
‘Ah, ma tante, your distinction lies outside the sphere of letters!’
That night we dallied, played bridge, and noted the addresses of our fellow-passengers, earnestly assuring and assured that we would call, or at least write — when early in the morning on the dim horizon we perceived the shore of England.
The approach of England, as if of a sudden, had precipitated the crystallization of our plans. The General with the mad eyes resigned himself to go to London. There must have been a Cabinet meeting, he thought, perhaps a debate in the House of Commons as to what might be the proper thing to do by him in his exile.
‘Why not see Krassin and go back to Russia and serve under the new régime?’
‘Too much honour for Krassin. Let him come to me. If they all come I might consider the invitation.’ The General said he thought the British Government, in concert with their Allies, would accord him the freedom of their countries and place a suite of officers at his disposal, one from each Ally, to accompany him on his travels through Europe; and he repeated his advice to me to apply for the highly enviable post of A.D.C. to him. ‘The war is over,’ said he, ‘and you cannot do better for yourself. I would treat you with all courtesy.’ Failing this, the General thought that he might eke out a handsome living in the British Isles by telling fortunes — disguise himself as the Black Monk of Russia, with long black fingernails and pale, terrible eyes.’ I only thought of it last night. I’d make my headquarters in Bond Street. All the society women would come in swarms. They would think I was Rasputin. I’d make tons and tons of money. What do you think of it?’
‘Not much.’
‘I go by what Carlyle said of the population of England.’
‘That applies to any population. If your recent utterance is to be regarded as at all characteristic it would prove it.’
‘Why, there are so many idiots in England that I would have a royal time!’
‘And the police, of course, are no exception: they would be silly enough to arrest you.’
‘H’m,’ said he, scraping his bristling chin with the black fingernails. There was silence. His spirits drooped. His usual optimism had deserted him. For a moment he was downcast, without plan, without hope. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said, looking at me with pale, desperate eyes.
‘Have you no relations?’
‘I have a wife somewhere, a sister.’
‘Where are they?’