‘I don’t believe it,’ I said, ‘You yourself thought that some of the letters came to them as well as to us, and that was the reason for their leaving.’
‘Oh, anonymous letter-writers always include themselves. I thought everybody knew that.’
‘Maybe, but people who live in glass houses don’t throw stones at their own dwellings. There’s still plenty of prejudice against emotional friendships between women.’
‘Only the other day you denied all that. What a turncoat you are. What with the witch’s dog and an altered proverb, I really
(3)
You must not think, Dame Beatrice, that this account covers only a few days, There were quite long gaps between one happening and the next, and I suppose more than six weeks elapsed between the episode of the notepaper heading and the departure of Miss Kennett and Miss Barnes.
Niobe had asked them to let her have their new address so that she could send on any letters which came for them, but I suppose they had already notified the Post Office, for none of their correspondence turned up, and neither did they leave a forwarding address.
The next couple to go were Sumatra and Irelath, but although they departed from Weston Pipers at the end of September, they paid six months’ rent in advance, asked for their apartment to be dusted and aired periodically, and promised to return in the following March. Irelath was to lecture in the United States and Sumatra resigned from her job in order to accompany him. I could only suppose that his Canadian father’s money was grafting the trip, for Irelath was so very minor a poet, so far as his published work was concerned, that it was impossible to believe that he had been selected on his merits.
My novel matured slowly. As I finished each chapter Niobe typed it for me. She had invested in a new typewriter for the purpose because, she said, it was unsuitable that deathless prose such as mine should be typed on a ten-year-old machine. That would do for making out receipts to the tenants for their rent and lists for the tradespeople, but not for my novel. Whether she was serious in her stated admiration for my work, or whether she simply wanted a new toy to play with, I did not enquire. I subbed up for the typewriter and I must say that she made my chapters look very attractive indeed, so much so that I began to admire them myself and felt that, given beginner’s luck, publication ceased to be problematical and was a near-certainty.
So matters went on for a month or two. The sea became colder, my swims from our strip of beach less frequent, the tenants, as the soldier said of the camp-following prostitutes, became more and more like old war- comrades and we all settled down to winter in. The house was snug and comfortable, for Niobe had installed a splendid central-heating system and had provided electric fires as well. The tenants’ excursions up to town to harry their publishers and abuse their literary agents became as infrequent as my dips in the sea and, except for some unexplained excursions into the town, everybody stayed put, although harmony did not always prevail. I was aware of undercurrents.
My novel reached the halfway stage and sometimes I wondered why on earth I had ever begun it. At about this time – I can’t remember the exact date – the weather turned wet and Constance Kent hit Evesham Evans over the head with a bottle with (according to his account) no justification whatever. He had to have four stitches in the cut. Polly Hempseed and Cassie McHaig got roaring drunk on the latter’s birthday and went staggering out into the grounds naked as they were born and performed weird gyrations on the lawn while the rain poured down on them and Niobe sent me out to remonstrate with them while everybody else crowded the windows to watch. Latimer Targe followed me out with a couple of blankets. We threw these over them to cover their nakedness although, as he said regretfully afterwards, it did rather spoil the fun for everybody, and when we got them indoors they had a fight which wrecked their living-room.
One morning when the postman knocked me up and presented me with a registered letter for which a signature was required, I signed obediently, having no idea, until he had gone and I had taken it to my room and a better light, that the letter was not for me but was addressed to Miss Minnie at The Lodge.
‘Oh, damn!’ I thought, as I looked out at the pouring rain, the soaked lawn and the dripping November trees. ‘She’ll have to wait for it. I’m not traipsing out in this!’
However, a registered letter is a registered letter, so, cursing the weather and ignoring Niobe’s call that breakfast was ready, I put a waterproof over my pyjamas, put on some shoes and ran across the lawn. Lights were on in several parts of the house, but the bungalow was unlighted and the curtains, I could see, were still drawn. I pushed the registered envelope through the letterbox, beat an exasperated tattoo on the door and pelted back to the house to get dried and dressed.
Niobe was not very pleased.
‘No need to have gone out there before breakfast,’ she said. ‘I’ve kept yours hot, but it isn’t the same as when it’s first cooked. She’ll probably stay in bed till eleven or later, on a beastly dark morning like this.’
‘Not with the bashing I gave her front door,’ I said.
‘I wonder what was in the envelope? Did you open it as you opened the other one?’ Niobe asked nastily.
‘Money, perhaps, as it was registered,’ I said, ignoring the thrust.
I thought no more of the matter. We were already making preparations for Christmas and I had planned a cocktail party, with a Christmas tree and presents for everybody. On Christmas Eve, Hempseed and Cassie, unusually subdued and well-behaved since their Terpsichorean exhibition on the lawn, could be heard in their flat practising carols to Constance Kent’s guitar, while the sounds of sawing and hammering from the Evans-Kent apartment seemed to prove that Evesham was carrying out a promise he had made to Cassie, a devout Catholic whenever she troubled herself to go to church – hers was a long way off – that he would make her a crib.
All seemed set for a happy if not a particularly peaceful period when the postman came again with an offering for Miss Minnie. This time it was a fairly bulky parcel.
‘This is the third time I’ve brought it, and never nobody at home,’ he told me resentfully, ‘and in this weather, sir, that’s not funny. There is never nobody at home in that bungalow, not to take in that registered letter nor nothing, so, without you’re willing to take it in for the lady, I’ll have to leave her a note that she’ll have to go and collect this parcel herself from the Post Office. I’ve done more than my duty already and I can’t tote this here parcel around no more times. It would mean her going into the town for it if I don’t leave it with you. Please yourself, of course, sir. You don’t have to accept it if you don’t want.’
‘Oh, I’ll take it,’ I said. I put it down underneath the hall table, did not think to tell anyone else that I had taken it in and, in the general bustle of preparations, Christmas shopping, ordering in drinks and food and being driven almost demented by Constance Kent’s guitar and Evesham Evans’s incessant carpentry, I forgot all about it. It was
