so the two were always pleasant to each other out of guilt. As writers and as men, they were very different, yet they always gravitated towards each other.
‘I read your latest with considerable interest,’ James said as soon as Denton was close, ‘and, I think, with satisfaction, although that is hardly a word that honours a work, I suppose, when heard by the author, or am I presuming to impose my own sensibilities on someone else’s, hardly unheard of in the world of books.’ He chuckled. Denton said something vague; he was never good at accepting praise, worse at giving it when it came to other people’s books. James was
Do him pretty well? Denton said, ‘We mostly get along.’
‘I’m never entirely confident of my publishers, whoever they be. The matter of royalty is vexing, constantly vexing, offered at a certain level and then haggled over as if the Man of Galilee had driven the money-changers out of the temple and into the publishing office.’ He shook Denton’s arm a little. ‘What do you think of these people who call themselves “agents”? They assure me they can lever better terms from the publishers, their letters sometimes quite impertinent, but then they confess they require some of it for themselves, a situation that I must admit gives me unease, not because I am naive in the ways of business, because I am not, but rather the opposite, for no one can have hovered about books for as long as I without learning that the income to be made from a book is finite and represents a sum that can be divided into only so many pieces without, like the crow in the Aesop’s fable — or is it the monkey? how one’s memory plays tricks — dividing it into nothingness. I wonder if these would-be “agents” are not simply opportunists who think authors are fools.’
Denton admitted that he had had some letters from would-be agents himself and was tempted.
‘Exactly. But one doesn’t want to be the first to step into this perhaps inviting pool and find it to be not sweet water but something unsavoury, perhaps in fact corrosive.’ James stood with his head slightly bent, still holding Denton’s arm, his bright eyes scavenging the room like those of some intelligent bird, a pied crow that, if its tongue were split and it were taught to talk, would say malicious things. It was as if James were always on the lookout for scandal or at least its potential, James’s idea of the world of fiction, at least in Denton’s view, being very close to gossip. Such an approach was not Denton’s, just as James’s ambience was not his. As if guessing his thought, James shook his arm again and said, ‘Our work is very different, yours and mine, yet both are to be admired. That is rather a conundrum. I have been thinking about it a good deal for a preface. The house of fiction has many windows, has it not?’
‘For us to look out of?’ Denton laughed. ‘I’d have said it was a house that had many doors.’
‘Aha, you shift my metaphor. Perhaps a separate entrance for ladies, at least, if not a separate house. No, I was thinking of the way we see and what we see and then what we do with what we see, each from his own window. Tell me now, what do you make of the vulgar concept of “the plot”? People who don’t know any better are forever asking me where I get my plots, as if I bought them with my shirts at a guinea a dozen. You don’t worry yourself greatly over “the plot”, surely?’
Denton tried to think about it. He lacked James’s interest in criticism, seldom worked in such terms. ‘I suppose I begin with situation,’ he said. He thought of the book he was trying to finish, the husband and wife and the ghostly child. ‘Or an exchange. Some kind of interaction.’
‘Aha! Very good. Interaction. Mmm. And then “the plot” comes along like a child’s wooden toy that gets pulled on a string, mechanically bobbing its head and wagging its tail. Yes. I quite agree. Although I begin rather differently; how matters not.’ His eyes had continued to dart about, even though his head was down and he and Denton might have seemed to be discussing secrets.
Denton thought about how they must look, then reminded himself that they were the only Americans there. The outsiders. It might have been the title of a Jamesian novel. He said, ‘I’d have said that you and I stand on the outside of the windows with our noses pressed against the glass, not that we were looking from the inside out.’
James let go of his arm. His little smile seemed almost apologetic. ‘You are made of even harder stuff than I. I fear it’s important to me to be safely inside.’ He prepared to move off. He pulled down a cuff and touched his white necktie. ‘I see Edmund Gosse over there. I must ask him about someone to paint my portrait. My publisher insists upon a portrait frontispiece for a collected works. I was to have been painted by Himple, RA, but he suddenly decamped for places unknown. I suppose this was “artistic” of him, but it leaves me in what Americans of our generation call “a pickle”. I have waited for him for months. Really, one should be able to be “artistic” and still maintain some regularity to one’s life.’ He gave Denton his small smile and a glance from his sharp eyes, up through his brows. ‘Thank you for your most helpful comments about our craft.’
Denton was able to get away twenty minutes after that. He had smiled at Lang and avoided Gweneth, the publisher who thought he had cheated them out of the motor car.
Atkins had circled a small article in the military-affairs page of
END OF AN OFFICER’S TRIAL
The court-martial proceedings against Lieutenant Aubrey Heseltine, Imperial Yeomanry, ended yesterday with a verdict of guilty to a lesser included charge. The reduction in charge, from Withdrawal in the Face of the Enemy to Failure to Obey a Lawful Order, was the result, a spokesman for the court-martial board said, of consideration for Lieutenant Heseltine’s medical condition. He is said to be suffering from a nervous disorder.
The officer was sentenced to loss of three months’ pay, loss of emoluments and privileges, and return of his commission to the Crown without compensation. He is not to use the rank or wear the King’s uniform again in any circumstances.
Several witnesses spoke to his medical condition and to his good conduct before the incident at Spattenkopje which led to the charge.
‘Poor devil,’ Denton muttered.
‘If he’d been other ranks, they’d have shot him.’ Atkins was pouring tea. ‘Bloo-ha! Discipline! Make an example of him!’ Atkins had turned himself into a fat general of about seventy. ‘My hat!’
‘I’ll go see him.’
‘You finish that book, General. There’s bills to pay.’
‘I can finish the book
‘Today, you mean? The usual. Mrs Char coming to do the rooms.’
‘Good time for me to be out of the house. Don’t let her into my room.’
‘Cleanliness is next to godliness.’
‘God isn’t an author.’
He thought he needed a reason to visit Heseltine — he could hardly show up and say something like
A sleety rain was coming down. He put on a pair of heavy tweed trousers he’d had since his first winter in London, a single-breasted wool coat that matched nothing but its own waistcoat, and another of the high collars that he despised.
‘Find me some shirts with soft collars,’ he snarled to Atkins.
‘Not proper.’
‘To hell with “proper”. I feel as if I’m wearing a slave collar.’
‘Have to get them made special, Colonel — cost you.’
‘And worth it.’
He pulled on an unfitted tweed ulster that billowed around his legs, something else he had bought years before. It had the virtue of keeping the rain off, but it was as heavy as the flock of sheep it had come from. Only as wide as his shoulders at the top, it expanded to yards of circumference at the skirts.
