terrace, wondering what had prompted the savage nightmare that had plagued me through the night. The dream had been the first of any kind I had had for several years – one of the pleasant features of beach fatigue is a heavy dreamless sleep, and the sudden irruption of a dream-filled night made me wonder whether Aurora Day, and more particularly her insane poems, were beginning to prey on my mind more than I realized.
My headache took a long time to dissipate. I lay back, watching the Day villa, its windows closed and shuttered, awnings retracted, like a sealed crown. Who was she anyway, I asked myself, and what did she really want?
Five minutes later, I saw the Cadillac swing out of the drive and coast down the Stars towards me.
Not another delivery! The woman was tireless. I waited by the front door, met the driver half way down the steps and took from him a wax-sealed envelope.
‘Look,’ I said to him confidentially. ‘I’d hate to discourage an emerging talent, but I think you might well use any influence you have on your mistress and, you know, generally …’ I let the idea hang in front of him, and added: ‘By the way, all these streamers that keep blowing across here are getting to be a damn nuisance.’
The chauffeur regarded me out of his red-rimmed foxy eyes, his beaked face contorted in a monstrous grin. Shaking his head sadly, he hobbled back to the car.
As he drove off I opened the letter. Inside was a single sheet of paper.
Mr Ransom,
Your rejection of my poems astounds me. I seriously advise you to reconsider your decision. This is no trifling matter. I expect to see the poems printed in your next issue.
AURORA DAY
That night I had another insane dream.
The next selection of poems arrived when I was still in bed, trying to massage a little sanity back into my mind. I climbed out of bed and made myself a large Martini, ignoring the envelope jutting through the door like the blade of a paper spear.
When I had steadied myself I slit it open, and scanned the three short poems included.
They were dreadful. Dimly I wondered how to persuade Aurora that the requisite talent was missing. Holding the Martini in one hand and peering at the poems in the other, I ambled on to the terrace and slumped down in one of the chairs.
With a shout I sprang into the air, knocking the glass out of my hand. I had sat down on something large and spongy, the size of a cushion but with uneven bony contours.
Looking down, I saw an enormous dead sand-ray lying in the centre of the seat, its white-tipped sting, still viable, projecting a full inch from its sheath above the cranial crest.
Jaw clamped angrily, I went straight into my study, slapped the three poems into an envelope with a rejection slip and scrawled across it: ‘Sorry, entirely unsuitable. Please try other publications.’
Half an hour later I drove down to Vermilion Sands and mailed it myself. As I came back I felt quietly pleased with myself.
That afternoon a colossal boil developed on my right cheek.
Tony Sapphire and Raymond Mayo came round the next morning to commiserate. Both thought I was being pigheaded and pedantic.
‘Print one,’ Tony told me, sitting down on the foot of the bed.
‘I’m damned if I will,’ I said. I stared out across the desert at Studio 5. Occasionally a window moved and caught the sunlight but otherwise I had seen nothing of my neighbour.
Tony shrugged. ‘All you’ve got to do is accept one and she’ll be satisfied.’
‘Are you sure?’ I asked cynically. ‘This may be only the beginning. For all we know she may have a dozen epics in the bottom of her suitcase.’
Raymond Mayo wandered over to the window beside me, slipped on his dark glasses and scrutinized the villa. I noticed that he looked even more dapper than usual, dark hair smoothed back, profile adjusted for maximum impact.
‘I saw her at the “psycho i” last night,’ he mused. ‘She had a private balcony upon the mezzanine. Quite extroardinary. They had to stop the floor show twice.’ He nodded to himself. ‘There’s something formless and unstated there, reminded me of Dali’s “Cosmogonic Venus”. Made me realize how absolutely terrifying all women really are. If I were you I’d do whatever I was told.’
I set my jaw, as far as I could, and shook my head dogmatically. ‘Go away. You writers are always pouring scorn on editors, but when things get tough who’s the first to break? This is the sort of situation I’m prepared to handle, my whole training and discipline tell me instinctively what to do. That crazy neurotic over there is trying to bewitch me. She thinks she can call down a plague of dead rays, boils and nightmares and I’ll surrender my conscience.’
Shaking their heads sadly over my obduracy, Tony and Raymond left me to myself.
Two hours later the boil had subsided as mysteriously as it had appeared. I was beginning to wonder why when a pick-up from The Graphis Press in Vermilion Sands delivered the advance five-hundred of the next issue of
I carried the cartons into the lounge, then slit off the wrapping, thinking pleasurably of Aurora Day’s promise that she would have her poems published in the next issue. She had failed to realize that I had passed the final pages two days beforehand, and that I could hardly have printed her poems even if I had wanted to.
Opening the pages, I turned to the editorial, another in my series of examinations of the present malaise affecting poetry.
However, in place of the usual half-dozen paragraphs of 10-point type I was astounded to see a single line of 24-point, announcing in italic caps:
I broke off, hurriedly peered at the cover to make sure Graphis had sent me advance copies of the right journal, then raced rapidly through the pages.
The first poem I recognized immediately. I had rejected it only two days earlier. The next three I had also seen and rejected, then came a series that were new to me, all signed ‘Aurora Day’ and taking the place of the poems I had passed in page proof.
The entire issue had been pirated! Not a single one of the original poems remained, and a completely new make-up had been substituted. I ran back into the lounge and opened a dozen copies. They were all the same.
Ten minutes later I had carried the three cartons out to the incinerator, tipped them in and soaked the copies with petrol, then tossed a match into the centre of the pyre. Simultaneously, a few miles away Graphis Press were doing the same to the remainder of the 5,000 imprint. How the misprinting had occurred they could not explain. They searched out the copy, all on Aurora’s typed notepaper, but with editorial markings in my handwriting! My own copy had disappeared, and they soon denied they had ever received it.
As the heavy flames beat into the hot sunlight I thought that through the thick brown smoke I could see a sudden burst of activity coming from my neighbour’s house. Windows were opening under the awnings, and the hunchbacked figure of the chauffeur was scurrying along the terrace.
Standing on the roof, her white gown billowing around her like an enormous silver fleece, Aurora Day looked down at me. Whether it was the large quantity of Martini I had drunk that morning, the recent boil on my cheek or the fumes from the burning petrol, I’m not sure, but as I walked back into the house I felt unsteady, and sat down hazily on the top step, closing my eyes as my brain swam.
After a few seconds my head cleared again. Leaning on my knees, I focused my eyes on the blue glass step between my feet. Cut into the surface in neat letters was:
Still too weak to more than register an automatic protest against this act of vandalism, I pulled myself to my feet, taking the door key out of my dressing-gown pocket. As I inserted it into the lock I noticed, inscribed into the brass seat of the lock:
There were other inscriptions all over the black leather panelling of the door, cut in the same neat script, the lines crossing each other at random, like filigree decoration around a baroque salver.
Closing the door behind me, I walked into the lounge. The walls seemed darker than usual, and I realized
