It was because of Phyllis Chambers that he got rid of the Royal Enfield. She refused point-blank to ride on the pillion; and in any case it would have been out of the question to travel around on it dressed in tennis clothes and carrying racquets. They were forced to beg lifts from other players who had cars, and this was not at all satisfactory.
‘It’s so demeaning,’ Phyllis said. ‘You really ought to have a car, you know. It would be so much more convenient, wouldn’t it?’
He had to agree that it would; there could be no question about that. The only problem was how to obtain a car when his finances were already stretched to the limit.
‘Everybody has a car these days,’ she said. Which was patently untrue of course, but which he saw no point in denying. ‘Without a car you’re so, well, limited, if you see what I mean.’
‘Yes, I do see what you mean.’
‘So you will get one, won’t you? Because I really don’t see how we can go on like this.’
He detected a veiled hint that in the continued absence of a car she might have to think about finding a different partner, and the possibility alarmed him. He did not want to lose her.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.
She looked pleased. ‘I knew you would, David. And it really will make things so much better, won’t it?’
*
He appealed to his father again. Unlike Phyllis Chambers, Mr Sterne failed to see the necessity of his son’s owning a car.
‘What’s wrong with the motor-bike?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with it, but a car would be more convenient in lots of ways.’
Mr Sterne gave him a shrewd look. ‘It’s that girl, isn’t it? You want a car so you can take her about in it.’
‘It’s not just that. It’d be better for my work. And now that I’m earning more I could pay you back before long. It’ll just be a loan, Dad.’
He had already seen the car. It was a Morgan three-wheeler, rather old but in running order. He gave the Royal Enfield in part exchange, and with the loan he had persuaded his father to advance he made himself the owner of something which, although it was powered by a two-cylinder air-cooled engine very plainly visible at the front, was nevertheless undoubtedly a car.
It had its drawbacks. It was noisy, it was smelly, it was far from comfortable to ride in, and the hood was in such poor condition that water tended to leak through whenever it rained. When the weather was warm and the sun was shining it was fine; you felt the breeze in your hair and the exhilaration of speed which was more apparent than real. As the season changed from summer to autumn and then to winter, however, you needed to be well wrapped-up against the chill.
Phyllis was not greatly impressed. ‘It’s a hybrid, isn’t it? It’s a kind of mechanical half-breed, neither one thing nor the other. But I suppose it’s better than the bike.’
She was nineteen years old and living with her parents in a fairly large house on the outskirts of the town. She was an only child and she had a job in her father’s office, though Sterne had a feeling that she did not take this work very seriously. No doubt she would expect to marry eventually and make a home of her own.
He had been introduced to Mr and Mrs Chambers, and he could tell that they did not regard him with much favour. He felt that they looked upon him as something rather distasteful that their daughter had brought into the house. The fact that he worked on The Post was obviously not considered to be very much to his credit.
Mr Chambers was a pale sour-looking man and his wife was a fading blonde with rather too much jewellery about her person. In her Sterne might have seen a preview of what Phyllis could be in another thirty years or so. But the thought did not enter his head. He was far too nervous under the probing eyes of the parents of the girl he was currently in love with.
‘So you’re David Sterne,’ Mr Chambers said. He had a rather high-pitched whinnying sort of voice and he made his words sound like an accusation of some misdemeanour. ‘Hear you’re a journalist.’
Sterne had never yet got round to describing himself as a journalist; it sounded altogether more impressive than reporter. But there seemed to be no need to point out this distinction to the solicitor, so he just said:
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Future in it, d’you think?’
‘I hope so.’
‘On that paper?’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Ah, so you’re thinking of moving on? Up to London, perhaps?’
‘It is a possibility, I suppose.’
‘You’d be well advised to. Young man like you. Don’t want to get yourself bogged down in a backwater like this.’
Sterne could not help feeling that what Mr Chambers had in mind was the idea that his removal to London would take him away from Phyllis and put paid to any liaison between the two that might be raising its ugly head. No doubt he had other plans for his daughter, plans which did not include marriage to someone so completely ineligible as he obviously was.
Mrs Chambers said, with a slight quiver of her chins: ‘Phyllis tells me you are a very good tennis player, David.’
‘I’m glad she thinks so,’ Sterne said.
‘Don’t you?’
‘Oh yes. But I could be biased, couldn’t I? She’s very good too, of course.’
‘So you make an excellent pair?’
The question could have had a double meaning. She might not have been referring solely to tennis. Sterne side-stepped the alternative allusion.
‘We win a lot of games.’
He was glad to get away from the house; it had an oppressive effect on him. There seemed to be no real comfort in it. There was a lot of solid furniture, heavy draperies, thick carpets, a lingering odour of floor polish and not a speck of dust anywhere. It was quite unlike his farmhouse home, which had a permanent appearance of untidiness, a lived-in feeling, a welcoming warmth. He preferred that kind of thing.
*
The Morgan made a great different to his life; it widened his range. He was able to take Phyllis to Ipswich and Norwich, where there was more choice of the latest films than in Bury. They went to dances and lent each other books, and though he was always short of money he felt pretty happy, all things considered.
It lasted for about a year. Then she began to cool, started making excuses for not keeping appointments with him, that sort of thing. And one day, when she had told him she had a previous engagement with her parents, he happened to see her riding in a brand-new MG Midget which was being driven by a young man with slicked-back hair, wearing a blue blazer and a spotted silk scarf.
He taxed her with this next day.
‘You lied to me.’
‘Well, yes,’ she admitted, ‘I suppose I did fib a little.’
‘Who was he?’
‘Alan Newcombe. He’s my cousin. He’s joining Daddy’s firm.’
‘I see. And now I suppose you prefer his company to mine?’
‘You don’t understand –’
‘Or maybe it’s the car. I can see that a new MG Midget would have more attraction than a beat-up old Morgan three-wheeler.’ He spoke bitterly, because he felt bitter. ‘But I think you might have told me. You might at least have done that.’
‘I was going to. I just didn’t want to hurt you.’
‘That was very considerate of you.’
‘Please don’t talk like that,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry; I really am sorry. You have to believe it. But it’s all over between us. It has to be. I’m in love with Alan.’
‘Ha!’ he said. It was not the most intelligent of comments, but he could think of nothing else on the spur of the moment.
‘You’re angry, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘Yes, I can see you are. But you mustn’t be. I mean it’s just something that happens.’
‘Oh, of course.’
‘I didn’t mean to fall in love with him. I couldn’t help it.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘so that’s that.’
‘I’m afraid it is.
Sorry, David.’
That was how it ended. Low key. So damned low key.
Chapter Five – FATE
In a way it was a relief. A blow also of course, straight between the eyes. But the blow was temporary; the relief was permanent. Now he would never have to go to that awful house again and try to be polite to those awful parents who made scarcely any effort to conceal the fact that they regarded him as a piece of dirt, quite unfit to be their daughter’s boyfriend. They had always wanted to be rid of him and now they were. And he was rid of them, thank God.
Now he could get down to some serious writing; he would have the time. With Phyllis on his hands he had written hardly anything except stuff for The Post, which could by no stretch of the imagination have been described as creative writing. Running around with her, he had given barely a thought to anything else. He saw now that he had wasted a whole year; but now with her off his mind he would really get down to it and make up for lost time.
He still played tennis of course, but she was no longer his partner. This worm Alan Newcombe had joined the club and she was paired with him. He always looked immaculate in his pressed white flannels and his Viyella shirt, with never a hair out of place under the controlling application of Brylcreem. His racket was one of the most expensive Wisdens, but Sterne was pleased to observe that he was no great shakes as a player. He was not good enough for his partner in fact, but she was too besotted with him to give him the boot. She no longer won anything, but apparently that was a price she was willing to pay.
He himself had a variety of partners; they were practically queueing up to play with him; which was flattering, to say the least. None of them was as good as Phyllis, and he did not get so involved with them as he had with her, though some of them might have liked him to.
And then another summer was gone and he was able to devote even more of his spare time to that occupation which he had to believe would eventually make his fortune.
He was still writing poetry, but he was turning more and more to the short story, which was likely to be more profitable. There was no shortage of markets; there were monthly magazines galore: Pearson’s, the Strand, the Red, the Blue, the Grand, Nash’s Pall Mall, the Happy, the Sunny, Cornhill, Blackwood’s, Argosy, Twenty Story, the Windsor and many more. There was a multitude of women’s journals and there were weeklies like John Bull, Tit-Bits, Punch, Answers, London Opinion and the Humorist, all publishing stories. An industrious author could make a decent living from writing nothing else.
He had bought a secondhand L.C. Smith typewriter, and he hammered out his stories on this and sent those he considered the best of them to various publications. They came back with sickening regularity, rejection slips attached to them with paper-clips. Sometimes he felt so discouraged that he thought of packing it in, his faith in himself sadly battered. Was there some vital secret for breaking into the market, a secret he had failed to discover? Many of the stories he read in magazines were no better than those he had written; he was convinced of that. Yet they had got into print and his had not. Why?
His aunt was worried about him. ‘You shouldn’t stay indoors so much in the evening. It can’t be good for a young man like you. You should go out more, enjoy yourself like you used to do with that nice girl. Can’t you find somebody else?’
‘Easily. But that wouldn’t get the writing done.’
‘But do you have to write so much, dear?’
‘Yes, I do. It’s my future, you see.’
He knew that she did not see and that she would continue to worry about him. But it had to be. It was his destiny.
‘I’m all right, Auntie. I’m quite all right. Don’t bother yourself about me.’
*
He came across an advertisement in John O’London’s Weekly. It read: ‘The Chancery Literary Agency specialises in placing the work of the unknown author. The highest prices are obtained and clients are paid immediately on acceptance of work, without extra charge.’
There was more, but this was enough. It occurred to him that this was what he had been needing all along – an agent. Perhaps editors scarcely glanced at work sent to them by the authors themselves. Perhaps all successful authors had agents. Perhaps this was the key.
He sent one of his best stories to the Chancery Literary Agency and received a prompt reply. The story was good; it deserved publication; but what it needed was a little expert revision to make it saleable. The C.L.A. was ready to undertake this work at the very reasonable fee of three shillings and sixpence per thousand words. They awaited his further instructions.
He felt a trifle disappointed. In his opinion the story had been perfectly all right as it was. But he supposed the C.L.A had had enough experience to know what was what; and if they revised the story it might make them all the more determined to get a sale for it. So, after some reflection, he decided to send a postal order for half a guinea to cover the cost of revising his three thousand word story.
The revised version arrived a week later. The blue pencil had been freely wielded and he was aghast to see the mayhem that had been inflicted on his story. Quite frankly he did not see how it was any better than it had been before; in fact he would have said it was worse. But he typed it out again with the changes that had been made and sent it back to the agency, together with the fee of another half-guinea which had been demanded to cover the expense of submitting it to as many markets as would prove necessary before the almost certain sale had been obtained.
There followed a long long silence from the C.L.A. After three months had elapsed he wrote to the agency inquiring whether they had yet had any success with the story. By return of post the manuscript came back with a list of magazines to which it had apparently been submitted. There was also a letter. The C.L.A. regretted that they had had no success in placing this particular story, but he would of course appreciate the fact that there were many reasons why a certain story might prove unacceptable at any given time. However, if he had other stories he would like them to handle for him they would be only too pleased to do so, provided the work was up to standard. They looked forward to hearing from him in due course.
He decided to have no further dealings with them, but to set down the whole sorry business as experience. He was to learn that there were a lot of sharks swimming around in the murky waters of the publishing world, eagerly snapping at any morsel that might come within reach. He had been bitten by one of them, but he would not let it happen again. There were firms eager to publish your novel if you paid them for the privilege. They were known as vanity publishers, and they did very little in the way of selling the books they produced. For his money the gullible author ended up with a pile of volumes which no one would buy, and he could either store them in the attic or give them away to friends and acquaintances.
*
Having been disillusioned by his dealings with the Chancery Literary Agency, Sterne came to the conclusion that an agent was not the magic key to success as an author and that the only way was to persevere with his own efforts to surmount the intangible barrier that seemed to exist between his stories and the printed page. And after a time he had some crumbs of encouragement. Now and then, instead of the printed rejection slip he would receive a brief note from the editor telling him that a story of his had almost made it and that other products of his pen would be welcomed for consideration. Spurred on by these magical words, he would hammer out more and more material on the old L.C. Smith and post it off to various destinations. But still it all came back, as though each manuscript had been a homing pigeon bound to return to the place from which it had come.
It seemed hopeless. There were days when he would despair, would call himself a fool for entertaining such ridiculous impossible dreams. Why not face the unpalatable truth that he simply did not have it in him to make the grade? He might as well make one big pile of all his stories so laboriously typed out in double spacing on quarto paper and set a match to it. He would be free then; free of this hope that was nothing but
a mockery.
But those days passed and he refused to give up. He had to have faith in himself, had to believe that if he continued pushing at the door it would finally open and he would be admitted to that paradise inhabited by the published author. One day it would happen.
And one day it did. There was a letter in a small white envelope instead of a rejected manuscript in a large buff one.
It was a letter of acceptance from the Happy Magazine. The editor liked his story, Where the Sun Shines, and had pleasure in offering three guineas for First British Serial Rights.
For a moment he felt quite giddy with elation and the print danced before his eyes. It was the breakthrough he had been seeking. Suddenly the door was open and from this point the going would be easy. At least, that was what he told himself.
He was wrong. The fact that one story had found favour in the eyes of one editor did not mean that all the others would henceforth be falling over one another to get hold of his work. There was still a long way to go, still many disappointments ahead; but just for now he was in ecstasy, and he felt that even in these depths of winter the sun was shining warmly for him.
The first person he told was his aunt. She was very pleased for his sake.
‘I’m sure it’s only what you deserve, dear. After all that hard work you’ve put in.’
She had never read anything of his and he doubted whether she had even heard of the Happy Magazine. He thought she might have shown a little more enthusiasm; she was taking it very calmly. But he supposed it would have been foolish to expect anything more demonstrative from her. She could have no conception of the truly earth-shaking impact of this event.
Rita Webb was more impressed when he told her. She was still Miss Webb, though still engaged to Cyril Atkins, who seemed to be in no hurry to buy the wedding ring.
‘Oh, it’s wonderful, David,’ she said. ‘I’m so glad, I really am. I mean it’s such an achievement, isn’t it? Quite a feather in your cap. I’m sure there’ll be some people round here who’ll be envious.’
A Wind on the Heath Page 3