Death of a Literary Widow

by Robert Barnard

  ‘No?’

  ‘Much more important. I should prefer to call them writers who work on newspapers. Because of course this is not going to be a “story” in the vulgar sense.’

  ‘Naturally not.’

  ‘And there will be no sensationalism. The fact is, the better papers have naturally got wind of what is being talked about in the literary world.’ There was a heady whiff of Bloomsbury in the ‘twenties about this last phrase, and she looked to see if it had impressed Greg Hocking. ‘And there, people in the know are naturally talking about my late husband. They know his first novel will be reprinted next month, and the book of stories later in the year. They know that Mr Kronweiser is working on the manuscript of the second novel, and that there is a mass of papers upstairs. It’s the sort of thing that naturally interests people.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Greg. ‘It certainly interests me.’

  ‘Kind of you to say so,’ said Mrs Machin, beaming on him condescendingly for his boyish enthusiasm. ‘This has been in the wind for some time, you know. The references to Walter have been piling up in the last year or two. People send them to me–people I once knew, in London, sometimes people quite out of the blue. There’ve been mentions in Encounter, the New Statesman, places like that. Now it’s all coming to a head. He was a very significant working-class writer, and now he is going to have a big, a very big, revival!’

  ‘That will be very exciting for you,’ said Greg, feeling like a stuck-pig of a confidant. ‘And I suppose the reporters are working on the background stuff?’

  ‘Precisely. There will be a long article in the Sunday Chronicle colour supplement, and another in the Sentinel weekend review. And I’m afraid the Sunday Grub has got on to the story as well. Big fleas and little fleas, you know . . . ’

  She pulled herself up from her contemplation of future fame, and fussed around Greg in a hostessy manner. She poured him another cup of tea, pressed him to take another slice of cake, and generally behaved as something between mother and mistress. But he could see that her mind was still on the subject of Walter Machin’s future recognition, and he said:

  ‘All this will be very good for sales.’

  ‘Very good! After all these years without a penny, I shall actually receive royalties. Quite a lot, too! I am going to make a very good deal for the second one, when the transcription is complete.’

  ‘I suppose Mr Kronweiser–’

  ‘Mr Kronweiser is transcribing the novel as part of his academic work on my late husband. That was agreed when he was given access to the papers. There is no question at all of his receiving remuneration for his labours.’

  ‘Naturally not,’ murmured Greg, cowed by the polysyllables.

  ‘But it’s not money, not money at all that interests me,’ said Mrs Machin, once more spreading herself out over her chair in her actressy pose and looking straight into Greg’s eyes with an expression of stage sincerity. ‘It’s the truth I’m interested in–making sure the public learns the truth!’

  For some reason Greg Hocking amended her last words in his own mind to ‘my truth’. But he said: ‘I’m sure if the reporters are the sort you say they are–’

  ‘Oh, they are. Except that rather dreadful little man from the Grub, of course, and nobody will pay serious attention to anything he writes. And naturally, I’ve talked to them–endlessly!–and supplied them with photographs, and so on. I’ve been just as co-operative with them as I have with Mr Kronweiser.’

  She paused. Greg Hocking sat, with his cup and saucer in his large hand, waiting for the nub of the matter. Mrs Machin looked ahead of her, this time genuinely in thought, her mouth pursed up in a not very pleasant expression.

  ‘And of course Mr Kronweiser I can trust. Mr Kronweiser I have completely under–complete trust in. On the other hand, the reporters . . . the newspaper writers . . . ’

  Greg Hocking looked at her in some bewilderment, because she seemed to be demanding something of him. ‘There’s nothing you can do about what they write,’ he said feebly. ‘Unless there’s a question of libel . . . ’

  ‘No, no-o-o,’ she said, smiling condescendingly. ‘Of course, I realize that, Gregory. I’m a woman of the world. No, what I was trying to say was . . . that they’ve been talking to our friend Hilda upstairs.’

  She looked at Greg significantly, but he let his eyes go blank–the sort of expression he assumed when being lied to by his pupils. He felt the situation was getting too difficult for him to cope with, and was relieved to hear a determined scratching at the door. He got up to open it, but Mrs Machin forestalled him.

  ‘No, no,’ she said, rising painfully. ‘It’s Pimpernel. He doesn’t know you very well. I shouldn’t like to startle him.’

  She got to the door a little uncertainly. Pimpernel danced in, registered Greg’s presence, and stood some feet from his armchair, letting out high piercing barks, like an ageing Queen of the Night. Greg Hocking had never liked poodles.

  ‘There, darling, there, it’s a nice man, a good friend, nothing to bark at, there, there, darling . . . ’

  Mrs Machin soothed the quivering black bundle with all the overwhelming force of her heavy maternality. She seemed to register Greg’s lack of sympathy, for when she had sat down she said pathetically: ‘He’s all I have. Now the boys are grown up.’

  Greg took a Marie biscuit, and made half-hearted overtures. Pimpernel took his hysterical fury over to the other armchair, sprang up into his mistress’s lap, and lay down eyeing Greg with his coal-black arrogant eyes.

  ‘There’s a love,’ said Mrs Machin. ‘Now, we were saying–?’

  ‘About Mrs Machin–’

  ‘Oh yes–Hilda Machin. Now, I know what good friends you are. And I appreciate your loyalty to her. I do. Nothing could be further from my mind than to say anything against Hilda. After all, we’ve lived together now, the two of us, for nearly ten years. I think it says something, don’t you? about–well, about both of us. That it’s been possible at all.’

  It was on the tip of Greg Hocking’s tongue to ask why it had been done in the first place, but Mrs Machin swept on.

  ‘And of course, I can see why they want to talk to her. Naturally. After all, she–lived with him for many years. She knows things about him and his life and background that even I–’ the voice cracked with the painfulness of the admission–‘even I do not know. But . . . ’ It came out in a flood: ‘I wonder what she is saying about me!’

  Hocking could hardly stop himself from smiling. Mrs Machin, with the sharp, bird-like eyes of a born performer, noticed the corners of his mouth twitching, and assumed a deprecatory smile herself in sympathy.

  ‘Yes, I realize it must seem ridiculous to you, Gregory. A silly old woman, worrying about battles long ago.’ She swept aside his protests with her superb old arms. ‘I can see how I must look to you. You’re of an age not to worry what people say about you! But . . . you know, she’s never forgiven me, never. If we . . . if we fight, as we do, just now and again, she still accuses me of . . . getting him away. Of stealing him.’ She had by now recovered her confidence, and she straightened her shoulders and said grandly: ‘Which is nonsense, of course. We were both mature people. We both knew exactly what we were doing, what we wanted.’

  ‘But you don’t want Hilda to be able to put her side of the story to the reporters?’ said Greg brutally. Pimpernel, responding to his tone, let out several top A’s and bared a couple of nasty little fangs.

  ‘Quiet, love, quiet.’ Mrs Machin leaned forward and put a hand on Greg’s thigh. ‘No, of course, Gregory, of course she must be allowed her say. That’s understood. And naturally I realize she will not be so entirely discreet as I have been. Because she is not–forgive me–she is not what we used to call a lady. But–but I don’t want her telling lies about me. She shouldn’t be allowed to.’ Her voice rose under the pressure of genuine egotistical emotion.

  ‘What makes you think she would want to?’

  ‘Oh come, Gregory.’ Mrs Machi
n’s expression and tone were pitying. ‘The abandoned wife, or whatever she was, talking about “the other woman”. That’s what I am in her eyes. Of course she’ll say things to the reporters, if she dares.’

  ‘They might not print them.’

  ‘They might not. Not the serious papers. But then again, they have ways of suggesting things . . . ’

  ‘I realize that, Mrs Machin. But, again, I don’t really see where I come in.’

  ‘Well–’ she smiled at him almost conspiratorially, though he was far from sure he was going to conspire–‘I thought, as you and Hilda are such friends, you could perhaps just . . . drop into the conversation . . . ’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘ . . . the word “libel”. I mean, just casually, to make her aware there is such a thing. And you know I am willing, if she should say . . . some of the things I think she might want to say . . . I am willing to go to court. I have my name to protect.’

  Mrs Machin subsided into silence, but suddenly, drawing herself together, she leaned across the little table and directed the whole force of her personality at Greg Hocking in a gesture of appeal. It possessed the whole of her big, full-breasted body, and Greg had never felt from an old woman so overpowering a sense of strength, seductiveness, sex. He could understand how Walter Machin was prised from little Hilda’s grip. For the second time that day, he flushed.

  ‘You do see, don’t you, Gregory, how horrible it would be to spoil all this? Just when Walter, at last, is going to get the fame he deserved but never got in his own lifetime? And then for the whole thing to be–soiled, by a sordid wrangle between two old women, a slanging match between two crones, digging up a not too edifying past. It would be too dreadful. And ridiculous. The whole thing would be drowned in dirty laughs.’

  She came to an end. Greg sat silent. Of course, there was nothing really he could do. And yet–what she said had appealed to him. It would be a pity. Just when Oswaldston’s own writer was getting his long-delayed recognition. He’d been long enough in the town to look forward to this happening. And he did have a lot of respect for Hilda. For this one too, though not in the same way. He would hate to see them both deluged in public ridicule, the butt of smutty jokes in the Spinners’ Arms. He looked up.

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said.

  ‘Gregory, you are a true friend,’ said Mrs Machin grandly, getting up as if the audience were at an end. Greg Hocking, relieved at his dismissal, nevertheless thought she might have observed the social niceties to make her purposes less blunt. Mrs Machin was clearly a woman used to using people, and casting them off when they had served their (or her) purpose.

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he repeated, starting for the door. ‘Of course I can’t guarantee–’

  ‘Naturally not, but coming from you . . . if you could just warn her–’

  ‘I don’t know about warning, but perhaps I might, as you said, just drop a word or two into the conversation, in a friendly sort of way.’

  ‘Exactly. Just what I hoped. I can’t say how much I appreciate this, Gregory.’

  ‘I’m happy to be of service, Mrs Machin.’

  ‘Oh come. I hope we’re going to be good friends. Please do try and call me Viola.’

  ‘I’m happy to be of service . . . Viola.’

  She gave him a benign, null smile of visiting royalty, and attended by Pimpernel–conducting complicated flanking movements around his feet on abstruse principles of his own–she showed him into the hall.

  ‘You won’t go up now?’ she whispered.

  ‘It would look a bit . . . obvious,’ he whispered in reply, feeling like a minor character in Gilbert and Sullivan.

  ‘You’re quite right,’ she mouthed. ‘Clever of you. Much better a little later.’ She opened the door, and as she walked out into the sunshine, blinking, she said softly: ‘You’ll go far.’

  She made it sound something between a prophecy and an invitation.

  CHAPTER III

  THE FIRST MRS MACHIN

  ON SATURDAY NIGHT, the best and bingiest glad-time of the week, the men of Oswaldston and their womenfolk went to their clubs and pubs, filtered best bitter down into their fattening guts, and remembered the late ’fifties, when they were all young Arthur Seatons, when the world was full of beddable women and fightable men, and the fat pay packets gave you loot enough and more to buy a good time from Friday to Monday.

  Alf Ackroyd, landlord of the Spinners’ Arms, had his wife in to help, and a tough young chap in the Public, and when he had a moment he reflected to himself that the neighbourhood was coming round, and looked round the bar with satisfaction. His dream was to do the old place up, good and modern, and when it happened he would have more than enough time to stand and survey his dreamed-of green desert of plasticated leather, for the neighbourhood would desert to cosier, cheaper haunts.

  Greg Hocking stood at the bar and wished he wasn’t that most suspicious of characters in a pub–a local teacher. The staff of the local College of Further Education tried to pretend they were different from ordinary school teachers, but Greg knew that to the regulars they were stained indelibly by their profession. He surveyed cautiously the clientele of the Saloon Bar.

  No Hilda yet, but there was still time for her to pop in. Next to him, and not by coincidence, were standing three new faces, though in fact one he had seen briefly, while visiting at Mrs Machin’s. Their voices were not of Lancashire, nor were their manners. They were, he had by now established, the reporters–or the gentlemen who wrote for the newspapers.

  The Sunday Chronicle writer was a fleshy young man–well dressed, well fed, well built and well pleased with himself, with some generations of good living behind him. His shirt was broadly striped in blue, and fitted closely his rounded contours. His suit was smart, made by a goodish tailor, his face was full lipped and boyish, and his accent was public-school, modified to suit the times.

  The Sentinel man wore a floppy polo-necked sweater, though it was a warm May night; his hair was dishevelled and he had stubble on his chin. His shoes had not been cleaned since they were new, and would not be till they were discarded. His accent was public-school, modified to suit the times.

  The Grub man was ratty. Just ratty. He stood apart from the other two, a mite contemptuous.

  They were talking about Viola Machin.

  ‘She’s an absolutely superb old thing,’ said the Chronicle. ‘A real survival from another age. Of course, she’s over the roof-tops about all the publicity. Pretends she’s past caring except for Walter’s sake, but she’s lapping it up. I say, old chap, we’d better go through the photographs tomorrow. I’m writing the story around them, and we ought to try not to duplicate.’

  ‘Fair enough. I’ll only want three or four. But we may have to duplicate on the Hilda Machin one, the one of them together at Filey, you know.’

  ‘I know the one. Yes. She’s been close, hasn’t she?’

  They shook their heads, as at the world’s ingratitude.

  ‘Has she only given you the one?’ asked the Grub.

  ‘Yes,’ said Chronicle and Sentinel in unison.

  ‘Oh,’ said Ratty non-committally. The other two looked at him suspiciously, sipping their gins and tonic.

  ‘I can understand old Viola not handing out happy snaps from the first marriage,’ said Sentinel experimentally, ‘but I can’t see why our ’Ilda shouldn’t be a bit more forthcoming. I thought the two were at daggers: a few happy snapshots would have suggested that poor old Walter was dragged away from our ’Ilda by a scheming woman.’

  ‘Perhaps there were no happy snapshots,’ said Chronicle, similarly tentative, and eyeing Ratty, who was looking into his beer and seemed to like what he saw. ‘Perhaps there was no money for things like that. Depression and all that jazz. Perhaps they fought like cat and dog. Our ’Ilda has a mind of her own, I’d guess.’

  ‘Actually, they weren’t that hard up, or shouldn’t have been,’ said Sentinel. ‘Our Walter was in work all through the
‘thirties. Down at Mattingley’s. Supervisor too. I don’t suppose there’s many around here could say the same.’

  ‘I’m playing down the social angle,’ said Chronicle, with a practised air of Etonian world-weariness.

  ‘Are you? Why?’

  ‘Our readers are fed up with paraded social consciences. Anyway, I know bugger all about it, and I’m not going to that grotty library to read it up. I’m concentrating on the personal angle.’

  ‘I always said your paper was a poshed-up version of the Sunday Express,’ said Sentinel genially, pushing back his hair from his eyes. He turned to the Sunday Grub man: ‘I suppose you’ll be doing the same, eh Bill?’

  ‘Oh aye,’ said Bill. ‘I’ll be doing that. But my piece will mostly be pictures.’

  They looked at him dyspeptically. There were no playing-fields ethics in the lower reaches of Fleet Street.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Sentinel, ‘I’ve got the first couple of paragraphs of the new book. Old Viola gave me permission, and I prised it out of that creepy Yank.’

  ‘What a pill. Christ, what a human incubus. Viola sent me up to get a letter she wrote to Walter, just before the war ended. You’d have thought I’d asked for dirty books in the Vatican. Looks this way and that, shuffles and snuffles, says he doesn’t really think . . . Finally I read him the Riot Act, and he handed over a typescript–a carbon copy, at that, and numbered and cross-indexed and all manner of nonsense. That’s the trouble with these American researchers: they guard their discoveries like Pamela her virtue. And he’s the worst specimen I’ve come across. Nasty, shifty bugger. Anyone would think he owned the manuscripts.’

  ‘I say,’ said Sentinel, ‘perhaps he does. Perhaps his university’s bought them. They do, you know.’

  ‘But they haven’t, old man. I asked Viola specially. American universities have fallen on hard times. Most of them have stopped buying second-rate authors’ cast-off underwear. But old Kronweiser has been given the right to sort through the papers, and transcribe them, and he’s taking every advantage of it he can.’