The New Sonia Wayward

by Michael Innes

  In great perplexity, Petticate wandered back into the cabin. There was, he seemed to remember, some whisky somewhere. A dash of that might serve to clear his head. But now he couldn’t find the whisky. The bottle, although it was straight in front of his thin and rather handsome nose, somehow eluded him. He sat down wearily and listened again to the lapping. This time he connected it with nothing in particular – except with hearing it, night by night, as he went to sleep. Yes, it was a pleasant drowsy sound.

  He woke up to darkness, and to cold and cramp. Something was digging into his side. But for a moment he didn’t attend to that, since his mind was wholly occupied with some inexplicable sense of horror. He called out incoherently to his wife, but she didn’t answer him. Then he knew that an irrevocable thing had happened. That was why he was sitting here, with the little folding table digging into him, instead of lying in his bunk. He had done something gratuitous and wanton, something with no reasonable sense to it. He sat up, and the movement put him abruptly in possession of the whole thing. What he had done had been not merely irrational. It had been fearfully dangerous as well. For no conceivable advantage, he was committed to telling a thumping lie – to swearing that Sonia had vanished while swimming from the side of the yacht. Of course she might have had her fatal attack while in the water, so that even if her body were recovered – as it well might be – he would probably be all right after all. Provided, that was to say, that nobody on that other yacht began to remember seeing anything odd.

  Petticate got to his feet and lit the lamp, pumping clumsily and cautiously to get the pressure right. Then he moved about the cabin uneasily, conscious that there was something he had to find. But what he had to find was really inside his own head – something that was somehow going to lift a great burden, a great shame, from his mind. His foot slipped on paper, and he found himself looking down at the litter of typescript on the floor. Next, he stared at the typewriter – stared at it with narrowed apprehensive eyes, as if it might begin to clatter of itself. He didn’t much like what it was accustomed to produce. Yet he had lived on it for years. The click of its keys had been the same as the clink of coins in his pocket; the rustle of its carbon paper and its quarto sheets had merged with the crinkle of bank notes in his wallet.

  Then – quite suddenly – Petticate had a sensation of standing amid blinding light. The effect was purely psychological, since there was now in the cabin a very good light already. He squared his shoulders. He put up his chin. The muscles round his mouth relaxed. If he had been challenged at that moment by some recording angel, he would have declared that Ffolliot Petticate, MB, RAMS (retired), was an honest man again. For he had, after all, done nothing that betrayed the noble rationality of the creed by which he lived.

  He sat down before the machine. He tapped out a single word. Then he read the completed sentence. His guess, he found, hadn’t been a bad one. The sentence read:

  There was that which was at once inscrutable and inchoate in eyes.

  He looked back at the previous sentence and got his bearings. Then he tapped again, pausing only to locate the shift key, so that he produced:

  There was that which was at once inscrutable and inchoate in his eyes.

  It didn’t mean a thing. But that, of course, was just as it should be. To hell with the opera being interrupta. Business As Usual was to be his motto henceforth. He was sure that Sonia would have wanted just that.

  2

  ‘I’ve read the first thirty thousand words,’ Petticate said. ‘Quite charming. Sonia at her best. And you know – you and I know, my dear man – just what that means.’

  He was sitting in the office of Sonia’s publisher, Ambrose Wedge. It was an extremely shabby office. It had been an extremely shabby office ever since the day Ambrose Wedge’s father had opened it – buying up for the purpose the entire mise en scène of a decayed and obscurely disgraced late Victorian solicitor. By this simple means Ambrose Wedge’s father successfully created the impression that Wedges had been prominent pretty well at the birth of English publishing – finding the poet Milton, perhaps, that risky ten pounds for Paradise Lost, or extending timely aid to the genteel indigence of Fielding or Steele. The solicitor’s black-japanned deed-boxes remained ranged round the walls, with the names of the old clients erased and new ones painted in – this in a paint so obtrusively yellowed by age that one rather expected to read among them Miss Emily Brontë or William Wordsworth Esquire or even just The Author of Waverley. Among the actual names, such as they were, Sonia Wayward held an honourable prominence. Petticate, indeed, was regarding it complacently now. Executors of Sonia Wayward, he was reflecting, wouldn’t look nearly so nice.

  ‘Sonia at her best?’ Wedge – who was in fact a man of curiously pyramidal structure – tilted back comfortably in his swivel-chair. ‘But when, bless her heart, is she anything else? It’s always a pleasure to see the new Sonia Wayward in the bookshops. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘I do.’

  Petticate spoke with conviction. Perhaps because he had been constrained to tell so many lies of late, he was emphatic wherever his sincerity could be unflawed.

  ‘Never tires.’

  ‘Never. This new book is entirely fresh.’

  ‘Fresh?’ A shade of misgiving, even of alarm, spread over Wedge’s features. ‘She’s not breaking new ground?’

  ‘No, no – nothing of the sort.’ Petticate hastily clarified his statement. ‘I mean merely that the writing has a wonderful quality of freshness. But the – um – general outlines are much as usual. In fact precisely as usual.’

  ‘Then that’s all right.’ Wedge beamed again. ‘Even one’s most reliable authors, you know, are liable to go right off the rails from time to time. Turn in something you’d never expect from them. Of course, it never does. Sells badly itself, and kills the succeeding book.’

  Petticate shook his head.

  ‘I’m sure Sonia will never do anything like that. Certainly not if I have anything to do with it.’

  ‘That’s fine. And you’re tremendously useful to her, I know.’ In an access of what appeared to be sheer affection, Wedge fished a cigar-box from a drawer and thrust it towards the husband of his esteemed authoress. ‘Havana,’ he said.

  Petticate registered his gratified awareness of this impressive circumstance, and took a cigar.

  ‘I’ve no doubt,’ he said, ‘that you have shocks from time to time.’

  ‘Lord, yes! Take Alspach. Your dear wife excepted’ – and Wedge offered Petticate a frankly conspiratorial grin – ‘Alspach is quite the most distinguished writer on my list.’

  Petticate gave the sudden harsh cackle that commonly preluded his occasional assertion of those superior standards of judgement with which Providence had endowed him.

  ‘Only one in your whole stable, my boy,’ he said.

  ‘I wouldn’t deny his being in a class by himself. In the running for an OM, and so forth. You know his books. Always the same richly sombre tone. The still sad music of humanity. Deep sadness, majestic gravity, unfaltering compassion. That was Alspach – as solemn as Mrs Humphry Ward, and a genius into the bargain. Then he had a spot of trouble at home.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ Petticate offered conventionally.

  ‘So, of course, was I.’ Wedge paused. ‘From a personal point of view, that is to say. Professionally regarded, it looked like being all to the good. His wife went mad. His only boy was killed while climbing in the Alps. They put his poor old father, who must have been over eighty, in gaol. And then they told him that he himself was going incurably blind. Frankly, my dear chap, I expected by every post the Alspach that would put all previous Alspaches in the shade. The music stiller and sadder than ever, and everything else to match. Wasn’t that reasonable?’

  Petticate, although he was not very interested in Wedge’s Alspach, gave this question decent consideration.

  ‘Well, yes – unless the poor devil’s misfortunes simply silenced him.’

  �
��They didn’t. The manuscript came in, all right. But it was completely off the rails. Not Alspach at all. Sadness, gravity, compassion: he’d ditched the whole outfit. The book was a savage comedy, a diabolical farce. Did you ever hear anything as unaccountable as that?’

  ‘Absolutely never.’ Petticate spoke promptly. It was not his part, he reflected, to argue with this useful imbecile – particularly as there might be tricky times ahead. He improved the occasion by asking: ‘May I tell Sonia about Alspach? She’ll be terribly interested.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I wish she’d come up to town with you.’

  ‘Ah – that reminds me.’ Petticate appeared to hesitate. ‘Do you mind, my dear fellow, if I drop a word in your ear?’

  Wedge looked momentarily suspicious.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Go right ahead.’

  ‘It was nice of you to ask her to lunch today. But, between you and me, Sonia is just the tiniest bit touchy. Would you ask Alspach to lunch – provided he wasn’t deprived and bereaved and blinded and turning in manuscripts filled with demoniacal laughter? What I mean to say is, it’s perhaps time you did another of those rather grand dinners in Sonia’s honour. A word to the wise, old boy.’

  ‘Thank you very much.’ Wedge appeared to take this hint in terms of sober gratitude. ‘I’ll see what I can fix up.’

  ‘Only it will have to wait a bit, now. Sonia’s off, you know. One of her wandering fits.’

  ‘I never heard that she had wandering fits.’ Wedge was interested. ‘Don’t you usually take your holidays together – in the yacht, and so forth?’

  ‘Yes, we do. But occasionally Sonia does just pack up and clear out. A sort of restlessness. Time of life, I suppose. Sometimes I even feel she might do it in a big way.’

  ‘You don’t mean leave you?’ Wedge looked alarmed at these intimations of instability in Sonia Wayward.

  ‘Not precisely that. Merely that the next thing one might hear of her could be a picture-postcard from Brazil. Fortunately it doesn’t affect her output. Nothing affects that.’

  ‘Certainly nothing has ever affected it so far.’ Wedge remained slightly uneasy. ‘Does she take a secretary with her?’

  ‘No, no. We’re not made of gold, my dear fellow – even with your excellent conduct of our affairs. And Sonia’s a great hand with a portable typewriter. Of course, when she’s travelling she sends everything to me to get copied and tidied up.’

  ‘You’ve been a very efficient agent of late.’ Wedge advanced this in a manner not wholly amiable.

  ‘Well, there’s no doubt that Sonia has come to like it that way. Receiving the money and keeping the accounts, and so forth. The job quite amuses me, you know, and it seems sensible enough. Business distracts her from her work. Cuts down output. The less it’s obtruded on her, the better she gets along. Certainly, keeping her quite clear of it has worked well with this new book. I think I’m more interested in it than in anything else she’s done.’

  Wedge was now wholly cheerful again.

  ‘It builds up suspense?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, most decidedly. I’ve been spending quite a lot of time wondering what’s going to happen next.’

  For a moment Wedge appeared disposed to receive this statement as a joke. Then he thought better of it.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. He was disposed to affect faint Americanisms. ‘What’s this one to be called?’

  For a fraction of a second Petticate hesitated. It was, he believed, the first instance of his doing so since he had embarked – or it might be better to say disembarked – upon his deception. Did Sonia invariably fix on the title of a new book at the start, so that it was something Wedge took for granted? It just so happened that Petticate didn’t know. So he must play safe.

  ‘The Gates of Delight,’ he said. ‘She’s going to call it The Gates of Delight. Rather good, I think. Discreetly erotic, but not vulgar.’ He gave his sudden cackle. ‘Or not at her level.’

  But Wedge was staring.

  ‘The Gates of Delight? But that was the title of her – let me see – her third book! How can she possibly have forgotten?’

  It was Petticate who had forgotten – or rather unconscious memory had neatly tripped him up.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ He laughed easily, and was careful to be in no haste to retrieve his slip. Meanwhile he thought rapidly, and with the satisfactory result that the probable source of this long-past title of Sonia’s came into his head. ‘I meant Man’s Desire,’ he said. ‘You can see how I mixed them up. That lovely ode by Bridges:

  Open for me the gates of delight,

  The gates of the garden of man’s desire;

  Where spirits touched by heavenly fire

  Have planted the trees of life.

  ‘As a matter of fact, Sonia’s thinking of taking a third title from the same stanza. The Trees of Life. I think I like that even better. But The Gates of Delight – I mean Man’s Desire – is just the thing for what she’s working at now.’

  Wedge was visibly impressed by this wealth of literary reference.

  ‘Man’s Desire isn’t bad,’ he said. ‘Provided, naturally, it’s the straight thing. We don’t expect anything pathological from Sonia. The travellers wouldn’t like it. And the reviewers mightn’t either – although of course that’s less important. Only one’s travellers sell books. That, you know, is the great lesson we have to learn from the Yanks. In the field of literature, that is to say.’

  Petticate was silent for a moment. He was reflecting that hoodwinking such a donkey as Ambrose Wedge was really rather poor sport for a person as clever as himself.

  ‘You’ll find,’ he said, ‘that Sonia’s new yarn, bless her, is as clean as a whistle. The Desire of Man is for the Woman, and the Desire of the Woman is for the Desire of the Man.’ Petticate cackled. ‘Such profundities reach the circulating libraries pretty rapidly, these days. The suburbs march breast forward with Maugham. And Sonia keeps up. And she’ll keep on keeping up, if you ask me.’

  ‘Alive,’ Wedge said.

  ‘Just that.’ Petticate accepted the word with enthusiasm. ‘Unquenchable vitality. I’m pretty sure Sonia will be going strong for as long as I live.’

  ‘Nice for you.’ Wedge, perhaps faintly aware that he was in some fashion being mocked at, made one of his detours into the disagreeable. ‘Keeps the wolf from the door, doesn’t it? Or even right at the bottom of the garden.’

  Petticate laughed what was by this time his deft liar’s laugh. ‘I have my modest private competence, you know, as well as my absurd pittance of a pension from the army. But naturally it’s delightful that the world treats Sonia so well. Last year was a pretty good one, I think you’ll agree.’

  ‘It wasn’t at all bad. In fact the sales were excellent.’ Wedge spoke as a fair-minded man. ‘Only they cost us something, I don’t mind telling you. It was quite a battle on the promotion side.’

  ‘Was it, indeed?’ Petticate sounded discreetly sceptical. ‘I don’t remember noticing that your advertising was anything out of the way.’

  ‘Advertising?’ Wedge, although he had now assumed the appearance of one sunk under a weight of care, managed an indulgent smile. ‘My dear chap, you don’t think advertisements sell books nowadays? It’s having the crack team of travellers that does the trick, every time. Unfortunately they’re devilishly expensive. I’d like to have you meet them, some time. They’re an – um – fine body of men.’ Wedge paused. ‘And women,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘I must certainly have you meet them one day.’

  Petticate, who had no belief in the substantial existence of this régiment d’élite, allowed himself a moment’s unresponsive silence.

  ‘I should mention,’ he said presently, ‘that I’ve been having a certain amount of business talk with Sonia – before she went off, that is. She started it, surprisingly enough. I’d say the royalty rates are a bit on her mind. Of course I tell her not to worry, and that I’ll look after all that. That’s much the best thing, you’ll agre
e.’

  Wedge considered this.

  ‘It has,’ he said rather ambiguously, ‘its advantages, no doubt.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that sliding scale. Quite frankly, I’d like to see the 20 % begin to operate a good deal earlier.’

  Wedge gave the sort of brisk nod that characterizes a man of eminently open mind.

  ‘My dear fellow, I’ll try to meet you if I possibly can. Only do remember’ – Wedge produced a charmingly frank smile, and at the same time achieved a practised gesture, sweeping in the threadbare drugget and horsehair upholsteries of the deceased solicitor – ‘only do remember that, in this trade, one lives positively from five-pound note to five-pound note.’

  Petticate looked at his cigar – not so much by way of ungenerous comment upon Wedge’s last remark as in calculation of how much longer he might spend where he was. It had occurred to him that, given a little ingenuity, Wedge could be made to work for a few of those five-pound notes.

  ‘Am I right,’ he asked, ‘in seeming to remember that those travellers of yours like to take round a sort of trailer of the next book?’

  ‘Certainly. And Sonia usually manages to let me have something when she’s about halfway through.’ Wedge tapped his own cigar against an ashtray thoughtfully donated to his impoverished enterprise by a firm of mineral-water manufacturers. ‘Do you think that, when you get in touch with her, you could ask her to send something of the sort along?’

  ‘I certainly can – if I do get in touch with her. But it’s my guess that I shan’t have a word from her until Man’s Desire is finished. Of course, I have a carbon of those first thirty thousand words. So I could probably knock you up something myself. I told you – didn’t I? – that I find it a deuced interesting story. As a matter of fact, most of what I’ve read is vividly in my head.’

  ‘How very odd.’ Wedge frowned, as if at once disapproving his own rash dip into candour. ‘Does it begin in an artist’s studio, or aboard the Queen Mary, or just before Lord Somebody’s guests start to arrive for a house-party?’