The New Sonia Wayward

by Michael Innes

  And fortunately, just at this moment, Boswell, who had been set down by his mistress and was in consequence feeling slighted, took Lady Edward Lifton craftily in the rear and managed to bite her in the ankle. In the subsequent commotion, which included a hunt for Dr Gregory and a telephone-call to the district nurse, Mrs Gotlop’s party began to break up.

  But a number of people made a point of speaking to Petticate before he went away. It was evident that any rumour of domestic disharmony that had previously got around was quite swamped and forgotten beneath the sensation caused by the news of Gialletti’s undertaking. Ladies who had seen works by the master when on visits to London – or who were certain that somewhere they must have done so – assured Petticate with animation that dear Sonia was the most apt of conceivable sitters for him. If it were not that it was destined to pass into the proud ownership of Petticate himself, it would undoubtedly be purchased for the nation.

  Once out on the Green, Petticate made his way somewhat reluctantly and circuitously home. Like the lowing herd, in fact, he wound slowly o’er the lea. He was very sober again, despite the cocktails. Perhaps it was because he had been given a good deal of food for thought.

  5

  And now Colonel Petticate began to experience more fully the mysterious ways of artistic creation.

  On the morning after Mrs Gotlop’s disturbing – although in some aspects gratifying – party he found himself writing the new Sonia Wayward with the ease of one who has discovered a vein of sustained inspiration. He even evolved a technique for marvellously speeding up the work. In the morning he typed; in the afternoon he read what he had written into his tape-recorder; in the evening he played this through to himself while he revised the typescript before him. This invoking of his own well-modulated voice he found extremely encouraging. It really quite brought Sonia’s sort of stuff alive.

  The process continued for weeks. However much he was harassed by the peculiar situation in which he had placed himself, whatever anxious consideration he had to give to every step which he must take in the actual world around him, the ideal world in which Timmy Vedrenne and his beloved trod their devious but ineluctable path towards St Margaret’s Church in Westminster remained inviolate and genially beckoning.

  Moreover the new Sonia Wayward was just that. It didn’t, that was to say, in the least turn out to be the new, the first, Wayward-Petticate or Petticate-Wayward. His fancy for giving poor old Ambrose Wedge a jolt by gingering the stuff up, for importing into his fable some of the larger liberties recently gained for imaginative fiction, faded before the commanding fact that this was Sonia’s book. It was indeed her best book. Almost from the start of his labours, Petticate had little doubt about this. It was a knowledge which afforded him much spiritual solace. He had, he realized, been a shade cavalier – not certainly towards Sonia herself, since he was far too much a gentleman for that, but to her mere mortal tenement when he had so unexpectedly found himself confronted with it on the yacht. Those fine feelings which were so nicely blended in him with a disposition inherently rational had undoubtedly given him some uncomfortable hours. But now he was making a large amends. He was putting Sonia on the map – her own mildly inimitable map – as she had never been on it before. He was so much possessed by the sense of his own piety in all this that, finding her framed photograph in a somewhat inconspicuous corner of his study, he placed it squarely on his desk beside the typewriter and regularly communed with it when some tricky moment in his narrative turned up.

  Meantime he did solve, and with the utmost ease, the seemingly awkward matter of Sergeant Bradnack’s mission. The summons had in due course arrived by registered post. He signed the receipt for it under his own name – a proceeding to which, in a respectable household, the Post Office as represented by the Snigg’s Green postman clearly had no objection at all. Then he took a little jaunt to Paris – it made a pleasant break in his devoted labours – and there ventured upon the first of what were to be his cautiously infrequent dips into actual forgery. Sonia’s letter to the magistrates’ clerk he considered to be a little masterpiece. It was at once dignified and respectful, and it was accompanied by a blank cheque which, upon consideration, he endorsed with the words Under Five Pounds. In the issue, this hint was taken in good part. The fine turned out to be thirty shillings, or no more than double what it might have been if Sonia had made her bow in court. On receiving an intimation of this, Petticate turned back a few pages of his typescript, found a convenient place, and inserted the words Timmy sat down. The royalties on these, he calculated, would more or less exactly cover the charge. Since the trip to Paris had been agreeable in itself, he judged it fair to pay the somewhat larger expenses of that out of his own pocket.

  What Youth Desires ran so well that Petticate found, during the later stages, that he had to give far less conscious thought to contriving his conclusion than to deciding upon just how the book was to be delivered to Wedge. The final typescript of one of Sonia’s novels commonly showed a good many ink or pencil scribbles in her own hand. But to imitate this would be to go against one of the principles he had decided on: that he should cut down forgery to an absolute minimum. So, although the idea of pursuing his wife’s last-moment thoughts as she read through her story strongly appealed to his artist’s sense, he decided to make no manuscript alterations. It would be easy to explain to Wedge, in what need be no more than a hastily written note, that Sonia, still on her mysterious travels, had entrusted him with the whole job of preparing the final ‘copy’ for the printer. As for proofs, she had fortunately never very much bothered her head with them. Often he had himself simply read them through for literal errors and then sent them off to press.

  To Wedge, therefore, Petticate eventually wrote as follows:

  Dear Wedge,

  Here is our talented friend’s latest. You will observe that, for her title, she has deserted Robert Bridges for Matthew Arnold. Both, I know, are favourite poets of yours. What I’m sending (as you will see, if you happen yourself to read the thing) is a very clean typescript, so the proofs should give us no trouble.

  Sonia still wanders, and communication with the dear girl is intermittent. Probably I shall soon join her, shutting up shop – temporarily or permanently – here at Snigg’s Green. Jamaica – or possibly Ischia – will be as good a place as another for a nice little garden from which to exclude that wolf.

  Yours in haste,

  Ffolliot Petticate

  PS. In the matter of royalties, please let me have a word about revising that sliding scale.

  Ff. P.

  Petticate read this over with considerable satisfaction before dispatching it. The tone was light but the matter was businesslike. What was implied about his present relations with Sonia seemed both plausible and sufficiently dull to be unlikely to stir up in Wedge any great renewal of curiosity. The reference to the wolf, by acknowledging a slight element of cynicism in his attitude to his wife, achieved the counter-suggestion of a man with nothing very serious to hide. All in all, Petticate judged it an effective and agreeable performance.

  A couple of days later he received a telegram in reply:

  ms received stop willing to go twenty-five per cent at twenty thousand thirty per cent at forty thousand stop and book club etc sales before stop in fact would meet you any terms relying on your own business sense re scope for promotion travellers etc stop any chance reproduction Gialletti’s bust ready in time for back wrapper query hope arrange dinner honour dear Sonia late autumn stop alspach will preside suggest hemingway forster amis sartre proust moravia warden of all souls president of french academy delete proust apparently dead pasternak snow frost suitable guests stop wedge

  Petticate read this with mingled feelings. It was rather astonishing that Wedge should put forward such excellent terms without a murmur. It was gratifying that he should have taken up the hint of a dinner in Sonia’s honour, although a certain lack of sober realism pervaded the proposed list of participants. It was really t
oo bad – Petticate thought – that the celebration could never take place. And it was equally too bad that the great Gialletti’s bust would never, in fact, grace one or all of Sonia Wayward’s future romances.

  It was only after considerable thought that Petticate satisfied himself about a reply to Wedge’s effusion. This too took the form of a telegram:

  — agree terms sonias behalf stop shall advise re bust and so delightful dinner suggestions later stop regards petticate

  It was the best that could be done. But it left him with the decided sense of an awkward future. Now that What Youth Desires was off his hands he must get down to what was undoubtedly his next serious concern. The conception of the phased withdrawal was still far too vague in his mind. Proper definition must be given to it at once.

  The first result of this resolution, unfortunately, turned out to be a grave error of judgement. It concerned the Hennwifes.

  The successful termination of his first sustained effort at authorship had produced a mood of confidence in Petticate. He was a man, he had become convinced, who could bring things off. Had not Timmy and Claire – and indeed the whole thronging creation of What Youth Desires – done in the end precisely what he had willed them to do? It was true that he was aware of the dangerous fallacy of arguing from books to life. He had marked the contrast which unmistakably declared itself between his handling of those shadowy creatures beyond the typewriter and his handling of the Wedges and Bradnacks and Gotlops of the actual world. Still, he had proved himself a man of resource and inventiveness. He ought not to hesitate to push ahead.

  The tiresomeness of the Hennwifes was something which, as he worked at the final stages of his book, he had been only intermittently aware of. But now they came much more directly into the focus of his attention. And there could be no doubt of their attitude. They believed that they knew just where their employer got off. It was true that neither of them would have used just this vulgar expression. Hennwife himself continued to talk like a manservant in Victorian fiction. Mrs Hennwife followed her husband more sparingly in the same idiom. But it was undeniable that they were disposed – as that same idiom might have expressed it – to the taking of liberties.

  And almost more irritating than the liberties which the Hennwifes took were the liberties they encouraged Ambrose to take.

  Ambrose was Mrs Hennwife’s Pekinese – and a creature, to Petticate’s mind, even more objectionable than Mrs Gotlop’s Boswell. For at least Boswell, however disgusting in himself, held what might be called a legitimate place in society, since his mistress belonged to a class in whom the proprietorship of small and expensive dogs is customary and allowed. How Mrs Hennwife had come by Ambrose Petticate didn’t know; nor did he know why Sonia had admitted the animal to the house. Indoor servants may properly, perhaps, keep a cat. But a kitchen dog is an anomaly. Incidentally, it was not least where cats were concerned that Ambrose was an intolerably noisy dog. A cat in the neighbourhood aroused Ambrose to a frenzy of singularly displeasing noise. And now Ambrose was all over the place. He had established a proprietary right to the largest sofa in the drawing-room. He was frequently to be observed dining in similarly unlicensed localities. He seemed particularly fond of a fresh and delicately prepared Dover sole.

  In contriving such improprieties as this, perhaps, the Hennwifes were simply beginning to feel their way. If they intended blackmail, they had not yet embarked upon it. There had been no demand for money – not even veiled under an application for higher wages. On the other hand there had been a good deal of high living in what Sonia had liked to call the servants’ hall. Odours of roast chicken and the like were frequently distinguishable in that quarter when Petticate himself was being sparely dieted on a slice of cold mutton. Snailum the high-class dairyman appeared to be sending in a lot of cream. Wine was certainly disappearing from the cellar. Petticate had several times observed a nondescript woman – who proved to be a relation of Mrs Hennwife’s resident in a neighbouring village – disappearing through the back-garden gate with a loaded basket on her arm. These disorders, although they might be thought of as common form in a household without a mistress, struck Petticate as distinctly sinister. And, that this was not a fanciful supposition quickly appeared. Going one day into the butler’s pantry in search of an electric torch, and chancing to open a drawer that ought to contain a good deal of Georgian silver, he found that he was looking at nothing but an empty stretch of green baize.

  Standing thus in what was Hennwife’s stronghold, Colonel Petticate found himself trembling all over. He knew at once that this was a crisis, and one requiring both a resolute will and a clear head. He could of course take no notice. Hennwife was unaware of his visit; he could simply go away and pretend not to have made this discovery. But that would only be to defer the struggle. Soon there would be some more impudently open depredation, forcing him to fight. Better – far better – stand up to the thing now.

  Petticate went to his study and rang the bell. Then he sat down at his desk, determined upon an attitude of firm composure. Hennwife entered. He had a professional way of coming into a room and, without turning round, closing the door silently behind him that Petticate had always for some reason found irritating.

  ‘You rang, sir?’

  Hennwife asked this unnecessary question in a tone no different from that which he had been employing for some time, and Petticate was now astounded that he had himself been refusing to notice its naked insolence. He found that he had to control his own voice carefully as he spoke.

  ‘I have just come from your pantry. Can you tell me why the older silver is not in its usual drawer?’

  For just a fraction of a second Hennwife hesitated. When he spoke, it was with perfect indifference.

  ‘I have no idea, sir. No idea at all.’

  ‘You knew that it had disappeared?’

  ‘Dear me, yes. The matter was evident, sir.’

  ‘And you said nothing?’

  ‘I supposed, sir, that you might be entertaining your leisure by some study of it. I trust I was not mistaken.’

  ‘You supposed nothing of the sort, Hennwife.’ Petticate felt his face flushing. ‘And it is perfectly clear that the silver has been stolen.’

  ‘Very conceivably, sir. I cannot be responsible for valuable property for which provision is not made under lock and key. No well-appointed household neglects such provision. In good service, it is a thing one simply does not meet.’

  There was an element of truth in this which made Petticate breathe hard. He couldn’t deny that he and Sonia had been careless. But this wasn’t going to drive him on the defensive now.

  ‘It is my intention,’ he said, ‘to call in the police at once.’ He pointed to the telephone. ‘Kindly get me the police station now.’

  At this Hennwife produced what, in his employer’s experience, he had never produced before. It was a smile – and an uncommonly ugly one at that.

  ‘I must beg to be excused, sir. It would, in my view, be highly injudicious to make any application to the police. I fear that the resulting agitation might not be good for your health. Pardon my mentioning the consideration, sir.’

  There was a moment’s silence between the two men. Petticate realized that the battle was joined. He realized that what in fact would be injudicious would be a failure himself to pick up the telephone at once. Yet he might perhaps, without visibly weakening, defer that decisive step at least for the inside of an hour. But the thing must be done without a trace of alarm.

  ‘Hennwife,’ he said gravely, ‘I have reason to think that you have come entirely to mistake your position in this house. I am not to be threatened. My property is not to be purloined. You may leave the room, and consult with your wife upon the very grave position in which you have placed yourself. Return in half an hour. If you show convincing signs of a better mind, it may be at least the means of sparing your disgrace.’

  The ugly smile had faded from Hennwife’s face. Petticate judged that the man was
shaken. He felt that he had struck just the right note with the fellow. He was pleased with himself.

  And Hennwife left the room without a word. He didn’t even, as was his habit, offer his employer his thanks for receiving permission to withdraw. Petticate had every hope that it was for the purpose of telling his wife that the game was up. One was always reading, after all, that blackmailers collapsed helplessly if their prospective victim stood up to them.

  Petticate took a turn round the study, and then sat down and lit a cigar. He didn’t precisely want a cigar; his inside wasn’t quite right for it; but no doubt the action was in part a symbolical one. He was asserting to himself that he belonged to a more powerful world than that of the menial Hennwife, who had no cigars to smoke. Or at least he ought to have had none. In point of fact, Petticate’s own cigars had been disappearing lately with a rather open unaccountability which went with all that high living in the Hennwife part of the house.

  Petticate smoked his cigar, debating with himself the course he should next pursue. He felt he knew, as an old campaigner, that once the initiative is gained it is important to keep the enemy on the run. The Hennwifes were on the run. What power, if any, did they have of making a stand and striking back?

  They had probably not, it had to be conceded, ventured as far as they had done on the strength of mere suspicion. If they believed that their employer was in the embarrassing position of endeavouring to conceal that he had been deserted by his wife, if they saw Petticate’s position as merely awkward and humiliating, they might on the strength of this allow themselves a certain amount of liberty and insolence. But making off with the family silver, and then coolly advising against calling in the police, was another matter. It represented a confident wickedness for which there must be some solid ground. And Petticate couldn’t have much doubt about what that solid ground was. The Hennwifes really had in their possession that current passport without which Sonia couldn’t have left the British Isles.