Two People Read online

  He is reading it a third time. Now he is imagining himself a reviewer. On The Times or somewhere. Bindweed, by Reginald Wellard. Never heard of him. Well, let’s see what it’s like . . . H’m . . . Ha . . .

  ‘It was not too much to say . . .’ Oh, well, let’s get it corrected. There were one or two little mistakes. One right at the beginning, wasn’t it, and one about page 30, and one——

  He looks. He reads it again . . . and again. The mistakes have vanished. Yet it is certain that they were there.

  Now, once more, very carefully.

  IV

  The success of Bindweed is now a matter of history in every publishing office. Two years ago no publisher had supposed that 100,000 words arranged in the order in which Reginald Wellard had arranged them could sell nearly a quarter of a million copies. To-day every publisher, and every young author, is convinced that any similar arrangement of 100,000 words can sell nearly a quarter of a million copies. Hopefully they seek such an arrangement. You never know. It may be ‘another Bindweed’ on their tables.

  Theatrical managers also (for the play was equally successful) tell each other over their cigars. ‘My boy, I’ve got another Bindweed,’ or encourage young dramatists by saying that this is the sort of play for which they are looking. Men who have made money in pork, cotton, ships, wool and hardware regret daily that they do not see their way clear to financing Shakespeare, Strindberg, opera, expressionism and the Russians, but add kindly that if you came to them with another Bindweed they might risk a small gamble. Fortunes were made over Bindweed, but fortunes also were lost—if money is ever lost in the theatrical world which is merely transferred from one theatrical pocket to another.

  But all this did not happen at once. Reginald Wellard did not wake to find himself famous. He woke to find himself the owner of six copies of Bindweed and one review of it. This was in The Times Literary Supplement, and drew attention in a kindly way to the superficial area of the book. 7½ by 5½. This was news to Reginald, who had never measured it. He measured it now, and found that The Times, as usual, was right. He wondered idly if there was a man in the office who did this, and nothing but this. An interesting job which brought one into contact with good literature, yet made no unfair demand on the intellect. Vaguely he sketched out in his mind an application for the post.

  As the weeks went by, longer reviews came in. Favourable, encouraging. The writers did not, as they put it, seem to have heard of Mr. Reginald Wellard before. As it happened, Mr. Reginald Wellard had never heard of them before, so there was nothing in that. They opined that he wrote intelligently and not without understanding. Mr. Wellard, reading this, opined that they also wrote intelligently and not without understanding, so there was still nothing between them. They cordially hoped that Mr. Wellard would go on writing novels . . . and Mr. Wellard cordially hoped that they would go on writing reviews. Things couldn’t have been more friendly. But it is probable that, if they had known that Bindweed was going to sell a quarter of a million copies, they would not have had such a high opinion of Mr. Wellard’s work. Nor he, in that case, of theirs.

  Mr. Pump quoted the best parts of these reviews, indicating by dots that much other equally favourable matter was being left out, owing to the exigencies of space.

  Now although the great Bindweed boom had not yet begun, there was enough movement underground to convince Sylvia that she was already a famous author’s wife. She had read the book, curled up on the sofa as she had promised, and she had loved it. What she had loved best was the Dedication. ‘To Sylvia, who has entwined herself in my heart.’ Pretty, of course, with its slight play on the convolvulus idea, but not really difficult to write. Not to be compared with Chapter V. Wellard had hoped for some special comment on Chapter V, not only from the reviewers, most of whom had been unable, owing to the exigencies of time, to get as far, but more particularly from Sylvia, who had once had, though she might have lost it, the key to that chapter. At Ventimiglia . . . on their honeymoon . . . that day, that sun-kist day . . . However she loved the Dedication best; and since she loved it all, presumably she loved also Chapter V. One mustn’t become exacting, just because one has written a book.

  Sylvia, then, loved the book, and she was the wife (think of it!) of the author Reginald Wellard. As Mrs. Wellard, if she happened to meet a maid-servant on the way, she was conducted into, or through, the houses of Seven Streams, Mallows and Redding Farm in search of their owners. Possibly she did not establish contact with a maid-servant, and then was hailed from the herbaceous border or the raspberry canes or the stables as, ‘Hallo, Sylvia,’ and made no further pretence of formality. Yet she was soon Mrs. Wellard again. Wife of Reginald Wellard—the author, not the bee-farmer. Round mouth, pursed mouth, large eyes, closed eyes, little shrugs, little faces, airs of adorable mystery, all her enchanting repertoire of expression, expressing no more than that her husband had written a book, and—well, dear, you know how it is. But, of course, they didn’t. And Sylvia, for all her pretty airs, could not tell them.

  ‘I saw Betty Baxter,’ she says, on returning to Westaways.

  ‘Oh?’ says Reginald.

  He doesn’t like the Baxter woman. Besides annoying him in almost every other way, she talks to flowers as most women talk to puppies and kittens. Conceivably a kitten may respond intelligibly to an inquiry phrased in the words ‘Didums wantums ’ickle dinkums milkums then?’—not, it may be, recognizing the actual words, but convinced by the tone that food is near. It is inconceivable, at least by Reginald, that a bed of zinnias should make any coherent reply at all to the Baxter woman, when asked in the same sort of voice if it wishes to be watered. Most gardeners, again, will tell you that flowers respond to one hand rather than to another; Reginald did not, from his own experience, doubt it; but he refused to believe that the Shirley poppies raised their heads and went quite pink when Mrs. Baxter came into the garden. ‘They know me, they do really, Mr. Wellard.’ The woman was a fool.

  ‘I know you don’t like her, darling, but she’s ever so fond of you.’

  How easily and recklessly Sylvia would say this of her friends!

  ‘Well, I’m a very nice man, Sylvia.’

  ‘You are, darling!’ She throws him a kiss. ‘And she’s heard such a lot of your book, and is so interested.’

  ‘Has she read it?’ asks the author as carelessly as he can.

  ‘No, darling, you see, they’ve given up their library subscription, it lapsed or something, she did explain to me, and so—— But she’s going to, as soon as ever she can get hold of a copy.’

  ‘She can buy it,’ said Reginald, annoyed with the woman.

  ‘I must tell her. I don’t think she thought of that. She wants us to play tennis on Saturday. Of course I told her that you were very busy and I couldn’t say.’

  ‘I shall be rather busy on Saturday,’ says Reginald Wellard.

  Grace Hildersham is also going to read it, as soon as she can get hold of a copy. Grace is a large fair woman, with a perpetually pink face over which the fair hair perpetually strays. She isn’t always under the raspberry net, picking raspberries for her famous jams, but if it happens to be there that you first meet her, you always expect to meet her there afterwards, or, meeting her elsewhere, conclude that she has just come from there. Only so could she be so flushed and untidy. A dear, obviously. She must always have had a lot of children, or a lot of raspberries, or a lot of something, to keep her busy. Reginald feels that the chances of Grace Hildersham’s reading Bindweed are not so good. Not only has she to get hold of the book (always a difficult matter for the inexperienced) but she has also to get hold of the time.

  ‘You do like her, don’t you?’ says Sylvia, on her return from her visit.

  ‘Tremendously,’ says Reginald.

  ‘I’m so glad. She likes you tremendously too.’

  The adverb seems to have been chosen by Reginald rather than by Grace Hil
dersham. However, no doubt she likes him.

  ‘She’s longing to read it.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘She wants us to go over to tea one day this week. What day would suit you, darling? I know how it is, of course.’

  ‘Saturday,’ says Reginald.

  Lena Coleby is also longing to read it. When you meet her she pulls off a big pair of brown gauntlets, and, to your surprise, is still gloved when she shakes hands with you. Don’t talk to her about food. She feeds a husband, three children, a horse, a pony, four cows, two pigs, a goat, half a dozen pigeons, and ducks and chickens numerable, but, by Reginald, uncounted. She is always considering food, mixing food, carrying food, adding up accounts about food, ordering food and making food. This is wearing work, but she has kept her hands. No other woman could have done it. Big, slow, romantic Coleby loved her hands when he wooed her, and almost articulated some pretty thought about them; she knew what she was in for when she married a farmer, but she swore to herself that she would keep her hands. She has. And save for the half-lemon in the bathroom, if you should be invited to wash there, and the two pairs of gloves, you will never guess how much time and thought and pride those hands have commanded.

  ‘You do like her, don’t you?’ says Sylvia, on her return from her visit.

  ‘I admire her terrifically,’ says Reginald.

  ‘I’m so glad. She admires you terrifically too.’

  Reginald knew she was going to.

  ‘She wants to order it from the library at Burdon when they go in next week for the market. I don’t think they belong, but you pay half a crown deposit, and then tuppence a time. It’s quite easy.’

  Reginald knew the circulating library at Burdon. It moved with the times, but had started thirty years behind them and had never got any nearer. Unless one of the Kingsleys had written a book called Bindweed, Lena Coleby would have to ask for something else.

  ‘Oh, and can we come over to supper one evening?’

  ‘If you like, sweetheart, of course.’

  Whatever future was awaiting Bindweed in London, the country for the moment gave no signs of it.

  Chapter Two

  I

  REGINALD was going to London again to get his hair cut.

  This hair business was a nuisance. As if shave, shave, shave every morning wasn’t enough. Apart from the wasted day, consider the expense. Five miles to the station: say sixpence for petrol and tyres. Turning round and backing at the station: say half a crown for the fence, unless one hit the same place as last time. Return ticket (and, coming back with your hair newly cut, you must go first-class) 13s. 8d. Lunch at the club: say 6s. 6d. Hair cut and tip: 1s. 6d. Station-master at Little Malling for not stealing the car: 1s. Total, £1 5s. 8d. You could get a permanent wave for that.

  However, Sylvia liked him with his hair cut. If she were reading, or needling, or arranging flowers, or looking at the goldfish, whatever she were doing, if he came up behind her, she would know without looking whether he had had his hair cut, or were wearing the blue tie, which she liked, or the open flannel shirt, which she liked better; whether he had used the new shaving-soap yet, or smoked a cigarette that morning. She had a sixth sense for all of her husband that was apprehensible by the senses. Nothing of the physical Reginald Wellard escaped her.

  Reginald backed the Morris slowly out of the barn. From time to time (each time beginning about six weeks after he had last tried) he thought that it would be more workmanlike to back the car into the barn when he put her away, and then drive her straight out in the morning . . . and then, from time to time he changed his mind about this. It was more workmanlike to drive in forwards, and leave the backwards for the coming out . . .

  Not so good this morning. That was because Sylvia was watching him. He felt her there suddenly. It was his custom to get the car well out of the barn first, and headed for the open road, before he went back to kiss Sylvia good-bye. In this way, if she saw him, she saw him at his best. At least, she had more chance of doing so. He might absently turn off the petrol on dismounting, and forget to turn it on again; he might—oh, well, there were a lot of things one might do. But there would be none of this backing business.

  He struggled out.

  ‘Darling, I was coming down to say good-bye.’

  ‘I’ll drive you there if you like,’ said Sylvia dreamily.

  ‘I say, will you really? But look here, that means you’ll have to meet me too, you know. Won’t that be rather a bore for you?’

  Sylvia was already at the wheel.

  ‘It’s such a lovely day,’ she explained.

  There was a mile of road, private but for a right of way, up to the main road, and Mrs. Edwards (mother, not wife, of Edwards) lived at a cottage, two-thirds of a mile along, where you got into second. Mrs. Edwards was bedridden, but she would say to Edwards when he came home that night, ‘So she took the car out to-day.’ It was curious, that. Reginald, whenever he went into second, made enormous preparations against waking the baby, with the result that he achieved grinding, tearing noises of such malignity that he almost went back into third as a protest. Sylvia dreamily stroked herself into this or that gear, her thoughts far away, her eyes on the road in front of her—no, not on the road in front, thought Reginald watching her; on the distant end of the road where it reached the stars, or some world of her own where none could follow her.

  They caught a train (was it the 11.3) which would certainly have run on Sundays only if Reginald had been driving, but felt that it could not disappoint Sylvia who had come specially to see it. ‘Here we are, Sylvia. We heard you five miles away not making the noise Reginald makes, and oiled ourselves and got steam up as quickly as we could.’

  Rather a sell for the train, thinks Reginald. Sylvia isn’t going.

  ‘Good-bye, sweetheart. Thank you so much for driving me.’

  ‘Good-bye, darling.’

  ‘And it’s the 3.10 back; 4.45 this end.’

  It is pretty certain now that the 3.10 will stop at Little Malling. Otherwise, as likely as not, it would have run straight through to Burdon. Perhaps, thinks Reginald, it would be safer to mention casually, but loudly, at Victoria also, that Sylvia is meeting him. Then there can be no mistake.

  He kisses her again. The train moves out of the station—disappointed, of course, at not having Sylvia on board, but resigned. Reginald waves, then goes across to the other window, from which you can see Sylvia crossing the line by the bridge . . . and sees Sylvia crossing the bridge; serene, remote, ridiculously lovely.

  II

  Reginald had a secret from his wife this morning. He often had secrets from her; almost it might be said that he always had secrets, for even if he told them, they remained secrets, since he could not share them with her. Sometimes he thought that she was just a child, intellectually not grown up, with whom he could never be in communion . . . and then sometimes he wondered if he were not really the child, and she the ineffably wise mother who could never be in communion with him.

  His secret to-day was this. He was going to get his hair cut, he really was going to get his hair cut, but he was going gladly, even excitedly, because he wanted to see what London was doing about Bindweed. For Mr. Pump had just announced that a Third Large Impression was printing. Now you can’t, so it seemed to Reginald, announce to London that a Third Large Impression of Reginald Wellard’s Bindweed is printing without there being left on London some faint awareness of the man Wellard’s existence. He did not expect to be welcomed at Victoria, pointed to in Piccadilly; but he did have some small hope that in his club a man might be lunching who had heard of the book, even if he had not read it. ‘Any relation of yours,’ he might be asked, ‘this man Wellard who has just written that book?’ In London, exciting London, questions could take this form. In the country they merely said, ‘Any relation to Milton of Hammerponds?’ when you quoted Lycidas.


  It was May 6th, a good day for walking; Reginald would walk across St. James’s Park to Pall Mall. He gave up his ticket, and started to walk by way of the bookstall, just in case; but of course it was absurd, because it was notorious that they only had Edgar Wallace. However . . . and suddenly embarrassment overwhelmed him, and his scalp pricked and tingled, as the whole station, passengers, porters, engine-drivers, bookstall-clerks, and policemen raised their voices in one loud cry of ‘Wellard! It’s Wellard!’

  ‘Wellard, sir,’ shouted the Chairman of the Company to the Prince of Wales as, hat in hand, he conducted his Royal Highness past the bookstall. ‘There, sir; turning over the pages of his book Bindweed.’

  ‘Wellard!’ roared a porter to the deaf old lady whose parrot he was carrying. ‘Author of Bindweed! That’s ’im there. ’Aving a read of it.’

  ‘So that’s what he looks like!’ shrieked one surprised schoolgirl to another. ‘So that’s Wellard!’

  And, suddenly again, the whole station shouted ‘Wellard!’ together, and every finger pointed at him. . . .

  Or didn’t it?

  Nervously, eyes on ground, Reginald switched round his head. Nervously he took his eyes up his neighbour from her feet to her knees (ugly knees), from her knees to her waist, from her waist to her neck, to her eyes. . . . The eyes took no notice of him. They were reading a copy of the Sketch, suspended above him. Other eyes were equally indifferent. Nobody was looking at him. Nobody was talking about him. Nobody had heard of him. He was on a desert island, with his book Bindweed which nobody but himself had read, nor would read ever.

  But that was equally absurd. Mr. Pump had announced a Third Large Impression. Was Mr. Pump a liar? Impossible.

  The bookstall clerk spared him a moment.

  ‘Reading very well, that book, sir,’ he says, slapping down elevenpence at somebody on his right.

  ‘Really?’ says Reginald, trying to hide his excitement. ‘Selling well, eh?’