Scoop-Evelyn-Waugh [1]
When Mrs. Stitch said ten minutes, she meant ten minutes. Sharp on time she was back, dressed for the street; her lovely face, scraped clean of clay, was now alive with interest. "Sweet Josephine, has Mr. Boot been boring you?" "It was all right really. I did most of the talking." "Show him your imitation of the Prime Minister." "No." "Sing him your Neapolitan song." "No." "Stand on your head. Just once for Mr. Boot." "No." "Oh dear. Well we must go at once if we are to get to Bethnal Green and back before luncheon. The traffic's terrible." Algernon Stitch went to his office in a sombre and rather antiquated Daimler; Julia always drove herself, in the latest model of mass-produced, baby car; brand-new twice a year, painted an invariable brilliant black, tiny and glossy as a midget's funeral hearse. She mounted the kerb and bowled rapidly along the pavement to the corner of St. James's, where a policeman took her number and ordered her into the road. "Third time this week," said Mrs. Stitch. "I wish they wouldn't. It's such a nuisance for Algy." Once embedded in the traffic block, she stopped the engine and turned her attention to the crossword. "It's 'detonate,'" she said, filling it in. East wind swept the street, carrying with it the exhaust gas of a hundred motors and coarse particles of Regency stucco from a once-decent Nash facade that was being demolished across the way. John shivered and rubbed some grit further into his eye. Eight minutes' close application was enough to finish the puzzle. Mrs. Stitch folded the paper and tossed it over her shoulder into the back seat; looked about her resentfully at the stationary traffic. "This is too much," she said; started the engine, turned sharp again onto the kerb and proceeded to Piccadilly, driving before her at a brisk pace, until he took refuge on the step of Brooks's, a portly, bald young man; when he reached safety, be turned to remonstrate, recognized Mrs. Stitch, and bowed profoundly to the tiny, black back as it shot the corner of Arlington Street. "One of the things I like about these absurd cars," she said, "is that you can do things with them that you couldn't do in a real one." From Hyde Park Corner to Piccadilly Circus the line of traffic was continuous and motionless, still as a photograph, unbroken and undisturbed save at a few strategic corners where barricaded navvies, like desperate outposts of some proletarian defence, were rending the road with mechanical drills, mining for the wires and tubes that controlled the life of the city. "I want to get away from London," said John Boot. "So it's come to that? All on account of your American girl?" "Well, mostly." "I warned you, before you began. Is she being frightful?" "My lips are sealed. But I've got to get far away or else go crazy." "To my certain knowledge she's driven three men into the bin. Where are you going?" "That's just what I wanted to talk about." The line of cars jerked forwards for ten yards and again came to rest. The lunchtime edition of the evening papers were already on the streets; placards announcing
ISHMAELITE CRISIS And STRONG LEAGUE NOTE
were fluttering in the east wind. "Ishmaelia seems to be the place. I was wondering if Algy would send me there as a spy." "Not a chance." "No?" "Foregonners. Algy's been sacking ten spies a day for weeks. It's a grossly overcrowded profession. Why don't you go as a war correspondent?" "Could you fix it?" "I don't see why not. After all you've been to Patagonia. I should think they would jump at you. You're sure you really want to go?" "Quite sure." "Well, I'll see what I can do. I'm meeting Lord Copper at lunch today at Margot's. I'll try and bring the subject up."
When Lady Metroland said half-past one she meant ten minutes to two. It was precisely at this time, simultaneously with her hostess, that Mrs. Stitch arrived (having been obliged by press of traffic to leave her little car in a garage halfway to Bethnal Green, and return to Curzon Street by means of the Underground railway). Lord Copper, however, who normally lunched at one, was waiting with some impatience. Various men and women who appeared to know one another intimately, and did not know Lord Copper, had been admitted from time to time and had disregarded him. His subordinates at the Megalopolitan Newspaper Corporation would have been at difficulties to recognize the uneasy figure which stood up each time the door was opened and sat down again unnoticed. He was a stranger in these parts; it was a thoughtless benefaction to one of Lady Metroland's charities that had exposed him, in the middle of a busy day, to this harrowing experience; he would readily, now, have doubled the sum to purchase his release. Thus when Mrs. Stitch directed upon him some of her piercing shafts of charm she found him first numb, then dazzled, then extravagantly receptive. From the moment of her entrance the luncheon party was transformed for Lord Copper; he had gotten a new angle on it. He knew of Mrs. Stitch; from time to time he had seen her in the distance; now for the first time he found himself riddled through and through, mesmerized, inebriated. Those at the table, witnessing the familiar process, began to conjecture, in tones which Lord Copper was too much entranced to overhear, what Julia could possibly want of him. "It's her model madhouse," said some; "She wants the caricaturists to lay off Algy," said others; "Been losing money," thought the second footman (at Lady Metro-land's orders he was on diet, and lunchtime always found him in a cynical mood); "A job for someone or other," came nearest the truth, but no one thought of John Courteney Boot until Mrs. Stitch brought him into the conversation. Then they all played up loyally. "You know," she said, after coaxing Lord Copper into an uncompromising denunciation of the Prime Minister's public and private honesty, "I expect he's all you say, but he's a man of far more taste than you'd suppose. He always sleeps with a Boot by his bed." "A boot?" asked Lord Copper, trustful but a little bewildered. "One of John Boot's books." The luncheon party had got their cue. "Dear John Boot," said Lady Metroland; "so clever and amusing. I wish I could get him to come and see me more often." "Such a divine style," said Lady Cockpurse. The table buzzed with praise of John Boot. It was a new name to Lord Copper. He resolved to question his literary secretary on the subject. He had become Boot-conscious. Mrs. Stitch changed her ground and began to ask him in the most flattering way about the chances of peace in Ishmaelia. Lord Copper gave it as his opinion that civil war was inevitable. Mrs. Stitch remarked how few of the famous war correspondents still survived. "Isn't there one called Sir Something Hitchcock?" asked Lady Cockpurse. (This was a false step, since the knight in question had lately left Lord Copper's service, after an acrimonious dispute about the date of the Battle of Hastings, and had transferred to the Lord Zinc camp.) "Who will you be sending to Ishmaelia?" asked Mrs. Stitch. "I am in consultation with my editors on the subject. We think it a very promising little war. A microcosm as you might say of world drama. We propose to give it fullest publicity. The workings of a great newspaper," said Lord Copper, feeling at last thoroughly Rotarian, "are of a complexity which the public seldom appreciates. The citizen little realizes the vast machinery put into motion for him in exchange for his morning penny." ("Oh God," said Lady Metroland, faintly but audibly.) "We shall have our naval, military and air experts, our squad of photographers, our colour reporters, covering the war from every angle and on every front." "Yes," said Mrs. Stitch, "yes, yes. I suppose you will. ... If I were you I should send someone like Boot. I don't suppose you could persuade him to go, but someone like him." "It has been my experience, dear Mrs. Stitch, that the Megalopolitan can command the talent of the world. Only last week the Poet Laureate wrote us an ode to the seasonal fluctuation of our net sales. We splashed it on the middle page. He admitted it was the most poetic and highly paid work he had ever done." "Well, of course, if you could get him, Boot is your man. He's a brilliant writer, he's travelled everywhere, and knows the whole Ishmaelite situation inside out." "Boot would be divine," said Lady Cockpurse loyally.