Not always women, of course. Sometimes emotional young men from very faraway countries. Only last week she had received a fan letter beginning, “Reading your book, I feel what a noble woman you must be.” After reading The Second Goldfish he had then gone off into an intense kind of literary ecstasy which was, Mrs. Oliver felt, completely unfitting.
She was not unduly modest. She thought the detective stories she wrote were quite good of their kind. Some were not so good and some were much better than others. But there was no reason, so far as she could see, to make anyone think she was a noble woman. She was a lucky woman who had established a happy knack of writing what quite a lot of people wanted to read. Wonderful luck that was, Mrs. Oliver thought to herself.
Well, all things considered, she had got through this ordeal very well. She had quite enjoyed herself, talked to some nice people. Now they were moving to where coffee was being handed round and where you could change partners and chat with other people. This was the moment of danger, as Mrs.
Oliver knew well. This was now where other women would come and attack her. Attack her with fulsome praise, and where she always felt lamentably inefficient at giving the right answers because there weren’t really any right answers that you could give. It went really rather like a travel book for going abroad with the right phrases.
Question: “I must tell you how very fond I am of reading your books and how wonderful I think they are.” Answer from flustered author: “Well, that’s very kind. I am so glad.” “You must understand that I’ve been waiting to meet you for months. It really is wonderful.” “Oh, it’s very nice of you. Very nice indeed.” It went on very much like that. Neither of you seemed to be able to talk about anything of outside interest. It had to be all about your books, or the other woman’s books if you knew what her books were. You were in the literary web and you weren’t good at this sort of stuff. Some people could do it, but Mrs. Oliver was bitterly aware of not having the proper capacity. A foreign friend of hers had once put her, when she was staying at an embassy abroad, through a kind of course.
“I listen to you,” Albertina had said in her charming, low, foreign voice. “I have listened to what you say to that young man who came from the newspaper to interview you. You have not got–no! you have not got the pride you should have in your work. You should say ‘Yes, I write well. I write better than anyone else who writes detective stories.’ ” “But I don’t,” Mrs. Oliver had said at that moment. “I’m not bad but–” “Ah, do not say ‘I don’t’ like that. You must say you do; even if you do not think you do, you ought to say you do.” “I wish, Albertina,” said Mrs. Oliver, “that you could interview these journalists who come. You would do it so well.
Can’t you pretend to be me one day, and I’ll listen behind the door?” “Yes, I suppose I could do it. It would be rather fun. But they would know I was not you. They know your face. But you must say ‘Yes, yes, I know that I am better than anyone else.’ You must say that to everybody. They should know it.
They should announce it. Oh, yes–it is terrible to hear you sitting there and say things as though you apologize for what you are. It must not be like that.” It had been rather, Mrs. Oliver thought, as though she had been a budding actress trying to learn a part, and the director had found her hopelessly bad at taking direction. Well, anyway, there’d be not much difficulty here. There’d be a few waiting females when they all got up from the table. In fact, she could see one or two hovering already. That wouldn’t matter much.
She would go and smile and be nice and say, “So kind of you.