“What’s the rent?”
“The castle belongs to me. Oh, you mean here? Five shillings a month.”
“You can afford more, now. How long has A Nice Drop of Rain been running?”
David glanced at a grubby theatrical poster and calculated on his finger.
“Ten months.”
“And The Night Sky in May opens next week?”
“I believe so. Really I must hurry up and finish Chips in Coromandel.”
“And we’ve only just found out where you live,” said Luffington, who represented an impressive firm of literary and theatrical agents. “Really, Mr. Glendower—David—you keep yourself rather too well hidden away. Weren’t you even interested to discover the amount of your bank balance?”
“I don’t seem to need money much.”
Luffington peered at him with disapproval. “You must get a new suit. And a new flat. Don’t you understand, people want to meet you?”
“I haven’t time to hunt for flats. I’m just at the crucial point in the second act. People must take me as they find me. But I’d rather they didn’t find me.”
“As to flats, you need have no worries at all,” Luffington said firmly. “There isn’t any need to hunt. Another of our authors is abroad at the moment and I happen to know hers is available, furnished, on a year’s lease. It will suit you admirably: a ground-floor flat in Curzon Street with a garden. And the rent is well within your present means. You can move in tomorrow; I will come here at ten with the office Bentley and help you move—you appear to have very little luggage—”
“I hope there will be room for my shelves; I don’t want my manuscripts to get into a muddle.”
“No there will not.” Luffington cast a disparaging glance at the boxes. “But I can assure you the flat is amply furnished with cupboards, desks, and bureaus. And I myself will help with the manuscripts.”
“There are forty-nine plays and seven sonnet sequences,” David warned him.
Even Luffington’s calm wavered for a moment, and the vaulted ceiling swam before his eyes in a superimposed vision of forty-nine box-office successes.
“How old did you say you were?”
“Twenty-five.”
“And A Nice Drop of Rain was the first piece of work you sent out?”
“Yes; this flat you speak of”—David’s tone was apprehensive—”I’ll have to keep it dusted and so on?”
“Don’t worry about any of that. The butler goes with the lease. He’ll take care of you.”
“Butler?”
“An old family retainer. The flat belongs to Louise Bonaventure—you’ve heard of her, I suppose?” Even you, his tone suggested, but David looked vague.
“She’s an extremely well-known ornithologist. You must have seen her TV programmes—no, I suppose you may not have,” he added as his gaze trailed down the damp walls to the candle in its saucer. “She travels in remote countries looking for rare birds. Her programme is called Parlour Treks. She’s off on Whitsun Island at the moment, I believe. A delightful creature; you must meet her next year when she gets back.” David looked mulish. “That’s all, I think,” Luffington ended briskly. “Till tomorrow then.”
He departed, a willow-thin young man, wearing the very latest collarless haddock-skin jacket, with eyes as cold and intelligent as panel lights.
David went back to his writing and in two minutes had forgotten the visitor. The flat in Curzon Street was furnished and carpeted in the most elegant taste, but David, next day, hardly took it in, beyond noticing tiers of well-filled bookshelves with absent approval. Sitting down at a large, comfortable desk, he pulled out a pencil and notebook from his pocket, and had to be forcibly dragged away by Luffington to meet the lawyers and sign the lease.
Luffington rapidly read the document aloud. “Property on the ground floor of number tiddle-tum three, Curzon Street, hereinafter known as The Property, together with all fixtures, furnishings, fittings, appurtenances, trum, trum, trum, shall be…” David’s attention drifted away. Could Luffington really have read “live and dead stock” or was that a phrase dimly recollected from the long-ago day when Glendower senior was sold up as bankrupt? “Subject to quarterly inspection by lessor or lessor’s agents, trum, trum, trum … shall retain the services of HENRY WADSWORTH OGLETHORPE as butler at a salary of not less than … lease shall be subject to approval of hereinbeforementioned HENRY WADSWORTH….”
“Just a formality,” little Mr. Glibchick, the lawyer, was murmuring. “Miss Bonaventure was anxious to ensure that the flat should be sublet to someone, as she put it, on the same wavelength as herself. (The ladies, bless them, have these fancies.) She places the utmost reliance on the judgement of Oglethorpe—butler since she was a child.”
“I have to be approved by this Oglethorpe?” David came back from Act II with an effort.
“If you don’t mind, sir—”
“Where is he?”
“In the kitchen. I’ll just—”
“I’ll go myself. Through here?” David laid his finger in the notebook and folded Act II round it.
A plump, fatherly man sat at the spotless table oiling a seventeenth-century musical box. His face was platter-shaped and pastry-coloured, with shrewd, friendly eyes.
“You are Henry Wadsworth Oglethorpe? Good morning. I understand you have to approve me. If you’ll just excuse me a moment—” David said politely, and wrote half a dozen lines, raising his head to say, “My name’s David Glendower.”
“Mr. Glendower, the playwright? You needn’t have troubled, sir.” Oglethorpe went placidly on with his task. “Miss Bonaventure has a very high opinion of you and so have I; I’ve seen your play twice.”
“Oh, well, that’s fine then. Very glad to make your acquaintance. What a beautiful musical box.”
“Miss Louise collects them, sir. Would you care to hear it play?”
It played “Can Ye Sew Cushions” very sweetly and hauntingly.
“I know the words to that,” said David, and supplied them in an agreeable tenor. Oglethorpe unexpectedly added the bass, and when, after twenty minutes, Luffington and Glibchick came in search, they had worked their way through to the “Ash Grove,” with falsetto cadenzas by David.
The lease was signed, and the two men of business took their leave, Luffington promising to return and escort David to a tailor.
“Before you do that, sir, I’ll get Mr. Glendower something off the peg,” Oglethorpe suggested, measuring David with his eye, “for he can’t be seen in Padrith and Kneale in that suit. And,” he added, as the front door closed behind Luffington, “in the meantime, how about a nice hot bath, sir? While you’re having it, I’ll just pop out and get the suit—a Lovat I think would be suitable, Mr. David—and then I’ll bring up a light, early lunch, shall I, and you can get straight on with your writing. An omelet and a bottle of Haut-Brion?”
“All right—” said David, steered neatly and inexorably in the direction of the bathroom. The hot water was already running. He felt vaguely that he was being remoulded, but since the process could not possibly upset his interior self, he did not particularly mind; in Oglethorpe’s capable hands it was rather comfortable. Certainly a hot bath was a luxury he had not experienced for years, and quite acceptable, though he found Miss Bonaventure’s bathroom, with its swansdown etceteras, dark-green marble, and sunk bath, alarmingly sybaritic.
Halfway through his bath, as he lay idly pushing the soap about with his toe and trying over lines of dialogue aloud (acoustically the room was superb), something rather disconcerting occurred.
A flash of movement caught his eye from a carved alabaster bracket by the window, on which reposed what he had taken to be a carved alabaster swan with its head tucked under its wing. Turning rather sharply, he now saw that the swan had thrust its neck forward, so that the head just protruded from under the wing, and was regarding him with a black and inscrutable eye.
David started so violently that a tidal wave slopped over the edge of the bath. Swans are baleful and unpredictable creatures at best, even when viewed from the vantage point of rowboat or towing path; to meet a swan when oneself recumbent, unclad, immersed, and on a much lower level is an unnerving experience. David glanced towards the bathroom door, gauging his distance, but the swan forestalled him by spreading a pair of wings with an eight-foot span and gliding to a point midway between bath and door. There it settled, tucking its flappers neatly underneath, curving its neck into a meticulous S-bend, and fixing its flat eyes on David.
With such an audience there was no pleasure in further soaking. Indeed, it seemed alarmingly possible that the bird might elect to share his bath with David. He dried himself hastily. Oglethorpe had removed his clothes and left him a towelling robe which afforded highly inadequate protection against swan assault. However, this bird’s manner, though watchful, did not appear to be hostile. When David gingerly skirted round to reach the door, it swivelled its head, keeping the flat black eyes trained on him like AA guns, but allowed him to leave in an orderly manner.