Four: "Dear Viv"

THAT summer's night hadn't finished with me. Opposite Fullers' a policeman was standing by Derek's car, arguing with him. Derek turned and saw me. "Here she is, officer. I said she wouldn't be a minute. Had to, er, powder her nose. Didn't you, darling?"
More trouble! More lies! I said yes, breathlessly, and climbed into the seat beside Derek. The policeman grinned slyly at me and said to Derek, "All right, sir. But another time remember there's no parking on the Hill. Even for an emergency like that." He fingered his mustache. Derek put the car in gear, thanked the policeman and gave him the wink of a dirty joke shared, and we were off at last.
Derek said nothing until we had turned right at the lights at the bottom. I thought he was going to drop me at the station, but he continued on along the Datchet road. "Phew!" He let the air out of his lungs with relief. "That was a close shave! Thought we were for it. Nice thing for my parents to read in the paper tomorrow. And Oxford! I should have had it."
"It was ghastly."
There was so much feeling in my voice that he looked sideways at me. "Oh, well. The path of true love and all that." His voice was light and easy. He had recovered. When would I? "Damned shame, really," he went on casually. "Just when we'd got it all set up." He put enthusiasm into his voice to carry me with him. "Tell you what. There's an hour before the train. Why don't we walk up along the river. It's a well-known beat for Windsor couples. Absolutely private. Pity to waste everything, time and so on, now we've made up our minds."
The "so on," I thought, meant "the thing" he had bought. I was aghast. I said urgently, "Oh, but I can't, Derek! I simply can't! You've no idea how awful I feel about what happened."
He looked quickly at me. "What do you mean, awful? You feeling ill or something?"
"Oh, it's not that. It's just that, that it was all so horrible. So shaming."
"Oh, that!" his voice was contemptuous. "We got away with it, didn't we? Come on. Be a sport!"
That again! But I did want to be comforted, feel his arms round me, be certain he still loved me, although everything had gone so wrong for him. But my legs began to tremble at the thought of going through it all again. I clutched my knees with my hands to control them. I said weakly. "Oh, well..."
"That's my girl!"
We went over the bridge, and Derek pulled the car in to the side. He helped me over a stile into a field and put his arm round me and guided me along the little tow-path past some houseboats moored under the willows. "Wish we had one of those," he said. "How about breaking into one? Lovely double bed. Probably some drink in the cupboards."
"Oh, no, Derek! For heaven's sake! There's been enough trouble." I could imagine the loud voice. "What's going on in there? Are you the owners of this boat? Come on out and let's have a look at you."
Derek laughed. "Perhaps you're right. Anyway, the grass is just as soft. Aren't you excited? You'll see. It's wonderful. Then we'll really be lovers."
"Oh, yes, Derek. But you will be gentle, won't you? I shan't be any good at it the first time."
Derek squeezed me excitedly. "Don't you worry. I'll show you."
I was feeling better, stronger. It was lovely walking with him in the moonlight. But there was a grove of trees ahead, and I looked at it fearfully. I knew that would be where it was going to happen. I must, I must make it easy and good for him! I mustn't be silly! I mustn't cry!
The path led through the grove. Derek looked about him. "In there," he said. "I'll go first. Keep your head down."
We crept in among the branches. Sure enough, there was a little clearing. Other people had been there before. There was a cigarette packet, a Coca-Cola bottle. The moss and leaves had been beaten down. 1 had the feeling that this was a brothel bed where hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lovers had pressed and struggled. But now there was no turning back. At least it must be a good place for it, if so many others had used it.
Derek was eager, impatient. He put his coat down for me and at once started, almost feverishly, his hands devouring me. I tried to melt, but my body was still cramped with nerves, and my limbs felt like wood. I wished he would say something, something sweet and loving, but he was intent and purposeful, manhandling me almost brutally, treating me as if I was a big clumsy doll. "A paper doll, for me to call my own"-the Ink Spots again! I could hear the deep bass of Hoppy Jones and the sweet soprano counterpoint of Bill Kenny, so piercingly sweet that it tore at the heartstrings. And underneath, the deep pulse-beat of Charlie Fuqua's guitar. The tears squeezed out of my eyes. Oh, God, what was happening to me? And then the sharp pain and the short scream I quickly stifled, and he was lying on top of me, his chest heaving and his heart beating heavily against my breast. I put my arms round him and felt his shirt wet against my hands.
We lay like that for long minutes. I watched the moonlight filtering down through the branches, and tried to stop my tears. So that was it! The great moment. A moment I would never have again. So now I was a woman, and the girl was gone! And there had been no pleasure, only pain like they all said. But there remained something. This man in my arms. 1 held him more tightly to me. 1 was his now, entirely his, and he was mine. He would look after me. We belonged. Now I would never be alone again. There were two of us.
Derek kissed my wet cheek and scrambled to his feet. He held out his hands, and I pulled down my skirt and he hauled me up. He looked into my face, and there was embarrassment in his half-smile. "I hope it didn't hurt too much."
"No. But was it all right for you?"
"Oh, yes, rather."
He bent down and picked up his coat. He looked at his watch. "I say! Only a quarter of an hour for the train! We'd better get moving."
We scrambled back onto the path and as we walked along I pulled a comb through my hair and brushed at my skirt. Derek walked silently beside me. His face under the moon was now closed, and when I put my arm through his there was no answering pressure. I wished he would be loving, talk about our next meeting, but I could feel that he was suddenly withdrawn, cold. I hadn't got used to men's faces after they've done it. I blamed myself. It hadn't been good enough. And I had cried. I had spoiled it for him.
We came to the car and drove silently to the station. I stopped him at the entrance. Under the yellow light his face was taut and strained and his eyes only half met mine. I said, "Don't come to the train, darling. I can find my way. What about next Saturday? I could come down to Oxford. Or would you rather wait until you're settled in?"
He said defensively, "Trouble is, Viv, things are going to be different at Oxford. I'll have to see. Write to you."
I tried to read his face. This was so different from our usual parting. Perhaps he was tired. God knew I was! I said, "Yes, of course. But write to me quickly, darling. I'd like to know how you're getting on." I reached up and kissed him on the lips. His own lips hardly responded.
He nodded. "Well, so long, Viv," and with a kind of twisted smile he turned and went off round the corner to his car.

* * *

It was two weeks later that I got the letter. I had written twice, but there had been no answer. In desperation I had even telephoned, but the man at the other end had gone away and come back and said that Mr. Mallaby wasn't at home.
The letter began, "Dear Viv, This is going to be a difficult letter to write." When I had got that far I went into my bedroom and locked the door and sat on my bed and gathered my courage. The letter went on to say that it had been a wonderful summer and he would never forget me. But now his life had changed and he would have a lot of work to do and there wouldn't be much room for "girls." He had told his parents about me, but they disapproved of our "affair." They said it wasn't fair to go on with a girl if one wasn't going to marry her. "They are terribly insular, I'm afraid, and they have ridiculous ideas about 'foreigners,' although heaven knows I regard you as just like any other English girl and you know I adore your accent." They were set on his marrying the daughter of some neighbor in the country. "I've never told you about this, which I'm afraid was very naughty of me, but as a matter of fact we're sort of semi-engaged. We had such a marvelous time together and you were such a sport that I didn't want to spoil it all." He said he hoped very much we would "run into each other" again one day and in the meantime he had asked Fortnum's to send me a dozen bottles of pink champagne, "the best," to remind me of the first time we had met. "And I do hope this letter won't upset you too much, Viv, as I really think you're the most wonderful girl, far too good for someone like me. With much love, happy memories, Derek."
Well, it took just ten minutes to break my heart and about another six months to mend it. Accounts of other people's aches and pains are uninteresting because they are so similar to everybody else's, so I won't go into details. I didn't even tell Susan. As I saw it, I'd behaved like a tramp, from the very first evening, and I'd been treated like a tramp. In this tight little world of England, I was a Canadian, and therefore a foreigner, an outsider-fair game. The fact that I hadn't seen it happening to me was more fool me. Born yesterday! Better get wise, or you'll go on being hurt! But beneath this open-eyed, chin-up rationalization, the girl in me whimpered and cringed, and for a time I cried at night and went down on my knees to the Holy Mother I had forsaken and prayed that She would give Derek back to me. But of course She wouldn't, and my pride forbade me to plead with him or to follow up my curt little note of acknowledgment to his letter and the return of the champagne to Fortnum's. The endless summer had ended. All that was left were some poignant Ink Spot memories, and the imprint of the nightmare in the cinema in Windsor, the marks of which I knew I would bear all my life.
I was lucky. The job I had been trying for came up. It was through the usual friend-of-a-friend, and it was on the Chelsea Clarion, a glorified parish magazine that had gone in for small ads and had established itself as a kind of marketplace for people looking for flats and rooms and servants in the southwest part of London. It had added some editorial pages that dealt only with local problems- the hideous new lamp standards, infrequent buses on the Number 11 route, the theft of milk bottles-things that really affected the local housewives, and it ran a whole page of local gossip, mostly "Chelsea," that "everybody" came to read and that somehow managed to dodge libel actions. It also had a hard-hitting editorial on Empire Loyalist lines that exactly suited the politics of the neighborhood, and, for good measure, it was stylishly made up each week (it was a weekly) by a man called Harling who was quite a dab at getting the most out of the old-fashioned type faces that were all our steam-age jobbing printers in Pimlico had in stock. In fact it was quite a good little paper, and the staff liked it so much they worked for a pittance and even for nothing when the ads didn't materialize in times like August and over the holidays. I got five pounds a week (we were non-union: not important enough), plus commission on any ads I could rustle up.
So I quietly tucked the fragments of my heart somewhere under my ribs and decided to get along without one for the future. I would rely on brains and guts and shoe-leather to show these damned English snobs that if I couldn't get anywhere else with them I could at least make a living out of them. So I went to work by day and cried by night and I became the most willing horse on the paper. I made tea for the staff, attended the funerals and got the lists of the mourners right, wrote spiky paragraphs for the gossip page, ran the competition column, and even checked the clues of the crossword before it went into type. And, in between, I hustled round the neighborhood, charming ads out of the most hardbitten shops and hotels and restaurants and piling up my twenty-per-cents with the tough old Scotswoman who kept the accounts. Soon I was making good money-twelve to twenty pounds a week-and the editor thought he would economize by stabilizing me at a salary of fifteen, so he installed me in a cubbyhole next to him and I became his editorial assistant, which apparently carried with it the privilege of sleeping with him. But at the first pinch of my behind I told him that I was engaged to a man in Canada, and, when I said it, I looked him so furiously in the eye that he got the message and left me alone. I liked him, and from then on we got on fine. He was an ex-Beaverbrook reporter called Len Holbrook, who had come into some money and had decided to go into business for himself. He was a Welshman and, like all of them, something of an idealist. He had decided that if he couldn't change the world he would at least make a start on Chelsea, and he bought the broken-down Clarion and started laying about him. He had a tip-off on the Council and another in the local Labour Party organization, and he got off to a flying start when he revealed that a jerry-builder had got the contract for a new block of Council flats and that he wasn't building to specification-not putting enough steel in the concrete or something. The Nationals picked up the story, with tongs because It stank of libel, and, as luck would have it, cracks began to appear in the uprights, and pictures got taken. There was an inquiry, the builder lost his contract and his license, and the Clarion put a red Saint George and Dragon on its masthead. There were other campaigns, like the ones I mentioned earlier, and suddenly people were reading the little paper and it put on more pages and soon had a circulation of around forty thousand and the Nationals were regularly stealing its stories and giving it an occasional plug in exchange.
Well, I settled down in my new job as "Assistant to the Editor," and I was given more writing to do and less leg-work, and in due course, after I had been there for a year, I graduated to a by-line, and "Vivienne Michel" became a public person and my salary went up to twenty guineas. Len liked the way I got on with things and wasn't afraid of people, and he taught me a lot about writing- tricks like hooking the reader with your lead paragraph, using short sentences, avoiding "okay" English, and, above all, writing about people. This he had learned from the Express, and he was always drumming it into my head. For instance, he had a phobia about the 11 and 22 bus services and he was always chasing them. I began one of my many stories about them, "Conductors on the Number 11 service complain that they have to work to too tight a schedule in the rush-hours." Len put his pencil through it. "People, people, people! This is how it ought to go: 'Frank Donaldson, a wideawake young man of twenty-seven, has a wife, Gracie, and two children, Bill, six, and Emily, five. And he has a grouse. "I haven't seen my kids in the evening ever since the summer holidays," he told me in the neat little parlor of number 36 Bolton Lane. "When I get home they're always in bed. You see, I'm a conductor, on the 11 route, and we've been running an hour late regular, ever since the new schedules came in." ' " Len stopped. "See what I mean? There are people driving those buses. They're more interesting than the buses. Now you go out and find a Frank Donaldson and make that story of yours come alive." Cheap stuff, I suppose, corny angles, but that's journalism, and I was in the trade and I did what he told me and my copy began to draw the letters-from the Donaldsons of the neighborhood and their wives and their mates. And editors seem to love letters. They make a paper look busy and read.
I stayed with the Clarion another two years, until I was just over twenty-one, and by then I was getting offers from the Nationals, from the Express and the Mail, and it seemed to me it was time to get out of S.W.3 and into the world. I was still living with Susan. She had got a job with the Foreign Office in something called "Communications," about which she was very secretive, and she had a boy-friend from the same department, and I knew it wouldn't be long before they got engaged and she would want the whole flat. My own private life was a vacuum-a business of drifting friendships and semi-flirtations from which I always recoiled, and I was in danger of becoming a hard, if successful, little career girl, smoking too many cigarettes and drinking too many vodkas and tonics and eating alone out of tins. My gods, or rather goddesses (Katharine Whitehorne and Penelope Gilliatt were outside my orbit), were Drusilla Beyfus, Veronica Papworth, Jean Campbell, Shirley Lord, Barbara Griggs, and Anne Sharpley-the top women journalists-and I only wanted to be as good as any of them and nothing else in the world.
And then, at a press show in aid of a Baroque Festival in Munich, I met Kurt Rainer of the V.W.Z.