As Berry and I Were Saying (19 page)

“These courtesies,” said Daphne, “are devastating. Last night Berry rang some bell. Boy admitted that, but wanted to leave it there. And the subject was that of evil which does not always come by its own.”

“That’s right,” said Berry. “Come on.”

“If you’ll allow me,” said I, “I’d prefer to withdraw.”

“No, you don’t,” said Berry. “I have my public to consider. And I will not permit my partner to let them down.”

“We can expunge the reference.”

“That would be most improper. Besides, I want to know.”

“So do I,” said Daphne.

“Well, it needn’t go in,” said I. “It means some more plain speaking.”

“I have always believed,” said Berry, “in calling a jade a jade.”

“You’re nearer the truth than you think. Still, I must dress this up. When I was in Treasury Chambers, we had to prosecute once in a type of case which invariably presents great difficulty. The offence was extremely grave and can be punished by penal servitude for life. The difficulty is presented by the fact that the principal witness for the Crown invariably goes back on her proof. In this case, she ran true to form; but the case was stronger than usual, and I think we might have got home, if Marshall Hall had not been briefed for the defence. He had a way with a jury, and he got the prisoner off. Well, that was that. But Channell was on the Bench. I remember that he looked at the lady, and she looked back. I can see her now, standing between the two wardresses, small, dark, attractive and terribly well turned out. Then Channell spoke very sternly. ‘Margery —,’ he said, ‘you’re a very fortunate woman. You are discharged.’ You see, Channell knew, and we knew, and she knew, and Marshall Hall knew a very important fact which the jury did
not
know. And that was that, less than twelve months before, she had been indicted and had stood in the very same dock at the Old Bailey on a precisely similar charge: and Marshall Hall had defended her and had got her off. He was her standing counsel. But, as I say, the jury didn’t know that: and so they did as their predecessors had done – and as, for all I know, their successors did. And that is one of the cases in which evil did not come by its own.”

“‘Her standing counsel,’” said Berry. “God bless my soul. And what was he paid for that?”

“I wouldn’t know. I should say, a hundred guineas. But it was worth her while. If she had gone down, she’d have got fifteen years.”

“My God,” said Daphne.

“He commanded big fees?” said Berry.

“Oh, yes. And he certainly earned them. He was a very fine advocate, Marshall Hall. Towards the end, he suffered a lot from sciatica, and he used to ask the Judge’s permission to sit, instead of stand. Not that those benches can have helped him. But I think his clerk had a cushion.”

“When it was very hot, could you ask permission to take off your wigs?”

“I never remember that happening. But Fletcher-Moulton usually had his off. It lay on the desk by his side. But he was a Lord Justice of Appeal, and did as he pleased. He was very old, of course. And another Lord Justice, Vaughan Williams, was even older than he. But there was nothing the matter with their brains. Only their bodies were failing. Old Lady Vaughan-Williams used to come down to the Law Courts every day to prepare her husband’s luncheon.”

“How sweet,” said Jill.

“So it was,” said I. “She was nearly as old as he: but she would trust no one else to see to his food.”

“A very proper spirit,” said Berry. “For the welfare of her lord, no sacrifice was too high. I could wish—”

“That’s all right,” said Daphne. “I’ll prepare your food tomorrow.”

“My sweet,” said Berry, hurriedly, “I never heard of such a thing. To think of your messing up those beautiful hands—”

“How?”

“Well, making pastry, for instance.”

“You won’t get any pastry,” said his wife.

Berry swallowed.

“We – we mustn’t upset Bridget,” he said.

“Bridget,” said Daphne, “will simply shriek with laughter.”

Berry stifled a scream.

Then –

“I withdraw,” he said. “I hereby submit to blackmail. It wasn’t a proper spirit. Lady Vaughan-Williams went far beyond the dictates of duty. She spoiled the old boy. And I daresay he’d much sooner have had a dozen oysters and a couple of glasses of port.”

“That’s probably why she did it,” I said.

“You are brutes,” said Jill. “I think it was perfectly sweet. Did you ever put Marshall Hall into one of your books?”

I shook my head.

“But I put in Bodkin. And though I say it, the portrait was very good.
Mr Quaritch
in
And Five Were Foolish
. He had such a pretty wit.”

“Ah,” said Daphne. “There’s something I meant to ask.
Quaritch
was a Treasury Counsel: yet he was defending a case.”

“Oh, yes. That was often done. They had to ask permission – that was all.”

“I assume they were well worth having. I mean they knew the ropes.”

“Some of them were. But Muir, for instance, was no earthly. I’ve heard him defend, and he was a fish out of water.”

“He had a big name,” said Berry.

“Among laymen – yes. So did…others, among laymen. Personally, I never had a great opinion of Muir, as Counsel for the Crown. Give him a dead case, and he’d screw the coffin down as could nobody else. But everything had to go according to plan. He couldn’t turn quickly, as counsel should be able to do. But, by God, he was a glutton for work. And he was safe as a house. A very admirable man. No sense of humour at all – he didn’t know what it meant.”

“Didn’t he lead for the Crown in the Crippen case?”

“Yes. And he did it well. But that was a dead case.”

“Was it, indeed?”

“We had so much evidence against Crippen, we didn’t use it all.”

“‘Among laymen’,” said Berry.

“Damn it,” I said. “I thought you’d pick that up.”

“Go on,” said Berry. “What the hell?”

“I’ve got to be careful here. I’m not going to mention names, but I could name at least four counsel whose reputation outside The Temple was in no way deserved. One was definitely bad. Another attained a great name in the nineteen twenties. I’d left the Bar by then, but I went to the Courts one day, to hear him cross-examine. I was never so disappointed in all my life.”

“How do they get these reputations?”

“I really don’t know. Probably through being in cases which are splashed, because they are ‘news’. So the public gets to know their names.”

“I’ve just remembered something. The famous Sir Edward Clarke. I rather think that he was before your time.”

“Just before. But I can remember him, for Coles Willing took me to hear him in 1903. Some death-bed Will case. He was, of course, the leader of the Bar in his day: and he actually practised for half a century. Think of the changes he saw in fifty years. It was said that he left the Bar a disappointed man. He’d been offered the Mastership of the Rolls: this he refused, for he wanted to be Lord Chief Justice. But they never offered him that. He was, of course, a famous advocate. He grew very autocratic towards the end.”

“
And Five Were Foolish
,” said Jill. “Wasn’t there something that started one of those tales?”

“I know what you mean, my darling. We were driving down through France soon after the first Great War. And we stopped at a garage, for I wanted some cotton waste. They hadn’t got such a thing: but they sold me a box of rags, which, they said, were sterilized.”

“The French all over,” said Berry.

“Exactly. But I had to have something. The first rag which I took out had once been part of the shirt of a wounded man.”

“How bestial,” said Daphne.

“The French all over,” said Berry.

“I didn’t take out any more. But that gave me the idea for the short tale
Madeleine
.”

“What gave you the idea for
The Stolen March
?”

“My favourite,” said Jill. “It always was.”

“I don’t know at all. I just sat down and began, and the book carried on. I well remember that I couldn’t think how to get them out of
The Pail
. But the book did it all right – and, I think, quite naturally.”

“If I may say so,” said Berry, “that book has some very high spots. Much, of course, was drivel: but—”

“What was drivel?” said Jill.

“I am happily unable,” said Berry, “to retain in my mind such written word as does not attain the standard necessary to merit my attention.”

“Plagiarist,” said Daphne. “That’s
Pride
to the life. Only Boy would have put it better.” She turned to me. “I always hoped you’d write a sequel to
The Stolen March
.”

“I meant to,” I said. “But a lot of people didn’t like it, you know.”

“That,” said Berry, “I can well believe.”

“Be quiet,” said Daphne. “But, Boy, that didn’t stop you?”

I laughed.

“No. That’s why I’m not a good author. I’ve always gone as I pleased. As long as I know that my work is up to standard, I don’t care what people like. But my publishers got worried. And so I put it off. And then I did other things, and – well, it’s too late now. It could be done: but the sequel would not be a patch on its predecessor. And that must never happen. If you are to write a sequel, it’s got to be just as good.”

“Was
Rupert of Hentzau
as good as
The Prisoner of Zenda
?”

“No. But the last scene lifted it very, very high.”

“What was the best novel written between the wars?”

“That’s easy. James Hilton’s
Lost Horizon
. About that, to my mind, there is no argument.”

“What made you change your style?”

“You mean, start writing romances?”

“Yes.
Blind Corner
was the first.”

“Well, I read an article – I think it was in
The Spectator
– in which the writer pointed out that an author who wrote stuff that sold, when he could really write better stuff should be ashamed of himself. That got me under the ribs. For I knew that, if I tried, I could write better English than so far I had. But there didn’t seem to me to be much scope for good English in the light stuff I had been writing. And so I wrote
Blind Corner
. Of course I got stacks of letters, saying ‘Anybody can do stuff like
Blind Corner
, but nobody else can do your light stuff. Please stick to your last.’”

“What damned impertinence,” said Berry.

“It was not meant. And I saw their point. But it wasn’t mine. So I wrote three more ‘
Chandos
’ books, before throwing back. The author who writes what his public wants him to write, because his public wants him to write it, is doomed.”

“It has been done,” said Daphne.

“I know. It’s a great mistake. In a way, it’s writing to order. And that is a thing no author should ever do.”

“After the first four ‘
Chandos
’ books, you wrote
Adèle and Co
.”

“To my mind,” said Berry, “taking it by and large, you’ve never bettered that book.”

“I shall always think it’s the best of the ‘
Berry
’ books.”

“Better,” said Daphne,” than
The House that Berry Built
?”

“That’s my belief.”

“One thing, I’ll give you,” said Berry. “For some extraordinary reason, your books don’t date.”

“That’s just an accident.”

“Some reviewers,” said Jill, “keep on referring to your tales as being impossible. They’re quite nice, as a rule, but they will keep on saying that the things that happen are impossible. That always makes me cross, for they’re
not
impossible.”

“I know,” said I, laughing. “It used to annoy me once. But I don’t care now. You see, you must remember this. We know that they are not impossible. Take
Cost Price
. Everything in that book could easily have happened. A courageous giant, like
Chandos
, who knew no fear, could have done all that he did. And there was no situation which was unreasonable. But, then, we know the Continent of Europe. And we know that all those things could have happened there. But the reviewer doesn’t know the Continent… And so he says, ‘Impossible. Entertaining no doubt: but impossible.’ Of course such things couldn’t take place in England. That is why I always make France or Austria the scene. And I refer to Austria before 1938. In
Blind Corner
I took care to say that, if you had cared to fight a duel with a couple of Lewis guns in the Austrian countryside, before the first war, no one would have taken the trouble to come and see what it was.”

“I can bear that out,” said Berry. “It’s perfectly true. And everything that happened in
She Fell Among Thieves
could perfectly well have happened in France up to the second Great War.”

“Well, there we are,” I said. “The reviewers don’t realize that, and I don’t blame them. But it happens to be true. After all, what is a romance? As I have said before, it is a ‘tale with scene and incidents remote from every-day life’. And there, I think, lies the answer. I once had a terribly nice letter from a bloke, who said ‘What I like about your books is that you never write anything which isn’t entirely possible. Given initiative, drive, courage, strength and money, any fit man could do what Mansel and Chandos do. And you always give a perfectly satisfactory explanation of everything. That’s why your books are convincing.’”

“That was a rare tribute.”

“It was, indeed. And I valued it very much. You see, it’s so easy, when A and B are in a jam, for C, the hero, to appear in a waiter’s dress and lug them out. But how did C get there? How did he get taken on? How was it that he was there at the critical moment? Well, that’s left to the imagination – and must be swallowed whole: for the author doesn’t know any more than the reader does. And when the police are coming and you’ve got to dispose of the dope. Well, you open a panel and you press a lever which drops the dope into a furnace. That’s fine, of course. But who installed the contrivance – a rather elaborate contrivance – behind the panelling of a London flat?” I shrugged my shoulders. “Convenient waiters and levers are all very well. But my experience is that in life they are not there. Such work is slovenly. I have always maintained that if you publish a book, you’ve got to play fair.
The Stolen March
was a fantasy: the action of
Blood Royal
and
Fire Below
took place in a principality not to be found on the maps: but, allowing for the custom of the country,
Chandos
did nothing which a fine fellow couldn’t have done. Frankly, I should be ashamed to offer my public something which no thinking man could accept. It is, I suppose, a matter of self-respect.”