The Millstone Read Free

whether it occurred hours, days or years later than the preceding scene—or indeed perhaps before it, one simply could not tell. I pointed this out to Dick and he was startled and alarmed because he could not see what I meant, which implied that the defect must have been integral and not technical. He earned his living by writing something or other for a television company, but he was not wholly committed to his work. Alex, on the other hand, was as committed as I was: he was working for an advertising agency, writing copy, and was thoroughly enraptured by his job. He was at heart rather a serious puritanical young man, and I think it gave him great pleasure to live in such a wicked warm atmosphere, all jokes and deceitfulness, prostituting his talent. He had a great flair for copy, too, and was forever reading aloud his better slogans from stray magazines and papers. He wrote poetry on the quiet, and actually published a piece or two once every two years. Lydia was the only one who had really made it: she had published a couple of novels, but had now for some time been mooching around London moaning that she had nothing else to say. Nobody sympathized
with her at all, understandably: she was only twenty-six, so what had she to worry about?
    In view of her state, she seized with delight upon any stories of the atrocity of other people's latest books, of which we managed to offer a kindly few.
    "It's no good, anyway," said Dick, after dismissing Joe Hurt's latest with a derisive sneer, "churning them out like that, one a year. Mechanical, that's what it is."
    "A bit more mechanism wouldn't hurt you," I said gaily. I was on my second large gin.
    Lydia, who had hitherto been accepting our devious comfort, suddenly turned on us with a wail of despondency.
    "I don't care
what
you say," she said, "it's better to write bad books than no books, it really is. Writing nothing is—is nothing, just nothing. It's wonderful to turn out one a year, I think Joe Hurt is wonderful, I admire it, I admire that kind of thing."
    "You haven't read it," said Dick.
    "That's not the point," said Lydia, "it's the effort, that's the point."
    "Why don't you write a bad book then?" I asked. "I bet you could write a bad book if you wanted to. Couldn't you?"
    "Not if I
knew
it was bad while I was writing it. I couldn't do it. I couldn't get it done."
    "What a romantic view of literary creation," said Dick.
    "Speak for yourself," said Lydia crossly. "Get yours published, and then start calling me romantic. Pass the gin, Rosie, there's a darling."
    "Anyway," said Alex, who had by now eaten half his loaf, "if you ask me, Joe Hurt knew quite well how bad his book was while he was writing it. It reeks of conscious badness on every page. Don't you think so, Rosie?"
    "I haven't read it," I said. "But you know what Joe
always says. Nobody ever wrote a masterpiece before the age of thirty-five, Joe says, so that gives me another six years, says Joe."
    "Still going out with Joe, Rosie?"
    "I'm still seeing him. Do stop calling me Rosie, who gave you that idea?"
    "Lydia. She called you Rosie just now."
    "She likes diminishing people. It makes her feel better, doesn't it, Lyd?"
    At this we all laughed loudly, and I reached for the gin and noticed with horror and dismay that it was half gone, more than half gone. Sudden pressing memories of what I had never quite forgotten came upon me, and I looked at my watch and said that wasn't it time they all went off to see their Fellini film. They were not at all easy to dislodge, having sunk down very thoroughly and chattily into my parent's extra-comfortable old deep chairs, where they had an air of being held like animals in the warmth of the central heating: they waved their arms and said they would rather stay and talk, and I almost hoped they might, and might indeed have sunk back into my chair myself, taking as ever the short-term view, the easy quiet way, when Alex suddenly had a thought. I knew what it was as soon as