The Outside Of Everything

Chapter 46
The Classifieds

Much as I love writing that captures everyday life, the nuances of the here and now, I find myself increasingly keen to escape into different worlds. Not different worlds of the science fiction kind, but the past. That different country. I wonder sometimes about writers I like a lot. Patrick O’Brian, say. Or Alan Furst. Writers who have successfully created images of the past. Vistas they have returned to time and again so successfully. The detail they capture is lovely. The Joseph Roth book on a bedside table. A very Alan Furst touch that. Lovely little details like that oh so non-casually tossed in. It must seem strange to immerse yourself so completely in a fictional world, and come blinking into the light of the here and now, and making less sense of what’s around than a faraway ocean in the nineteenth century or a train through middle Europe at the onset of war in the 1930s.

In my own endeavours to escape the troubles of the here and now I have been returning to some old favourites on the bookshelves. Some favourite writers. Margery Allingham. Josephine Tey. Ngaio Marsh. Some favourite old characters. Sherlock Holmes. Richard Hannay. George Smiley. Different worlds. With their own particular characteristics. And habits. Ones I like. Like the use of classifieds. How often in those books have important messages been relayed, or clues found, in the classified sections of newspapers? You don’t get that now. Well, Private Eye’s classifieds are often worth a giggle for their sheer preposterousness, but it is a dying art form in many ways. But once upon a time we used to scour the classifieds, hoping for something out of the ordinary, an opportunity for adventure. Well, life isn’t an Albert Campion yarn, but nevertheless if you wish for something hard enough, then sometimes, just sometimes.

So loafing one day, leafing through the local paper, and coming across a small ad buried which burbled about a damsel in distress needing a bulwark or bulldog. Something like that. Irresistible. Worth dropping a line to the PO Box listed perhaps? Well, I did. And it seems nobody else bothered to. Probably thought it was a hoax. I know my compadres did. But one evening there was a ‘phone call for me. Sounds like a posh old lady, I was told. For me? Odd, I thought. Turns out it was my damsel in distress. More of a grand dame it seemed to be. A touch of the Margaret Rutherfords about her. Quite scary. Absolute self-confidence. It was hard to imagine her in distress, but that’s what she claimed she was. Someone’s out to get me, she said. Ah, I said. I need someone who can be my secretary, who can take my story down, and who can stop them getting at me, she added. Right, I said. Are you game, she asked? Wouldn’t miss it for the world, I said. But tell me more, I pleaded.

In time, I learnt more. My formidable old dear lived in the posh part of town. One of the old houses. Probably ripe for renovation. But her sort weren’t into that nonsense. Thank goodness. She was very much of the old school. Tweed, pleated Country Casuals skirts and Windsmoor twin sets. Well spoken. Naturally. She was set on writing her memoirs. Predominantly about the war years. When she was involved in some of the shadier, intelligence stroke propaganda activities, and she thought there were people who had heard and were intent on stopping her. Oh she wouldn’t be betraying the nation’s secrets. This was more on the people side. Some of the people involved in that milieu. People of influence. They didn’t want certain stories told. Might damage their oh so carefully cultivated reputations. But truth will out, said my grand dame.

So somehow we settled into a sort of routine. I would go round to the old house, sit and take notes while my dame burbled on about growing up and the onset of WW2 and drifting into intelligence work, initially in a secretarial capacity, but becoming more and more indispensible and trusted and central to things. I would listen and take notes, and then the idea was that my grand dame would take these notes and turn them into proper prose, which I would then edit. It was a fascinating process, and one we gradually arrived at as I proved myself to be fit for the task. It was astonishing to me that the grand dame so casually accepted that I would suit the task, and that someone would be prepared to and indeed be capable of taking copious notes, which would be legible and that this same person would in turn be capable of the task of editing or proof reading. Ah well, self doubt was never part of the grand dame’s make up.

Perhaps even more strangely the thorny issue of remuneration was never discussed. It would have been vulgar on my part to mention money. And I’m sure it never entered into my grand dame’s head that a bulwark or bulldog would want paying. Anyway there were worse ways to while away the days than sitting at this lady’s feet, learning. She had quite a story to tell. How much of it was true, it’s hard to say. I’ve since cross referenced it with other sources and memoirs and records, and it’s got the bright ring of truth with perhaps a bit of embellishment and flighty fancy. I learned a lot from these sessions. And I could add I received payment in kind through a sense of character building and free access to the grand dame’s comprehensive library. Funnily enough the bookshelves were filled with first editions, often with personal inscriptions. Names which at the time were not that familiar but which were given new leases of life by good people like Virago. I learned a lot. I learned how to listen. I learned how to capture people’s voices. I learned accuracy and discipline. I learned a lot about what might have gone on behind the scenes during the war. The way lots of writers and so on were drafted in to help. My grand dame was very good at dropping names. I couldn’t betray confidences though could I now?

As you may have guessed the book never made it to the publication stage. As I understand it the few publishers that perused it thought it too hot to handle. And sadly my grand dame passed gently into the dark night, and I have no idea what became of our manuscript. I was never really sure who her executors were. She didn’t have any children, I know. That was part of the story. She’d married one of her commanding officers. That was considered quite scandalous at the time. He was much older. Had a family of his own. She was barely out of her teens. The existing family, some of whom were as old as she was, never accepted her, and they would be long gone, and she was an only child. It was one of the war time sacrifices, she said. It didn’t matter that much to her, or did it. She seemed like a Stevie Smith character, after the war doing routine clerical jobs, burying her intelligence like a lot of ladies, after they’d had a chance to bloom briefly in wartime. She was as I said scary. But she had high standards. And some of her phrases haunt me still. She hated, for example, the phrase something like. That made her glower. Something like, she’d say? That’s no good to me, she’d add. I need detail. Details matter. That stayed with me.

As for the death threats. Well, maybe she was right. She did get some weird ‘phone calls. She did have the capacity to upset people. She certainly said some scurrilous things about folks that became part of the literary and political establishment. But I wasn’t aware of any specific threats. And yet she maintained that she was protected now. Methinks she flattered us too much, but it is worth pointing out that she won over the hearts of all of us. We would have done anything for her. Oh, and did I say she was like Margaret Rutherford? Well, that’s perhaps a little unkind. Shall we say Joan Hickson instead? She’d have made a great Jane Marple. That knack for getting to square one ahead of anyone else. The sort of person the unitiated underestimate. And yet the other-worldyness was unnerving. The innocence, in a way. Like sticking an SOS in a small ad. That sort of thing. It just shouldn’t happen. Well, that’s what they’d like you to believe.