Peter Dickinson - Death of a Unicorn

I tugged my skirt down and minced along with maddening nine-inch steps to Mr Todd’s office. He was on the telephone and something the person at the other end had said had caused him to explode into a harsh, bellowing laugh. He took the sheet of paper from me and read it, still apparently listening to the telephone.

‘The spelling mistakes are intentional,’ I hissed.

He nodded and went on reading and/or listening. A big man with the look of a horse which guesses it’s on its way to the knackers. Bloodshot brown eyes, skin loose over coarse bones, like a sofa whose stuffing has come adrift, huge quivering hands, cigarette smouldering between yellow fingers. Office a clutter, roll-top desk, shabby leather armchairs, newspapers on floor, originals of cartoons on walls.

‘Fine,’ he said, interrupting the quack of the telephone. ‘Get it on paper and bung it in, old boy. No, on spec, I’m afraid. I’ve got a new proprietor and I haven’t broken him in yet. No, don’t talk about it any more or it will die on you. Got a meeting now, but let’s have lunch—where the hell’s my diary? Bugger. You’ll have to ring Miss Walsh and fix a date. It’ll be good to see you.’

He put the telephone down and shook his head.

‘Poor sod,’ he said. ‘Never be any use again.’

He picked up another telephone.

‘Nellie? Fellow called Gerald Astley will ring and say I told him to fix a lunch. Fend him . . . Did I? Oh God, how awful! All right, I’ll see it through this time. Somewhere not too pricey. Oh, he’ll ring all right. Geralds never get the message.’

He put the telephone down, looked me in the eye and brought out that ghastly laugh. Then he tilted his chair back and re-read what I’d written, dragging at his cigarette. I felt shy and nervous. Although I’d written it to show him what I thought of the job he seemed to be going to offer me, I felt it had come out really funny. I wanted him to like it, after all. Considering how he’d dealt with the man on the telephone he seemed to be taking a surprising amount of time. Perhaps, I realised, what he was really doing was thinking of a way of getting rid of me without offending Mr Brierley. Rather slowly he heaved himself to his feet and stood, still looking down at the paper.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s see how far her ladyship’s jaw drops.’

He rushed past me with a shambling Groucho stride. I hobbled behind and found him out in the corridor holding a swing door open. There was more corridor beyond, but quite different. The change was almost as sudden as the one when you went through the little door in the corner of the Banqueting Hall at Cheadle and found yourself in Wheatstone’s pantry. Mr Todd’s side of the swing doors had a battered, clubby, male feeling. Here there was a receptionist’s desk, unoccupied except for a bowl of tulips. White telephone. Photograph of Queen Mary, signed. Lime-green carpet. My stupid skirt and high heels belonged this side, in a way they didn’t on the other. Mr Todd knocked at a door with a painted porcelain handle and fingerplate, put his head into the room, said something, then held the door for me.

The same, only more so. Smell of pot-pourri, pale pink walls, thick cream carpet, silk lampshades, little gilt chairs covered in ivory watered satin, painted escritoire—you couldn’t call it a desk, that would be rude—and commode. Signed photographs on every ledge and shelf. A woman rose from the escritoire and came forward to greet me. I had seen her hundreds of times, at dances and weddings and Henleys and Fourths of Junes and Ascots, but I’d never known who she was. Small and plump but ultra-stately, blue rinse, flat face heavily powdered.

‘Lady Margaret,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘How well I remember your parents’ wedding. Such a happy occasion. How is your dear mother?’

‘Firing on all cylinders,’ I said. ‘I had a colossal row about coming here at all.’

I don’t know why I said that. It wasn’t true, because actually I hadn’t risked telling Mummy, though there really would have been a row if I had—I’ll explain about that in a moment. Anyway, the woman looked blank and glanced at Mr Todd in a manner that told me no one had asked her whether she needed a new assistant.

‘Something I want to show you,’ said Mr Todd and passed her my paragraph.

She took the eye-glasses that hung on a silk cord round her neck and held them to her face. Her eyebrows went up almost an inch. She only read a couple of lines before letting the glasses fall and staring at Mr Todd.

‘Oh, no,’ she murmured. ‘Quite impossible.’

‘Nice and lively, I thought,’ said Mr Todd.

She turned her stare on me, stony-blue.

‘If you wouldn’t mind, Lady Margaret.’

‘I did a grown-up version too.’

‘I like this,’ said Mr Todd. ‘It’s a fresh note.’

He didn’t sound at all sure of himself.

‘If you don’t mind, Lady Margaret,’ said the woman again.

It was like being back in the nursery when Nanny and Mummy were setting up for a battle. I went scarlet and hobbled out. Mr Todd closed the door behind me. All my misery and fury came back. I leaned against the receptionist’s desk and tried to will them away, but I was now quite certain I knew what was happening. Until this morning I’d hardly thought about Night and Day. It was just another magazine, slightly more exciting than some of them because Mummy wouldn’t have it in the house. The reason she gave was that some of the cartoons were ‘unsuitable’ (there was usually at least one of an artist saying something to a naked model and another of a blonde saying something to an old gentleman she was in bed with), but really it was because she hated the ‘Social Round’ pages, which were written by somebody called Cynthia Darke. She disliked all that sort of thing, I think because she thought that what they were about was extremely important but private, and it was obscene to have it all written down for dentists’ wives in Wimbledon to read. But though she disapproved of ‘Jennifer’ and the others she had an especial hatred for Cynthia Darke. Presumably the woman I’d just met was Cynthia Darke, which made what she’d said about my parents’ wedding and my dear mother a bit ironic.

Anyway, when I read the magazine in the hairdresser’s—naturally grabbing it first because it was banned at home—I used to glance at the grisly ‘Social Round’ to see if any of my friends were in it, then look at the cartoons, then read the theatre and book reviews, and then if there wasn’t any other magazine handy try some of the articles and poems. I was so used to it that it had never struck me as at all odd that a magazine that was mainly like Punch or Lilliput should contain a section on what the debby-and-horsey world was up to. Now I was actually in the place and had seen and smelt the difference between the two sides of the swing door I realised that I was dealing with two almost separate kingdoms. Mr Brierley had talked about ‘my magazine’ and I’d heard Mr Todd saying that he’d got a new proprietor. Naturally he wasn’t happy about having some chance-met girl foisted on him so he’d decided to shunt her over the border into the other kingdom. He was only pretending to like what I’d written so that he could put all the blame on Cynthia Darke for turning me down. And equally naturally Cynthia Darke wasn’t going to let it happen like that. Well, if they didn’t want me, I didn’t want them. I pushed through the swing doors and along the corridor to the landing, where I pressed the button for the lift.

It was an age coming. In any other skirt I could have gone clattering ostentatiously down the stairs. I waited and waited, working myself into a frenzy that Mr Todd would come out and find me there. From down the stairs a tenor voice began to sing one of those Irish ballads about a prisoner turning his last gaze on the green hills of Erin before the English did something unspeakable to him. The voice enjoyed itself, enjoyed the echoing stairwell which made it sound as though it was filtering up from some dungeon deep under Shoe Lane. Another voice interrupted and the singing ended in a laugh. Footsteps tapped on the polished wooden treads. Not wanting to be caught so obviously running away from my defeat (that’s what I felt, though I don’t see how the men could have known) I moved away from the lift and pulled myself together a bit. When they came in sight I realised that they’d only just finished luncheon, though it was nearly four o’clock.