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.That’s what people ought to have said about you, and believe me it’s the most important thing that can be said about any writer.I should like to have the responsibility of making them say it about you.Does anyone realize it?’‘No one’s ever told me.’‘I always say it takes an entrepreneur with a bit of his own genius to recognize a writer who has it too.That’s why it’s a providential occasion, you and I meeting here tonight.I should like to put over another piece of the real thing before I die.I’m absolutely sure I could do it for you.’‘What firm is yours, Mr Robinson?’Robinson laughed.‘At present I can’t be said to have a firm.I shall have to revive the one I used to have.Haven’t you heard of R S Robinson?’She looked embarrassed.‘Oh dear,’ he said, with one of his bursts of hilarious honesty, ‘if you’d been at a party like this twenty-five years ago and hadn’t heard of me, I should have left you and gone to find someone interesting.But you will hear of R S Robinson’s again.We’re going to do things together, you and I.I assure you, we’re bound to put each other on the map.’Then I tapped him on the arm.He looked up to see who I was.With complete good humour he cried: ‘Why, it’s Lewis Eliot! Good evening to you, sir!’I smiled at the young woman, but Robinson, sparkling with cunning, did not intend me to talk to her.Instead, he faced into the room, and said, either full of hilarity or putting on a splendid show of it: ‘Is this a fair sample of the post-war spirit, should you say?’I broke in: ‘It’s a long time since I met you last.’Robinson was certain that I was threatening his latest plan, but he was not out-faced.He had not altered since the morning I recovered Sheila’s money; his suit was shabby and frayed at the cuffs, but so were many prosperous men’s after six years of war.He said to the young woman, with candour, with indomitable dignity: ‘Mr Eliot was interested in my publishing scheme a few years ago.I’m sorry to say that nothing came of it then.’‘What have you been doing since?’ I asked.‘Nothing much, sir, nothing very much.’‘What did you do in the war?’‘Nothing at all.’ He was gleeful.He added: ‘You’re thinking that I was too old for them to get me.Of course I was, they couldn’t have touched me.But I decided to offer my services, so I got a job in – (he gave me the name of an aircraft firm) – and they subsidized me for four years and I did nothing at all.’The young woman was laughing: he took so much delight in having no conscience that she also felt delight.Just as Sheila used to.‘How did you spend your time?’ she asked.‘I discovered how to be a slow clerk.Believe me, no one’s applied real intelligence to the problem before.By the time I left, I could spin a reasonable hour’s work out into at least two days.And that gave me time for serious things, that is, thinking out the programme you and I were talking about before Mr Eliot joined us.’He grinned at me with malicious high spirits, superiority and contempt.‘I suppose you’ve been doing your best for your country, sir?’ Just as I remembered him, he felt a match for any man alive.I inquired: ‘Have you got a job now?’‘Certainly not,’ said Robinson.I wondered if, with his bizarre frugality, he had saved money out of his wages at the factory.Then I spoke across him to his companion: ‘I don’t think we’ve been introduced, have we?’Soon after I heard her name I left them, to Robinson’s surprise and relief.I left them with Robinson’s triumphant ‘Good evening to you, sir’ fluting across the room, and muttered to Betty that I was slipping away.Alone in that room, she knew that something had gone wrong for me; disappointed after the promise of the early evening, she could read in my face some inexplicable distress.‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.She was right.I had been upset by the sound of the young woman’s name [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]