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By Root 2995 0

A lot was expected from Kydd. Before further exchanges could take place, Quiggin’s old friend Mark Members arrived. With him was a young man whose khaki shirt, corduroy trousers, generally buccaneering aspect, suggested guerrilla warfare in the Quiggin manner, though far more effectively. This was appropriate enough in Odo Stevens, an unlikely figure to turn up at a publisher’s party, though apparently an already accepted acquaintance of Members. As Sillery had remarked, white locks suited Members. He allowed them to grow fairly long, which gave him the rather dramatic air of a nineteenth-century literary man who had loved and suffered, the mane of hair weighing down his slight, spare body. Stevens made a face expressing recognition, but, before we could speak, was at once buttonholed by Quiggin, with whom he also appeared on the best of terms. Members now introduced Stevens to Shernmaker.

‘I don’t know whether you’ve met Odo Stevens, Bernard? You probably read his piece the other day about life with the Army of Occupation. Odo and I have just been discussing the most suitable European centre for cultural congress – you know my organization is trying to get one on foot. Do you hold any views? Your own co-operation would, of course, be valuable.’

Shernmaker was still giving nothing away. Frowning, moving a little closer, he watched Members’s face as if trying to detect potential insincerities; allowing at the same time a rapid glance at the door to make sure no one of importance was arriving while his attention was thus occupied. Shernmaker’s party personality varied a good deal according to circumstance; this evening a man of iron, on guard against attempts to disturb his own profundities of thought by petty everyday concerns. His duty, this manner implied, was with a wider world than any offered by Quiggin & Craggs and their like; if a trifle sullen, he must be forgiven. He had already shown that, once committed to such inanities, the best defence was epigram. Members, who had known Shernmaker for years – almost as long as he had known Quiggin – evidently wanted to get something out of him, because he showed himself quite prepared to put up, anyway within reason, with the Shernmaker personality as then exercised.

‘You’ll agree, Bernard, that effective discussion of the Writer’s Position in Society is impractical in unsympathetic surroundings. Artists are vulnerable to circumstance, never more so than when compulsorily confined to their native shores.’

Still Shernmaker did not answer. Members became more blunt in exposition.

‘We’re none of us ever going to get out of England again, except as emissaries of culture. That’s painfully clear. We’re caught in a trap. Unless something is done, we’ll none of us ever see the Mediterranean again.’

Evadne Clapham, L. O. Salvidge and Malcolm Crowding, the last of whom had a poem in Fission, had joined the group. All agreed with this deduction. Evadne Clapham went further. She clasped her hands together, and quoted:

‘A Robin Redbreast in a Cage

Puts all Heaven in a Rage.’

The lines suddenly brought Shernmaker to life. He stared at Evadne Clapham as if outraged. She smiled invitingly back at him.

‘Rubbish.’

‘You think Blake rubbish, Mr Shernmaker?’

‘I disagree with him in this particular case.’

‘How so?’

‘A robin redbreast in a rage

Puts all heaven in a cage.’

Evadne Clapham now unclasped her hands, and brought them together several times in silent applause.

‘Very good, very good. You are quite right, Mr Shernmaker. I often notice what aggressive birds they are when I’m gardening. Your conclusion is, of course, that writers must not be held in check. Don’t you agree, Mark? We must make ourselves heard. Do tell me about the young man you came in with. Isn’t it true he’s had a very glamorous war career, and is terribly naughty?’

This question was answered by Quiggin introducing Odo Stevens all round as the man who was writing a war book to make all other war books seem thin stuff. It was to be about Partisans in the Balkans. Quiggin was a little put out to find that