The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [36]
“So that’s her name,” said Sylvia.
“If you only knew how funny that was,” said Simon, scribbling his initials on the bill and leaving the table while Sylvia was still groping with gloves and bag.
As things turned out, however, he became Miss Grits’s lover before the week was out. The idea was hers. She suggested it to him one evening at his flat as they corrected the typescript of the final version of their first treatment.
“No, really,” Simon said aghast. “No, really. It would be quite impossible. I’m sorry, but . . .”
“Why? Don’t you like women?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“Oh, come along,” Miss Grits said briskly. “We don’t get much time for amusement . . .” And later, as she packed their manuscripts into her attaché case she said, “We must do it again if we have time. Besides I find it’s so much easier to work with a man if you’re having an affaire with him.”
III
For three weeks Simon and Miss Grits (he always thought of her by this name in spite of all subsequent intimacies) worked together in complete harmony. His life was re-directed and transfigured. No longer did he lie in bed, glumly preparing himself for the coming day; no longer did he say every morning ‘I must get down to the country and finish that book’ and every evening find himself slinking back to the same urban flat; no longer did he sit over supper tables with Sylvia, idly bickering; no more listless explanations over the telephone. Instead he pursued a routine of incalculable variety, summoned by telephone at all hours to conferences which rarely assembled; sometimes to Hampstead, sometimes to the studios, once to Brighton. He spent long periods of work pacing up and down his sitting room, with Miss Grits pacing backwards and forwards along the other wall and Miss Dawkins obediently perched between them, as the two dictated, corrected and redrafted their scenario. There were meals at improbable times and vivid, unsentimental passages of love with Miss Grits. He ate irregular and improbable meals, bowling through the suburbs in Sir James’s car, pacing the carpet dictating to Miss Dawkins, perched in deserted lots upon scenery which seemed made to survive the collapse of civilization. He lapsed, like Miss Grits, into brief spells of death-like unconsciousness, often awakening, startled, to find that a street or desert or factory had come into being about him while he slept.
The film meanwhile grew rapidly, daily putting out new shoots and changing under their eyes in a hundred unexpected ways. Each conference produced some radical change in the story. Miss Grits in her precise, unvariable voice would read out the fruits of their work. Sir James would sit with his head in his hand, rocking slightly from side to side and giving vent to occasional low moans and whimpers; round him sat the experts—production, direction, casting, continuity, cutting and costing managers, bright eyes, eager to attract the great man’s attention with some apt intrusion.
“Well,” Sir James would say, “I think we can O.K. that. Any suggestions, gentlemen?”
There would be a pause, until one by one the experts began to deliver their contributions . . . “I’ve been thinking, sir, that it won’t do to have the scene laid in Denmark. The public won’t stand for travel stuff. How about setting it in Scotland—then we could have some kilts and clan gathering scenes?”
“Yes, that’s a very sensible suggestion. Make a note of that, Lent . . .”
“I was thinking we’d better drop this character of the Queen. She’d much better be dead before the action starts. She hangs up the action. The public won’t stand for him abusing his mother.”
“Yes, make a note of that, Lent.”
“How would it be, sir, to make the ghost the Queen instead of the King . . .”
“Yes, make a note of that, Lent . . .”
“Don’t you think, sir, it would be better if Ophelia were Horatio’s sister. More poignant, if you see what I mean.”
“Yes, make a note of that . . .”
“I think we are losing sight of the essence of the story in the last sequence. After all, it is first and foremost a Ghost Story, isn’t it? . . .”
And so from