A Summer Serial

Samuel Deronda

By JOHN WAIN Samuel, an inconspicuous and handicapped boy, wishes to find some means of investing himself with sufficient glitter to attract Minnie Stroney away from his rival, Dennis. Chancing on a poetry magazine, he discovers that he can produce what passes for 'poetry' among the people who edit and read this magazine. In a few days he is an accepted poet. The question now is, how best to capitalise the fact?

imust say I do like a fellow to be a bit out of the ordinary,' said Minnie Stroney. She and Samuel were sitting together in a milk-bar and he was showing her his copy of the poetry magazine and his letter of acceptance from the editor. 'It's nice for people to be different instead of all being the same,' she explained.

'Thass what I think,' said Samuel. He seized his advantage. 'Course, it's no good going in for this stuff'—he indicated the magazine—'unless you are different. Poets, not the same as ordinary fellows.'

At the word 'ordinary,' as if on cue, Dennis entered the milk- bar. He looked healthy and aggressive. He had evidently just been to the hairdresser and his Tony Curtis hair-cut, which of late had been getting ragged, was newly restored to its neat effectiveness.

'Been looking for you, Beautiful,' he said to Minnie. He leaned against the counter in between Samuel and Minnie, with his back to Samuel; in this way he was able to get in between them although they were sitting on adjacent stools.

Ordinarily, Minnie would have switched her attention to Dennis, and ignored Samuel from that minute. But now she appeared irresolute. Dennis was attractive to her, undeniably so, but it was also true that Samuel had produced a remarkable new card. She had never before met anyone who read poetry, let alone wrote it. She supposed that was why Samuel had always been so quiet. He was brooding inwardly, experiencing the power of his own imagination. She looked at him over Dennis's head, and he once more seized his'chance.

'Takes a bit of doing, netcherly,' he said. 'Can't get the hang of it all at once.

'Studied a long time, I suppose?' Minnie asked, still over the head of Dennis.

'Years,' said Samuel briefly. 'Never away from it, for years. 'Swhy I never had much time frenny social life, sorta thing.' Dennis swivelled round.

`Gorblimey, it's Rocky Marciano,' he said. He put out a hand and pretended to feel Samuel's biceps. 'What's this about studying, Buster? Watcha been studying? Tell papa.'

'I don't, think it'd intress you,' said Samuel with dignity, getting down from his stool. 'Not much in your line, I specked.

We was talking about poertry.' , He expected Dennis to burst into a roar of malicious laughter, but Dennis did nothing of the sort. Instead he began to look very nasty and threatening.

'Oh, poertry, eh?' he said, putting his hands on his hips. 'It's like that, is it?'

- 'Like what?' said Samuel, genuinely bewildered.

'Tell me it isn't true, Baby,' said Dennis to Minnie. 'Tell me he's not telling the truth.' , 'Dunno what you mean,' she said, tossing her head and turning her profile to him. 'Samuel's just showing me a magazine that they're going to print one of his poems in, that's all' 'One of his poems?' Dennis asked, very slowly and with hatred. 'Print one of his POEMS?'

He rounded on Samuel: 'What you been telling her?' he asked like a policeman. , Samuel began to understand. He had been doing some more thinking in the last ten days and he had remembered that poets were supposed to be gay, roistering blades, fatally attractive to women. This was not a conspicuous part of the legend that sur- rounded his new metier, but it was the part that had attracted the attention of Dennis, in whose mind Samuel now figured, evidently, as an expert seducer and no fit companion for Minnie Stroney.

'Been writin' poems, have you?' he continued, very fiercely.

`You got no call to get excited,' Samuel countered, measuring the distance to the door with a quick glance.

Suddenly Dennis relaxed; his face creased into its usual good- humoured sneer.

'Pretty smart, kid,' he said, clapping Samuel on the shoulder. 'You had me believin' y'at first.' Smiling round at Minnie, he took up the magazine, which was lying on the counter. 'Poertry, eh?' he grinned. Holding i,t close to his eyes, he began an exag- gerated pretence of scanning every word on the cover.

'Don't see your name anywhere,' he said to Samuel in feigned surprise.

'Next issue,' said Samuel briefly. He could see that his idyll was in ruins, for one morning at least, but a new aggressiveness made him want to stay, instead of slinking away as he had been used to doing; at least he could pester Dennis so that neither of them would win the round.

Dennis laughed loudly. 'Oh, next issue, eh?' he shouted jovially. `Lemme know when it comes out. I'll buy it outa me old age • pension.'

'It comes out every three months,' Samuel muttered, but he knew that this was too lame to be an effective riposte. He was simply playing into Dennis's hands. At any moment he would call him 'Buster.'

Suddenly a fountain of rage flowed upwards in Samuel's heart. He had stood about enough of this. He had the editor's letter, but he knew Dennis would only say he had forged it, especially as it was on ordinary paper with no printed address. There was only one immediate way out. 'I goad telephone call I gotter make,' be said, slipping down from his stool. Dennis immediately sat on it, and he saw with a fresh upsurge of rage that Minnie seemed preparing to give Dennis her full attention. 'I'll be back,' he said, scowling, 'as soon as I finished me call.'

`Don't hurry,' said Dennis. 'There's some poems wrote up on the wall of the phone box,' he added. 'You can fill the time in gettin' a basin fuller them' Samuel held the magazine clutched in his hand. The number of the editor's telephone was not given; he got it from 'Enquiries' and dialled it at furious speed. The editor's name was Randolph Seed. He could hear the office telephone ringing, and almost at once it was lifted up, but no one spoke.

Samuel waited, afraid to speak first. He could hear the other person breathing. Silently he stared down at the mouthpiece.

Then the thought of Dennis assailed him, and on a wave of hatred he said, 'Is Mr. Seed there?'

'This is Mr. Seed's secretary speaking,' came an indistinct voice. Its owner spoke quietly, as if afraid of being overheard by someone else in the same room, and also in an oddly high-pitched voice. Samuel could not decide whether it was a man imitating a woman, or a woman imitating a man.

'I'm Deronda,' he brought out, struggling against his mounting sense of unreality.

'You're what?'

'Not what. Who.'

'Who what?'

Samuel laid down the receiver and wiped his palms. Why couldn't the fellow employ a secretary who had a voice like a human being and understood normal speech? Picking up the instrument again, he said weakly. 'My name is Deronda—Samuel Deronda. You accepted a poem of mine the other week. You remember—you must remember—it was called "Poem." Sent me a letter about it 'n all,' he cried.

The voice at the other end now underwent a change. It dropped several tones and seemed to become more relaxed, as if its owner had decided that there was nothing to be afraid of.

`Ah! a contributor. Of course, of course. What would you like me to do for you?'

Samuel had not rehearsed this well enough. Faced with the crucial moment of the conversation, his nerve failed him. If he pestered this person, whoever it was, the result might be that he would get black-listed and then his poem would never be pub- lished at all. He panicked. 'Your—your voice has changed,' he said accusingly.

A laugh came along the wire. 'Well, what of it? Give every man his voice—that's the motto of the magazine. You've seen it on the cover, Mr. Slazenger.'

'Deronda,' Samuel shouted. He felt very near to tears.

'Listen, come to the party,' said the voice, giving way now to fatigue and boredom. 'Come to the office party tomorrow night. You'll meet all the other poets there. Believe me, their names are just as damned silly as yours.'

Samuel opened his mouth to shout, 'Silly yerself !' Then, in time, he realised what the man had said. Gratitude and joy flooded his being. Still shouting, out of sheer nervousness, he began to bellow his thanks. 'I'll bring Minnie,' he said, really to himself, but still hooting into the telephone.

'Bring who the hell you like,' said the voice. He heard the receiver being hung up.

Samuel bounded back into the milk-bar. Dennis and Minnie were sitting on the adjacent stools, heads bowed, knees pressed together. She was reading his hand.

'You haven't half got a nice life-line,' she was saying.

`I'll throw it to you,' Dennis purred. He was enjoying his

moment of supremacy. Samuel sneered at the back of his neck, then stood on tiptoe and looked Minnie straight in the eyes as she raised her head.

`S!pose you're doing somethin' tomorra night, Minnie?' he said casually.

Dennis twisted round. 'Yes, Jack, she's doing something. And the next night, and the one after that.'

Samuel recognised that 'Jack' was the next stage after 'Buster,' and that it represented open hostility instead of easy contempt. This, he realised with an unwonted shrewdness, was an advance.

'Pity,' he said, still addressing Minnie. 'I had an invitation for yew.'

Dennis laughed nastily. 'Invitation what for? Walk along the sider the canal and eat three penn'orth of potater crisps? Be your age, Jack.' He turned away again.

'It was to a party,' said Samuel, still paying no attention to Dennis. 'A littry party. Famous writers. Meet all the slebritties.'

Dennis, maddened, twisted round again. "Ere,' he said. 'What you talkin' about? Slebritties? What kinder slebritities?'

`You woudnavurd ovvem,' said Samuel. 'Outer your line. Writers. Famous poets,' he added.

'Famous flippin' jackrabbits !' Dennis shouted. 'Famous ruddy me Aunt Fanny!'

Samuel glanced across at Minnie. In her face he read his victory. Silently, he watched her get down from her stool.

`As it actually heppens,' she said witheringly, 'I'm entirely free tomorrow night. I'll be glad to come along, Samuel, and thanks.'

`Pick you up at sem-thirty,' said Samuel quickly. He stood by to let her go out, then backed away from Dennis. Once outside,

he broke into a run. • 'I'm better known by my pen-name, of course,' said the leathery- faced fat man. Samuel shifted uneasily on his feet. Where was Minnie? They had been here for hours, and he had hardly spoken to her. He tried to search for her out of the corner of his eye, but the leathery-faced fat man, whose discourse was entering its second hour, kept a keen look-out for signs of inattention.

'I write under the name of Henry Gibson,' he said. 'You see why, don't you?'

`Nice name,' Samuel stammered. 'Take yew long to think it up?' he asked in a burst of inspiration. 'Watcher do, look through the telephone book?'

The leathery-faced man stared at him reproachfully. 'You mean to say you don't cotton on?' he asked mournfully. 'Haven't you realised that that's how BBC announcers always pronounce "Henrik Ibsen"?'

A tall young man in a plastic raincoat now joined them. Samuel wondered why he did not find this garment too hot in the crowded, sweltering room. He seemed quite cool, however, and asked Samuel his name.

`Then when my book is published,' the leather-face went on, 'all the people who hear it mentioned over the air—' `Deronda? One of Randolph's would-be contributors?'

'Not would-be,' said Samuel with an air of quiet pride. 'I bin accepted. Had a letter 'n all.'

The man in the plastic raincoat began to laugh delightedly.

'Had a letter, have you?' he guffawed. 'Here, Len, did you hear that?' • `I'd rather you called me Henry,' grumbled the leather-faced man. 'I was just explaining to this chap—' `Yes, but you don't see the joke,' cried the tall man, wiping his eyes on his plastic sleeve and getting ready to laugh again. 'This chap's fallen for Ran's gag!'

Len, alias Henry Gibson, stared at him fixedly. 'You don't mean the letter gag? About accepting his poem?'

The other, unable to speak, nodded in delight.

Samuel looked round wildly. What were they saying? And where was Minnie?

But here she was, coming across the room to him. And the man holding on to her shoulder was Randolph Seed, the editor.

With laughter exploding round him, Samuel faced his matador. (To be continued in three further instalments)