Evelyn Waugh - Scoop

Evelyn Waugh Scoop

First published in 1938

Book One

THE STITCH SERVICE

chapter 1

While still a young man, John Courteney Boot had, as his publisher proclaimed, "achieved an assured and enviable position in contemporary letters." His novels sold fifteen thousand copies in their first year and were read by the people whose opinion John Boot respected. Between novels he kept his name sweet in intellectual circles with unprofitable but modish works on history and travel. His signed first editions sometimes changed hands at a shilling or two above their original price. He had published eight books (beginning with a life of Rimbaud written when he was eighteen, and concluding, at the moment, with Waste of Time, a studiously modest description of some harrowing months among the Patagonian Indians), of which most people who lunched with Lady Metroland could remember the names of three or four. He had many charming friends, of whom the most valued was the lovely Mrs. Algernon Stitch.

Like all in her circle John Boot habitually brought his difficulties to her for solution. It was wilh this purpose, on a biting-cold mid-June morning, that he crossed the Park and called at her house (a superb creation by Nicholas Hawksmoor modestly concealed in a cul-de-sac near Saint James's Palace).

Algernon Stitch was standing in the hall; his bowler hat was on his head; his right hand, grasping a crimson, royally emblazoned despatch case, emerged from the left sleeve of his overcoat; his other hand burrowed petulantly in the breast pocket. An umbrella under his left arm further inconvenienced him. He spoke indistinctly, for he was holding a folded copy of the morning paper between his teeth.

"Can't get it on," he seemed to say.

The man who had opened the door came to his assistance, removed the umbrella and despatch case and laid them on the marble table; removed the coat and held it behind his master. John took the newspaper.

"Thanks. Thanks very much. Much obliged. Come to see Julia, eh?"

From high overhead, down the majestic curves of the great staircase, came a small but preternaturally resonant voice.

"Try not to be late for dinner, Algy; the Kents are coming."

"She's upstairs," said Stitch. He had his coat on now and looked fully an English cabinet minister; long and thin, with a long, thin nose, and long, thin moustaches; the ideal model for Continental caricaturists. "You'll find her in bed," he said.

"Your speech reads very well this morning." John was always polite to Stitch; everybody was; Labour members loved him.

"Speech? Mine? Ah. Reads well, eh? Sounded terrible to me. Thanks all the same. Thanks very much. Much obliged."

So Stitch went out to the Ministry of Imperial Defence and John went up to see Julia.

As her husband had told him, she was still in bed although it was past eleven o'clock. Her normally mobile face was encased in clay, rigid and menacing as an Aztec mask. But she was not resting. Her secretary, Miss Holloway, sat at her side with account books, bills and correspondence. With one hand Mrs. Stitch was signing cheques; with the other she held the telephone to which, at the moment, she was dictating details of the costumes for a charity ballet. An elegant young man at the top of a stepladder was painting ruined castles on the ceiling. Josephine, the eight-year-old Stitch prodigy, sat on the foot of the bed construing her day's passage of Virgil. Mrs. Stitch's maid, Brittling, was reading her the clues of the morning crossword. She had been hard at it since half-past seven.

Josephine rose from her lesson to kick John as he entered. "Boot," she said savagely, "Boot!" catching him first on one kneecap, then on the other. It was a joke of long standing.

Mrs. Stitch turned her face of clay, in which only the eyes gave a suggestion of welcome, towards her visitor.

"Come in," she said, "I'm just going out. Why twenty pounds to Mrs. Beaver?"

"That was for Lady Jean's wedding present," said Miss Holloway.

"I must have been insane. About the lion's head for the centurion's breastplate; there's a beautiful one over the gate of a house near Salisbury, called Twisbury Manor; copy that as near as you can; ring up Country Life and ask for 'back numbers'; there was a photograph of it about two years ago. You're putting too much ivy on the turret, Arthur; the owl won't show up unless you have him on the bare stone and I'm particularly attached to the owl. Munera, darling, like tumtiddy; always a short a in neuter plurals. It sounds like an anagram; see if 'Terracotta' fits. I'm delighted to see you, John. Where have you been? You can come and buy carpets with me; I've found a new shop in Bethnal Green, kept by a very interesting Jew who speaks no English; the most extraordinary things keep happening to his sister. Why should I go to Viola Chasm's Distressed Area; did she come to my Model Madhouse?"

"Oh, yes, Mrs. Stitch."

"Then I suppose it means two guineas. I absolutely loved Waste of Time. We read it aloud at Blakewell. The headless abbot is grand."

"Headless abbot?"

"Not in Wasters. On Arthur's ceiling. I put it in the Prime Minister's bedroom."

"Did he read it?"

"Well, I don't think he reads much."

"Terracotta is too long, madam, and there is no r."

"Try hottentot. It's that kind of word. I can never do anagrams unless I can see them. No, Twisbury; you must have heard of it."

"Floribus Austrum," Josephine chanted, "perditus et liquidis immisi fontibus apros; having been lost with flowers in the South and sent into the liquid fountains; apros is wild boars but I couldn't quite make sense of that bit."

"We'll do it tomorrow. I've got to go out now. Is 'hottentot' any use?"

"No h, madam," said Brittling with ineffable gloom.

"Oh, dear. I must look at it in my bath. I shall only be ten minutes. Stay and talk to Josephine."

She was out of bed and out of the room. Brittling followed. Miss Holloway collected the cheques and papers. The young man on the ladder dabbed away industriously. Josephine rolled to the head of the bed and stared up at him.

"It's very banal, isn't it, Boot?"

"I like it very much."

"Do you? I think all Arthur's work is banal. I read your book Waste of Time."

"Ah." John did not invite criticism.

"I thought it very banal."

"You seem to find everything banal."

"It is a new word whose correct use I have only lately learnt," said Josephine with dignity. "I find it applies to nearly everything; Virgil and Miss Brittling and my gymnasium."

"How is the gymnasium going?"

"I am by far the best of my class although there are several girls older than me and two middle-class boys."

When Mrs. Stitch said ten minutes, she meant ten minutes. Sharp on time she was back, dressed for the street; her lovely face, scraped clean of clay, was now alive with interest.

"Sweet Josephine, has Mr. Boot been boring you?"

"It was all right really. I did most of the talking."

"Show him your imitation of the Prime Minister."

"No."

"Sing him your Neapolitan song."

"No."

"Stand on your head. Just once for Mr. Boot."

"No."

"Oh dear. Well we must go at once if we are to get to Bethnal Green and back before luncheon. The traffic's terrible."

Algernon Stitch went to his office in a sombre and rather antiquated Daimler; Julia always drove herself, in the latest model of mass-produced, baby car; brand-new twice a year, painted an invariable brilliant black, tiny and glossy as a midget's funeral hearse. She mounted the kerb and bowled rapidly along the pavement to the corner of St. James's, where a policeman took her number and ordered her into the road.

"Third time this week," said Mrs. Stitch. "I wish they wouldn't. It's such a nuisance for Algy."