As Berry and I Were Saying by Dornford Yates Page A

understand.”
    “Well, I become an amanuensis. I don’t know what’s coming next. That’s why, when American editors used to ask me for a synopsis, I never could give them one: for I’d no idea of the line which the book would take. So I used to make one up: but I always said, ‘But it mayn’t turn out like this’ – and, of course, it never did.”
    “Look here,” said Berry. “I am a reasonably credulous man. But I’m not a damned fool. D’you mean to sit there and tell me that, when you wrote She Fell Among Thieves you didn’t bring Jenny in to be Chandos ’ second wife?”
    “Certainly,” said I. “I never suspected her existence, till Chandos saw her in the distance by the side of the pool. And, when she walked into their arms, I thought she was going to marry Mansel . It never occurred to me that she liked Chandos best.”
    “Well, either you’re mental,” said Berry, “or else you’re the biggest liar I ever met.”
    “Let’s say I’m mental,” said I. “D’you remember Blind Corner ?
    “No woman in it,” said Berry. “The best thing you ever did. Not that that’s saying much.”
    “Be quiet,” said Jill.
    “At the end of the penultimate chapter, the faithful party is stuck. Stuck good and proper. Am I right?”
    “Yes,” said Berry, “I suppose you might call it ‘stuck’. They’re only entombed alive. Ten yards or so of their tunnel have fallen in, and they have no shovels or picks: the other way out is barred – by four bars which they cannot move: beyond the bars is a passage which leads to the bottom of a well, in which the water is rising very fast: and the well is ninety feet deep. And you call it ‘being stuck’.”
    “Well, I wrote the last words of that chapter late one night. When I read them through the next morning, I almost lost my nerve. I remember saying aloud, ‘My God, I’ve done it now.’ For I could not see how any men could emerge from such a predicament. Then I calmed down. ‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘the book has brought me so far: the only thing I can do is to go straight on.’ And so I did. And the book brought them out all right, without any fuss. And The Times said ‘The escape from the great well is story-telling of a high order.’”
    “So it was,” said Berry. “I give the book best. And when you write a dud, that’s the book’s fault, too?”
    “I suppose so,” said I. “I only do as I’m told.”
    “But not in short stories?” said Daphne.
    “Not to the same extent. I can usually see the outline. Though I don’t think I did in Ann . I certainly never foresaw her husband’s death.”
    “How long did Ann take you to write?”
    “Exactly six weeks. I always remember that.”
    “That’s very slow,” said Berry.
    “I’ve always been very slow. Red in the Morning went quickly – I don’t know why.”
    “A rotten title,” said Berry.
    “Beast,” said Jill.
    “Not one of my best, my darling.”
    “So was This Publican .”
    “To be honest,” said I, “ This Publican was one of the very best titles I ever chose. But it was too subtle. Lots of people thought that it was a religious book.”
    “I do hope,” said Berry, “they sent it to their maiden aunts. They’d have enjoyed Rowena , wouldn’t they?”
    “ Lower Than Vermin ,” said Jill, “was one of your best.”
    I shook my head.
    “Thousands didn’t get it,” I said. I glanced at my wrist. “Just look at the time we’ve wasted. It’s Berry’s turn.”
    “But this must go in,” said Daphne.
    “Not into the book?”
    “Of course it must,” said Jill.
    “I think it should,” said Berry. “Among those of little taste, you have acquired a certain low reputation for delivering the goods. You’ve never written a classic, like Forever Amber : and you’ve never rammed home sex, as every novelist should. That very convenient epithet, so often preceding ‘fool’, does not appear in any of your books. You’ve never belonged to The Savage