Dreams of another day, p.5
Dreams of Another Day, page 5
‘Ming, you …’ Connie hesitated.
The younger woman looked so puzzled and so willing that Connie was filled with the kind of protectiveness that Ming’s sisters displayed all too obviously.
‘I have been determined to make you less good-natured so that fewer people will exploit you, and here I am joining the crowd.’ Connie sighed and pushed the heavy dark hair away from her forehead. Ming saw how badly bruised she was and how painful the jagged-edged cut must still be.
‘But I need you too much to refuse your offer. Keep a note of your expenses and I’ll reimburse those, and obviously pay you for any articles you write, and … Ah, Max,’ Connie added in a cooler voice as she looked up and saw him, ‘Ming has just agreed to become our subscriptions manager.’
‘Wonderful news!’ Max put down the heavy tray on a low oak chest and picked up the pewter coffee pot. ‘White for you, Connie?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘How was your meeting yesterday?’
‘Interesting,’ Connie accepted a large blue-and-white cup from Max and added two lumps of sugar. Stirring the coffee, she turned to Ming. ‘I went to talk to one of the account managers who takes quite a lot of our space to find out what we ought to do to get more women to buy the magazine. He introduced me to the psychiatrist who advises the agency, and …’
‘What?’ said Ming, too startled to notice that she was interrupting. ‘A psychiatrist in advertising?’
Max poured Ming a cup of coffee and then one for himself.
‘Yes. Apparently most of the big agencies are using people like him now. In America they call them “motivational researchers”. They’re needed to advise on the best way to push people into buying things. Without some mental manipulation it seems that no one would ever buy anything.’
‘Come on, Connie. Don’t exaggerate,’ said Max, looking amused. ‘Buying things is a natural human instinct. No one needs to be pushed into it.’
‘Well, they definitely do need to be forced to buy the magazine,’ said Connie, sounding irritable enough to make Ming wince.
It seemed to have no such effect on Max, who sat peacefully drinking his coffee. Connie turned to Ming.
‘You see, we need to make more intelligent, married women aware of our existence and persuade them to subscribe. I am absolutely convinced that there are plenty of them who would like what we’re trying to produce, but we haven’t reached them yet.‘
‘Part of the difficulty must be that the women you most want are spending what little money they have on their homes and children,’ said Ming slowly. There was more that she wanted to say, but she felt too uncertain of her position to start criticising.
Connie’s rather hard, handsome face was transfigured by a smile of mixed ruefulness and satisfaction.
‘That’s rather what the advertising man said, and his suggestion was to make the women feel guilty about losing touch with “the world beyond the nursery”. He said that that’s how all the most successful advertisements work. You make the potential customer feel unsafe so that she buys security with your product.’
‘How horrible!’ As the other two laughed at her exclamation, Ming felt absurdly naïve and was glad that she had said no more.
For the next hour she sat in silence, listening to Max and Connie in growing frustration. They discussed the recent news and talked about commissioning articles on all sorts of subjects from the proposals for a common market in Europe to the significance of the mixed reviews of Look Back in Anger; from the cost of Grace Kelly’s wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco to the recent state visit of Krushchev and Bulganin to Britain and the strange disappearance of Commander Crabbe, who might or might not have been murdered by the Russians as he dived beneath their ships in Portsmouth Harbour.
Listening to them, Ming felt increasingly sure of one reason why they were having trouble selling the magazine, but the memory of their mockery and the knowledge of her inexperience in their world kept her quiet. After a while, Max noticed her stillness and a certain stubborn twist to her gentle mouth.
‘What’s up?’ he said. ‘Something’s the matter, Ming. What is it?’
Connie turned her dark head to look impatiently at Ming.
‘Aren’t you feeling well?’ she asked in irritable concern.
‘I’m feeling perfectly all right,’ answered Ming. ‘It’s just … well, don’t you think that all the things you’re talking about are a bit uninteresting?’
Connie’s dark eyebrows closed over the top of her nose and her mouth tightened. Max tilted his head to one side.
‘Uninteresting how?’ he asked. ‘International relations, domestic politics, the first new directions in the theatre for a generation: they’re all fairly important subjects, you know.’
‘Yes, I know they are.’ Having started to speak, Ming knew that she was going to have to explain herself, however much she irritated the others. She remembered the advice Connie had given her in Egypt and spoke as steadily as she could.
‘But they’ve all been written about in every newspaper and most of the other magazines that touch on anything more than knitting patterns and … and how to make cheap jam for the nursery.’
‘That’s a fair point, Connie,’ said Max with a laugh that made him seem much younger than usual. ‘Go on, Ming.’
‘Well,’ she said, crossing one slim leg over the other and leaning forward in her eagerness to make them understand what she meant, ‘you’ve said that the whole point of the magazine is to make young married women realise that there is a world beyond the nursery.’
‘Precisely!’ said Connie. ‘Several worlds in fact: of politics, science, the arts and so on. That’s why we’re tackling all those sorts of subjects so that our readers are better informed. And our articles are not the same as all the others; we’re producing serious analysis, not news.’
‘Yes, I know, but people can get most of it from the newspapers or the wireless. The problem isn’t that women don’t know there are all those worlds out there, but that they’re cut off from them. Isn’t there some way of showing them how to join in?’
Connie got out of her chair and paced in front of the fire. With an expression of exaggerated patience on her long face, she started to speak.
‘Ming, we’re in the business of widening people’s mental horizons, not listing advertisements for vacancies in offices.’
Trying not to let Connie’s biting voice make her sound defensive, Ming said carefully:
‘I do understand that. Please don’t be angry, Connie. I’m not being deliberately obtuse. Listen: the articles I’ve read so far are intelligent and important but rather worthy – if you see what I mean – and a bit austere. I think they’d appeal more if they were more fun. I don’t mean comical, but entertaining and even a bit controversial.’
‘Thank you,’ said Connie with cold sarcasm. ‘I’m glad you think that they’re intelligent.’
Looking up at the older woman, Ming began to wish that she had never started on her protest. She liked Connie and they had always got on well with each other, but her anger was making Ming feel wobbly. She looked at Max and saw a smile of pure amusement on his thin face, which helped.
‘Don’t intimidate her, Connie,’ he said. ‘I think she’s got a point.’ Ming smiled gratefully at him.
‘Oughtn’t the magazine to be going behind the scenes and showing how things are orchestrated?’ She looked back to her long years assisting Roger Sillhorne. ‘Most of us just carry on through our lives doing as we’ve been taught and putting up with things we don’t like because they’re “facts of life”. Couldn’t the magazine do something about that? Show who has the power, for example, and how they got it? What happens if they abuse it and who controls it and therefore who controls us all?’
Max got up to fetch the coffee pot, which was keeping warm in the hearth, and poured more into each of their cups. Sitting back in his chair he drank. There was a gleam in his grey eyes that had not been there earlier in the morning.
‘For example,’ said Ming, her face increasingly pink with enthusiasm, ‘what about an article on the way the advertisers are using psychology to manipulate us all into feeling guilty and buying their stuff? Wouldn’t that be more useful – and more interesting – than yet another analysis of the balance of trade and what the government plans to do about it?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Connie, slowly getting over her surprise that her pliant and gentle protégée was making so fundamental a criticism of her ideas. ‘But it’s important that we write seriously for our women readers. It would be a disaster if we started to write down to them and assumed that their only interests were jam and knitting.’
‘Yes, but there’s more to life than international relations.’ With a vivid memory of the power that her inheritance had given her Ming went on: ‘What about money? That’s crucial and jolly interesting, too.’
Connie went back to her chair and sat down in silence.
‘What about starting with a series of interviews, say, with women who were earning large amounts of money, to show that it is possible?’ Ming went on.
Max looked amused but Connie clearly disapproved.
‘Isn’t that rather vulgar?’
Ming flushed slightly at the disdain in Connie’s voice, but she stood her ground.
‘Money is considered vulgar only by those who have plenty and therefore don’t need to think about it or those who haven’t quite enough and therefore can’t bear to think about it.’
‘Perhaps.’ Connie still looked unconvinced.
She took her gold cigarette case out of her bag and offered it to the other two. Ming shook her head. Since her illness she had lost the taste for smoking. But Max took a cigarette.
‘It’s certainly true, Connie, that without money one is also quite without power,’ said Max, no longer amused. ‘With it, worlds do open. And it would mark out the magazine as being different from any other around.’
‘I suppose it’s a possibility, but I had certainly never considered money as being a particularly desirable subject for the magazine.’
‘Perhaps because you’ve always had it,’ said Max. ‘The only difficulty that I can see, Ming, is whether there are enough women earning significant amounts to make a series.’
She sat up straighter. ‘The only way we’ll discover that is by looking for them. And there are other financial things we could tackle, too. For instance all this criticism from the church about premium bonds and how they’ll turn the people of this country into gamblers.’
‘Yes?’ Max looked interested but sceptical. ‘So what?’
‘Well, think of the Church of England’s investments. All that money in blue chips is being gambled on the prospect of the shares’ value rising. If that’s good enough for the church, why shouldn’t the populace have a go too? I detest hypocrisy.’ All the energy was back in Ming’s voice and she no longer looked tentative.
Max roared with laughter and even Connie’s set lips relaxed enough to twitch into a smile.
‘Bravo!’
‘All right,’ said Connie, taking the necessary decision. She tapped the ash off her cigarette into a flat pewter dish that Max used as an ashtray. ‘You’d better try to discover some suitable women, Ming. If you can find anyone, we can discuss it later. It might offend people, but …’ She broke off.
‘But, we have to be prepared to do that,’ said Max, watching them both with a sardonic look in his light eyes. ‘Otherwise we might just as well be publishing – what was it you said, Ming? – knitting patterns and recipes for cheap jam for the nursery.’
Ming laughed in relief. On the few occasions when she had met Max in the past he had seemed cool and rather difficult; she had never expected him to take her part or to have a sense of humour.
‘Very well,’ said Connie. ‘What else, Ming? You seem to have some surprisingly radical ideas.’
There was still enough sarcasm in Connie’s voice to make Ming want to shrivel into the depths of her chair.
‘I haven’t any more at the moment,’ she said, lying but determined not to cause any more trouble.
For the rest of the morning she merely listened as Max and Connie went through the books publishers had sent them, deciding which ones should be reviewed and by whom. Just as the small grandfather clock struck one, Connie shuffled her papers together and stood up.
‘That’s that, then. Ming, you’ll draft something on your advertising idea and look for women earning high salaries. Now, we’d better leave you in peace, Max. Coming, Ming?’
Obedient, but a little reluctant to face Connie’s wrath without the support of Max’s amused peacemaking. Ming went to fetch her luggage and then said goodbye to Max.
As soon as she had shut Max’s front door behind them, Connie said abruptly:
‘You’re looking much better, Ming.’
‘Thank you. I didn’t mean to be tiresome in there.’
Connie smiled and shook her head.
‘You weren’t. It was a fair point and gutsy of you to stick to it. I don’t know that I entirely agree with you about the dull worthiness of what we’ve been publishing, but I do see what you mean. I’m sorry if I sounded obstructive. Now, I think I‘d better give you some lunch,’ she said.
‘That’s sweet of you,’ said Ming, feeling too tired to stand up for anything at all any more, ‘but I ought to get back to London. I’m having dinner at Flixe’s tonight and I need to have my hair washed.’
‘All right. I’ll walk with you to your car,’ said Connie, tucking a hand in Ming’s arm. When they were well out of earshot of the cottage, she added: ‘Ming, can I ask you not to talk to anyone about Max? He doesn’t sign all the things he writes for us and it would be better if it were not generally known that he plays such a large part in the magazine.’
‘Certainly, but why?’
Ming was surprised to see her friend’s face flush as though with embarrassment or perhaps anger. After a long silence, Connie eventually said:
‘There are a lot of people who disapprove of him – mainly people who don’t know him – and so it’s better that his connection with the magazine is played down.’
Suppressing the obvious question because Connie seemed so reluctant to talk, Ming loyally assured her that she would say nothing to anyone of Max’s presence at the meeting or the part he played in the magazine.
As she drove back to London, stopping at a café for a sandwich and another cup of coffee about half-way, Ming could not help speculating about Max and the part he and Connie played in each other’s lives.
That evening Ming changed into a suitable little black dress and drove round to her sister’s big, comfortable house in Kensington.
Peter Suvarov opened the door when she rang the bell and kissed her. He looked almost exactly the same as he had done when she had come round in her hospital bed during the Blitz and seen him for the first time. There were deeper lines on his face and his hair was more heavily streaked with grey, but his glinting dark eyes were the same, and his beautifully shaped mouth, which could look wholly generous one moment and frighteningly bitter the next, had not changed at all. He was as slim as he had been then, and few people would have realised his true age.
Before she could say anything he urged her into the drawing room.
‘You’re looking a lot less washed-out than before the cruise,’ he said. ‘It must have helped, despite the unfortunate incident. I’m glad.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, smiling up at him. Cynical she might have become, but his approval still warmed her and he could still make her feel enveloped in protection. Looking around the big drawing room, she was relieved to find that no other guests had arrived and that Flixe herself was still cooking or dressing.
Peter poured her a gin and tonic and settled down to ask her about Egypt. He watched her over the rim of his whisky glass, enjoying the renewed brightness in her eyes and the lift to her lips. Thinking that she looked as lovely as she had as a girl, but a lot more interesting, he listened to her descriptions.
‘Why did you choose Egypt in the first place?’ he asked when she had finished. ‘It always seemed odd when you could have gone to all sorts of good – and safer – places at this end of the Mediterranean.’
‘Oh, it was my father’s idea,’ she said, sipping her drink. ‘He wanted me to see it before the last of our troops leave this summer. It’s been so much part of his life that he can’t really bear the thought that it doesn’t actually belong to the British Army. I don’t think it occurred to him that there could be trouble – or that Connie and I might actually be stoned. Doesn’t it sound biblical?’
Peter thought that he heard the faintest hint of sarcasm in Ming’s voice.
‘And you did what he wanted, just like that?’ His mouth twisted as he spoke, but his eyes were quite kind. Ming nodded.
‘It seemed easier,’ she said after a while. ‘It usually is. And I didn’t really care where I went. The doctors said I had to go somewhere warm and dry. What did it matter? And I suppose I was quite curious. I have a few random memories of coming back from India through the Suez Canal, but as I was only three then, they don’t mean much. I’m glad to have seen it – and even to have seen all that bottled-up rage exploding.’
She drank and then added: ‘I hated that, but in an odd way I identified …’
Peter watched her with a faint smile in his eyes. It reminded her how easy it was to confide in him and how much she still needed to protect herself against him.
‘In any case,’ she said hurriedly, ‘it was well worth it. I enjoyed the trip and we saw lots of lovely places.’
‘Good. Ming …’
‘Who’s Flixe producing for my inspection this evening?’ she asked before he could put his question into words.
At that Peter laughed, ignored what he had been going to say and leaned forward to kiss her cheek.
‘I keep telling her to stop it,’ he said, ‘but she likes doing it, and I know you’re too strong-minded to succumb to the wrong one. You are, aren’t you, Ming?’
