“Nice of you to come,” he said. “Sorry I couldn’t see you before. Lots of small things to see to on a job like this. Had dinner?”

“Not yet.”

“Pity. Have to eat, you know. Can’t work at full pressure unless you eat plenty.”

Then Simon and Miss Grits sat down and Sir James explained his plan. “I want, ladies and gentlemen, to introduce Mr. Lent to you. I’m sure you all know his name already and I daresay some of you know his work. Well, I’ve called him in to help us and I hope that when he’s heard the plan he’ll consent to join us. I want to produce a film of Hamlet. I daresay you don’t think that’s a very original idea—but it’s Angle that counts in the film world. I’m going to do it from an entirely new angle. That’s why I’ve called in Mr. Lent. I want him to write dialogue for us.”

“But, surely,” said Simon, “there’s quite a lot of dialogue there already?”

“Ah, you don’t see my angle. There have been plenty of productions of Shakespeare in modern dress. We are going to produce him in modern speech. How can you expect the public to enjoy Shakespeare when they can’t make head or tail of the dialogue. D’you know I began reading a copy the other day and blessed if I could understand it. At once I said, ‘What the public wants is Shakespeare with all his beauty of thought and character translated into the language of everyday life.’ Now Mr. Lent here was the man whose name naturally suggested itself. Many of the most high-class critics have commended Mr. Lent’s dialogue. Now my idea is that Miss Grits here shall act in an advisory capacity, helping with the continuity and the technical side, and that Mr. Lent shall be given a free hand with the scenario…”

The discourse lasted for a quarter of an hour; then the chiefs of staff nodded sagely; Simon was taken into another room and given a contract to sign by which he received £50 a week retaining fee and £250 advance.

“You had better fix up with Miss Grits the times of work most suitable to you. I shall expect your first treatment by the end of the week. I should go and get some dinner if I were you. Must eat.”

Slightly dizzy, Simon hurried to the canteen where two languorous blondes were packing up for the night.

“We’ve been on since four o’clock this morning,” they said, “and the supers have eaten everything except the nougat. Sorry.”

Sucking a bar of nougat Simon emerged into the now deserted studio. On three sides of him, to the height of twelve feet, rose in appalling completeness the marble walls of the scene-restaurant; at his elbow a bottle of imitation champagne still stood in its pail of melted ice; above and beyond extended the vast gloom of rafters and ceiling.

“Fact,” said Simon to himself, “the world of action… the pulse of life… Money, hunger… Reality.”

Next morning he was called with the words, “Two young ladies waiting to see you.”

“Two?”

Simon put on his dressing gown and, orange juice in hand, entered his sitting room. Miss Grits nodded pleasantly.

“We arranged to start at ten,” she said. “But it doesn’t really matter. I shall not require you very much in the early stages. This is Miss Dawkins. She is one of the staff stenographers. Sir James thought you would need one. Miss Dawkins will be attached to you until further notice. He also sent two copies of Hamlet. When you’ve had your bath, I’ll read you my notes for our first treatment.”

But this was not to be; before Simon was dressed Miss Grits had been recalled to the studio on urgent business.

“I’ll ring up and tell you when I am free,” she said.

Simon spent the morning dictating letters to everyone he could think of; they began—“Please forgive me for dictating this, but I am so busy just now that I have little time for personal correspondence…” Miss Dawkins sat deferentially over her pad. He gave her Sylvia’s number.

“Will you get on to this number and present my compliments to Miss Lennox and ask her to luncheon at Espinoza’s… And book a table for two there at one forty-five.”

“Darling,” said Sylvia, when they met, “why were you out all yesterday and who was that voice this morning?”

“Oh, that was Miss Dawkins, my stenographer.”

“Simon, what can you mean?”

“You see, I’ve joined the film industry.”

“Darling. Do give me a job.”

“Well, I’m not paying much attention to casting at the moment—but I’ll bear you in mind.”

“Goodness. How you’ve changed in two days!”

“Yes!” said Simon, with great complacency. “Yes, I think I have. You see, for the first time in my life I have come into contact with Real Life. I’m going to give up writing novels. It was a mug’s game anyway. The written word is dead—first the papyrus, then the printed book, now the film. The artist must no longer work alone. He is part of the age in which he lives; he must share (only of course, my dear Sylvia, in very different proportions) the weekly wage envelope of the proletarian. Vital art implies a corresponding set of social relationships. Co-operation… co-ordination… the hive endeavour of the community directed to a single end…”

Simon continued in this strain at some length, eating meantime a luncheon of Dickensian dimensions, until, in a small, miserable voice, Sylvia said: “It seems to me that you’ve fallen for some ghastly film star.”

“O God,” said Simon, “only a virgin could be as vulgar as that.”

They were about to start one of their old, interminable quarrels when the telephone boy brought a message that Miss Grits wished to resume work instantly.

“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.”

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.