Conversations With Mr. Prain by Joan Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

work, no matter how much they believe in it. That’s why we all crave positive feedback.”
    And this was an opportunity for him to say, “Yes, Stella, and let me give you positive feedback right now. I’ve read your work and it’s stupendous.” But instead there was a stark silence in which a question mark hung sneering in the air, a silence that was broken at last by Mr. Prain offering more tea and asking why I had not eaten my cake. I looked again to the ogre’s face in the misericord and shivered.
    “Are you cold?” asked Mr. Prain, observing my discomfort.
    “No, thank you,” I replied, putting up a semblance of fortitude. In fact, the room was a little cold. The luxuriant warmth of the August day did not penetrate the bricks of this vast old house, and the sun was shining at the front, not here at the north-facing back of building, where we were sitting in one of the shadiest rooms. I was wearing a summer dress, one which I had bought at the Market from an antique clothes stall, a short 1960s shift dress made from a floral cotton print fabric. Such a nostalgic image was not quite my style. I had worn it especially for the occasion, and had forsaken a cardigan positive that I would have no need of it. I had swept my hair up into a kind of fat, wormy roll, and the nape of my neck was therefore exposed to the air. I had not imagined we would sit indoors on a day like this. Mr. Prain was wearing a cream cotton suit, brown shoes and socks, a cream and brown tie and an off-white shirt. Perhaps this was casual attire forhim, though it did not seem so to me. We must have appeared to belong to another decade. The room would not have given us away, full as it was of the past. I had had no prescience of this scenario when I had set off from Camden. I had imagined tea on the lawn, a walk through the grounds. I had not expected to be cold.
    A couple of twittering sparrows landed briefly on the outside windowsill of the open window, seeming to me like two giggling children you might pass in the street, two city children you fear may be laughing at you as you walk by.
    It was all very well discussing writing and its role, I thought, but this was not what I had come to tea to talk about. In my eagerness to impress him as a serious writer I had not been honest. I wanted to be put out of my jitteriness. It was impossible to feel normal when he would not give me a clue as to what he felt about the typescripts I had given him to peruse. I sensed now that he was stalling. I had again that uneasy feeling that we were working at cross-purposes, that something else was going on. This time it was stronger, more conscious, and yet I could not put it down to anything in particular that he had said or done. I felt the way out of the quagmire was to confront.
    I looked directly into that face, those dark, scientific eyes, and said, “Mr. Prain, we’re not talking about my typescripts.”
    His face gave nothing away. “No.”
    He would not be prompted. I had an uneasy feeling that I had been lured into a thicket by a false promise, andwas now in peril. Doubt made me bold. Rumbling up from a deep pit of suspicion, there was a question I surprised myself by asking, “Then why did you invite me here today?”
    As if this line had been the cue for an interruption, Monique entered. There were a few creaks and muted footsteps outside the great double doors at the far end of the room, while Mr. Prain gazed at me. There was a rap of gentle knocks, and one of the brass handles wriggled and turned. Mr. Prain twisted around in his chair with an air of grateful curiosity. I realised then that he did not wish to answer my question, not immediately anyway. He would not tell me the real reason he had invited me to tea on that Monday afternoon, but it was not merely to discuss my work.
    Monique moved gracefully through the door, with the kind of delicate and yet assured style of the French that Anglo-Saxon women have seldom managed to cultivate. I knew