St. Lucy's Day
A week later a cab dropped Mary off in front of the Wordmongers' shop. She still had no real idea as to where she was. If anything the fog was thicker than it had been the previous week.
She had 200 pounds in cash in her purse. It was a tremendous amount to be carrying about and she had been worrying about being robbed. This was most of her personal fortune. People think that because your family is rich you have scads of cash laying about. She did not get a regular allowance from her father. When she needed money he gave it to her. Over the years she had saved 345 pounds from these cash advances, hidden in the bookcase in her bedroom, and now she was going to pay 200 pounds of it to Small Lake.
The ginger cat was waiting for Mary on the front step of the shop. It greeted her with a "Meeow".
"And how are you Miss Purity?" The cat purred and rubbed against her legs.
Mary and the cat entered the shop together.
"Lady MC?" Morton greeted her.
"Yes"
"Please follow Purity. She will lead you to Small Lake's office."
Mary followed the cat. Purity took a different, shorter route than Morton had taken the last time. This time they first went down a short hall which had only door which was marked 'Advice for Couples'. Mary could hear a couple arguing inside. Next they went down a longer corridor which had doors labelled with types of childrens' books: picture books, animal stories, school stories, adventure stories, magic stories ... They turned a corner and they were at Small Lake's office.
"Lady MC. Exactly on time. Please be seated." Small Lake greeted her.
"That is a very remarkable cat. But she has an impossible name to live up to"
Small Lake regarded the cat. "People think 'purity' means always pure. They forget that things can be purified, even souls. What do you take with your tea?"
After they each had their tea Small Lake began. "Having read the whole manuscript my advice to you is to scrap the diary format and rewrite the storey as a third person narrative with S as the protagonist"
"S?"
"Yes she is a strong appealing character who gets what she wants, both with respect to her nursing career and the chauffeur. On the other hand our diarist narrator is too weak for a storey you want to end 'happily ever after'. She vacillates. She lies to herself. She lies to others. She trusts no one. She listens to no good advice but she does follow her Aunt R's bad advice. Twice she has opportunities to go after M when almost any action on her part would have saved their relationship. You might say that she never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. And she does nothing but mope during 1915. Worst of all she has an obsessive compulsion to be a martyr by marrying R to 'save the family's reputation' when S's actions have already proven that the family's reputation is quite resilient. She would be a good heroine for a psychological novel wherein she comes to a bad end. I ask again will you consider rewriting your storey?
Mary reeled at Small Lake's comments. "No, I must insist on proceeding with what I gave you"
"Very well" Small Lake sighed. "Your storey started out as an interesting twist on 'Pride and Prejudice' with the diarist, as Elizabeth, eventually falling in love with M as the Collins character. A happy ending would have been easy to contrive at that point. But in a bewildering parallel development
the diarist becomes Lydia entangled with the unfortunate K as Wickham. As an aside I would point out that Miss Austen never resorted to anything as salacious as that death scene. Then R as a bad Darcy rescues the diarist as Elizabeth and Lydia combined. From this point it is apparent they will live unhappily ever after. So we find ourselves in 'Anna Karenina' territory with the diarist as Anna, M as Vronsky and R as Karenin. Are you sure you do not want an unhappy ending? The last entry in the diary could be the diarist as Anna saying that she planning on taking a trip then a postscript by a third party could say that the diary was found on the body of a woman who committed suicide by .. our tragedians have developed any number of possible ways to end..."
Mary shook her head. "No, I need a happy ending"
"I feared as much. You have left the storey in such a mess that there are only two ways to contrive a happy ending. The first is to introduce some sort of deus ex machina to cut the Gordian knot. Something like an earthquake or other cataclysm to get rid of R, but it would leave the reader unsatisfied and I believe you as well."
Mary nodded her head.
"So I took the direct route." he pushed a typewritten manuscript across the desk to Mary. "These are the diary entries required to give your storey a happy ever after ending."
Mary skimmed through the entries. "This seems so.. simple"
"It seems simple because it is simple. Our heroine/diarist, call her X, confesses all to her father and M, our hero, not the mother. They are upset, but not as upset as X fears. After all they have already weathered what I would say is the bigger scandal, S running off with the chauffeur, which is an ongoing scandal, as opposed to the incident with K, which is over seven years old, with the war intervening. The war really did change the way people think about things you know. X breaks her engagement with R. R threatens to publish. She tells him 'to publish and be damned'. Plus she tells R she will give her storey to his newspaper rivals, the storey of how a cad discovered how a young lady had committed a foolish indiscretion in her youth and used it to blackmail her into marriage. Such a storey would prevent his elevation to the peerage. He would never be a true Press Baron. Checkmate. X and M marry, have lots of beautiful, intelligent children and live happily ever after."
"Will it work?"
"It does work"
"Thank you for your work" Mary took an envelope out of her purse and laid it on the desk. "This is for you"
Small Lake took the envelope and put it in his desk. He did not count the cash. "Thank you, it was a pleasure to have been of service to you. Now if you will let Wolf and I walk you to the corner?"
The walk through the fog was as quiet as their last walk.
-0-
The storey played out almost as Small Lake had written it. He had not written the part where Matthew knocked Richard down. Richard almost had a stroke when Mary played her trump card. Nothing had been published. Matthew had proposed on New Year's Eve and they were to be married on February 14th.
Mary wanted to thank Small Lake again when she next was in London but as it turned out she was unable to do so. She asked four different cabbies to take her to the Wordmongers' Shop on Horseneedle Street but she was told the same thing by each. As one said to her "I've been a cabbie in London for more than thirty years, not counting the war, and there is no Horseneedle Street in London. Sorry miss, you must have the wrong address." She went to the municipal licencing office and was told no such business as the Wordmongers' Shop had ever been licenced in London. She even went to the Library and read through the issues of the newspapers she had been reading on the day she decided to visit the Wordmongers Shop. None of them contained any advertisements for such a shop.
When she returned to Downton Abbey she wanted again to read the pages Small Lake had given her. She could not find them. And next time she went to add to her cache of cash she found that she still had her 345 pounds.
-0-
Gentle Reader may you have a Happy Christmas and may the peace of the world be with you in 2012.