coming to him—he really has.” She paused. “And you? Did she get rid of you or did you get rid of her?”
“She got rid of me.”
Barbara marvelled at this. How could any woman let go of him—with his looks and his manner? How could she?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sure you didn’t deserve it.”
He laughed at this. “I don’t know about that. I suppose I have my irritating ways. And you never know—sometimes the chemistry just isn’t right, or it’s one-sided.”
“That’s true,” she said. “But when it’s right, you can tell, can’t you? You just know.”
He nodded. And then he looked at her sideways and their eyes met—just briefly, but they met.
Barbara said to herself: Oh, please, please, please! Please let nothing go wrong with this—this wildly improbable, impossible, but gorgeous thing. She was not sure to whom to address this invocation. To Venus, perhaps? If the goddess of love were listening, she would surely cherish such an invocation and understand the urgency, the yearning, that lay behind it.
57. Barbara Ragg Writes a Letter
ON MONDAY, Barbara Ragg went into her office in Soho, the Ragg Porter Literary Agency (founded 1974, by her father, Gregory Ragg, and his friend Fatty Porter). She was usually the first to arrive in the morning, coming in even before the cleaning lady, who emptied the wastepaper bins and vacuumed the floor, and then, her duties done, was to be found in the waiting room reading unsolicited manuscripts over a cup of tea. She had a good eye for a promising script, Barbara and her colleagues had found, and they encouraged her to note down her verdict on a piece of paper and pin it to the front page of the manuscript. “Promising,” a note might read, or “A bit sentimental, I think,” or simply “Rubbish.” And sometimes these notes would be accompanied by a request for fresh cleaning supplies, as in: “A good romance—credible characters—and please order more liquid soap for the toilets.”
The Ragg Porter Literary Agency did not reveal to the world that some of its reading was done by the cleaning lady; such an admission would be misunderstood by those who did not know the cleaning lady in question and her record of spotting a good literary prospect. It was as reliable a system, the agents felt, as any other, and certainly more truthful than the practice of sending manuscripts back completely unread but accompanied by a letter which implied that the manuscript had been carefully considered. The statement “Your manuscript has been carefully considered by our reader” did not reveal that the reader in question was the cleaning lady. And why reveal this? asked Barbara. What difference does it make?
That Monday morning, when the cleaning lady came in and began her cheerful rounds of the various cubicles that made up the office, she noticed that Barbara’s light was on. A glance through the open door revealed Barbara at her desk, writing a letter.
“Early start, Barbara!” she said.
Barbara looked up. “I’m writing a letter, Maggie. I woke up very early this morning.”
The cleaning lady nodded. She liked Barbara and she was pleased to see her looking bright. That awful man of hers, that MP, she thought, the horrible one, he’s the one who makes her miserable. It’s always a man—always. If there’s an unhappy-looking woman, then there’s an awful man somewhere. Always.
Barbara returned to her letter. She was writing to her friend James Holloway in Edinburgh, telling him about her weekend.
“I know you don’t mind my burdening you with the details of my life, James, and that’s why I’m writing to you this morning about something really, really important that has occurred. No, don’t worry—this is not something difficult or challenging. Far from it. Something really remarkable has happened to me and I wanted you to know about it. I’m not looking for any advice—I am utterly sure of what I’m doing and I think it’s the right thing for me. I just want to tell somebody about it. You know how it is when something good happens—when you read a book that strikes a chord, or see a picture that really speaks to you—you want to share it with a friend. You just have to. That’s how I feel.
“The first thing I have to tell you is this: I’ve left Oedipus. Now I know that you’ll be pleased by this because I always knew your view of him—and you were right. Do you remember how you said to me, ‘Sorry, but he’s