Elephants Can Remember

Oliver knew well. This was now where other women would come and attack her. Attack her with fulsome praise, and where she always felt lamentably inefficient at giving the right answers because there weren't really any right answers that you could give. It went really rather like a travel book for going abroad with the right phrases.

Question: "I must tell you how very fond I am of reading your books and how wonderful I think they are." Answer from flustered author: "Well, that's very kind. I am so glad." "You must understand that I've been waiting to meet you for months. It really is wonderful." "Oh, it's very nice of you. Very nice indeed." It went on very much like that. Neither of you seemed to be able to talk about anything of outside interest. It had to be all about your books, or the other woman's books if you knew what her books were. You were in the literary web and you weren't good at this sort of stuff. Some people could do it, but Mrs. Oliver was bitterly aware of not having the proper capacity. A foreign friend of hers had once put her, when she was staying at an embassy abroad, through a kind of course.

"I listen to you," Albertina had said in her charming, low, foreign voice. "I have listened to what you say to that young man who came from the newspaper to interview you. You have not got-no! you have not got the pride you should have in your work. You should say 'Yes, I write well. I write better than anyone else who writes detective stories.' " "But I don't," Mrs. Oliver had said at that moment. "I'm not bad but-" "Ah, do not say 'I don't' like that. You must say you do; even if you do not think you do, you ought to say you do." "I wish, Albertina," said Mrs. Oliver, "that you could interview these journalists who come. You would do it so well.

Can't you pretend to be me one day, and I'll listen behind the door?" "Yes, I suppose I could do it. It would be rather fun. But they would know I was not you. They know your face. But you must say 'Yes, yes, I know that I am better than anyone else.' You must say that to everybody. They should know it.

They should announce it. Oh, yes-it is terrible to hear you sitting there and say things as though you apologize for what you are. It must not be like that." It had been rather, Mrs. Oliver thought, as though she had been a budding actress trying to learn a part, and the director had found her hopelessly bad at taking direction. Well, anyway, there'd be not much difficulty here. There'd be a few waiting females when they all got up from the table. In fact, she could see one or two hovering already. That wouldn't matter much.

She would go and smile and be nice and say, "So kind of you.

I'm so pleased. One is so glad to know people like one's books." All the stale old things. Rather as though you put a hand into a box and took out some useful words already strung together like a necklace of beads. And then, before very long now, she could leave.

Her eyes went round the table because she might perhaps see some friends there as well as would-be admirers. Yes, she did see in the distance Maurine Grant, who was great fun.

The moment came, the literary women and the attendant cavaliers who had also attended the lunch, rose. They streamed towards chairs, towards coffee tables, towards sofas, and confidential corners. The moment of peril, Mrs. Oliver often thought of it to herself, though usually at cocktails and not literary parties because she seldom went to the latter. At any moment the danger might arise, as someone whom you did not remember but who remembered you, or someone whom you definitely did not want to talk to but whom you found you could not avoid. In this case it was the first dilemma that came to her. A large woman. Ample proportions, large white champing teeth. What in French could have been called une femme formidable, but who definitely had not only the French variety of being formidable, but the English one of being supremely bossy. Obviously she either knew Mrs. Oliver, or was intent on making her acquaintance there and then. The last was how it happened to go.

"Oh, Mrs. Oliver," she said in a high-pitched voice. "What a pleasure to meet you today. I have wanted to for so long. I simply adore your books. So does my son. And my husband used to insist on never traveling without at least two of your books. But come, do sit down. There are so many things I want to ask you about." Oh, well, thought Mrs. Oliver, not my favorite type of woman, this. But as well her as any other.

She allowed herself to be conducted in a firm way, rather as a police officer might have done. She was taken to a settee for two across a corner, and her new friend accepted coffee and placed coffee before her also.

"There. Now we are settled. I don't suppose you know my name. I am Mrs. Burton-Cox." "Oh yes," said Mrs. Oliver, embarrassed, as usual. Mrs.