“A spizzard. A sort of cross between a spiv and a lizard—the lounge kind. So then I cut my family off and went and lived with a girl I knew who had an apartment. And my family cut off my allowance, which was a very silly thing to do, because it might have had just the opposite effect from what they intended. As it happened, it didn’t, because all the girls I knew who were making out that way seemed to me to have a very wearing sort of time of it. Not much fun, and an awful lot of jealousy to put up with—and so much planning. You’d never believe how much planning it needs to keep one or two second strings in good condition—or do I mean two or three spare strings?” She pondered.
“Never mind,” I told her. “I get the general idea. You just didn’t want the strings at all.”
“Intuitive, you are. All the same, I couldn’t just sponge on the girl who had the apartment. I did have to have some money, so I wrote the book.”
I did not think I’d heard quite aright.
“You made a book?” I suggested.
“I wrote the book.” She glanced at me and smiled. “I must look awful dumb—that’s just the way they all used to look at me when I told them I was writing a book. Mind you, it wasn’t a very good book—I mean, not like Aldous or Charles or people of that kind—but it worked.”
I refrained from asking which of many possible Charleses this referred to. I simply asked:
“You mean it did get published?”
“Oh yes. And it really brought in quite a lot of money. The film rights——”
“What was this book?” I asked curiously.
“It was called Sex Is My Adventure.”
I stared and then smote my forehead.
“Josella Playton, of course. I couldn’t think why that name kept on nearly ringing bells. You wrote that thing?” I added incredulously.
I couldn’t think why I had not remembered before. Her photograph had been all over the place—not a very good photograph, now I could look at the original, and the book had been all over the place too. Two large circulating libraries had banned it, probably on the title alone. After that its success had been assured, and the sales went rocketing up into the hundred thousands. Josella chuckled. I was glad to hear it.
“Oh dear,” she said. “You look just like all my relatives did.”
“I can’t blame them,” I told her.
“Did you read it?” she asked.
I shook my head. She sighed.
“People are funny. All you know about it is the title and the publicity, and you’re shocked. And it’s such a harmless little book, really. Mixture of green-sophisticated and pink-romantic, with patches of schoolgirly-purple. But the title was a good idea.”
“All depends what you mean by good,” I suggested. “And you put your own name to it, too.”
“That,” she agreed, “was a mistake. The publishers persuaded me that it would be so much better for publicity. From their point of view they were right. I became quite notorious for a bit—it used to make me giggle inside when I saw people looking speculatively at me in restaurants and places—they seemed to find it so hard to tie up what they saw with what they thought. Lots of people I didn’t care for took to turning up regularly at the apartment, so to get rid of them, and because I’d proved that I didn’t have to go home, I went home again.
“The book rather spoiled things, though. People would be so literal-minded about that title. I seem to have been keeping up a permanent defensive ever since against people I don’t like—and those I wanted to like were either scared or shocked. What’s so annoying is that it wasn’t even a wicked book—it was just silly-shocking, and sensible people ought to have seen that.”