PROOF


I bought a font at the sale, all but complete. Roman type, nothing
fancy. A couple of galleys and some artwork, probably the last job in
hand before old Perkins died. I bid for a set of illustrated calendars,
but it went way too high for me. The family, I think, and I was glad I
didn't get it.

'Never mind,' Mary said.

I took her to lunch. She was twenty, no something, and very bright. She
always said I discovered her. Sure, I gave her name to an art director I
knew and he took her on for a few months. Then she stayed, with him. She
wrote well. It isn't art, it's lying on demand. She understood that and
she had some crazy ideas. She would phone and spin me the tale, tape it.
Sometimes we'd spend a few hours together, like today. I took her to the
sale to show her where she came from. Ink and hot metal. I had bought a
framed foolscap page of printers correction symbols for her. 'Look at
this,' she said, '"transpose sections"'. She thought the mark was like
half a battlement, and I suppose it is. '"Insert double quotation marks"
is like somebody sleeping'. Well, like I say, she had some ideas.

She got a little drunk and leaned on me in the car. I drove her to her flat,
she leaned on me in the lift. I made coffee but when I took it into the sitting
room she was asleep, her feet under a throw. I covered her and left.
Insert full stop.