On the contrary, I could not remember any other man talking with this simplicity, frankness and comradeship about the sort of life I, and women like me, live. I laughed at one point, because I was being ‘named’ on such a high level (*2), yet lectured as if I were a small girl, instead of being several years older than he. It struck me as odd that he did not hear my laugh, it wasn’t a question of being offended by it, or waiting until I stopped laughing, or asking why I was laughing, he simply went on talking, as if he had forgotten I was there. I had the most uncomfortable feeling that I literally didn’t exist for Saul any longer, and I was glad to bring the thing to an end, which I had to do because I was expecting a man from the company who wants to buy Frontiers of War. When he came I decided not to sell the rights of the novel. They do want to make the film, I think, so what is the use of standing out all these years simply to give in now, just because for the first time I’m running short of money. So I told him I wouldn’t sell. He assumed I had sold it to someone else, was unable to believe that a writer existed who wouldn’t sell, at a high enough price. He kept raising the price, absurdly, I kept refusing, it was all farcical, I began to laugh — it reminded me of the moment I laughed and Saul didn’t hear: he didn’t know why I was laughing and kept looking at me as if I, the real Anna who was laughing, didn’t exist for him. And when he went off, it was with dislike on both sides. Anyway, to go back to Saul, when I told him I was expecting someone to come, I was struck by how he scrambled up, as if he were being thrown out, yes, really, as if I’d thrown him out, instead of just saying I was expecting a man on business. Then he controlled the scrambling defensive movement, and nodded, very cool and withdrawn, and went straight downstairs. When he had gone I felt bad, the whole encounter full of jarrings and discordancies, and I decided I had made a mistake about letting him come to my flat. But later I told Saul about my not wanting to sell the novel for a film, and rather defensively, because I am used to being treated as if I were foolish, and he took it for granted I was right. He said the reason he finally left his job in Hollywood was because there wasn’t anybody left in it who was capable of believing that a writer would refuse money rather than have a bad film made. He talks like all these people who have worked in Hollywood — with a sort of grim, incredulous despair that anything so corrupt can actually exist. Then he said something that struck me: ‘We’ve got to make stands all the time. Yeah, OK, we make stands on false positions sometimes, but the point is to make the stand at all. I’ve the advantage over you on one point…’ (I was struck, this time uncomfortably, by the sullenness of I’ve the advantage over you on one point, as if we were in some sort of contest or battle) ‘… and that is, the pressures that have been put on me to give in have been much more direct and obvious than the pressures in this country.’ I said, knowing what he meant, but wanting to hear him define it: ‘Give in to what?’ ‘If you don’t know, I can’t tell you.’ ‘Oh, but I do know.’ ‘I think you do. I hope you do.’