He did , however , give her the name and address of a very good lawyer who had got him an injunction to restrain a firm from publishing a book until the author had removed a passage attacking him for some slander which had been , in fact , a case of Privilege .sx In spite of all the transferred maternity she was endowed with by her patients , poor Serena was an infant-in-arms as a buyer of property .sx No , not even an infant-in-arms but a new-born babe , a premature piece of frailty in an oxygen-tent of utter innocence .sx The complexity of that innocence was colossal .sx It had layer after layer of illusion to be peeled off and replaced with sad knowledgeability .sx It was a nakedness of " vety to be clothed leaf by leaf with the disappointment of experience .sx Her first illusion consisted in the belief that all she need do was to go to an agent , visit half a dozen houses in one day , choose one , make an offer , put it in the hands of a lawyer and go away on her holiday while the whole transaction was put through .sx At the worst , she could postpone their holiday , if she didn't find anything she liked at once .sx August would after all be a little hot for Greece .sx All that mattered was moving .sx For quite suddenly she couldn't stand their flat any more .sx She must come back to something new , even if it meant shortening their trip abroad or taking an extra week off to get settled in .sx She soon found that Tom Stevens was right about the prices , whatever their cause .sx The market , moreover , seemed more like one of her graph representations of a psychotic's dream world than a rational state of affairs carefully calculated by a handful of wicked speculators , though she supposed that these latter might well be the chosen instruments of the city's collective unconscious .sx For the prices of houses bore no relation whatsoever to their size , beauty , or convenience , only to some lunatic hierarchy of districts by which any area , however traffic-ridden , that could by any considerable wrench of the imagination be called a Village , was also the most plutocratic in its price-range ; that is , any piece of town with one pretty street , square , corner , stretch of river , bit of heath , common or park , round which lesser , uglier streets clustered hopefully , borrowing the same name for themselves as crescents , gardens , garden-crescents , rises , hills , hill-rises , ways and ends , mewses , lanes , groves and vales , could aspire to and perhaps eventually earn the name of Village .sx Slum terraces and workers' cottages would be bought up , sometimes by enterprising individuals but more often by the wicked speculators for a profitable sale to less enterprising individuals , and one by one the black brick houses would turn white , or pink or blue , with bright yellow doors and flower-boxes in the windows .sx " This street , " the agents would say , " hasn't quite come .sx " When it did so , and several more around it , the area would at last receive by way of final decoration and of course price-promotion , the name of Village .sx Second to Villages were the Best Residential Areas , where the affluent middle class had always lived , but they were , after all , limited and unexpandable , and now that practically everyone was affluent middle-class , the Best Residential Areas were so much in demand that prices shot up well beyond the range of the affluent middle-class , and only the milk-bar millionaires lived there , expense-account experts , some of the more successful comedians , the odd reckless film-star , and of course the speculators themselves .sx Fortunately , however , the fashion for Victorian architecture which Mr. John Betjeman had started several decades before had caught on at last and therefore saved the situation for the affluent middle-class , who now had plenty of lovely-ugly to be coldly elegant in .sx All this Serena discovered , and more , but in stages .sx For the first thing she did was to make an offer on a small pink terraced cottage , two beds , two inter-comm .sx rec .sx , mod .sx k. and b. , sep .sx W.C. small back yard , newly dec .sx , near shops and tube in up-and-coming Camden Town Village , +6,000 Freehold .sx The next thing that Serena discovered was that she could not afford to buy a house at all .sx And this in spite of having at last managed to save the ten percent needed .sx Or so she thought , being then in possession of what seemed to her the princely sum of six hundred pounds .sx The lawyer said :sx " Of course you must count about two hundred for legal charges and stamp duties , maybe less , depending on the price of the house , and whether it has been registered .sx I take it you have a mortgage lined up , then , Mrs.- er- Buttery ?sx " " Not yet , but the bank would give me a loan , I'm sure .sx " " Er , yes .sx You have some securities , then ?sx " " Well , no .sx Just my work .sx And my husband's .sx " " No .sx . life insurance ?sx " Serena had more in common with Stella than she realised , for the word security had meant little to her until now , when she felt this sudden urge to buy property , paying off a mortgage like rent for twenty years and then living free of expense , she thought , when they were " old and grey and full of " - though she hoped she would never be as psychologically asleep as all that .sx All she had ever bothered to insure was her conscious self against just such a submerging sleep .sx She shook her head at Mr. Clacton , who seemed asleep enough himself , both in her terms and his , for it was a hot day and his office was stuffed to its low ceiling with undisturbed books , undisturbed files and dust from probably Dickensian times .sx His aspect was as dusty as his office , with scurf from dusty hair on the dusty shoulders of his black suit , cigarette ash down the front , an ashen face and yellow sleepy dust in the corners of his pale grey eyes .sx His finger-nails were dirty , though he tried to make up for it by constantly paring them with the finger-nail of the opposite hand .sx His voice was like his black and pin-stripe , a grey superimposition of respectability over the original colour of his own natural vowels , the result being somehow as ineffective , not just dusty-grey but muddy , slimy even .sx His digressions too , seemed to have no other purpose than the throwing of dust in his client's eyes , the dust of fake security , of the fake friend of the family , like the puffs from his Gauloises , which said ~'Don't you worry your fluffy little head about that , just lull back in the layers of my experience,' as he told her how he had saved one of his clients from buying a house in which he somehow owned all the bricks and mortar but not the joists , which had been omitted from the Deeds , and how he had learnt from another client who was a greengrocer that all greengrocers cheat the income-tax by a complicated system of unrecorded purchases which has become the norm at Covent Garden .sx " Yes , well .sx . " He judged that she had been sufficiently dazzled and gave a long raucous cough .sx " Only cigarettes worth smoking , these .sx Most unhealthy , English ones .sx Well , now , let me see .sx I think I can put you onto some people who might , I say might , let you have a mortgage on this property .sx . " " But , they're safe , are they ?sx I mean , they're not- money-lenders ?sx " " Mrs.- er- Buttery , all mortgage companies are money-lenders .sx That's rather the point , isn't it ?sx " " No , but I mean- " " I know what you mean .sx You may trust me , Mrs. Buttery .sx I think , however , that you might have to revise your ideas about- er- the type of property you intend to purchase .sx " She revised them .sx The little man from the Inter-Insular ( British Archipelago ) Insurance Company soon saw to that .sx He was bald and bouncy , jumping up from her sofa with each explanation , whether because of the sherry she offered him or from a passionate interest in his work she couldn't tell .sx When he had jumped up some twenty times , talked of premiums , policies , tax exemptions and survey fees , worked out sums rapidly on Inter-Insular Insurance Company sheets of paper which he produced from a shiny black brief-case , asked many questions about Rupert's age , health and income , even his salesman's patter failed to smooth over the traumatic experience undergone by Serena's relatively sheltered psyche that afternoon .sx Poor Serena .sx In spite of the good marks she had brought home from school she had never grasped the implications or practical application of compound interest .sx She used to solve all the problems set of course , but her conscious mind must have refused to accept the moral shock of it all , so that even now at the age of forty and eleven months , she still assumed that if one borrowed six thousand pounds at six per cent , one paid back , in the end , six thousand plus six per cent of six thousand , that is , six thousand three hundred and sixty pounds .sx The meaning of the words " 6per annum " had somehow got lost with the years .sx Her second shock was the mortgage rating .sx " You see , Mrs. Buttery , " said the little man rather sadly now , but very fast , like a comic spouting gags , " the value of the policy would be worked out entirely according to your husband's earnings .sx I'm afraid we can't take yours into account at all .sx It's a rule of I.I.I. You see , you might stop work to have- well , for all sorts of reasons , or you might leave him .sx " " But how utterly extraordinary , " said Serena angrily , " you must be living in the nineteenth century .sx " " Oh , but it's a very general rule , Mrs. Buttery , you'll find that no insurance companies , or building societies , for that matter , will allow for the wife's earnings .sx Our lawyers- " " Who are your lawyers ?sx " " Clacton's .sx " " Well , I'm damned .sx " " Now , let me see , you say your husband earns about .sx . yes , that would come to .sx . three , carry seven , six nines are fifty four- of course we'd have to have some sort of proof , you know , it's very difficult with self-employed persons , carry two .sx Yes .sx I'm afraid we couldn't raise this loan to more than three thousand three fifty at the most .sx Now you could get quite a nice little semi-detached house in Grimstead for three thousand , that's where I live , just before the green belt , lovely and modern , you know .sx I forgot to tell you , we don't usually lend any house built earlier than 1918 .sx " But Serena was not easily discouraged .sx She had , moreover , a reasonable endowment of intelligence and enough analytical training , specialised though it was , to get to grips with the more megalomaniac vagaries of an unfamiliar world .sx Within three days she had worked it all out .sx It was all quite clear .sx Houses were too expensive , at any rate for poor self-employed individualists like themselves , who nevertheless hankered for respectability and membership of the new and widespread , property-owning , affluent middle-class .sx Therefore they would buy part of a house .sx The market was flooded with long-lease flats for sale , on one and sometimes two floors of vast Victorian mansions , bought up by speculators and converted with more paint than architecture , a glass door here and there , a vine-leaf or cabbage-rose paper on one of the walls , a stainless steel kitchen-sink with perhaps a +45 waste-disposal unit to send the price up by a couple of hundred more .sx " You see , " she propounded to Rupert after her last patient had gone , " we can get three thousand three fifty , perhaps a little more if we can cheat your earnings a bit .sx I'm sure you could raise the rest from one of your publishers , get two books commissioned and write them later .sx I've got a bit owing too .sx Now , I saw some flats in Hendon for four thou , and some in West Hampstead for four two fifty , two beds , two reception , k. and b. , just think , our own bathroom .sx Much more spacious than that poky little cottage , which wasn't a bit practical really , the reception room was too small when divided and too big when not .sx