"I'm just not entirely sure I think it's a very good idea," Professor Emilia DeBusque pushed the spectacles she didn't really need a little higher on her daintily upturned nose.
"Oh, but please?" whined Professor Molly P'ohlig from her writing desk, "I think it could be quite good publicity, and a little bit of a diversion from this dreary summer."
Emily put down the latest Alan Hollinghurst manuscript, into which she was trying to inject a little life, and gazed out of the Poppycock windows at the flatly grey English summer sky. "I just don't know, Molly. Do we really want the BBC nosing around in our lives for a whole week? How will we get any work done?"
"But I've always wanted to be in a documentary! And there's hardly much work going on in the summertime," Maude called from her chaise lounge bequeathed to her by the estate of Marghanita Laski, where she was roundly beating Mr. Periwinkle at a game of chess.
"She's right," Molly said, idly playing with some pearls that had once belonged to Julia Strachey, and wondered if an inkstain mightn't be curiously fetching on a wedding dress, "No one ever writes in the summer. It's much better to write when it's gloomy out and you can stay in by the fire."
Emily sighed, knowing that she could very rarely beat Maude and Molly once they'd teamed up. She turned back from the window to find three hopeful faces looking expectantly in her direction. "You're always saying we should try new things, Professor," Mr. Periwinkle said a little wistfully, as Maude's knight swooped down on his queen. "Even if it was Nabokov's chess set, we can't play all summer."
Emily crossed her arms and eyed Molly. "And what does Mr. Denning say? Did you bring it up at your meeting yesterday?"
Molly turned red and began to worry her pearls, mumbling, "Y-yes, I...I think he did say it was a good idea."
Emily bit her lip to hide her smile, and patted the lovely new crucifix around her neck, a gift from Father Inigo. "Alright," she said. "I'll call them tomorrow." Whoops of glee went up around the room, and no one did any work for the rest of the day.
***
(4 days later...)
"Young man, if you do not remove that camera from next to my face, there are going to be consequences," said Emily sternly, and the young man with the video camera nearly fell over his feet in his hasty retreat, having been given a long lecture the day before on the plot of E.M. Delafield's sadly under-appreciated novel.
"Oh, excuse me, dear fellow, but would you mind assisting me? There's a rather large parcel, and I need some help deciphering the return address," Mr. Periwinkle shunted the young man in question over to his mail bag, camera and all, before Emily did him a mischief. Maude was sat in front of the fire, trying to gently turn down the persistent overtures of the smitten young director. Try as she might, he just would not believe that she was coming out of a divorce and felt herself not ready for a relationship as yet. "Well," she said finally, in a bit of a huff, "I suppose you'll just have to wait until the book comes out!"
Molly had been soldiering on through an interview, but was finding that her carefully prepared answers about the best neglected English authoresses were not exactly fitting in with the questions.
"So," said the slick and smarmy young journalist, "Describe your inspirations for the...charming decor here at the Poppycock home office."
"Well, we've all obviously read "How to Run Your Home without Help"," Molly began, trying to hijack the conversation back to literature, "The delightful 1949 instructional manual for the newly servantless, and--"
"What's your opinion on Barbara Cartwright?" the journalist asked, smirking, as he smoothed down an eyebrow.
Molly sat up a little straighter. "Well, she certainly wrote an awful lot of books. Although if I'm looking for romance, I would turn instead to the works of Dorothy Whipple, who had some very keen observations on--"
"And how do you respond to the rumors that you are carrying on an affair with Mr. Denning?"
Emily gasped and Mr. Periwinkle knocked over an entire bottle of gin. Molly remained silent for a moment, and then said, "I believe we may have changed our minds about the documentary."
Maude hopped up and ran to open the door, and Mr. Periwinkle shooed the three horrid young men out. "Alright, I was wrong!" Molly shouted. "Poppycock isn't suited to the outside world at all, and we should have stayed our frumpy little selves all alone. What a disaster! How rude they all were!"
"And they didn't seem to care at all about books," Maude raised her eyebrows, "They just wanted to be...salacious."
"Oh dear, my girls, I think we all owe Emily an apology. I believe our heads got a bit swelled and we forgot who we are." Mr. Periwinkle was still sadly mopping up the gin, wondering only a little bit if he could just squeeze the towel out into a glass.
"And who are we?" Emily asked, putting her arms around Molly and Maude.
"We are...girls who love the Persephone bookstore," Maude said with a nod.
"Girls who like to make naughty asides while watching very prim films based on classic novels," Molly added.
"Lonely girls," Mr. Periwinkle said, dabbing at his nose with the gin-soaked towel.
"We are Poppycock girls," Emily said firmly.
And they loved her so much that they let her pick the miniseries for the afternoon.
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