In the centre of this museum the Literary Director, Mr Wilberforce, and the Senior Editor, Mr Tate, sat at an oval walnut table observing the weekly rite. They sipped Madeira and nibbled seedcake and looked disapprovingly at the manuscript before them and then at Geoffrey Corkadale. It was difficult to tell which they disliked most. Certainly Geoffrey’s suede suit and floral shirt did not fit the atmosphere. Sir Clarence would not have approved. Mr Wilberforce helped himself to some more Madeira and shook his head.
‘I cannot agree,’ he said. ‘I find it wholly incomprehensible that we should even consider lending our name, our great name, to the publication of this … thing.’
‘You didn’t like the book?’ said Geoffrey.
‘Like it? I could hardly bring myself to finish it.’
‘Well, we can’t hope to please everyone.’
‘But we’ve never touched a book like this before. We have our reputation to consider.’
‘Not to mention our overdraft,’ said Geoffrey. ‘And to be brutally frank, we have to choose between our reputation and bankruptcy.’
‘But does it have to be this awful book?’ said Mr Tate. ‘I mean, have you read it?’
Geoffrey nodded. ‘As a matter of fact I have. I know that my father didn’t make a habit of reading anything later than Meredith but …’
‘Your poor father,’ said Mr Wilberforce with feeling, ‘must be turning in his grave at the very thought—’
‘Where, with any luck, he will shortly be joined by the so-called heroine of this disgusting novel,’ said Mr Tate.
Geoffrey rearranged a stray lock of hair. ‘Considering that papa was cremated I shouldn’t have thought that his turning or her joining him would be very easy,’ he murmured. Mr Wilberforce and Mr Tate looked grim. Geoffrey adjusted his smile. ‘Your objection then, I take it, is based on the fact that the romance in this novel is between a seventeen-year-old boy and an eighty-year-old woman?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Wilberforce more loudly than was his wont, ‘it is. Though how you can bring yourself to use the word “romance” …’
‘The relationship then. The term doesn’t matter.’
‘It’s not the term I’m worried about,’ said Mr Tate. ‘It’s not even the relationship. If it simply stuck to that it wouldn’t be so bad. It’s the bits in between that get me. I had no idea … oh well, never mind. The whole thing is so awful.’
‘It’s the bits in between,’ said Geoffrey, ‘that will sell the book.’
Mr Wilberforce shook his head. ‘Personally I’m inclined to think we would run the risk, the gravest risk, of being prosecuted for obscenity,’ he said, ‘and in my view quite rightly.’
‘I agree,’ said Mr Tate. ‘I mean, take the episode where they use the rocking horse and the douche—’
‘For God’s sake,’ squawked Mr Wilberforce. ‘It was bad enough having to read it. Do we have to hold a post-mortem?’
‘The term is applicable,’ said Mr Tate. ‘Even the title …’
‘All right,’ said Geoffrey, ‘I grant you that it’s a bit tasteless but—’
‘Tasteless? What about the part where he—’
‘Don’t, Tate, don’t, there’s a good fellow,’ said Mr Wilberforce feebly.
‘As I was saying,’ continued Geoffrey, ‘I’m prepared to admit that that sort of thing isn’t everyone’s cup of tea … oh for goodness’ sake, Wilberforce … well anyway, I can think of half a dozen books like it …’
‘I can’t, thank God,’ said Mr Tate.
‘… which in their time were considered objectionable but—’
‘Name me one,’ shouted Mr Wilberforce. ‘Just name me one to equal this!’ His hand shook at the manuscript.
‘Lady Chatterley,’ said Geoffrey.
‘Pah,’ said Mr Tate. ‘By comparison Chatterley was pure as the driven snow.’
‘Anyway, Chatterley’s banned,’ said Mr Wilberforce.
Geoffrey Corkadale heaved a sigh. ‘Oh God,’ he muttered, ‘someone tell him that the Georgians aren’t around any longer.’
‘More’s the pity,’ said Mr Tate. ‘We did rather well with some of them. The rot set in with The Well of Loneliness.’
‘And there’s another filthy book,’ said Mr Wilberforce, ‘but we didn’t publish it.’
‘The rot set in,’ Geoffrey interrupted, ‘when Uncle Cuthbert took it into his woolly head to pulp Wilkie’s Ballroom Dancing Made Perfect and published Fashoda’s Guide to the Edible Fungi in its place.’
‘Fashoda was a bad choice,’ Mr Tate agreed. ‘I remember the coroner was most uncomplimentary.’
‘Let’s get back to our present position,’ said Geoffrey, ‘which from a financial point of view is just as deadly. Now Frensic has offered us this novel and in my view we ought to accept it.’
‘We’ve never had dealings with Frensic before,’ said Mr Tate. ‘They tell me he drives a hard bargain. How much is he demanding this time?’
‘A purely nominal sum.’
‘A nominal sum? Frensic? That doesn’t sound like him. He usually asks the earth. There must be a snag.’
‘The damned book’s the snag. Any fool can see that,’ said Mr Wilberforce.
‘Frensic has wider views,’ said Geoffrey. ‘He foresees a transatlantic purchase.’
There was an audible sigh from the two old men.
‘Ah,’ said Mr Tate, ‘an American sale. That could make a considerable difference.’
‘Exactly,’ said Geoffrey, ‘and Frensic is convinced that the book has merits the Americans might well appreciate. After all, it’s not all sex and there are passages with Lawrentian overtones, not to mention references to many important literary figures. The Bloomsbury Group for instance, Virginia Woolf and Middleton Murry. And then there’s the philosophy.’
Mr Tate nodded. ‘True. True,’ he said. ‘It’s the sort of pot of message Americans might fall for but I don’t see what good that is going to do us.’
‘Ten per cent of the American royalties,’ said Geoffrey. ‘That’s what good it’s going to do us.’
‘The author agrees to this?’
‘Mr Frensic seems to think so and if the book makes the bestseller lists in the States it will consequently sell wildly over here.’
‘If,’ said Mr Tate. ‘A very big if. Who has he in mind as the American publisher?’
‘Hutchmeyer.’
‘Ah,’ said Mr Tate, ‘one begins to see his drift.’
‘Hutchmeyer,’ said Mr Wilberforce, ‘is a rogue and a thief.’
‘He is also one of the most successful promoters in American publishing,’ said Geoffrey. ‘If he decides to buy a book it will sell. And he pays enormous advances.’
Mr Tate nodded. ‘I must say I have never understood the working of the American market but it’s true they often pay enormous advances and Hutchmeyer is flamboyant. Frensic could well be right. It’s a chance I suppose.’
‘Our only chance,’ said Geoffrey. ‘The alternative is to put the firm up for auction.’
Mr Wilberforce poured some more Madeira. ‘It seems a terrible comedown,’ he said. ‘To think that we should have sunk to this … this pseudo-intellectual pornography.’
‘If it keeps us financially solvent …’ said Mr Tate. ‘Who is this man Piper anyway?’
‘A pervert,’ said Mr Wilberforce firmly.
‘Frensic tells me he’s a young man who has been writing for some time,’ said Geoffrey. ‘This is his first novel.’
‘And hopefully his last,’ said Mr Wilberforce. ‘Still I suppose it could have been worse. Who was that dreadful creature who had herself castrated and then wrote a book advertising the fact?’
‘I should have thought that was an impossibility,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Castrated herself. Now himself I—’
‘You’re probably thinking of In Cold Blood by someone called McCullers,’ said Mr Tate. ‘Never did read the book myself but people tell me it was foul.’
‘Then we are all ag
reed,’ said Geoffrey, to change the subject from one so close to the bone. Mr Tate and Mr Wilberforce nodded sadly.
*
Frensic greeted their decision without overt enthusiasm.
‘We can’t be sure of Hutchmeyer yet,’ he told Geoffrey over lunch at Wheelers. ‘There must be no leaks to the press. If this gets out Hutchmeyer won’t bite. I suggest we simply refer to it as Pause.’
‘It’s appropriate,’ said Geoffrey. ‘It will take at least three months to get the proofs done.’
‘That will give us time to work on Hutchmeyer.’
‘And you really think there’s a chance he will buy?’
‘Every chance,’ said Frensic. ‘Miss Futtle exercises enormous charms for him.’
‘Extraordinary,’ said Geoffrey with a shudder. ‘Still, having read Pause there’s obviously no accounting for tastes.’
‘Sonia is also an excellent saleswoman,’ said Frensic. ‘She makes a point of asking for very large advances and that always impresses Americans. It shows we have faith in the book.’
‘And this fellow Piper agrees to our ten per cent cut?’
Frensic nodded. He had spoken to Mr Cadwalladine. ‘The author has left all the terms of the negotiations and sale entirely in my hands,’ he said truthfully. And there the matter rested until Hutchmeyer flew into London with his entourage in the first week of February.
3
It was said of Hutchmeyer that he was the most illiterate publisher in the world and that having started life as a fight promoter he had brought his pugilistic gifts to the book trade and had once gone eight rounds with Mailer. It was also said that he never read the books he bought and that the only words he could read were those on cheques and dollar bills. It was said that he owned half the Amazon forest and that when he looked at a tree all he could see was a dustjacket. A great many things were said about Hutchmeyer, most of them unpleasant, and, while each contained an element of truth, added together they amounted to so many inconsistencies that behind them Hutchmeyer could guard the secret of his success. That at least no one doubted. Hutchmeyer was immensely successful. A legend in his own lifetime, he haunted the insomniac thoughts of publishers who had turned down Love Story when it was going for a song, had spurned Frederick Forsyth and ignored Ian Fleming and now lay awake cursing their own stupidity. Hutchmeyer himself slept soundly. For a sick man, remarkably soundly. And Hutchmeyer was always sick. If Frensic’s success lay in outeating and outdrinking his competitors, Hutchmeyer’s was due to his hypochondria. When he hadn’t an ulcer or gallstones, he was subject to some intestinal complaint that necessitated a regime of abstinence. Publishers and agents coming to his table found themselves obliged to plough their way through six courses, each richer and more alarmingly indigestible than the last, while Hutchmeyer toyed with a piece of boiled fish, a biscuit and a glass of mineral water. From these culinary encounters Hutchmeyer rose a thinner and richer man while his guests staggered home wondering what the hell had hit them. Nor were they allowed time to recover. Hutchmeyer’s peripatetic schedule – London today, New York tomorrow, Los Angeles the day after – had a dual purpose. It provided him with an excuse to insist on speed and avoided prolonged negotiations, and it kept his sales staff on their toes. More than one contract had been signed by an author in the throes of so awful a hangover that he could hardly put pen to paper, let alone read the small print. And the small print in Hutchmeyer’s contracts was exceedingly small. Understandably so, since it contained clauses that invalidated almost everything set out in bold type. To add to the hazards of doing business with Hutchmeyer, most of them legal, there was his manner. Hutchmeyer was gross, partly by nature and partly as a reaction to the literary aestheticism he was exposed to. It was one of the qualities he appreciated about Sonia Futtle. No one had ever called her aesthetic.
‘You’re like a daughter to me,’ he said hugging her when she arrived at his suite in the Hilton. ‘What’s my baby got for me this time?’
‘One humdinger,’ said Sonia, disengaging herself and climbing on to the bicycle exerciser that accompanied Hutchmeyer everywhere. Hutchmeyer selected the lowest chair in the room.
‘You don’t say. A novel?’
Sonia cycled busily and nodded.
‘What’s it called?’ asked Hutchmeyer for whom first things came first.
‘Pause O Men for the Virgin.’
‘Pause O Men for the what?’
‘Virgin,’ said Sonia and cycled more vigorously than ever.
Hutchmeyer glimpsed a thigh. ‘Virgin? You mean you’ve got a religious novel that’s hot?’
‘Hot as Hades.’
‘Sounds good, a time like this. It fits with the Jesus freaks and Superstar and Zen and how to mend automobiles. And it’s women’s year so we got The Virgin.’
Sonia stopped pedalling. ‘Now don’t get carried away, Hutch. It’s not that kind of virgin.’
‘It’s not?’
‘No way.’
‘So there’s different kinds of virgin. Sounds interesting. Tell me.’ And Sonia Futtle, seated on the bicycle machine, told him while her legs moved up and down with a delicious lethargy that lulled his critical faculties. Hutchmeyer made only token resistance. ‘Forget it,’ he said when she had finished. ‘You can deepsix that crap. Eighty years old and still fucking. That I don’t need.’
Sonia climbed off the exerciser and stood in front of him. ‘Don’t be a dumbcluck, Hutch. Now you listen to me. You’re not going to throw this one out. Over my dead body. This book’s got class.’
Hutchmeyer smiled happily. This was Fuller Brush talking. The sales pitch. No soft sell. ‘Convince me.’
‘Right,’ said Sonia. ‘Who reads? Don’t answer. I’ll tell you. The kids. Fifteen to twenty-one. They read. They got the time. They got the education. Literacy rate peak is sixteen to twenty. Right?’
‘Right,’ said Hutchmeyer.
‘Right, so we’ve got a seventeen-year-old boy in the book with an identity crisis.’
‘Identity crisises is out. That stuff went the way of all Freud.’
‘Sure, but this is different. This boy isn’t sick or something.’
‘You kidding? Fucking his own grandmother isn’t sick?’
‘She isn’t his grandmother. She’s a woman a—’
‘Listen baby, I’ll tell you something. She’s eighty, she’s no goddam woman no more. I should know. My wife, Baby, is fifty-eight and she’s drybones. What the beauty surgeons have left of her. That woman has had more taken out of her than you’d believe possible. She’s got silicone boobs and degreased thighs. She’s had four new maidenheads to my knowledge and her face lifted so often I’ve lost count.’
‘And why?’ said Sonia. ‘Because she wants to stay all woman.’
‘All woman she ain’t. More spare parts than woman.’
‘But she reads. Am I right?’
‘Reads? She reads more books than I sell in a month.’
‘And that’s my point. The young read and the old read. You can kiss the in-betweens goodbye.’
‘You tell Baby she’s old and you can kiss yourself goodbye. She’d have your fanny for a dishcloth. I mean it.’
‘What I’m saying is that you’ve got literacy peak sixteen to twenty, then a gap and another LP sixty on out. Tell me I’m lying.’
Hutchmeyer shrugged. ‘So you’re right.’
‘And what’s this book about?’ said Sonia. ‘It’s—’
‘Some crazy kid shacked up with Grandma Moses. It’s been done some place else. Tell me something new. Besides, it’s dirty.’
‘You’re wrong, Hutch, you’re so wrong. It’s a love story, no shit. They mean something to one another. He needs her and she needs him.’
‘Me, I need neither of them.’
‘They give one another what they lack alone. He gets maturity, experience, wisdom, the fruit of a lifetime …’
‘Fruit? Fruit? Jesus, you want me to throw up or something?’
‘…
and she gets youth, vitality, life,’ Sonia continued. ‘It’s great. I mean it. A deep, meaningful book. It’s liberationist it’s existentialist. It’s … Remember what The French Lieutenant’s Woman did? Swept America. And Pause is what America’s been waiting for. Seventeen loves eighty. Loves, Hutch, L.O.V.E.S. So every senior citizen is going to buy it to find out what they’ve been missing and the students will go for the philosophomore message. Pitch it right and we can scoop the pool. We get the culture buffs with significance, the weirdos with the porn and the marshmallows with romance. This is the book for the whole family. It could sell by the—’
Hutchmeyer got up and paced the room. ‘You know I think maybe you’ve got something there,’ he said. ‘I ask myself “Would Baby buy this story?” and I have to say yes. And what that woman falls for the whole world buys. What price?’
‘Two million dollars.’
‘Two million … You’ve got to be kidding.’
Hutchmeyer gaped.
Sonia climbed back on to the bicycle machine. ‘Two million. I kid you not.’
‘Go jump, baby, go jump. Two million? For a novel? No way.’
‘Two million or I go flash my gams at Milenberg.’
‘That cheapskate? He couldn’t raise two million. You can hawk your pussy all the way to Avenue of the Americas it won’t do you no good.’
‘American rights, paperback, film, TV, serialization, book clubs …’
Hutchmeyer yawned. ‘Tell me something new. They’re mine already.’
‘Not on this book they’re not.’
‘So Milenberg buys. You get no price and I buy him. What’s in it for me?’
‘Fame,’ said Sonia simply, ‘Just fame. With this book you’re up there with the all-time greats. Gone With The Wind, Forever Amber, Valley of The Dolls, Dr Zhivago, Airport, The Carpetbaggers. You’d make the Reader’s Digest Almanac.’
‘The Reader’s Digest Almanac?’ said Hutchmeyer in an awed voice. ‘You really think I could make that?’
‘Think? I know. This is a prestige book about life’s potentialities. No kitsch. Message like Mary Baker Eddy. A symphony of words. Look who’s bought it in London. No fly-by-night firm.’