Beryl Bainbridge

by Brendan King

  Shashoua’s subsequent claim, published many years after Colin’s death, that in his first year in charge Duckworth had made ‘several hundred thousand pounds profit’20 and that Colin told him this would ruin the company as authors would now ask for back royalties, is patently ludicrous. Several hundred thousand would have immediately cleared Duckworth’s overdraft with enough left over to pay whatever royalties were outstanding several times over.

  Colin now began to negotiate with Michael Estorick, the son of a wealthy art dealer, whose first novel he had published a few years earlier. Estorick was interested in getting more involved in the editorial side of publishing, so the opportunity to buy into Duckworth seemed a good one, and a deal was put forward in which Estorick would take over Roger’s shares for a cash input of £500,000. There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing over the next few days, with Colin unsure whether to trust Estorick or stick with Shashoua.

  During these negotiations Beryl frequently acted as a go-between, fielding telephone calls from both: Estorick relayed messages to Colin through her, and Colin confided in her about his uncertainties regarding Estorick. Late one night after a bout of drinking, and wanting to offer Colin her support, she wrote him a simple statement saying she trusted him and that whatever he did she was behind him, and posted it through the door of the Duckworth offices.21

  At the beginning of November a deal was done: ‘Roger has given in – he’s backing out. Of course Colin is still worried about Michael, but it’s terrific news, isn’t it?’22 A new contract for An Awfully Big Adventure was produced and this time Colin offered a more respectable £10,000 advance.

  In the first year of the new partnership Estorick’s second novel What Are Friends For was published, a somewhat ironic title in the light of how quickly things turned sour and what would follow. One sticking point was Estorick’s desire to have a larger editorial role on the fiction list, something that didn’t go down well with Anna and was hardly improved by their mutual antipathy. Another investor in the firm, the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, a charitable organization set up by the Halifax-based confectionery giant, became equally dissatisfied with Colin, though for different reasons: Duckworth’s financial situation didn’t seem to be improving and profits were slow to materialize. In what inevitably seemed like a symbolic move, the firm, no longer able to afford the high business rates of Camden Town, was forced to exchange its iconic home for more prosaic premises in Hoxton Square in the East End.23

  Unhappy at the return on its investment the Rowntree board sided with Estorick in blaming Colin’s attitude and business methods. As John Jolliffe subsequently put it in his history of Duckworth: ‘Relations between the two factions were almost as bad as could be, and at a board meeting on 26 November 1991 Estorick is minuted as having thrown a file at Colin and then having left the room in anger.’24 A few months later Colin was unceremoniously fired and locked out of his own office.25 Beryl hurriedly scribbled a note to her agent Andrew Hewson to tell him the news: ‘C was sacked yesterday and given 48 hours to clear desk! I feel sick.’26

  But Colin had factored in a safety clause when Estorick had bought Shashoua’s shares, inserting an option to buy them back within a period of eighteen months from the date they were sold. Colin now took the gamble of exercising his option, and on informing Estorick’s solicitors of this he was reinstated as ipso facto head of the firm.27 The only problem was that with the deadline rapidly approaching, Colin had no money with which to buy back the shares.

  It was around this period that Colin started giving extracurricular Latin lessons to Jo’s two sons, Bertie and Charlie, and in order to encourage them Beryl decided to sit in too. In a notebook she used for writing out her Latin homework, its inside cover appropriately enough giving the complete conjugation of amare (to love), the ongoing drama with the Rowntree Trust was reflected in her exercises. Alongside the traditional phrases about Cato and Gaul that Beryl wrote out and tried to translate, there were others of her own invention, the import of which no doubt went over her grandsons’ heads: ‘The writer thinks of the publisher with love (Scriba publicatori amorem multum). Colin, you will defeat the Barbarians of Halifax (Coline, Halifaxis barbaros superabis). You will save the day by a stratagem (Diem consilio servabis).’28

  All of which may have been bad Latin, but as a piece of fortunetelling it would turn out to be worse. One ‘stratagem’ that was considered was for Beryl to move to another publisher for what would amount to a ‘transfer fee’, the money being used to ease Duckworth’s financial situation. (Anna had already left Duckworth for similar reasons, moving to Viking in 1990.) It was something Beryl discussed with Colin and which she asked her agent to make discreet enquiries about, even though she wasn’t very enthusiastic: ‘I don’t really want to leave Duckworth – I have a gut feeling my creative whatsit depends on the sort of way they’ve always treated me. Perhaps I’m a masochist. I don’t know. O dear.’29

  Another ‘stratagem’ – the idea of using Beryl’s house as security for a loan – would become one of the most contentious issues surrounding her financial dealings with Duckworth, with Beryl being portrayed as the victim and Colin as ruthlessly exploiting his emotional hold over her in an attempt to save his own skin. Needless to say, this is a gross distortion of what occurred.

  The collateral idea was probably initiated by Stephen Hill, an investment banker who became involved with Duckworth around the time Colin was looking for an investor to replace Michael Estorick. Colin had initially asked Malcolm Hill to invest in the firm but he declined and suggested his brother Stephen instead, though he gave Colin a piece of warning advice: ‘Take the money and say goodbye; things can become nasty.’30 In any event, the idea arose shortly after Colin and Stephen met and it would be Stephen, not Colin, who would be the chief architect of the plan, which involved a consortium of guarantors and properties, including Colin and Anna, Colin’s brother John, Beryl and Stephen Hill himself.

  One of the main difficulties Colin faced was that the bank wouldn’t lend him or the business any more money without further guarantees, and if Colin defaulted on the existing overdraft, which amounted to around £200,000, he stood to lose everything, house and business. The idea was therefore put forward that John and Beryl could use their secure financial positions to ‘guarantee’ a further loan to Duckworth until Stephen came up with the money to buy out Estorick and the Rowntree Trust. Everyone agreed that this was a good idea in theory, and Stephen set about putting the plan into action.

  This was not the first time a bank loan, guaranteed by property, had been considered in order to keep Duckworth afloat. In April 1989 Roger Shashoua had told Colin that he needed some security for the money he was putting into the firm, but as there was already a large mortgage on Gloucester Crescent, a move was made to use the Haycrafts’ cottage in Trefechan in Wales – or the ‘Taj Mahal’ as Beryl referred to it – as collateral instead. Roger drew up a form to this effect, but Colin, fearing it would mean losing everything if he defaulted, lost his nerve when it came to signing the form. He later told Beryl he ran out of the back exit and into the nearby pub, The Good Mixer. He started talking to a man at the bar but then burst into tears. At the time he thought he was having a nervous breakdown.31

  When Beryl agreed to act as a guarantor she had no idea about the legal implications of such an arrangement, and that if Duckworth went bust she might be liable for their debts. Somewhat naively, she thought that guaranteeing a loan was like being a character witness – and who wouldn’t be a character witness for a friend? When solicitors became involved and an agreement was drawn up, however, she was soon apprised of the dangers of what she’d innocently agreed to. In her Latin notebook she sketched out a number of questions to ask Colin the next time she saw him: ‘Loan on houses. Would bank give money on it? or the full amount? For how long? What safe-guards?’32

  Shortly afterwards, Beryl’s solicitor, Tony Ellis, wrote to Stephen Hill to clarify the situation: ‘When the matter of her prope
rty being offered as collateral was first discussed it was on the basis that her guarantee would be for a short term only and that she would then be released from it.’33 But six months later the issue was still dragging on, only now Stephen seemed to be asking Beryl to invest directly in the company, and her solicitor wrote to Duckworth in no uncertain terms to disabuse them of the idea: ‘Beryl Bainbridge has always made it clear from the outset that she would be prepared to be involved in an arrangement which would involve her house being used as collateral security for a short-term bridging loan . . . She is, I know, horrified that her offer to help with security for a bridging loan appears to have been interpreted as an offer to support an open-ended loan. I, as you know, have on several occasions both spoken to Stephen Hill and written to him to make Beryl’s position clear.’34

  Undaunted, Stephen wrote back to say that the Haycrafts were putting up 22 Gloucester Crescent as the first security (despite the fact that it was heavily mortgaged), together with their share in Duckworth, and that he and Beryl would commit to approximately £200,000 each. In addition, Anna and John Haycraft would be signing joint-and-several guarantees for £75,000 each. Stephen tried to sweeten the pill by saying that Beryl would be the first to be repaid.35

  Aside from Stephen’s seeming inability to take on board the plain statements that Beryl’s solicitor was making about her involvement, there were worrying discrepancies in what was being stated to the various participants: Stephen told Beryl and her solicitor that the bank had agreed to a ‘facility’ for £400,000, but a letter to Stephen from the Bank of Ireland shows that he was negotiating a loan of £600,000, and despite Ellis’s repeated insistence that Beryl’s guarantee should last no more than three months, the bank was told it would be five years.36

  Whether Ellis knew about the Bank of Ireland letter at the time isn’t clear, but in any case he wasn’t happy with the terms of the loan as Stephen had outlined them, and even less so by the fact that Stephen hadn’t told him that the Rowntree Trust had applied for a court order preventing the transfer of Estorick’s shares to Colin. His reply was brusque: ‘It seems to me you are asking Beryl to pledge her property to secure borrowing by Colin Haycraft to purchase shares in Duckworth (shares probably substantially overpriced) the transfer of which, maybe, could not be registered into Colin Haycraft’s name and which in turn he would therefore be unable to transfer to an investor. Unless Colin Haycraft made a lot of money (and I understand he has other substantial and pressing debts) Beryl would be locked into this arrangement for ever . . . It is not what she had in mind.’37

  This should have been the end of it, and had Beryl left the matter in her solicitor’s hands as everyone around her, including her agent and close friends, was urging her to do, it would have been. But now she unaccountably told Stephen that she might be able to raise £100,000 cash – perhaps thinking that it would get her out of committing her house. When Stephen wrote back to welcome this proposal she immediately took umbrage again:

  Dear Stephen,

  Re your letter of the 16th, and your delight at my suggestion that I could raise £100,000 privately. Naturally you’re delighted – notwithstanding the fact that it would place me under a considerable financial burden. You mention something called a Convertible Loan Stock and a Current Yield, and though you rightly state I’m ‘not into shares and those capitalistic thingies’ there would be no necessity to convert my loan into shares, but my debt would be recorded in this fashion!!! You say ‘don’t worry about this aspect of things – it only means that my resultant debt would be a real debt payable by the company’. As a little woman, who should not worry her head about such abstruse matters, I’m sure you’re in the right. As a fully solvent member of the human race (regrettably no thanks to Duckworth) I’m worried about this disreputable matter of a Convertible Loan Stock. With all due respect – bugger off!38

  Aside from her innate suspicion of financial deals, her animus was also fuelled by the vaguely insulting notion that her assets were more important to Duckworth than her reputation as a writer: ‘Do you realise how this affects me!’ she complained to Stephen in another letter, ‘I’ve stuck by Duckworth thru thick and thin and in the end, when the chips are down, my house is of more value than my books . . . if Duckworth is really now into surviving and becoming a responsible company, I would have thought it might have valued the author.’39

  The idea of the guaranteed loan was eventually dropped, but for Beryl the damage had been done. Although Stephen had been doing much of the pressuring – Beryl later referred to him as an ‘awful bloke’40 – she was justifiably angry with Colin for mixing up their personal relationship in what appeared to her to be a murky scheme in which she could potentially lose her house. Coming on top of her still-simmering resentment over the royalties and payments issue, it was hardly surprising that she gave free rein to her criticisms in outbursts suggesting that Colin had tried to get her to sign over her house.

  When A. N. Wilson stated this in print in a portrait of Beryl written after her death, he was doing little more than repeating her own words, however partial or misleading they may have been. But his implication of actual financial impropriety on Colin’s part was less well founded. Wilson’s assertion that Beryl ‘saw almost none’ of the money Duckworth earned from her books is flatly contradicted by the figures she gave to her accountant of her Duckworth earnings. Nor did the ‘house issue’ spell the end of her relationship with Colin. Whatever she may have told Bernice Rubens, who urged her to break with him over the matter, Colin’s visits to Albert Street, as evidenced by Beryl’s diary, resumed shortly afterwards.

  In private, Beryl’s own assessment of the ‘house issue’ was slightly more nuanced. ‘That buisness of the fall of Duckworth and my house being involved upset me terribly. Nobody, apart from my children, who . . . took the full force of drunken scenes and muttered threats that I wanted to die, realised quite how it affected me . . . I’m well aware that whatever it was that upset me had more to do with my own temprement – a need for approval – rather than outside forces, but the fact remains I was knocked sideways.’41

  The anxiety that Beryl was feeling over financial matters at the time was undoubtedly compounded by a letter she received in August 1992 from an embarrassed Genevieve Cooper at the Evening Standard. It had been Cooper who had introduced Beryl as a columnist at the Standard and now she had to tell her that the paper’s new editor, Stewart Steven, was dropping her, and that the column she was currently writing would be her last.

  On the bottom of the letter Beryl scribbled, for posterity’s sake: ‘Last column 2 days later. Bit of a shock seeing its my only source of income.’42 This, like almost everything Beryl said about her finances, should not be taken literally. According to her tax form for that year, money from the Evening Standard articles actually represented less than a third of her total earnings, which amounted to nearly six times the national average.43 As much of this figure was made up of advances and royalties on books, it was stretching the point considerably to accuse Duckworth of not contributing significantly to her income. If anything highlighted the difference between Beryl’s perception of things and factual reality, it is her tax returns, which refute the derisory figures she would repeatedly claim to have earned from Duckworth, whether she was talking to close friends such as A. N. Wilson or to journalists. In these matters Beryl seemed to follow Mark Twain’s advice to never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

  After the collapse of the loan scheme, Stephen came up with the money by other means and at the last minute Estorick and the Rowntree Trust were ousted in what became known as the ‘Boardroom Coup’. A press release was put out through Peter Carter-Ruck & Partners: ‘Colin Haycraft, Chairman and Managing Director of Duckworth . . . announced shortly before 4.00pm on Monday 7 December 1992 that he had completed the purchase of the 38% shareholding formerly held in Duckworth by Mr Michael Estorick . . . Colin Haycraft now owns 72% of Duckworth.’44 The event was marked by celebratory
photographs taken on the roof of Hoxton Square. Ominously, John Jolliffe noted that on the day of the share transfer, described by one of the lawyers involved as ‘a life shortening experience’, Colin suffered a mild stroke.45

  Whether by this stage anything could have really saved Duckworth is a moot point. It certainly seemed that nothing could save Colin. As if his financial situation wasn’t bad enough, a few months earlier he had been careless enough to voice his thoughts about Rowntree in public, and was subsequently sued for libel. The damages awarded against him were considerable and coming on top of a Capital Gains tax bill his personal problems continued to mount. Two years later the legal bill was still hanging over his head, and he told his solicitor ‘there seems to be little alternative to my going bankrupt’.46

  The financial problems threatening to overtake Duckworth had consequences that went well beyond the world of publishing. If the firm went bankrupt it would be a disaster for the Haycrafts as a family, entailing the loss not only of the house in Camden that had become symbolic of a whole way of life, but also the cottage in Wales, which Anna increasingly used as a physical and psychological retreat from the more unpalatable realities of life in London.

  Given the situation it was little wonder that tensions between Colin and Anna occasionally erupted into outright confrontation. Beryl recalled one evening at the Crescent during this period when Anna called Colin down from upstairs and began insulting him in front of her, telling him he was useless as a father and that the sooner he dropped dead the better.47

  On another occasion shortly afterwards, she and Anna happened to meet Yolanta May, who suggested going for a meal. Thinking that if she got out of it she could see Colin instead, Beryl declined saying she felt ill; at which Yola said to Anna that they should go to the Crescent and pick up Colin, unwittingly undoing Beryl’s plan and leaving her with no option but to go back to Albert Street on her own. The meal had not, however, been a success, and Yola rang Beryl the next day to tell her that Anna and Colin had had a blazing row in the middle of the restaurant: ‘I thought they were going to kill each other.’48