‘I’ve got an appointment to see Mr Humphries.’ He turned his scar away, and tried a half-cock grin to put her at ease.
‘Come in, then.’ She showed him to a small office, treading backwards as if he might lunge forward for a kiss.
He wondered how long she had taken to nurture her posh accent from the glum corner of the country she had grown up in, and noted her diamond-shaped brass earrings, the string of black beads over her grey striped blouse, and a rosebud mouth with just the right curl for scaring callers away. Bert felt like belching in her face. ‘Worked here long?’
‘Longer than you.’
Sharpshit. He took his cap off. ‘It doesn’t sound long to me,’ Herbert said, in his most polished accent. ‘I’m rather surprised you can’t be rather more polite to an author. If it weren’t for someone like me you wouldn’t have a job.’
‘Think I’d care? They pay me next to nothing.’ She looked for something on the desk, which he thought might be a perfumed clothes peg to put on her snout, then fastened a few papers together. ‘What are you going to see Mr Humphries for?’
You may be Bert Gedling, he thought, but you don’t have to think like Archie Bleasby. He went up close. ‘It’s about a novel.’
‘And you have an appointment?’
‘I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. Bert Gedling’s the name.’
‘Oh.’ She pressed a button on the intercom, and a Donald Duck squawk came back. ‘Sit down.’ She pointed to a chair, as if he was blind. ‘He shouldn’t be long.’
He preferred to stand, sniffing the dusty upholstery of the sofa while relishing a whiff of the girl’s scent. To bolster the role of Bert Gedling, which he must put on in no uncertain terms, he recalled acting in the Ovid play at school. Now that he was on a real stage the experience would be put to more practical use, though the encounter with a publishing firm was a come-down compared to Phaeton’s fatal drive across the universe in the Sun God’s horse and cart. Life and death stakes weren’t on the cards, but if this wasn’t a metamorphosis he didn’t know what was.
Perhaps the file box under Humphries’ arm was to give the idea that he was hurried, the ruse wasted on Herbert, who saw him as ordinary enough in that he only had one side to his personality, and wouldn’t be difficult to deal with. If he was a worried man he was the sort who had been born that way, and so was able to put on a smile of pretending to be at ease, betrayed by lines across his brow as close as contours defining a steep hill.
He looked at Bert from the doorway and, twiddling a watch chain across his waistcoat, came forward to shake his hand. ‘Humphries,’ he said, unable to meet his eyes. He led the way to a large office on the first floor, the stair walls decorated with framed photographs of authors who looked as if they had been to the same school as Herbert Thurgarton-Strang.
They sat at opposite ends of a leather-covered couch. ‘Well, Mr Gedling,’ Humphries said, still hugging the file box as if his lunch was in it. ‘I don’t see any point in beating about the bush. We’ve read Royal Ordnance, and we’re very impressed. We want to publish it.’ He paused for a look of surprise, or even pleasure, but Herbert, knowing it was called for, and in spite of a bumping heart, gazed across at a shelf of novels, deciding it was unlikely that he had read books with such gaudy spines.
‘Mind you, it’s an unusual piece of work, and there’s no saying how well or otherwise it will sell, but we’ll certainly do our best to push it. I don’t think there has been a working-class novel quite like it, though I’m afraid you might have to alter a few of the more explicit words.’
‘Oh, well, ’appen I will,’ he grudged. ‘People’ll know what I mean, anyway.’
‘No doubt about that.’
Above the bookcase stood a large framed photograph of a school cricket team, and Bert walked across as if interested in the books. ‘You published all these?’
Humphries laughed. ‘Oh, many more than that.’
‘It’s a lot.’ He managed a look at the photograph and saw, among the lines of faces, his old adolescent self, not as he would like to have imagined – head half backwards, with a sneer at the world, or at least an aspect of Byronic contempt – but as a sixteen-year-old with a look of trepidation, he would almost say fear, certainly anxiety, unease, a nervousness at the lips and a stare showing how at bay and unhappy he must have been. To cover the shock and before turning round he took out a packet of Woodbines. ‘Fag?’
‘No, thank you. Are you all right?’
‘I was only thinking I ain’t read any o’ them books. I’ve got a lot to mek up for.’ The cigarette hid his face in smoke. Isaac’s advice had been to let them do most of the talking, but it was necessary to emphasize his identity as Bert Gedling, so he couldn’t stay dumb.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve had much time.’
‘True. I’ve slogged my guts out in a factory since I was fourteen, but at least I learned how to write a novel about that life.’
‘You certainly did. Do you still work there?’
Thoughts and talk lived on different levels, and he decided it was best not to speculate on how the photograph of the old cricket team came to be in Humphries’ office. ‘I’ve got to earn a living, ’aven’t I?’ He looked around the room. ‘There are worse places.’
‘What about your family?’
Bert’s impulse, which Herbert trod on, was to tell him that his family was none of his fucking business. Instead he decided he would be more convincing if he didn’t clip off too many aitches. ‘Mam and Dad was killed in an air raid, so an aunt took me in. When she couldn’t stand me going out to pubs and coming back kay-lied she threw me on the street and I ’ad to live in digs.’
A real son of the people. Amazing. Humphries shook the money up and down in his left trouser pocket. ‘How did you learn to write so well?’ – not a grammatical slip anywhere, and the neatest-cleanest typescript I’ve seen for a long time. They’d even wondered whether it wasn’t a novel cooked up by some university chap pulling a fast one, but it was far more authentic than that.
Bert smiled. ‘Easy. I read a lot o’ books. Then again, I went to a good school till I was fourteen. If yer didn’t spell right yer got bashed.’
Humphries stared, as if not entirely believing that he had before him an all-round twenty-two carat, totally unspoiled self-taught novelist from the working class. Bert gave the stare back, then crumbled his expression into the cheery open-hearted smile of a workman which, he knew from much practice with the mirror, would make him look like a berserker only halfway gone from self-control. Humphries cleared phlegm from his throat for a further question. ‘Where did you acquire that scar? And the sling? You seem to have been in the wars.’
Humphries felt free to ask about the scar because he looked on him as from a lower sort of life. He may not know why he’s doing it, Herbert thought, but that’s how it is. If he took me as one of his own kind he would have waited for me to tell him about it. The trouble is he doesn’t even know he’s being supercilious, and because I do, and because I want him to think I’m somebody I’m not, I won’t give him a mouthful of well-delivered execration, but get back to being Bert.
‘I was. Life’s a battlefield where I come from.’ He lifted the sling an inch or two. ‘Industrial accident, this. As for the scar, they’re a rough lot up north. I offended a bloke in a pub, but don’t ask me what I said. Maybe I only just looked at him, and the ponce came for me with a knife. Got a swipe in before I could dodge. He thought he’d frightened me off, but nowt frightens me. I had my boots on, so I went straight back in and kicked the knife out of his hand. Then I cracked ’is ribs to stop his complaints. He didn’t look very pretty after I’d done.’
He flipped his cigarette end into the empty fireplace, as if ready to go out and manufacture another fracas, or give a performance on the spot, should there be any sign of trouble.
Don’t overdo the Bert bit. Pull back. Yet it was irresistible, because playing the role was as near as he’d get to driving a c
hariot across the sky – better in fact because he wasn’t as daft as Phaeton, so it wouldn’t be fatal. Functioning through the eyes, brain and heart of Bert made Herbert wonder how long he could keep up the stance, a long part to play, and not always easy, calling every moment for care and dexterity. It was hard to understand how Humphries was unable to penetrate such an everyday person and see the real man within. Had he led such a sheltered life? Still, didn’t Archie always say that if you live a lie you become the lie itself, and didn’t feel you were living a lie at all? He was acting out of inspiration, and knew it was safe to carry on. ‘I enjoy a bit of a bust-up on a Saturday night.’
He should be on the stage. Humphries offered a cigar from his leather case. It’s even better than too good to be true. They smoked in apparent peace. ‘Well, Mr Gedling – or may I call you Bert?’
Herbert nodded. ‘Any day.’
‘We’ll draw up a contract and make an advance of two hundred pounds. Half now, and half on publication.’
‘For ten years work? Is that all authors mek on a long book like this?’
‘You’ll earn more when the royalties start coming in.’
Bert detected a fear on Humphries’ part that he might reach for his novel and march off with it elsewhere. ‘That’s only a promise, though. You can’t live on promises.’
‘It’s more than that, I think. Do you have an agent?’ – as if he could deal with him or her more easily.
Ash fell from Bert’s cigar, such a good Cuban it didn’t break on impact but lay like a turd on the carpet. He put his foot on it for luck. ‘My lawyer will look at the contract. He knows all about book advances. But I did think five ’undred would be nearer the mark.’ Herbert could live a year on that, with care. ‘That’s what he said when I showed him your letter.’
Humphries put the ashtray between them. ‘Has he read it – the book, I mean?’
‘Loves it. Reckons it’s as good as owt that moaning minnie D. H. Lawrence wrote, though I suppose he was having me on.’ Herbert could see him trying to decide whether he was bluffing or just being naive. Dense thoughts were struggling around in the compost of Gedling’s brain, which made him unpredictable, untrustworthy.
Humphries wondered with a frisson what F. R. Leavis would say to his views on Lawrence. Though clearly from the boondocks, Gedling was no fool, and in spite of the clarity of his writing there was something sly about him, which may be no bad thing when, Humphries thought, we put him through the publicity machine. ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Bert. As a gesture of confidence and goodwill, and to show our faith in you, we’ll make it three hundred – if I’m able to square it with the other directors, which I think I can.’
Herbert had hit as much of a jackpot as the one-armed bandit could deliver, but it was even so beyond what he had hoped for. He asked, as if still not satisfied: ‘When will you publish the book, then?’
Humphries barked into an intercom for a sheet of schedules. ‘I want you to know, Bert, that we have a policy here of treating our authors with decency and respect. We look after them, but expect loyalty in return.’
A better-looking girl than the female Cerberus on the front door came in with the schedules. ‘Thank you, Deborah.’ He flipped through the papers. ‘We’ll bring Royal Ordnance out in the autumn,’ he told her, ‘which gives us about six months, plenty of time to get advance copies to the reviewers.’
‘Deborah, eh?’ Bert said, when she had gone. ‘A bit of all right, in’t she?’ Cool and haughty Deborah in her purple blouse, with a nice golden trinket between her tits, had given him a quick look, and assumed it told her everything about him, but once outside she would realize that such was not the case. If – no, when – he met her again that kind of uncertainty would give him half a chance.
‘She’s one of our up-and-coming editors,’ Humphries said.
The curt tone was a good reason for Bert to frown: ‘Autumn’s a long way off. I was thinking a couple of months would do the trick.’ He stretched his legs from the sofa, and blew a perfect smoke ring towards the fireplace. ‘I might ’ave another done by then.’
‘That’s all right. We can bring it out next year. Do you have a title?’
A photograph of Rodin’s Thinker, seen in a book at Isaac’s, showed the attitude to take, until the words flashed into his brain. ‘Ye’, I’ll call it The Other Side of the Tracks.’
‘No resting on your laurels, eh? That’s good. And in the meantime you’ll go on working in the factory, I suppose?’
The country house he’d buy would have a well-shaved lawn you went on to from French windows. There’d be a table, and a sunshade under which he’d scribble tales from the factory on to a foolscap pad so that the sunshine breeze couldn’t flush the papers away. A middle-aged motherly housekeeper would disturb him with the musical tinkle of a tea tray, or perhaps wake him from an illicit snooze. Maybe his good luck and swelling fortune would run to a flat above the National Gallery, with a view almost level with Nelson’s melancholy phizog. In the morning he’d amble across the Square in his dressing gown and carpet slippers to eat breakfast in Joe Lyons, a friendly nod at the policeman who’d soon get used to such eccentricity: ‘Nice morning, Mr Gedling!’ ‘Would be, if I hadn’t drunk so much last night.’ ‘Ah! You authors!’
On the other hand maybe he’d live half-starved in a furnished room for the rest of his days, and struggle with the poverty he’d read about in George Gissing’s books. ‘The factory’s all I know. Unless I pack it in and get a job as a clay-kicker down the pit. The money’s better there, better than writing novels, any road up.’
Humphries clasped hands, and Herbert could never see such a man feeling contrite at the thought of a writer on his uppers. ‘I don’t think you’ll have to do that kind of work much longer.’
‘I hope not. I’ve done my bit.’
‘Before you go, though’ – he pressed a button – ‘I’d like you to meet my chief editor, who wrote such an enthusiastic report on your novel.’
Herbert lay back, uninterested, smoking at his ease, when who should walk in but that wanking little blighter Dominic Jones, who had been his best friend at school. Bert considered himself to be in the shit bucket up to his neck, at the same time realizing that publishing was just the sort of occupation in which to find someone like Dominic. So, he told himself, get deeper ever deeper into Bert as quickly as you can, though even Archie’s skin might not be thick enough to hide in.
‘Dominic, I’d like you to meet Bert Gedling, who wrote Royal Ordnance that you admired so much.’
Bert uncoiled himself to greet this pink plump man of middle height, already slightly bald, but spiffingly dressed, as they would have put it during those long ago days at school. ‘Hey up, Domino.’
The same old baby face, but turning to petulance. ‘Dominic, if you don’t mind.’
It was him, right enough. Bert corkscrewed so deeply into Gedling that his own mother wouldn’t have known him or, better still, he wouldn’t even have spotted himself walking along the street. ‘Sorry, I thought it was Domino. They ’ave funny names down in London.’ He used the grip of a million handlepower, so that Dominic needed all his spartan school upbringing not to flinch at the pain. He couldn’t possibly connect Bert with the Thurgarton-Strang whose contemptuous handshake had never been more than the extension of one finger, and who he had last seen playing table tennis in the games room more than twelve years ago. The scar helped, as did the muffler, the calloused hands and hardened face, the half-closed eyes, and one or two blackheads cultured for the occasion.
Dominic backed a pace. ‘It’s certainly a good novel. Unusual, too.’
‘That’s high praise,’ Humphries said, ‘coming from him. It’s only the third book he’s accepted since the new year. What did you say about it?’
‘A real achievement, both as art and realism.’ He looked at Herbert, but then, he would, wouldn’t he? Herbert felt the horizons spinning, the room in a flux, as if he had put back six pints of
Younger’s Number One, and never drunk anything more potent than cocoa before. Bert was reluctant to come up and help keep the perilous world at bay, but Herbert kept him up front by the scruff of his neck.
‘I was talking about it with someone at Penguin’s yesterday,’ Dominic said, ‘in Chez Victor’s.’
‘Were you, then?’ Humphries leaned against the desk, hoping his chief editor would have enough diplomatic sense to handle the kind of rogue element carefully that neither of them had met before. ‘They’ll have first refusal on the paperback rights, but only if they’re quick about it, and if they come up with the right price.’
‘Penguins!’ Bert exclaimed, in control again. ‘I thought they on’y touched classics. I’ve read all of them, though.’ The more mystified they were about his ability to produce a book from such a background the less they would imagine him to be who he really was, in which case Herbert could afford to throw out a few hints now and again as to how cultured he was. ‘I’ll ’ave to be off soon. I want to get back up north before my lawyer shuts ’is offices.’
He felt absolute joy, walking arm in arm with Bert in the sunshine up St Martin’s Lane, both too full of their success to get straightaway back into the Underground. Such freewheeling happiness made his strides seem ten feet long, no one nearby coming up to his measure. ‘We did it, old boy, we pulled it off,’ Herbert said.
‘Fuckin’ did,’ Bert crowed. But a cloud went over his face: ‘What about that snotchops who looked a bit funny when ’e saw yer, though?’
The Broken Chariot Page 25