Wishful Thinking

by Jemma Harvey

  In bed, I lay wakeful, re-enacting the scene with Nigel with various different endings, all better than the original, until sleep sneaked up and caught me unawares. Blissful oblivion. Then in the morning there was the business of waking up to being me, humiliation and all. I wondered how someone who was size sixteen could feel so small.

  It was many nights before the only plus in the situation occurred to me. At least I could spend more time with Russell Crowe.

  Chapter 3

  The Moving Finger writes, and having writ

  Moves on, nor all thy Piety nor Wit

  Can call it back to cancel half a Line

  Nor all thy tears wash out a Word of It.

  EDWARD FITZGERALD: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

  Tout pour un, un pour tout. (All for one, one for all.)

  DUMAS: The Three Musketeers

  When troubles come, they come not single spies, as someone once said. Probably Hamlet, because it usually is. I was Nigelless, boyfriendless, fat and unloved and likely to remain so. It was February, going on March, and spring seemed a long way off, in every sense. My sister rang and asked after Nigel, so I had to tell her we’d broken up, and she expressed her commiseration with just enough real pity in her voice to make me long to kill her. Sophie is ten years older, and slim, with a husband, two children, and three dogs, and she lives her life in a welter of love and laundry. She is frequently sorry for me, and I know it, and I could forgive her everything except that.

  To cap it all, at the beginning of March Alistair Garnett (the Publishing Director) summoned me to his office. ‘You’re doing well,’ he told me. ‘You handled the Mallory woman brilliantly: she thinks you’re a star. Natural tact, obviously.’

  A cold trickle ran down my spine. When your boss praises your tact, you know it’s a preliminary to being asked to do something utterly horrendous.

  ‘And you got Todd to cut the title: I can’t believe that. He’s generally about as flexible as the Rock of Gibraltar.’

  ‘He didn’t like it,’ I ventured.

  ‘Who cares? Keeping the author happy is, as we both know, a myth that we propound only to – well, the authors. Personally, I dream of the day when all books are written by computers.’

  ‘They’d only develop a temperament,’ I pointed out. ‘And then you’d get one trying to destroy the world in a fit of pique after a couple of bad reviews.’

  ‘There’s always one,’ Alistair sighed, presumably in agreement. ‘Where were we? Todd Jarman. I’ve got the manuscript of his new book here. I’ve roughed out a few suggestions as to plot and so on – nothing major, but I think we could do with another body; it gets a bit slack towards the end. Oh, and it’ll need line-editing afterwards. I haven’t the time for that. You’ve hit it off so well with him I thought you could finish it off. You’ll have to go round to his place and go through it with him: he prefers having editorial sessions at home. You won’t mind that.’

  ‘He hates me,’ I said baldly, blank with horror. ‘He said I was arrogant and ignorant and—’

  ‘Nonsense. Just striking sparks off each other. The best kind of creative partnership.’

  ‘He hates me.’

  ‘I told you you’d be working on his stuff.’

  ‘Yes, but – with him?’

  Alistair fixed me with his sternest glare. ‘There’s no place for cowardice in this business, Cookie,’ he said. ‘We’re in the front line here. We have to face the critics, we have to face the writers – we’re the ones who must publish and be damned. The enemies of free speech may issue fatwas and plant bombs in our offices—’

  ‘Have they ever?’

  ‘Shut up: I’m holding forth. Our enemies may threaten, and bully, and intimidate, but we do not flinch. We point our Mont Blanc pens and say: “Come on, make my day.”’ (‘Speak for yourself,’ I muttered. I had a felt-tip.) ‘We stiffen our sinews and march on in the cause of Literature. Arm yourself with commas, with colons, with little squiggles in the margin. As it says in the Bible, the Word is God, and we deal in words.’

  I had no intention of listening to any more of this. He was starting to sound like Lord Kitchener’s poster. No doubt he thought it was funny; I didn’t. I really was the one in the firing line. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I give in.’

  Todd’s new book was good, perhaps one of his best, but it didn’t cheer me up. His hero, D.I. Jake Hatchett, was alternately tight-lipped and foul-mouthed, possibly because he got hit on the head a lot, at least in this story. Under a stone-faced, flint-hearted exterior he had dark, brooding emotional depths which only the reader got to see: successive girlfriends in previous novels either got killed or did it, though here we had a new twist with a female lawyer who put herself beyond the pale at the end by agreeing to defend the murderer. Did Helen know? I wondered. Hatchett was invariably matey with prostitutes and down-and-outs, hostile to the rich and successful – in short, the kind of cop who only exists between the pages of a book or on TV. He was so clearly the sombre side of Todd Jarman’s persona that as I read I found myself superimposing the author’s face on the character, hearing the curt phrases uttered not in the tones of the actor who had been such a hit in the role, but in those of the man who had been so scathing about my editorial skills. Of course, most writers create their hero in their own image, or the image they would like to have, so this wasn’t exactly new – but for some reason it made me feel uncomfortably close to Todd Jarman. There’s nothing like a row for bringing down normal social barriers. Or professional ones. I hadn’t felt that close to, say, Oonagh Mallory, that turner-out of historic soaps set invariably amidst the passions and potato-crops of the Emerald Isle.

  I began the business of tinkering with the grammar, adding a comma here or removing one there, noting every alteration in the margin so Todd could object to it later on. In addition I marked – very tentatively – sections which I thought might need cutting or rewriting, and indicated places where Alistair’s suggestions could be incorporated. By this time, the process was starting to go to my head, and I even came up with a shortlist of candidates for an extra murder, including a hooker who knew too much, a bent cop (Jarman always had lots of those), and a cab-driver who could have overheard a crucial conversation in the back of his taxi. (Something on the lines of: ‘I had that Peter Sutcliffe in the back of me cab once . . .) I knew I’d overdone it, but I might as well be hung – or, more probably, strangled – for a sheep as for a lamb. It was nearly six before I finished. I reached for the receiver with a shaking hand and dialled Todd’s number.

  There’s a natural antipathy between writers and editors – rather like that between the driver with nowhere to park the car and the ubiquitous traffic warden. Circumstances have made them enemies and there is no possibility of reconciliation without changing the basic structure of society. But in the literary world, at least, the association usually starts with courtesy. Todd and I seemed to have dispensed with this. Listening to the ring tone, I told myself the relationship had nowhere to go but up.

  I got an answering machine. Relief had just begun to surge through me when an unrecorded voice cut in abruptly. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is that Mr Jarman?’ Instinctively, I went for formal courtesy.

  ‘Could be. Who wants him?’

  ‘It’s Emma Cook,’ I said. ‘Your least favourite editor.’ In the ensuing silence I could feel the attempt at humour going down like raw suet. ‘Alistair and I have been working on your manuscript. It’s terrific. I was wondering if I could come over and go through it with you.’

  ‘If it’s terrific what is there to go through?’

  ‘Just a few minor points . . .’ Editors always say that.

  ‘I’d be happy to work with Alistair, but frankly, Miz Cook, I don’t think there’s anything you can do for me. Go teach your grandmother to fuck eggs. Sorry – suck. Printer’s error.’

  ‘Alistair’s rather busy at the moment—’

  A mistake.

  ‘In that case, I’d better
find a publisher who isn’t too busy to work with me.’

  ‘He thought we’d established a great rapport,’ I said desperately. ‘You and I, I mean. He said—’

  ‘Didn’t you disillusion him?’ A note of surprise sneaked in under the sarcasm.

  ‘I tried,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t listen. He thinks we were just “striking sparks” off each other. He called it a creative partnership. Then he made a speech about publishing and being damned.’ This was wildly unprofessional, and I knew it, but I was past caring. ‘I don’t know if you know Alistair very well, but he has this crusading spirit.’

  ‘I’ll bet he does. In a bottle in the bottom drawer. Unfortunately, I know him well enough to believe you. You’d better come round on Friday. Two p.m. Or are you getting your hair done?’

  ‘My hair does itself,’ I retorted, but quietly. I had gained my point, but I didn’t feel good about it. When I thought of my red ink on the manuscript, my knees turned to jelly. I contemplated Tippexing out some of the changes, but decided in the end I couldn’t be bothered. What the hell.

  Which only goes to show that indolence is a more powerful motive force than fear, though what that says about the human race God only knows.

  On Friday, bundled into a large furry coat which made me look like an overgrown koala (not real fur: dead teddy), I arrived at Jarman’s address, a slim, elegant house in Belsize Park several lightyears away from the mean streets of his novels. Urns flanked the front steps, sprouting exotic shrubs; a burglar alarm adorned the façade while a furtive satellite dish lurked round the side. I stiffened my sinews, imitated the action of the tiger, and pressed the bell. Nothing happened. I let my sinews relax a little, and pressed again.

  Todd Jarman opened the door, clasping a portable phone to one ear, and threw me a look which said: ‘How dare you interrupt my phone call?’ as if I had done it deliberately. He was wearing a shabby grey sweatshirt, greying jeans, and a stony grey expression. His five o’clock shadow obviously dated from five o’clock the previous afternoon. He went on talking for what felt like an hour though it was probably only about ten minutes, retreating into an adjacent room at the same time to leave me standing in the hallway feeling like a lemon. Finally I heard him conclude the conversation; then he called out: ‘Come on in.’ The words were an invitation but the tone was brusque. Conscious of a sinking stomach somewhere below my tigerish sinews, I followed him.

  I found myself in a room which looked like a study under invasion from a designer sitting room. At one end there was a desk with laptop, printer, and all the usual etceteras, while the wall beside it was stacked with crowded bookshelves and an old-fashioned lamp stood poised to fill in when the daylight ran out. The rest of the room had been taken over by a very long sofa with no cushions, a chair that resembled the satellite dish outside, and a glass-topped coffee table balanced on what seemed to be a hunk of natural granite. Here, the books were tidily arranged on black-painted shelves and interspersed with tasteful ornaments. A vast grey rug appeared to be advancing towards the work desk like a creeping tide.

  Jarman evidently caught the bewilderment in my gaze. ‘Helen’s rearranging the place,’ he offered unexpectedly. ‘She thinks this is too nice a room to waste as a study: she wants me to move upstairs. As you can see, she’s started re-doing it already, but I’m holding on. This is Custer’s last stand over here – if you managed to fit in any history around your dedicated study of the English language.’

  ‘Little Bighorn,’ I said. ‘I saw a movie. Wonderful how good their camerawork was in those days.’

  He didn’t smile, of course. ‘Coffee?’ he inquired, picking up the inevitable unwashed mug which probably features on every writer’s desk in the universe.

  ‘Tea,’ I said, to be awkward. ‘Please.’

  He threw me a dark look but made no comment, merely inquiring my preferences in milk and sugar on his way to the kitchen.

  ‘Just milk.’

  He returned presently carrying two mugs, tea for me, coffee for himself, and wearing an expression suggestive of gritted teeth. ‘Here you are.’ He handed me the tea. ‘Miss Cook – Emma—’ (Have you noticed how men always say Miss when they’re being polite, and Miz when they want to offend?) ‘– we seem to have got off on the wrong foot. Alistair assures me you’re very good at your job. Under the circumstances, I think we should try to start over again.’

  He wasn’t being sincere, I told myself. Of course he wasn’t. So I didn’t have to be sincere either. ‘All right,’ I said, juggling with my mug to extend my right hand in a gesture that felt somewhat forced.

  His grip was firm and strong. He would have made a good strangler.

  ‘Have a seat,’ he said, indicating the sofa. ‘I’m afraid it isn’t very comfortable.’ I had already shed my coat on to the satellite-dish chair.

  We sat down on the sofa, I produced the annotated manuscript, and we got to work.

  Détente lasted until the first page.

  Some writers work quickly and carelessly and need extensive editing to tidy up their prose. A few are dyslexic and make regular grammatical errors. (A lot can’t spell, but spellchecks can deal with that.) An editor’s nightmare is the perfectionist writer who thinks he/she never makes a mistake, whose command of language is faultless and who knows by instinct when even a comma has been misplaced. Todd Jarman was – of course – one of the latter. I knew bloody-mindedness had made me overenthusiastic, but by the time Todd had begun with the acid-tongued scorn, graduating through sarcasm and contempt to pure rage, I was determined to concede as little as possible. There was something about him that seemed to flip a switch inside me, cancelling out the tact and diplomacy with which I had handled Oonagh Mallory of the potato passions and turning me into the editorial equivalent of a virago.

  I found myself saying whatever came into my head – and the remarks that came into my head were the sort you usually only think of after the event and, in a professional context, would have been better left unsaid. (Later, I thought how good it would have been if I had been able to come up with the same quickfire nastiness in my final scene with Nigel, instead of expending it on the far less appropriate target of Todd Jarman.) By the time we got to Alistair’s suggestions for plot development we were in a state of total war and I knew in my gut I would be out of a job by the end of the week. I might get away with calling an author arrogant and pig-headed to his face but I had twice accused him of over-writing and once of lack of clarity. Jarman prided himself on his clarity and the raw simplicity of his style.

  ‘You want what?’ he said. ‘Another body? We’ve already got three.’

  ‘You can never have too many bodies,’ I said blithely. ‘Look at Taggart. They have one before every ad break.’

  ‘Of all the ludicrous comparisons – ! I don’t intend to take my cue from some crap TV show named after a hero who died years ago – and can you blame him? My work is rooted in the stark realities of street crime—’

  ‘There are over two hundred murders every year in London and the southeast,’ I declared. ‘You can do four of them.’ It was utter rubbish – I hadn’t the faintest idea of the annual murder rate – but I had noticed with Nigel the efficacy of statistics in any argument, and I was prepared to improvise. With a belated flicker of tact, I didn’t point out that it was a crap TV show which had made Jarman’s books a hit.

  ‘A fourth murder would involve manipulating both my characters and plot. I don’t intend to do that. I won’t pander to the national appetite for gore.’

  ‘Considering that your first body is a prostitute dressed as a nun with stigmata on her hands and feet and an upside-down cross cut into her forehead—’

  ‘Every detail of that crime was psychologically significant.’

  ‘And then there’s the pimp found decapitated in an alleyway whose head turns up in the chilled section at Tesco, and the retired Chief Constable, also dressed as a nun—’

  ‘I know what happens in my own novel: you don’t nee
d to recap. I work out my plots very carefully beforehand. You can’t just chuck in an extra corpse because you think the body count is too low. Stick to fiddling with semicolons and the state of the verb, Miz Cook—’ the would-be friendly use of Emma had long gone out the window ‘– that suits your mentality. Literary criticism is way out of your league.’

  I didn’t mention that the whole extra-body thing was Alistair’s idea. By then, I didn’t care. ‘If you re-read the book properly,’ I snapped, implying that he hadn’t, ‘you’ll notice that the pace slows up badly towards the end. You need something to wake the reader up. There’s no point in having a perfect plot if no one can be bothered to stay the course.’

  God knows what he might have said to that, but the sound of the front door and a quick, high-heeled step in the hall distracted him. Helen Aucham walked in, slender and power-suited, her hair as perfect as the ramifications of his plot. In daylight her Botoxed complexion looked smooth and flawless. ‘Oh, are you working?’ Her gaze skimmed over me without interest. As usual. ‘God, I’ve had an awful day. They’re going to deport Charlie Nguru even though the medical evidence of torture was conclusive. I’ve got three days to find a loophole. Be a darling and get me a drink.’ I wondered how someone so superficial could be so caring. Or vice versa.