by Frances
“If I were somebody else,” Pam said, when she had reached this point in the story, “I’d say those Norths are the ones who did it. A cooked-up story if I ever heard one.”
“You,” Jerry said, washing toast down with coffee, “you and Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley, in command of detectives, Borough of Manhattan. All they need is a motive.” He put his newspaper down briefly, so that he could look across the table at Pam. “You saw her show,” Jerry said, thoughtfully. “Some of the shows you see make a person feel like—”
“It is not,” Pam said, “anything to joke about. I don’t see why we’re not in jail.”
“Give us time,” Jerry told her, and went back to reading about Amanda Towne, of whom there was a good deal to write.
She had been in her middle forties, native of Arkansas, former newspaper woman in Chicago. She had been married, briefly, twenty years before, to Russell Barnes, then also a newspaper reporter—and now a copyreader (but copy editor in the Times) on an afternoon newspaper. According to Mr. Barnes, there had been no divorce; merely a friendly (and certainly protracted) separation. Mr. Barnes was shocked to hear of his wife’s death. (And, therewith, more or less vanished from the picture.)
Amanda Towne had been living alone, and had resumed her maiden name, when she turned from newspapers to broadcasting. She had been first a newscaster on an afternoon radio program, her time period brief and her sphere news of interest to women. But she had not stayed there, or on the Chicago station which had given her a start. She went on to a half-hour period; to interviews as well as news—and to many glowing, dramatized, little reports on products of interest to women. She expanded further, became a network feature, and an institution and was an hour long and a nation wide. By this stage, her show had a name—“People Next Door”—originated in New York, where celebrities suitable to trial by interview are somewhat more easily come by.
“But what Amanda never did,” her business manager, Mrs. Alice Fleming, assured the Herald Tribune’s radio and TV authority (who had a separate story of her own, beginning on Page 1) “was to lose the common touch. She hated the word ‘folksy,’ of course, but I’m afraid it was often used of her. It was what made her appeal so universal. All over the country, women felt she was just—well, I guess, just the next door neighbor who had come in to call.”
The transition from radio to television was somewhat difficult, and a good many—particularly among the women interviewers—fell between. Amanda did not; she kept a foot firmly on radio for longer than most, when radio dissolved under it, she was firmly on TV, from two to three, three afternoons a week, and was often asked, further, to give the woman’s point of view on matters of world importance, Sunday afternoons being the most frequent times for this, since on Sundays television is most likely to think deeply.
“In recent years” (this was the Times’ television commentator) “Amanda Towne became noted for the frequently penetrating quality of her questions, which sometimes drew forth revealing answers. In not a few cases, answers were somewhat more revealing than those interviewed realized. Her program was, through the years, often the source of news stories. The recent misadventure of Judge Roger Parkman is a minor example—although perhaps not particularly minor to Judge Parkman, whose political career, some think, has been jeopardized.”
The Times’ radio and TV man did not go further into that. The writer of the Herald Tribune’s lead story did.
“Miss Towne,” he wrote, “had a knack of making those she interviewed feel relaxed, as if they were talking with a sympathetic friend in privacy. It is said along Madison Avenue that some lived to regret what they had said in these relaxed moments, and to feel that Miss Towne had ‘led them on.’ An example cited is the very recent case of Judge Roger Parkman who, in the course of an interview with Miss Towne, made a casual remark which has been widely, if unfairly, interpreted as reflecting adversely on certain minority groups.”
This, to the Herald Tribune’s rewrite man, appeared to cover that, and he went to graze in other pastures. Pam read on, searching and not finding, and put her paper down on the table and said, “Jerry. This Judge Parkman?”
Jerry said, “U-mmm?”
“Parkman,” Pam said. “Isn’t it in the Times? What did he say that was so awful?”
“‘—were varied,’” Jerry read. “‘From the climbers of new mountains, to winners of cooking contests, from best-selling authors to—’”
“Parkman,” Pam said. “Judge” (she checked) “Roger Parkman. Something he said has been widely interpreted.”
Jerry marked his place with a finger. He said, “What did you say about Mr. Dulles?”
“Really,” Pam said. “You never listen. Parkman. Judge Parkman. Something on Miss Towne’s program. Isn’t it in the Times?”
“Oh,” Jerry said. “Yes. Something about—” He paused. He remembered. He said he remembered. He said it had been chiefly in the Post. Because Judge Parkman was a Republican. He’d been talked about for lieutenant governor or something. The rest of the papers had followed it with little enthusiasm.
“What?” Pam said.
“It wasn’t anything much,” Jerry said. “I do remember it was on Miss Towne’s program. Perfectly innocent, anybody’d think. Only—” Pam waited while Jerry thought. “All he said,” Jerry told her, “was something like ‘people like you and me.’ Or maybe, ‘You and I and people like us.’”
Pam shook her head. She said it must have been the context.
It had been, Jerry said. He couldn’t remember the context in any detail. But—relaxed, possibly led on—Judge Parkman had allowed himself to be netted in a context which made a probably innocent remark appear to reflect on all who were not, as he and Miss Towne triumphantly were, white and Protestant and, presumably, eligible for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution. “On the distaff side,” Jerry said, before Pam could say that a man couldn’t very well be a daughter.
“Oh,” Pam said. “In New York City. A politician. And a Republican. Ouch!”
In a word, it had been “Ouch!” Judge Parkman had been saying that, in statements of considerable length, since the previous Friday, when he had spoken lightheartedly to the so sympathetic Amanda Towne—and to many thousands more, not all of them inclined to forbearance. There had been much pattering of little feet as Republicans from all around trotted forward to disavow Judge Parkman’s implications; to say how deeply they, on the other hand, loved people of all races and all colors and all creeds. It had become entirely evident that Judge Parkman would not further be talked about for lieutenant governor. Or anything.
“The poor man,” Pam said. “People should be very clear in what they say, shouldn’t they?”
Jerry looked at her. He swallowed coffee. After consideration, he said, “Yes, Pamela.”
“His career in shreds,” Pam said. “And I suppose, nobody to sue? Since he said it himself. He must have been very annoyed at Miss Towne.” She paused. “Very,” she said. “Particularly if she led him on, as the papers say. Wove the context.”
“Wove the—” Jerry said and paused to consider. Perhaps, on second thought, a context could be woven, and a career reduced to shreds thereby. It occurred to him, on third thought, that that, or part of it, might be precisely what Pam was doing.
“Listen,” Jerry said. “He’d hardly be that annoyed, if that’s what you mean.” He lighted a cigarette and looked at it. “As,” he said, “I suppose it is.”
“Well,” Pam said.
“What good would it do him?” Jerry asked. “The damage is done, presumably. Probably he can live it down. Anyway—”
Pam said she knew the one about frying pans and fires. To say nothing of least said soonest mended, and the rest. All the same—
“Suppose,” she said, “he tried to get her to have him on the program again? So he could straighten things out? Say how much he loved minorities with votes? And she wouldn’t do it? And he got mad and—”
; “No,” Jerry said.
“Somebody got mad,” Pam pointed out. “Or frightened. Or stood to profit. I wonder if—”
“No,” Jerry said. “This time, we won’t try to help. All right? We sit this one out.”
“If we’re let,” Pam said.
It was not precisely a promise. It would have, Jerry decided, to serve. He went to his office and Pam went back to the apartment, where the men of Prentori sized.
At a quarter of eleven, Jerry was talking, on the telephone, with an author about a bug, and being firm in his insistence that the bug would not go away no matter how little you looked at it. Miss Prentice, who received, came to the door of his office and her eyes were bright. “Try to think of something, Clem,” Jerry said to the author. “Before we send it to the printer,” and hung up and said, “Yes?” to Miss Prentice, who was clearly pleased and excited—as if the Book-of-the-Month had called in person, with entreaties.
“Mr. Kingsley would like to see you,” Miss Prentice said, as one who imparts tidings almost too joyous for belief.
“Fine,” Jerry said, and said thank you, and to ask Mr. Kingsley to come in and, to his secretary, “Better get the latest sales reports out, hadn’t we, Jane?” Jane Whitsett thought they had indeed, and went for them.
They would, Jerry supposed, be what Byron Kingsley had come to see—to look at with that odd combination of pride and modesty and wonder which was so much part of him; to say, with that diffidence which, in spite of everything, was still so charming, that the figures were pretty good, weren’t they, Mr. North? (Not quite saying, “Mr. North, sir,” but somehow implying it.) He might also, of course, wonder whether it would be quite convenient to have a little further advance against royalties. Which would be all right. For the moment there was almost nothing Byron Kingsley could ask of North Books, Inc., which would not be all right. Mr. Kingsley was, to put it shortly, a publisher’s dream. There had been no brighter dream since the man from Macmillan’s took the manuscript of Gone With the Wind home in a trunk.
Byron Kingsley was, to put it even more shortly, the author of Look Away, Stranger. Gerald North (president, editor-in-chief, of North Books, Inc.) still pinched himself awake when he looked at the sales figures of Look Away, Stranger. (Two other editors, who had turned it down, took Miltown tablets when they remembered.) It was that sort of thing, that sort of novel, and the whole business was still, Jerry admitted to himself at intervals, and to Pam now and then, entirely unaccountable. Lightning had struck. That was what it came to.
The manuscript of Look Away, Stranger had come, looking rather like a bale of cotton, out of Arkansas. It showed signs, already, of other journeys. Somebody had laid a cigarette, briefly, on page 6. Pages from 105 on were suspiciously fresh. No agent had intervened—there was the murky aura of amateurism plain around Look Away, Stranger, which was also something over six hundred pages in length.
Jerry had passed it down almost two years ago—passed it down as far as it would go, which was no great distance, since North Books, Inc., is not a Macmillan for size. “Have a look at this,” Jerry had said, and the reader had sighed and said, absently, that he hoped it was typed on one side of the paper only.
“Deepest South I’ve ever dropped into,” the reader had reported, orally. “Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, touch of Williams. Old mansions falling into weed patches. And scions. Lots of scions.”
“O.K.,” Jerry had said, “put it over there somewhere,” and it had been put over there somewhere, and stayed over there for a matter of weeks, looming large. Jerry forgot it; grew accustomed to its balelike bulk; saw it one day, for no reason in particular, and said, “Jane, have them bundle that up and—” He paused, for no reason in particular, and said, “No. Bring it—” and had looked at Jane Whitsett, a small, neat girl, and realized she would be no match for Look Away, Stranger, and got the manuscript himself. Got it and, to keep the franchise, to clear his conscience, read the first page. It was, at any rate, neatly typed. He read the second page, since conscience still pointed an accusing finger. And then he read the third.
It was all that the reader had said. It was Deep South. Moreover, it was a family chronicle, stretching from there to, it appeared at first glance, eternity. And yet—
Jerry took the first hundred pages home with him that evening, read late (having got around to it late) and was still on the far side of the Civil War. There had been a rape, of course—what Jerry presumed would be merely a preliminary rape. And a baby had fallen in a hogpen and, as was to be expected, been eaten. All of this was much as Jerry had foreseen, warned as he had been. And yet—
And yet, the next day, he found that, for reasons entirely obscure, he wanted to get on with it. He got on with it, as other things allowed. There were passages—There were scenes that—By page 300, Jerry found that, mentally, he was cutting; almost preparing for the printer. Although, of course, it would never come to that. It would—
“Read this damn thing,” Jerry said, a week later, to Frank Barry, who was too good to stay much longer with North Books, Inc., unless it became Barry Books, Inc., or at the least North and Barry, Inc. Barry weighed it in his hands. He said it would have to be a five ninety-five book, at least. “Probably it won’t come to that,” Jerry told him. “But—”
There had been much editing, much cutting. This had been carried on by mail—carried on in long letters from Frank Barry, from Jerry himself, since they worked on it together; in short letters from Byron Kingsley, who was as brief in correspondence as he had been lengthy in art. Kingsley, from Arkansas—from, it appeared—a small town somewhere near Little Rock, had agreed at once that the book was too long; said he’d always known it was too long. He had been appreciative of acceptance, had signed a contract without demur, although Jerry (with conscience still pointing a finger) had suggested he might like to engage an agent; had said, to almost all suggestions, that they knew more about it than he did, and that he certainly was grateful for the help he was getting. He had behaved, indeed, gratifyingly unlike an author.
Jerry himself had worked on the book, with Barry, in a mood recurrently one of misgiving. A good deal of the time, he was convinced that he was engaged in furthering the most colossal mistake of his life. Other and bigger firms (gossip gets around in the trade) had seen Look Away, Stranger, and shuddered, and looked away precipitately. “Warmed-over Faulkner” was the most common description gossiped; “Warmed-over Wolfe” was a close second. Probably older heads—and bigger pockets—had been right. And yet—
Look Away, Stranger was published in the early fall. It blew the top off. “I’m still damned if I know why,” Jerry said, to Barry, and to Pamela North. “What’s the thing got—?” He always ended that with a shrug. But it was nothing to be shrugged off.
Book-of-the-Month was part of it. A movie sale which, although his cut was small—conscience had shaken a finger angrily and been heeded—was something for Jerry to blink about, was a good deal of it. In addition to which, the trade sale (at $5.95) was a thing you had to look at to believe.
And there, finally—lured at last out of Arkansas—was Byron Kingsley himself and Kingsley was, in a fashion, as remarkable as the book.
Looking at him now, standing to greet him, Jerry North was once more startled by the magnitude of the phenomenon which was Byron Kingsley. There was, for one thing, the sheer size of the man. He was six feet four, a stature seldom attained by those who write for a living; he was solid from feet (in cordovan shoes, now) to thick and tawny hair. He had mild blue eyes in a wide and evenly tanned face; he was in all respects a singularly handsome man. But there was more to it than that—as there had been more to Look Away, Stranger than could be precisely evaluated. Like the novel, Byron Kingsley was, somehow, of more than life-size; handsomer than a man has any business being, yet inoffensively handsome. Perhaps because he gave no indication that he was in the least conscious of being handsome. Possibly that was the best thing about Byron Kingsley, at any rate from the view of people who
wanted to make the best of him, and the best for him.
Now he stood, with just the faintest suggestion of a stoop (as a man who did not want the accidental advantage of greater height, and was embarrassed by it), and smiled (with just a touch of diffidence) and did not sit until Jerry had sat first. And then he said he hoped he wasn’t butting in on anything, and that it was mighty good of Mr. North to let him barge in this way. He had a low, musical voice, and used it with charming diffidence.
Jerry, assuring him that he had butted in on nothing, could barge at will, remembered how, when Kingsley first came to the office—which was after Book-of-the-Month acceptance, when it became evident which way the wind blew—he had sat for almost half an hour in the reception room, in a corner out of Miss Prentice’s view, and had merely waited patiently to be noticed. He might, Jerry thought, have sat there all afternoon, never thinking to rap on Miss Prentice’s little window, call attention to himself, had not a stenographer, coming in from lunch, gone to Hilda Prentice with her eyes wide and her lips parted and enquired, “What is that wonderful thing out there?” Miss Prentice had looked, and taken steps to find out.
He sat now much as he had sat then, not putting himself forward. Two months of it had not changed him. His hair was better cut now; his clothes as urban as anyone’s. But he was still as modest as he had been; as unhardened. For six weeks he had been interviewed, had been asked to speak—which he did diffidently, but surprisingly well—had been photographed. This had not changed him. He had had little (and somewhat obscure) anecdotes told of him in Leonard Lyon’s column; had had parties given for him; had been able to read that no new writer of equal talent had appeared within memory. He still called all women “ma’am” and all men “sir.” (It was not quite “suh.”) Praised to his face, he tended to look uncomfortable and to say, “That’s mighty nice of you, ma’am.” (Or “suh.”)