A Bed of Scorpions

by Judith Flanders

  ‘It was the figuring it out on my own. That you didn’t tell me once Compton was found dead.’

  I looked at him for the first time. ‘I get that part. But it never occurred to me because it was so long ago. If it had mattered, I would have thought, I have to tell Jake. But the sex was so long ago, and so unimportant, I just never thought of it. The friend part, which is important, I told you right away.’

  He smiled slightly, which was a relief. ‘“The sex was so unimportant”? You really know how to bolster a guy’s ego, don’t you?’

  I went back to the coffee. ‘It was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.’

  ‘Having a conversation with you literary types is always fun, but what the hell does that mean?’

  ‘It means that that was then and this is now.’

  ‘This.’

  I nodded.

  ‘I know talking isn’t your favourite thing, which is why you end up quoting from books, but do we know what we’re talking about here?’

  I thought we probably did.

  ‘OK. Let’s let it go. If you have accepted my apology … ?’ He waited until I nodded again, then he went and got down two cups.

  I hunted through the fruit bowl for a banana that wasn’t entirely black. I wondered if bananas were cunningly genetically modified by scientists in the pay of fruit companies so that they moved from green to black with nothing in between. Then I decided that this was probably not the ideal time to have a chat about that insight. Instead, ‘Do we need to talk about Celia Stein? I don’t know why she popped up, what she wanted, or even if she really did want something.’

  Jake stood at the table, leaning on his hands where he’d put the cups down. I poured out the coffee and put his cup back in front of him and sat down. He didn’t move. ‘I don’t know either, but it doesn’t matter. The weight of evidence suggests suicide. Unless the inquest returns a suspicious-death verdict, that’s it for us.’

  I stilled. The bastard had let us jump through all those hoops last night when he’d known this?

  He saw the thought and cut in before I had figured out what to say, his hands raised pacifically: ‘The file went upstairs yesterday; there was an email with the decision when I woke up this morning.’

  Some of the tension left my body. ‘Lucky for you.’

  He carefully didn’t smile. ‘So it would seem.’

  I’d expected another quiet day at work. Fridays were generally subdued in publishing no matter what time of year. Lots of people worked four-day weeks, and Friday was the favoured at-home day. In the summer, even more people took long weekends, and then there were the ones who were formally or informally on holiday. I’d got lots of reading done the day before, and dealt with a backlog of contract quibbles I’d been sitting on for weeks. Truthfully, contracts I’d been sitting on for months. But no more than a couple of months. Three maybe. All right, they were contracts I’d been sitting on since before the dawn of time, but now I’d finally dealt with them, I felt I should get points for it, and even more points for all those months when I’d been genuinely pained at not having done them. Although neither the agents involved, nor even our own contracts department, seemed to agree.

  At any rate, they were done now, and I was free to get on with the kind of work I liked. Submissions are great. There is always a sense of adventure when you pull the next manuscript off the pile. I still thought of it as a pile, even though most of our submissions were now sent by email, and I read them on an e-reader. It’s far more practical – the agents can send them over to us faster, the assistants don’t spend their lives photocopying them, or unjamming the photocopier. But I still don’t like these cyber-manuscripts. There are rational reasons for my dislike. I think it’s important to know physically where I am in a book, how much further to halfway, to the end, things that matter in terms of pacing and structure. And there are irrational reasons: the feel, the smell, the heft. An e-reader is less physically strenuous – carrying just three or four manuscripts home to read was hell on the back – but also somehow less of an adventure. And Bim has made his displeasure known too. He was used to having lots of paper from me to colour on, or cut into shapes and paste. E-readers were damaging his creative output.

  That morning, however, it was a printed manuscript, from a Luddite agent who always sent her submissions by post. We rolled our eyes when we mentioned her name, but secretly I loved her. Miranda obviously felt differently when she came in and found me with my feet up, manuscript in my lap, cup in hand. She looked at me as if I’d asked her to go and pluck another quill from the goose and sharpen its nib. A few weeks ago I’d walked past when she was discussing manuscripts with another assistant. ‘How did they get submissions before?’ they were exclaiming in wonder. I didn’t break stride. ‘Papyrus,’ I said. Now she stared down at me as though she finally believed me.

  I waited for her to remember what it was she’d come in for. She had plenty to be getting on with, and if she’d just needed advice or input, she usually emailed. She stayed leaning against the door jamb, but if that was supposed to make me think that she’d just come in for a casual gossip, she’d failed, because she’d closed the door.

  ‘Have you heard?’ she asked.

  ‘Heard?’ If it was minor office rumours, who was sleeping with whom, she wouldn’t have closed the door.

  ‘Olive. She’s been having breakfast meetings all this week. And she hasn’t told Evie who they’re with, just to book her out till ten.’ Olive is Olive Robinson, the publishing director. In a larger company she’d have a fancier title, like chief executive. Evie is her secretary, which is another way you know how senior Olive is, because the rest of the senior staff have assistants. Whatever you call them, the administrative staff can, and do, forecast the major upheavals, because they book the meetings.

  I took my feet out of the drawer they rest on when I read. Miranda’s bulletin might as well have a caption: Important Enough to Sit Up For. ‘Wow,’ I said.

  We stared at each other meaningfully. I drank the last of my coffee and kept hold of my cup. The kitchen would be where there was news, if it was anywhere.

  A cluster of anxious-looking people stood by the kettle. I poured out some coffee, but didn’t bother to look at the treat-table. It was Friday, and no one came back to work from holiday on a Friday. I wasn’t thinking about that consciously, it was just a Pavlov’s-dog reflex response to office circadian rhythms.

  I leant against the counter and took stock: a couple of people from contracts, one from marketing, one from design. If there was anything to know, there was a chance someone would have heard.

  Timmins & Ross is owned privately, by the descendants of the Mr Timmins and Mr Ross who had founded the company in the 1930s, diluted by a few others who had bought in in the late eighties when the company had needed a cash infusion. Happily, it was just before the period when venture capitalists had decided that investing in publishing would make them rich. Those companies had been swallowed up by conglomerates soon after, because there was no other way to make a speedy financial return. Publishing made an OK return if you didn’t want riches beyond the dreams of avarice, but if an OK return was what venture capitalists were looking for, I’d missed the memo. Anyway, that was then. Now publishing barely makes any money, and an OK return would have us all conga-ing around Bedford Square wearing party hats made out of discarded publicity folders. Because in the last decade, book sales have declined overall, and even where numbers have held up, or even increased, the sales are made in supermarkets and online, places where publishers receive a declining share of the sale price. We are just like the farmers getting screwed over by the supermarkets: they buy from us at ever-lower prices, so even if they sell more and more, the money magically never increases. Same story for Amazon. Same story for e-books.

  I know, not the world’s biggest tragedy in the great scheme of things. But this wasn’t the great scheme of things, this was our lives. And our livelihoods. But like everyone else
working in a disaster zone, we had pushed the truth aside until it became background noise. We did what we could to make the new reality work. We offered our authors less money. That hurt every time we had to do it, but we did it. We spent less on marketing and promotion, which was self-defeating, but we did that too. Staffing levels had been cut, thankfully so far through natural wastage rather than redundancies at T&R, but we were always expecting worse. And still profits dropped.

  So if Olive was having long meetings with someone, or several someones, whose names couldn’t be written in her diary, we automatically assumed the worst. A positive result would be a new investor. A negative one, that the current owners wanted to sell. Then it would be to one of the big corporate publishers, and most of us would lose our jobs. The big companies already had the back-office apparatus they needed, so finance, contracts, all those departments would go; even editorial and design weren’t safe. T&R published a hundred books a year. If you were a giant corporation that already employed a few dozen editors and a few dozen designers, our whole list could be scattered among them. And since those editors and designers were just as scared of losing their jobs, they would quietly take on the extra work, no matter how burdensome.

  I listened to the back and forth, but there was nothing concrete. It was all surmise, and a lot of fear.

  Just before one, Sandra Stanworth, the head of publicity and one of my closer friends at work, put her head round my door and asked if I had lunch plans. I didn’t, so we headed to a square behind the British Museum. It was part of the University of London, and would be packed with students, but the bigger squares nearby – Bedford Square on one side, Russell Square on the other – would have more tourists shuffling through from the British Museum and the stations. Malet Square was hidden, and there was less through-traffic. There was also a deli en route, where we could pick up lunch. A pastoral haven it wasn’t, but it was the best central London could come up with on a weekday.

  We stayed off the topic of Olive and her mystery meetings. We’d both been through it before – everyone in publishing over thirty has been through it before – and we knew that whatever would happen would happen. Instead we caught each other up. Sandra has a very small car, two large boys, and one vast dog, and they’d just driven back from a wedding in Ireland. As a mathematical equation, 2(big) boys + 1(huge) dog x 1(tiny) car / (11-hour) drive = opening scene in comic novel. Then I filled her in on the Jake scenario – not Frank’s death, which I couldn’t bear to mention, just the dinner-with-Aidan-door-kicking story, which for her benefit I also turned into comedy. She was disappointed I hadn’t thrown stuff. In another lifetime, I told her. I understand the attractions of throwing. But unless you organise your life better than I’ve managed to organise mine, if you throw stuff, eventually you have to pick it up again. Which is a terrible anticlimax, and would make me want to throw the stuff all over again. Which I’d have to pick up again. Which.

  Despite our forced comedy, work was uppermost on our minds. Just before I’d left the office, I’d emailed Helena. She worked in corporate law, and if one of the conglomerates was circling, she might hear of it. Even a smaller bite would still need company lawyers. On a more personal level, when I got back after lunch I emailed my boss, David Snaith, and his assistant, sending them the manuscripts of two books I wanted to offer for, to get them listed on the minutes for next week’s acquisitions meeting. I also sent copies to potential allies in sales, marketing and publicity, as well as a couple of editors. The more enthusiasm I could work up in-house for a book, the more likely I would be able to buy it – if I couldn’t persuade my colleagues that it was great, there was little chance that as a publisher we could persuade strangers. I’d done a sales number on Sandra at lunch, and sent her copies too. If we were going to be bought out, I might as well acquire as much as I could while I could.

  In the same spirit, I spent the afternoon sorting out my outstanding Frankfurt appointments. Miranda had done the easy ones, where it’s just horse-trading – ‘I’ll give you Sunday at 4.30 on your stand if you give me Monday 9 o’clock on ours’ – but she couldn’t do the ones where the horse-trading had failed, and the person I wanted to meet no longer had any free slots at a time when I had free slots, which meant a meeting couldn’t be fitted into the working day. She couldn’t know who I’d be happy to meet for coffee or a drink, but wouldn’t be able to tolerate for a whole dinner (or, just as likely, who wouldn’t be able to tolerate me for that long), or the people I could tolerate for dinner, but I’d whimper and refuse to get out of bed if I had to see them for a breakfast meeting, before I was properly caffeinated.

  I got to the final entry on Miranda’s list and read it twice before I called through the wall. ‘Did that guy from the small publisher in Oregon really send an appointment request with an urgent flag on it? Urgent, four months ahead of the book fair? From a publisher I’ve never heard of and who …’ I looked a third time ‘who specialises in hiking guides?’

  I heard her giggle. ‘Yes! I left him for you because I knew that would be one of your favourite things.’

  I was definitely going to have to find her a better job. ‘That was thoughtful, thank you. He’s just been put at the very tail-end of my if-I-have-time-or-when-hell-freezes-over list.’

  There was a pause. ‘Who’s at the top of that list?’

  ‘He is. He is the only person on the list.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  JAKE HAD TEXTED first thing to say he was working a late shift, and would go back to Hammersmith after. That was fine by me. I decided to be very un-Sam-like and not worry about it, although I worked around that by spending the time I’d saved by not worrying in worrying that not worrying was really a worrying sign. By the time I’d finished with that, Kay had invited me up for pizza and the new James Bond DVD. The pizza and the company were great, but the only person who understood the movie properly was Bim, although that may have been because he was the only one who was not drinking. But he explained to us the bits we’d missed by chatting through them, and he drew us pictures of the scenes he’d particularly enjoyed, in case I wanted to take them home and study them. It was kind of him, and he definitely had a better grasp of narrative structure than several of my authors.

  When I went downstairs, I stuck them up on the fridge so that when he visited he would know I appreciated them. I used the ironic fridge-magnets that were shaped to look like paper clips, which I’d bought at a Roy Lichtenstein exhibition. Then I pulled one of the magnets off the fridge again. On the reverse, sure enough, there was ‘JR Installations’. These were some of the ‘tourist tat’ Jim designed. I thought they were charming and witty, and not tattish at all. I’d probably buy a Stevenson notebook if they’d made those, too. I stared at the magnet for a while, as if it might decide to speak if I left a pause in the conversation, a pause long enough for it to become embarrassed at not contributing. Apparently the magnet was not English, because it seemed unembarrassable.

  I stopped being frivolous and thought about Jim, and Frank, and then, feeling like four kinds of fool, I emailed.

  Hi, Jim

  Just out of curiosity, I wondered which of Stevenson’s collages you wanted to use for your notebooks. No real reason for asking, apart from having worked for Tetrarch, and I know Stevenson used their books a lot. If it’s commercially confidential, please tell me to go away. I don’t know how these things work, and don’t want to step on any toes.

  Cheers

  Sam

  P.S. I have entirely avoided thinking about the panel since the moment we left the restaurant. Hope your day was as good.

  And for good measure I added a smiley. Queen of the faux-casual, that’s me.

  As I hit Send, I saw an email from Aidan. It was actually from Myra, at the gallery, and was a group email. The police had said the funeral could go ahead, she wrote, and it would be held on the following Wednesday, at a church in Highgate at eleven, and then at Kenwood House, on Hampstead Heath, immediately afterwards.
r />   I put it in my diary, and emailed Helena to see if she wanted to go together. I’d heard from her earlier in the day, when the police had notified Aidan of the date of the inquest, and that no further action would be taken until then. But she hadn’t said anything else, and I guess there was nothing else to be said. I also emailed Myra back, to ask if she knew if we should send flowers. Or was it family only, or would Toby prefer a donation to charity, and if so, did she know which one? This kind of bureaucracy of death, normally so distressing to go through, now seemed comfortable after the previous week.

  I hit Send/Receive a few more times, as though that might coax an otherwise shy email to pop into my inbox. For good measure, I checked my phone. Nothing. I hadn’t heard from Jake since his text that morning. In the couple of months we’d been seeing each other, we’d quickly found a routine. We either said if we had other plans for the weekend, or were working, otherwise we just assumed we’d spend the time together. After last night, followed by a day’s silence, that wasn’t an assumption I was making now.

  And I went on not making any assumptions the following morning. There was no message from Jake when I woke up, so I got on with my day. I ran up to see if Mr Rudiger wanted me to pick anything up for him at the market where I did my shopping on Saturdays. And I decided it might be a good time to go and see Toby, as the market was halfway between me and what I still mentally called Frank’s house. If people were still keeping an eye on Toby, disguised as condolence calls, they’d probably be glad of a cake, or fruit, or cheese and biscuits. I could pick up whatever it was at the market and continue on to Frank’s from there. I texted Anna to see if she knew what was needed, and she replied almost immediately with Lucy’s number, saying she was in charge of kitchen supplies.

  I stared at the text, as though it had some cryptic message for me. I was going to see Toby and pay a condolence call, I reminded myself. The police had suggested they would be surprised if Frank’s death were anything other than suicide, and I was grateful for that. So why, muttered my subconscious, did you email Jim last night? I have no idea, I told it wearily, and instead texted Lucy about cake. I was better at cake. I had talent there, and years of practice. Since I was being so sensible, I decided I’d better make at least a vague gesture towards maturity in other aspects of my life, and so I texted Jake: Off to the market, then to Toby for condolence call. Back around noon. I collected my bike from the hole under the stairs that we dignify by calling a cupboard, and set off.