A Bed of Scorpions

by Judith Flanders

  The only episode remotely connected to the case, therefore, was an email from Aidan on Sunday, sent to both Helena and me. ‘The installation is almost finished, and tomorrow evening a few journalists are coming in. It’s not the main press view, but just for the broadsheet reviewers whose deadlines are early. Do you want to come? I’ll be there around five, and I’ll leave your names. Ask for Esther Wolff in the press office, and she’ll bring you in.’

  By this time we were sitting in the garden after dinner. It was just starting to get dark, not enough that we needed to turn the lights on inside, but not light enough to see each other properly, either. The phone’s glow cast a little sodium firefly on Jake’s face as I handed it over to him to read.

  I resolutely didn’t look at him as I said, casually, ‘What do you think?’

  He grunted. Then, ‘I don’t know what the specialists will have got up to on the weekend, but if you want to go, go. Why not?’

  ‘I doubt Helena will. She thinks leaving the office early is for lightweights. I might, though. Although I need to try and set up an appointment about Miranda. It’ll depend on when Olive can see me. And five means I’d have to leave at four. I am, theoretically, in full-time employment. I can’t just wander off whenever the fancy takes me. I was out all day Friday.’ I have no idea who I was trying to convince. No one in the garden was fooled. We both knew that the first ‘I might’ meant ‘I will’, while the torrent of reasons why not that had followed was nothing more than window dressing.

  We sat on for a while longer. Then, ‘Are they looking for Celia?’ My voice was much smaller than I intended it to be.

  Jake didn’t answer, but he took my hand until it got too cold, and then we went in and went to bed.

  On Monday, Jake dropped me at work again. I didn’t tease him anymore. He thought there was some danger, but not enough to warrant full-out precautions. If he could watch over me he would, and when he couldn’t, he would trust to my good sense. Whatever he thought that might mean.

  I hadn’t tried to set up a meeting with Olive the previous week, since I needed David to be on holiday before I could legitimately go over his head. When I got in it was early, only just eight, but I thought I’d get my foot in the door for an appointment today if that were possible.

  Publishing office etiquette is informal, but there are ways we shape that informality that we unconsciously adhere to. Most conversations are conducted by email along the corridors, unless it’s serious gossip, in which case the kitchen is the place for conversations that begin ‘You have to promise that you won’t tell anyone’. Some of us, though, are still old-fashioned enough to like talking face-to-face. Whoever wants to do that just puts their head around an office door, or wanders into an open-plan area. An open door means any gossip, or even idle chit-chat, is welcome. A closed door says ‘Knock and come in, but only if its work. Oh, all right, but the gossip better be really good’.

  Olive nominally subscribes to this code, but as she’s the publishing director few people take her up on her open door. Instead, I emailed Evie. ‘If Olive has time this week, can you slot me in for five mins? Won’t take more, I promise. Sam.’ In tacit acknowledgement that this was a formal request for a formal appointment, I didn’t add the ‘x’ that most publishing people – all publishing women, and far more publishing men than would care to admit it – add beside their names automatically. I suspect many of us emailing the bank to sort out a missing direct-debit payment have absent-mindedly blown cyber kisses to bemused data processors.

  Less than two minutes after I’d hit Send, a reply pinged back from Olive directly. ‘Now is fine if you’re in. O.’ I hadn’t known she read Evie’s email account, and there were no kisses for me. Still, there was an appointment.

  The downside of this up-and-at-’em early-morning manoeuvring was that Miranda had yet to appear. I was going to have a little trouble saying she’d ‘just’ told me when she wasn’t there to tell me anything. I headed down the hall. I’d burn that bridge when I came to it.

  Olive is great. I think everyone at T&R knows how lucky we are to have her. She’s a couple of years younger than me, probably just turned forty or so, and came up through editorial, which means she knows about books, and reading. It sounds unnecessary to say that, but more and more publishing houses are run by accountants, or sales people, or people who love marketing brands. Even sales and marketing people are a lesser evil. At least they worked with books before being elevated to the money end. One or two companies are now run by people who have never had any connection to books. To them books are just another commodity. Like Cheddar.

  None of this should matter. What we sell is imagination, the possibility of being somewhere else, talking to people who never existed, or died a millennium ago. How you do it, by words on paper, or on an e-reader, or carried through your window by phosphorescent pixies driving chocolate sleighs, shouldn’t matter. But it does. Which is why we have been so fearful for the past fortnight. The big fear is that we’ll lose our jobs. The lesser fear is that we’ll keep our jobs. Just in a corporate gulag.

  Of course, when I went into Olive’s office I hadn’t officially heard anything about her meetings, or any takeover rumours, so I just plonked myself down with my coffee and thanked her for squeezing me in. ‘I wouldn’t have bothered Evie so early if I’d known you were picking up her emails.’

  ‘Not a problem. If I hadn’t had the time, I would have left it for her.’

  Fair enough. ‘It’s a smallish thing, and normally I’d speak to David.’ If I’d ever wanted proof that God didn’t exist, I had it right then, because if he did exist, and he was as passionately devoted to micromanaging our lives as most religions suggest, he’d definitely have struck me dead for that lie. ‘But unfortunately, it needs to be sorted right away, and he’s on holiday this week.’ I filled her in on Miranda’s job offer, which she’d notified me of by email on the weekend, I now discovered as the lie tripped fluently out of my mouth. ‘There’s no immediate slot for her to move into here, but I’d hate to let her go without at least trying to find something. She’s terrific. She did most of the work on Breda’s last book.’ Breda is my starriest author, and a major contributor to T&R’s bottom line. ‘And not just editorial. The authors like her personally, and she’s made really good contacts.’ I summed up. ‘She’s great, and she’d be an asset to T&R.’ So what about it, lady?

  Olive was direct. ‘If you want her, we should try and keep her. But if there isn’t a vacancy, or likely to be one soon’ – she raised an eyebrow, asking if I’d heard anything on the office grapevine that she hadn’t, and I shook my head in reply – ‘we can’t create one. There is no possibility of adding another salary at the moment.’ That was final, her expression said. Don’t go there.

  So I didn’t. ‘I thought that would be the case, but maybe half-and-half? If I have her three days a week, and she does junior editorial two days?’

  ‘Are you willing to give up your assistant?’ Her tone was a warning: don’t come crying to me later, saying you have too much work and you need a full-time assistant.

  ‘Half my assistant. And when we find a vacancy for her to move into, I get the other half back.’ Olive smiled at how fast I’d corrected her, and how vehemently. Miranda was terrific, but I wasn’t willing to lose all my backup to keep her. I went on more moderately. ‘It goes without saying that I’d like not to have to give her up. But it’s, well, it’s just unkind for her to miss a chance because I’m not willing to take on a bit more. And anyway, she does more than my last three assistants combined. If we go out of our way for her, she’ll pay it back. She does.’

  Olive considered that. ‘I’ve spoken to her to say hello to, but no more.’ My lips twitched, and Olive nodded as if I’d spoken. ‘Yes, the Goth thing isn’t great.’

  I agreed, it wasn’t. ‘But it’s part of the reason that says we should keep her. Some of my oldest, most traditional authors love her. If she can make them see past her hair and the pierci
ngs … I keep thinking she’ll outgrow it. Which makes me sound like her mother.’

  Olive laughed. ‘As long as you don’t tell her she’s just going through a phase.’ I liked watching Olive laugh. Her skin was dark, like her name, and she had deep crow’s feet around her eyes, as if she’d spent a lot of time laughing.

  She continued smiling even after she’d had her laugh, although now it was turned on me. ‘You look like the child now. One who’s just brought a stray kitten home. “Can we keep him, Mum? I’ll feed him myself, and clean out his litter every day, I promise.” When does the decision need to be made?’

  This was much better than I’d hoped. ‘The end of the week.’ It was the end of the week. Just not this week. But if I admitted that, then there would have been no reason not to wait until David got back next Monday. And then we’d grow old and die while he failed to make a decision.

  I’d done what I could for the moment. I stood up. ‘Thanks.’ And escaped. A decent start, with a possible maybe in less time than it took for me to drink a cup of coffee. Take that, David Snaith, I mentally toasted as I walked past his office. And then hastily lowered my cup as Olive put her head out of her door.

  The lines around her eyes deepened again, but she pretended she hadn’t seen anything. ‘Will you ask for Miranda’s personnel file to be sent up?’

  And she shut the door before I laughed.

  It was good that I’d got that meeting in early, because the rest of the day might not have existed for all the attention I paid to it. Miranda came in around ten, and I told her to come in and shut the door, which meant I had news for her. She was too experienced to think it meant gossip, because what gossip could I have possibly heard at the weekend?

  She looked worried, which was touching. I knew that we worked well together, and I knew that she’d rather stay at T&R than go to a smaller house, but I hadn’t realised quite how much she wanted it.

  First the bad news, that Olive had confirmed that she wouldn’t let us create a job for Miranda. ‘But we knew that. And she sounded quite positive about the half-and-half job: that if you agree to be a half-assistant, half-junior editor for the moment, when a full editorial vacancy comes up you’ll be in line for it. Although until she jumps one way or the other, I didn’t discuss salary.’

  I expected her to have to weigh up the option. She had been offered a full-time job that got her more firmly on the editorial ladder, and although she’d still be doing the admin work there that she was doing for me now, she’d be doing it for herself, not for someone else. And there’d be more money. So when she said, ‘You’d do that for me?’ I wasn’t sure what she meant.

  ‘Do what? We agreed that this is what I’d suggest to Olive last week. Didn’t we?’

  ‘You didn’t say you’d lose half your assistant. Or if you did say it, I didn’t understand. I thought you’d be allowed to hire someone else.’

  ‘I told you, they aren’t going to let us make new hires or add salaries.’

  ‘But are you willing to do that?’

  Clearly we were both speaking foreign languages. ‘Of course I’m willing. I’ve done it.’ I amended. ‘If Olive agrees, I’ve done it.’

  Miranda’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I don’t know what to say. You’re making your job harder, to help me.’

  I qualified that overstatement. ‘I’m making my job a little harder, and no one except you helped you. You’ve done far more than your job description, and you’ve done it really well.’ I like to get brownie points when they’re due, and a lot of the time even when they’re not due, but this really wasn’t a case for making me out to be a saint. I don’t think I could even have got beatified for this morning’s contribution. ‘We don’t have to worry right now. It hasn’t happened yet. Olive might say no.’

  ‘You’re right. Chickens. Counting. Don’t.’ She nodded and stood up to go back to her desk. At the door, though, she stopped, turned and came back, and gave me a fierce hug. And at lunchtime a huge bunch of cornflowers and poppies silently appeared on my desk.

  I remember that part, but otherwise, while I know I went to meetings, sent and received emails – I even participated in an auction for a book – I only know it because I have the emails, and T&R is now the proud publisher of a new author. I have no memory of any of it. As far as I’m aware, I spent the day staring out the window and worrying away at the Stevenson question.

  I’m not even sure how, or when, it became ‘the Stevenson question’. Two weeks ago, Aidan had told me that his partner Frank had died. Only fourteen days, and yet that dark figure in the dark room had vanished as though he’d never been. Werner Schmidt’s death had never been very real to me, in part, I think, because I didn’t know what he’d looked like, or anything about him except that he shelved his oil paints by date and drank too much. Instead it was the equally dead Edward Stevenson, and Celia Stein, who had taken over their space, and everyone’s attention.

  By the time four o’clock rolled around, therefore, of course I was going to the preview at the Tate. I stopped by Miranda’s desk and dropped some things off: a list of proofs to be sent out to authors who might give us quotes to use for promotion; some sales material to be proofread; a reminder to nag at the design department to return the family photographs an author had lent us to use in her book. It was routine, mechanical work that I should have done myself, but which had sat, untouched, on my desk all day.

  ‘I’m out for the rest of the day. I’m going to a press view at the Tate, for a show by the woman from the Daylesworth Trust’s father.’ It was a convoluted explanation, but since there was no real explanation for why I was going, it would have to do.

  ‘Get you,’ said Miranda cheerfully.

  ‘Living the high life. Is there anything before I go?’

  She shook her head, then reconsidered and changed it to a nod. ‘You’ve been sent a new novel by the scout from Jansen’s, who says it’s the newest thing in Scan-noir crime. Except that it’s not really Scan, because it’s Finnish. Shall I try and find us a Finnish reader somewhere? I’ve checked, and no one here uses one, but I can email a few friends at other publishers. Oh, and I’ve done the permissions and copyright forms for Carol Dennison’s book. I’ll leave them on your desk. I checked them, and they’re fine, but you need to authorise the payments.’

  And she wondered why I thought she deserved promotion?

  When I got to the Tate, the guard at the front door tried to stop me. The gallery was closing in half an hour, and admissions had just ended. But I said the secret passwords, ‘Esther Wolff’ and ‘press’, and he immediately stood back.

  ‘Go down to the bronze sculpture at the end of the hall,’ he said, pointing through the central foyer to the rear of the museum. ‘The entrance to the exhibition is on your right, and the warder there will find Esther for you.’

  Open sesame.

  Even half an hour before closing, the museum was filled with people getting their final thirty minutes’ worth of culture. But the school groups had long gone, and so had the people who had come up to London for the day. And the mothers with small children. The visitors now were, on average, older and quieter than the first and the last groups, and younger and more mobile than the middle ones. I stood and watched idly for a few minutes, wondering about these people assiduously art-ing around the place at five o’clock on a weekday afternoon. Didn’t they have jobs? Could they all be self-employed? Or had they, too, just cut out of their offices early on a summer afternoon? I’d certainly left work early on summer afternoons, but I’d never thought to go to a museum. It was an enticing idea, but even as I played with the idea I realised that these were not office-skivers. They were tourists. London without tourists is as unimaginable as boiled eggs without toast soldiers. If you remove one half, is there any point to the other? At least, that’s the official view. On tourists and London, I mean. I don’t think there’s an official view on toast soldiers.

  I stopped daydreaming and turned right as directed. Fac
ing me was a temporary barrier with a poster for the Stevenson exhibition on it, and a pasted streamer over one corner: ‘Exhibition opens 16 June’. I stopped to look at the painting they had chosen. I was expecting Poppity Princess, as the most famous, but it wasn’t that one. It was only a detail, a close-up of an eye and a nose made up of photographic negatives. Clever. It felt familiar, yet at the same time, you didn’t think you’d know everything, which you might have with Poppity Princess. I slid behind the roped-off section, with an entirely unreasonable feeling of being an insider.

  The guard by the door did not share my delusion, and he kept a beady eye on me as he checked his list of names. But Aidan and Esther Wolff had done their work, and he was forced to let me enter, although his manner suggested that when he ran the museum, things would not be so slipshod. I squinted quickly down at my skirt. It was clean. Further down. My shoes were a pair. Was there more I was supposed to be doing? I consoled myself that it was my scraped face that made the whites of his eyes show, not that I looked generally un-private-view-worthy. So when he handed me a folder marked ‘Press’, I took it as though I expected it. As soon as I’d walked through the foyer, though, I checked it out. Nothing exciting: thumbnails of illustrations that were available for the newspapers’ picture desks; a list of the pieces on show; a page of welcome blah from the gallery’s director, most of which was taken up by begging the journalists to mention the show’s sponsors as frequently as possible. Dull. I shoved it in my bag.

  Earlier in the day Aidan had sent Helena a list of all the Stevensons the gallery had sold over the last ten years, as he’d promised, and had copied me in. I hadn’t looked at it. The titles meant nothing to me, and it was only my specialist geekery that had meant I’d been able to spot the problem with the collage at the Arts Council panel. I’d look again at the ones with the book jackets, but it wouldn’t add anything to what I’d done yesterday. In fact, I had no real reason to be here, so I decided to just go through as though it were any other show, only with fewer people about.