by PETER DAVEY
He ended the call, puffed out some breath and sank back into the pillows.
“Well?” cried Katie, exasperated.
“I’ve got it. I’ve got the job.”
*
The Dragon’s Head, despite Darren's gloomy prediction, had managed to survive. Darren himself had moved on to greater things and Dominic had taken on his position along with his salary and his responsibilities. A rather pale, nervy English graduate called Naomi was now his protégée as he had once been Darren’s, and Dominic, remembering what it had been like, was particularly kind to her. Sonia – feisty as ever though a little heavier around the jowl and girth – still ruled from her desk by the main entrance and Alistair still spent most of the day shut up in his office. Dominic had made no further attempts to write a novel.
He spent the last afternoon of his employment clearing out his desk, which had always been chaos. It was a poignant task. Every object was pregnant with memories – book fair catalogues, publicity material for works at whose birth he had been midwife, a tray full of correspondence (mostly cleared), his chipped blue mug stuffed with biros, pens and pencils, the little china tray where resided a jumble of paperclips, pencil sharpeners, coins, an eraser, some elastic bands. He even found, buried in the bottom of his bottom drawer, a file containing what looked like some sample chapters of a novel. “Oh… God,” he murmured, drawing it out and glancing at the title page, and the memory of the most inglorious moment of his career came flooding back.
He read the first page. He stretched back in his chair and read the second. He found himself chuckling. This was the first time he had actually read this manuscript since, back then, he had been too ashamed even to open it. And there was no doubt about it, it was good – it was bloody good. As an older, wiser man he felt more acutely than ever his guilt at allowing this novel to be passed over. The only grain of comfort was that work of this quality would be bound to have found a home elsewhere, although he had to admit, in spite of being pretty au fait with the literary scene, that he had never seen a novel called The Tyranny of Love in print. Unless the title had been changed. As he read on his shame intensified, but still he could not put it down. It was riveting. Then he forced himself to stop and tossed the pages into the bin bag along with the rest of his rubbish as though they were contaminated. That was all in the past now. He had to move on.
At ten to five he knocked on Alistair’s door. He called out “Come!” and Dominic entered his office for the last time.
“Well, Alistair, I’m off. I just wanted to say thank you. For everything. I’ve learnt everything I know about publishing from you.”
“I suppose that’s a compliment,” he smiled, standing up and coming around from behind his desk.
“And thanks for the recommendation. That was what clinched it for me.”
“I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think you were up to it – and deserved it.”
He shook Dominic’s hand then patted him warmly on the shoulder. “Good luck, old fellow. I’m sorry to be losing you. Spare us a thought when you’re living life out there in the fast lane. And what I said about your novel, all those years ago? Don’t let it put you off your dream of becoming a writer.”
Dominic was amazed and rather touched that Alistair had even remembered his novel. “I won’t,” he said.
He gave Naomi a farewell kiss on the check, then braced himself and gave Sonia one as well. To his relief she did not seem to object. “Go on, piss off,” she said. But she was smiling.
Before leaving the building, he paused in the bleak entrance hallway, remembering the very first day he had come there, nearly six years earlier, for his first interview. The abandoned desk and filing cabinet were still tucked in the corner against the wall, though someone had finally got around to removing the cardboard box.
As he ambled through the crowded streets towards the underground, he thought of the person he had been then – at one moment gauche and terrified, at the next bubbling over with all the arrogance and optimism of youth. Then he remembered Alistair’s parting words: “Don’t let what I said about your novel put you off your dream of becoming a writer.”
His route to the station led across a small public garden and he paused and sat down on a bench. The autumn sunshine felt warm on his face. He found he was in no hurry to return to the flat and another onslaught of frenetic excitement about their future in America. What had happened to his dream of becoming a writer? It seemed that in the process of growing up, of becoming less lonely, less passionate and idealistic, more comfortable in his own skin and with the world around him, his dream had not so much been abandoned – it was nothing as dramatic as that – it had simply faded into the background. And now here he was, heading off to the States to the job he was sure he wanted with the girl he loved. Yet, deep down, he sensed that nothing in life could be that simple, nothing could be that perfect. The most smoothly flowing plans snagged on the thorns of reality, yet that was what gave life its texture and, ultimately, its meaning. And it was that which, some day, would make him sit down at his laptop and write again.
2
Katie had dreamed of living in California ever since she was fourteen and, even though their departure was still more than a month away, she had already thrown herself wholeheartedly into the preparations. On the Monday evening after his departure from The Dragon’s Head, Dominic was entering the flat carrying two bags of groceries when he noticed various brand-new items of clothing strewn all over the chairs and sofa, including a rather dashing pair of royal blue and cream bathing shorts clearly intended for him. Katie now supervised the purchase of all his clothes – as well as the cutting of his hair – and his appearance had become a lot cooler and more co-ordinated as a result.
“Been shopping?” he called out, rather pointlessly.
“Just a few basics,” she called back from the bedroom. “We can’t turn up on the West Coast looking like a pair of scruffy old Brits, can we?”
Three glossy paperbacks lay in a heap on the armchair. Dominic picked them up one by one and glanced at the titles. He loved the smell of brand new books.
“I bought those for the flight,” Katie remarked as she walked into the room.
“'Loss'” he murmured, reading aloud the title on one of the covers, “by the lovely Nicola Carson.”
“I know, I can’t stand her! Bitch. How dare anyone be a best-selling author and a film star and be beautiful?”
“Well, you’re beautiful,” Dominic observed, rather distantly.
“Yeah, and I reckon I could act just as well as her, given the chance. Personally, I can't see what all the fuss is about.”
“Why did you buy her book then, if you loathe her so much?”
“In the vain hope that it might be crap, I suppose.”
“It won the Connaught Prize.”
“It must be crap then!” she laughed.
Dominic sat down on the sofa. “Well, I’ll soon tell you if it is,” he said, starting to read it at the beginning. “If there’s one thing I’m qualified to do, it’s to tell whether a book’s crap or not.”
He secretly hoped himself that it might be crap. But he soon discovered it was not – it was something very different. As he read the first few paragraphs his face formed into a grimace of disbelief. Katie looked at him in amazement. It was as though he literally could not believe his eyes.
“But…”
“What?”
“This is that manuscript…”
“What?”
“This novel. I was reading it in manuscript form just a few days ago. At least, a sample. It was sent to me over five years ago and it’s been sitting in the bottom drawer of my desk ever since. It’s identical – word for word! This wasn’t written by Nicola Carson. It wasn’t even written by a woman – it was written by a man called Edward Haymer.”
“Maybe she submitted it under a pseudonym.”
“Of course she didn't! Why would a gorgeous and highly marketable girl in her t
wenties pretend to be a man? Besides, there was a CV with that submission.”
“Well… maybe he ghost wrote it for her. Or maybe he was desperate for money and sold her the manuscript.”
“Or maybe she just stole it and changed the title and hoped no one would notice. Whatever happened, this novel’s plagiarised. You can’t win a major literary prize with a book that’s been written by someone else!”
Dominic gazed at the text in silence as the full implication of what he had discovered began to sink in.
“Nicola Carson was the youngest Connaught winner ever – and people said that her looks and charisma swayed the judges. Then on the strength of that she went on to become one of the hottest stars on the planet. And she’s a fake! And I could be the only person in the entire human race who knows it. Jesus, this is… unbelievable!”
Katie was growing alarmed. She did not want Dominic getting excited about anything other than their departure for America.
“Well, the guy who wrote it must know.”
“He may not. It’s under a different title. He may take absolutely no interest in other writers’ work. A lot of writers don’t – they’re too busy writing their own stuff. And if he’d noticed he would have protested when it first appeared. Oh shit, I’ve just thought of something. I threw that manuscript away – the only proof I had. I put the bags in the skip myself. And the rubbish got collected last Friday. Shhhh-it!”
“Well, that’s that then,” Katie pronounced with satisfaction.
“Maybe if I phoned the council I could find out where they’ve taken it.”
“Oh, come on. It’ll be in some landfill in Essex by now. What are you going to do, search through every bag? It’d take you the rest of your life! That’s if they haven’t already buried it.”
“Fuck!”
Dominic was distracted for the rest of the evening. He barely spoke to Katie, who grew increasingly disgruntled as she wanted to spend a jolly hour curled up with her boyfriend and a glass of Chardonnay watching a DVD entitled Practical Advice for Green Card Applicants. Finally, in the hope of shaking him out of his new obsession, she suggested they eat out. “I can’t be arsed to cook.”
Dominic was lost in thought. She repeated her suggestion, more assertively.
“Sorry?”
“I said let’s eat out. I can’t be bothered to cook.”
“Oh. Right,” he mumbled, not having heard a word.
“Dominic!”
“What I need to do is track down the real author. That’s the only way I can find out how this happened and whether he knows or not. His name was Edward Haymer – I remember that but I can’t remember where he lived.”
Katie was losing patience. “Dominic, we’re emigrating in four weeks’ time! We’ve got a million things to do before then! We haven’t got time to go chasing around the countryside after unknown authors!”
“Look, babe, I don’t think you quite grasp what’s going on here. This is Nicola Carson we’re talking about – best-selling author and megastar Nicola Carson – with Oscars and BAFTAs and Golden Globes coming out of every orifice! If she comes crashing down it could be the biggest thing since... well, the biggest thing ever!”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! She's not that big – she's just some little bimbo that's been pumped up into a star! In a couple of years someone else will have come along and everyone will have forgotten about her!”
“All the more reason to strike while the iron's hot! Imagine the embarrassment to the Connaught people! And her publisher! They’ll have to pulp every copy. It’ll cost them millions. And she’ll be a laughing stock. And I’ll be the one to make it happen!”
Katie stared at him. “This is revealing a side to your character I’m not sure I like very much.”
“I thought you said you hated her.”
“I do, but I'm not foaming at the mouth about it.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. The fact is I don’t give a shit about her one way or the other – it’s just my career I care about. This could be the break I’ve been waiting for all my life! I could write a piece for one of the national dailies and get interviewed on telly – ‘The man who exposed Nicola Carson’ – then follow it up with a book and make my name as an author. Jesus, talk about a USP!”
“I thought the job in the States was the break you’d been waiting for all your life!”
“It is. But when all’s said and done it’s only a job. A slightly more glamorous setting, a bit more money, but basically just more of the same.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Katie murmured, crestfallen.
Dominic cupped his palms around her elbows and looked her in the eyes. “Look, darling, don’t get me wrong. I’m looking forward to going to the States. I’m looking forward to going to the States with you. But this story’s dynamite.”
“You’re talking like you're some sort of hack journalist,” she retorted, releasing herself. “But you’re not. You’re a publisher.”
“I’m a writer, Katie. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. And I want to write serious novels, not sensationalist crap about celebrities. But you just can’t imagine how hard it is to break in nowadays – it’s like acting or anything else. Once I’ve published, once I’ve got my name out there, I can start writing the sort of books I want to write. But this could be my big opportunity and I can’t afford to let it go – it’s the sort of thing that comes along once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky. Look, just give me a couple of weeks. If the worst comes to the worst we can say we’ve got family problems and ask them to keep the job on hold for a while. I’m sure it can’t make any difference.”
“We’ve already booked our flight! And I’ve arranged our going-away party! There’s nothing sadder than having a going-away party and then not going!”
Dominic sighed. “Okay. We’ll go as planned. You get on with the preparations. Just give me a free hand for a fortnight. That’s all I ask.”
“Anyway, you say you’re at the centre of this, but you’ve got no proof, now that you’ve very cleverly thrown that manuscript away. And even that could have been forged.”
“Why would anyone want to forge something like that?”
“For the very reasons you said. To bring down Nicola Carson. To create a scandal. People may love her but plenty of people loathe her too, including me. They’d love nothing better than to see her wiped off the map.”
“I received that manuscript five years ago. Nobody had even heard of her then.”
“Yes, but you can’t prove you received it five years ago! You can’t prove you received it at all. There’s only your word it ever existed. And even if you still had it, what would it prove? You could take any one of those books I bought, type out the first fifty pages, change the title and the author’s name and then say ‘Hey, Look everybody! This is a manuscript I received five years ago and just happened to shove in my bottom drawer instead of returning it to the author like I was meant to do. And it proves this book’s plagiarised.’ You see how crazy it sounds?”
Dominic was silenced for a moment. “Well, maybe you’re right,” he mumbled. “But I happen to know that manuscript did exist and that it wasn’t forged. And I happen to know that her novel’s a fake.”
Katie said nothing. She felt she had made her point.
“Okay, I know it's going to be hard to prove. But I sort of... feel I owe it to that Haymer guy to try.”
“Why?”
“Because there was a reason that manuscript was in my bottom drawer.”
“What reason?”
Dominic hesitated. “I took the decision not to put it in the rejection bin. I didn’t have the authority to accept it for publication, my job was just to separate the wheat from the chaff and pass anything promising on to Darren or Alistair. But I forgot. I stuck it in my drawer and just forgot about it. I was so fucking disorganised. Then when I came across it, more than a year later, I was too embarrassed to say anything. That novel should have been published, Katie, a
nd Edward Haymer should be an established novelist by now. And it’s my fault he isn’t.”
She considered his words for a moment. “Well you shouldn’t feel badly about it. These things happen.”
“They shouldn’t happen, not when a man’s entire career’s at stake. And I’ve never forgiven myself. I’ve pushed it to the back of my mind but I’ve never forgotten about it. It’s only once in a lifetime that a real gem like that turns up – and if I’d been responsible for discovering Edward Haymer at least my career in publishing wouldn’t have been entirely wasted.”
Katie sighed. “Look, everyone makes mistakes when they’re starting out in a job. And he must have sent it to other publishers. Plenty of other editors must have rejected it too or he’d be a famous author, wouldn’t he?”
“Yes but Alistair was unique. He was still prepared to take a risk with a novel if it was really good, whoever the author. He wasn’t ruled by accountants with profit margins and financial targets. He only cared about quality.”
Katie heaved another sigh. “Look, just take your fortnight and do what you can in that time.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. After all, if you expose Nicola Carson and turn this guy into a star, it won’t do our reputations in the States any harm, will it?”
“Thanks hun,” he murmured, sliding his arms around her waist. “Thanks for being so understanding. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
*
Dominic had been unable to sleep. He had gone to bed with Katie as usual, had lain awake gazing at the ceiling and, as soon as she was slumbering peacefully – no doubt dreaming of California – he had got up again and made for his laptop in the living room. He was in mental turmoil. At one moment he was almost trembling with excitement about the story he had unearthed, at the next he was recalling Katie’s prophetic words. With or without the manuscript, how the hell was he going to prove what he knew to be true? He sighed with despair, feeling his USP already slipping away from him.