by PETER DAVEY
“Jo-Jo? It's Miranda.” She exchanged a few pleasantries with ‘Jo-Jo’ – whoever she might be – then made her request. She cupped her hand over the mouthpiece and turned to Dominic. “Tomorrow all right for you?”
“Perfect.”
When she had ended the call, he thanked her profusely. It seemed then that the meeting had come to a natural conclusion but he hesitated.
“Miss Cole, I hope you don’t mind me asking but… aren’t you Nicola Carson’s agent as well?”
She looked wary for a moment, clearly wondering if he had another agenda. “I still handle the rights on ‘Loss’ but I have no involvement in her film work. Why do you ask?”
“It’s just that, well, I have to admit I’ve always had rather a soft spot for her.”
“You and most of the male population of planet Earth.”
“I know. And I just wondered, I mean, I’ve heard so many conflicting stories about her and I just wondered what she’s like in person? You always do wonder that about celebrities, don’t you?”
“You’re not a moonlighting journalist, are you?”
“No! Good heavens no! Nothing like that!”
“No, okay. I must say you don’t look like one. So, what’s Nicola Carson like? To be perfectly honest, she was the biggest disappointment of my career.”
“Really? I’ve never heard her called that before.”
“I’m speaking from the literary point of view. I took her on when she was unpublished in the expectation that she had a brilliant career ahead of her. The publishers were all clamouring to get their hands on ‘Loss’ – I was inundated with pre-emptive offers and I managed to get her a fifty grand advance so she could get on with her second novel – pretty much unheard of for a début novelist. But, as I’m sure you know, the second novel never appeared, nor any others. Hal Birling offered her the lead in ‘All About Me’ and she never looked back. Oh I know she’s been pumped up into a huge star and made pots of money but to me she’s wasted her talent. I don’t normally make errors of judgement like that but I certainly did in her case. Still, she’s only twenty-eight – there’s still time. Maybe she’ll get bored with the high life and go back to writing.”
“Maybe she’s not so much wasting her talent as pointing it in a different direction?” Dominic ventured.
“Princess Zara of the Planet Zog? I ask you!”
“Well, I know that was rubbish, but she has done some good stuff as well. She was brilliant in 'All about Me.'”
Miranda Cole shrugged. “You're probably right. I'm afraid I'm biased, being a boring old bookworm.”
“So what’s she actually like in the flesh?”
She observed Dominic for a moment then shifted her gaze to the leaves swaying beyond the window, though she did not seem to be focusing on anything in particular. Then she murmured, almost as though talking to herself, “She was lovely – not just on the outside but inside as well. People couldn’t see it because she had so much attitude. She didn’t take any crap from anyone. But under the surface there was such… vulnerability. I knew she’d had a hard time. And I often wondered...” She hesitated. “I often wondered if ‘Loss’ was rooted in her own past and that that was what made it so moving, so authentic. But she never talked about it.”
Silence fell in the room. The cars and pedestrians going up and down Farringdon Street seemed to belong in another world. Then Dominic asked, “And what did you think of her novel? Didn’t you think it was a very mature piece of work for a girl of her age?”
“It was. But then she’d had to grow up fast.”
Dominic knew he was walking a tightrope. He had wondered vaguely if he might recruit this Miranda Cole to their cause as well as Tom Newcomb, but he knew now that that was not going to happen.
“Anyway,” she said, suddenly standing up and extending her hand. “Good luck with Tom. Get Sasha to give you his number and directions on your way out. You'll need them.”
*
“I've got to go out,” he said the next morning. “Just for a few hours.”
“Where this time?”
“I have to say goodbye to a great-aunt up in Gloucestershire. She's in an old people's home up there.”
“You've never said anything to me about a great-aunt in Gloucestershire.”
“Well, I’ve never really had reason to. We're not very close and she’ll probably barely remember who I am. But she's ninety-three and might pop her clogs at any time. I’d suggest you come with me...”
“God, no thank you! I'm allergic to old folk's homes. Anyway, I've still got stuff I need to do here.”
“I’ll be back as soon as possible. I promise.”
*
Tom Newcomb’s country retreat turned out to be a vast, ramshackle farmhouse in creamy Cotswold stone. Dominic was rather relieved. The spectacle of the former hard man of social realism living in a beamy cottage with roses winding over the porch would have been too much to bear but, even so, the leafy world in which he had buried himself was a far, far cry from the slums and tenements of northern England which had made him famous. Dominic had ascertained from Wikipedia that he had become something of an authority on herbs.
Opening the front gate, he stared up at the towering, tatty gables in some trepidation. He had no idea how this famous writer was going to react to his request, nor even how best to broach it. ‘I have a feeling he may not like her very much’ was not a lot to go on.
A hen wandered across his path as he approached the porch, which was like that of a country church. He tugged on a dangling iron ring which he assumed was a bell, though there was no discernible sound within and no response. After a few moments, he plucked up his courage and tried the door, which was unlocked. Peering into the gloomy interior of the house, he listened intently for signs of life, but all he could hear was the deep, slow tick of an invisible clock. He called out, timidly, “Hell-o-o!”
A little voice behind him echoed, “Hell-o-o.”
He spun round to find a tiny blonde shrimp of a girl with eyes like saucers staring up at him – where she had materialised from he had no idea. She must have been about seven and, despite the season, was wearing only jeans and a jumper, with red wellingtons and a red woollen hat perched on her head.
“Who are you?” she inquired.
“I’m Dominic. I’m looking for Mr. Newcomb.”
“I’ll take you to him,” she said, holding out her hand.
Dominic reached down and took the tiny hand and she led him around the side of the house, through a gap in a hedge and across a soggy, unkempt lawn where they were joined by a rumbustuous little boy, slightly older than the girl.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“This is Dominic, silly! He’s come to see Tom!”
Dominic spotted a tall, elderly man with a walking stick in a gateway ahead. He wore jeans and a white shirt with no collar under a corduroy coat and was heavily lined with a thatch of almost white hair.
“This is Dominic,” explained the girl as they approached.
“Pleased to meet you, Dominic!” he said as they shook hands. “Bracken, my love, would you go and ask Jo-Jo if she could bring our guest a nice glass of parsnip wine? Come on, Dominic, let's go and sit by the herb garden.”
The place he led him to, sheltered behind a greenhouse with a view over another lawn and a wooded valley beyond, proved to be a sun trap. They settled in two wicker garden chairs.
“It’s a beautiful place you have here!” Dominic remarked for want of something to say.
Tom Newcomb considered his words at length. “Yes but the rains have been terrible this winter. If it keeps it up the spring sowing could be delayed for weeks.” He sounded more like a character from Thomas Hardy than the enfant terrible of social realism from Barnsley. On the far side of the lawn a gang of children were playing hide and seek riotously among some bushes.
“The grandkids,” he explained. “I’ve got twelve altogether – the fruits of three marriages and one or
two others who slipped through the net, I’m afraid.” He spoke in a sonorous, ‘poetry-reading’ voice but with a Yorkshire accent still discernible underneath.
“That’s very impressive. Do they all live with you?”
“God no! Just Ty and his sister Bracken – the ones you met – live with us as our own. Their mother ran off with her Ayurvedic masseur. Tell me, Dominic, do you eat meat?”
He was a little fazed by the question, wondering if it was a roundabout way of being invited to lunch. “Yes. Yes I do,” he replied.
“Well don’t. It’s a disgusting habit. Did you know that reliable statistics have proved that vegetarians are 87 per cent more regular than carnivores?”
“No I didn't.”
“I won’t have the kids eating meat while they’re staying here. Just fresh vegetables, fruit, pulses, and my own homemade bread. It means they fart all the time but at least their farts aren't completely rank, which is a sign of a good healthy digestive system, don’t you think? It’s hardly surprising that human excrement smells so disgusting when it’s mainly rotting meat that’s been sitting around in our guts for days on end.”
The great writer lapsed into silence for a moment, no doubt savouring the joys of regularity.
“So, Miranda tells me you’re researching a book? What is it? A novel?”
“No, it’s a biography. The subject is a current female celebrity but its real USP is a startling revelation which will quite possibly destroy her career.”
“USP! How I love that acronym! It says everything about our so-called contemporary culture, doesn’t it? Historians of the future are not going to call this the Cyber Age or the Digital Age, they’re going to call it the Age of the Unique Selling Point! So who is this celebrity anyway?”
“Nicola Carson.”
There was a long silence. The whole of Gloucestershire seemed suddenly frostbound. Then Tom Newcomb said, “So why have you come to me?”
Dominic was panic-stricken, as though he had stood up to make a presentation to a vast audience then realised he’d forgotten his notes. “A friend suggested it,” he floundered. “Someone called Edward Haymer. You won’t have heard of him.”
“And how did he know about my connection with Nicola Carson?”
“I’m not sure that he did. He just said you might be a good person to ask. Since you’re of that generation.”
“That generation?”
“Well, I mean the generation Nicola Carson was writing about – people who were young in the fifties and sixties.”
He again responded with silence. “So what is this startling revelation?” he said at last.
“Her one and only novel ‘Loss’ wasn’t written by her at all. She stole the manuscript from Edward Haymer. I happen to know this for a fact, though sadly I have no proof.”
Tom Newcomb was gazing out over the lawn, the trees and the landscape beyond. Then, to Dominic’s amazement, he started to chuckle. “Well I’m a step ahead of you there, lad. I already knew that.”
Dominic stared at him in consternation. “You knew?”
“I did.”
“You mean you guessed – from the style, from its sophistication, from its maturity?”
“Well, that too. But mainly because she told me.”
Dominic could not believe what he was hearing. “You mean she admitted she stole Ted’s – Edward Haymer’s – manuscript?”
“She didn’t mention the author by name.”
“But, what happened exactly? If you don’t mind my asking.”
The old writer gathered his thoughts for a moment before replying. “The whole thing seemed fishy to me from the start. When I first met her at Harold Mosberg’s launch she told me she was an actress but was having trouble finding work. I know people in the business, so I said I’d sound out some contacts for her. Then a few weeks later she phones me up saying she’s written a novel and could I put her in touch with an agent? And I remember thinking, why didn’t she mention that in the first place? I’m a writer, we were at a launch – it would have been the perfect opportunity. I could have introduced her to Miranda then and there.”
“So what did you think of her novel?”
“I thought it was good. Bloody good. Which was why I couldn’t believe she’d written it. Okay, she was a bright enough lass, plenty of charisma I suppose, but that book had a depth and a breadth about it and an understanding of the human condition that no one can acquire by the age of twenty-three, or however old she was at the time. And even though the narrator was a girl, I sensed a man’s voice behind it. It’s something very subtle but quite unmistakable. And then there was the logistics. How could she have found the time to write a novel like that? I know better that anyone how long the job can take. No, I’m sorry, when I read that book and then thought about that girl, the two just didn’t go together.”
“So what did you do?”
“I broached it to her – tentatively, of course. I didn’t come right out and accuse her of plagiarism but I said that I sensed another hand at work in large sections of her book – something like that. Her reaction amazed me. Instead of getting angry and defensive she went all flirtatious and giggly and said, ‘You can keep a secret can’t you, Tom?’ Then she told me she’d got it off this rather reclusive bloke she knew who was an unpublished author.”
“Got it off him?”
“Yeah, I wasn’t quite clear whether she’d stolen it or whether he’d given it to her, but I assumed she’d stolen it since I can’t imagine any writer just giving someone a manuscript they’d probably worked on for years. She said it didn’t matter because he was dissatisfied with it and had abandoned it. But I was still unhappy about it.”
“She did steal it from him,” said Dominic. “That I do know. They had some kind of relationship – I’m not quite sure about the nature of it – but he must have shown it to her. Then they lost touch. The next thing he knew she’d published it under her own name and turned it into a bestseller.”
“Which he was none too thrilled about, presumably.”
“That’s putting it mildly!” Dominic laughed. Then he asked, after a moment’s hesitation, “Mr. Newcomb, do you mind me asking... if you knew the truth about her novel, why didn’t you speak out at the time?”
He considered the question. “I suppose I should’ve done. But the fact is I introduced her to Miranda before she told me the truth. They got on like a house on fire from the start, those two – well, it was a bit more than that, if you know what I mean. Miranda knew Nicola was dynamite and she managed to screw a fifty grand advance out of Jonathan Hale – it’s the stuff agents’ dreams are made of and I didn’t want to piss on their parade. I did mention my misgivings to her but she just brushed them aside, saying that all young authors are influenced – that’s how they find their voice. If I’d told her exactly what Nicola had told me she probably wouldn’t have believed me and Nicola would have denied it. And I have to confess I’d rather fallen under Nicola’s spell myself – she was the sexiest thing on the planet, after all. I agreed reluctantly – and mainly for Miranda’s sake – to be guest speaker at her London launch but I drew the line at writing a review. Just the same, I can’t say I felt proud of turning a blind eye, but then I said to myself, ‘I’ve told Miranda what I think, she’s her agent, and if she’s okay with it then it’s out of my hands.’”
Dominic braced himself. “Mr. Newcomb, if it came to it, would you be prepared to tell what you’ve just told me to a court of law?”
He turned and stared at him. “A court? I thought you said you were researching a book.”
“I am. But I’m also helping Ted and Anne Haymer build a case against Nicola Carson for theft of Ted's intellectual property. That’s what my book’s going to be about.”
“Jesus!”
At that moment Bracken hove into view, walking very slowly with a look of intense concentration in an effort not to spill the glass of cloudy yellow liquid she was carrying. She looked highly relieved when D
ominic took it from her with profuse thanks.
“Hope you enjoy it!” said Tom Newcomb. “I made it myself.”
Dominic took a tentative sip. “Mmm! Lovely!” he pronounced as he set it down again.
“I’ve completely forgotten what we were talking about.”
“Nicola Carson’s book.”
“Ah yes! The court case. So where’s this going to happen?”
“Probably at the High Court in London. The Chancery Division.”
“Would we get lunch?”
“We?”
“Jo-Jo, myself and the kids. She could take them to the Natural History Museum. It’d be a bit of an outing for us – we haven’t been to London in ages.”
“Well, your expenses would be reimbursed, naturally. And you wouldn’t feel awkward…?”
“Awkward?”
“Saying now what you could have said then?”
“No. Because if I’d said it then, when Nicola was flavour of the month, I’d have been a lone voice in the wilderness and no one would’ve believed me. I’d have been accused of acting out of spite. But things have changed, haven’t they? – since your Mr. Hayes came crawling out of the woodwork.”
“Haymer. Yes, they certainly have. And you wouldn’t feel awkward with Miranda Cole?”
“No! There’s no love lost between Miranda and Nicola nowadays. She moved mountains to build her writing career and all she’s done is fuck in front of a camera for five years. Which is probably what she’s best suited to.”
Despite Dominic’s excitement, there was something in this man’s tone that made him uneasy. “Well, to be fair she hasn’t just done that. She’s a good actress. She was brilliant in ‘All About Me’. And she’s the favourite to win a BAFTA – possibly even an Oscar – for her latest film.”
“Look, Dominic, understand one thing. Nicola Carson is a foul-mouthed, egocentric, stuck-up little bitch. When she travels she’s like a medieval queen with her entourage – hairdressers, manicurists, PA, Christ know what – not to mention those thugs she euphemistically calls her bodyguards. I mean, who the hell does she think she is, Greta Garbo? Film stars don’t go on like that nowadays – they push their babies round Sainsbury’s and wait with the other mums outside the school gates. Even the blokes.”