Facing them sat a large woman in battleship-grey—clearly the supervisor. She was jabbing her finger at a page of typescript annotated in red ink. ‘Are you going quite blind, Mavis?’ she asked the crone standing before her. ‘Redo.’ Shaking visibly, and looking on the edge of tears, her victim tottered away.
Amiss was led through the door in the partition and placed in a Victorian button-back armchair beside another Sheraton table bearing a copy of The Wrangler’s history. ‘Would you care for afternoon tea?’ she asked.
‘How delightful. Yes, please.’
She vanished and reappeared fifteen minutes later with a tray bearing a teapot, water jug, strainer, milk jug and sugar basin complete with tongs: all looked Georgian and silver. There were also doilied china plates of cucumber sandwiches and what in Amiss’s youth had been called fancy cakes.
By the time Lambie Crump deigned to emerge from his office and shake hands with his guest, Amiss was replete and had progressed in his studies to the great scandal of the 1840s when the editor put the journal’s spare cash into railway shares: in the resulting crash the Papworths had to stump up a vast sum of money to keep the journal afloat.
‘Just a moment.’ Lambie Crump darted through the partition and came back divested of the several sheets of handwritten paper he’d been carrying. ‘Sorry about that. One had to finish a rather tricky analysis of the latest New Labour proposals for creating constitutional mayhem. Pray, come in.’
Amiss followed him into a room far too grand to be described as an office. Had the effect not been slightly spoiled by the shabbiness of the paintwork, its spaciousness, ornate gilt decoration, fine furniture and splendid fireplace dominated by a magnificent gilt-framed rural landscape, would have been appropriate to a foreign secretary.
Lambie Crump suited his surroundings, being the epitome of those known popularly as Young Fogeys, although he was taller and skinnier than the norm and being by now in his forties was perilously close to graduating to full-blown fogeyhood. His blond hair flopped Byronically over his brow, slightly obscuring the right side of his pince-nez; across his three-piece, hairy, yellowish suit and check shirt was strung a heavy gold watch chain; his tie was that of a gentleman’s club known to Amiss as the Highest of all High Tory fortresses; and his brogues looked both handmade and ancient.
On the coatstand was a brown trilby hat, a long cashmere coat and a black umbrella, and nestling beside Lambie Crump’s desk was a Gladstone bag of considerable age. The glass-fronted bookcase contained hundreds of leather-bound volumes.
Lambie Crump fussed around Amiss as he seated him and then threw himself into the vast chair behind his desk, which looked to be the twin of the doorkeeper’s. ‘It is good of you to call, Mr Amiss. Good of you to call.’
‘Not at all, Mr Lambie Crump. A pleasure.’
Lambie Crump placed the tips of his fingers together and looked portentous. ‘One is reluctant to begin crassly, but it is proper to mention that one has a veto over your appointment. While one’s freedom of action is confined to matters editorial, in practice it is so closely combined with the managerial side of the paper that the trustees would not countenance having imposed upon one anyone with whom one could not work.’ He leaned his chin on the tips of his steepled fingers and peered at Amiss over the top of his glasses. ‘For some reason that eludes one, the trustees appear to think one’s welfare is their concern.’
He threw back his head and emitted a sound which Amiss thought was intended to express amusement, but which more resembled the distress call of an anxious horse. When the sound had faded away, he balanced his head again on his fingers and looked solemn. ‘You will understand, therefore, that while one was happy to leave it to Charlie Papworth to suggest the name of someone who might assist, one could accept no one who fails to understand that one can accomplish nothing without tranquillity. A manager will have to understand that editorial takes precedence over managerial at all times.’
‘Of course, Mr Lambie Crump. I should wish it to be no other way. My concern is to make your life easier, not add to its vexations.’
That circumlocution went down noticeably well with Lambie Crump, who now went to the trouble of looking at Amiss appraisingly. Having taken in the inoffensive tweed and the check shirt, his gaze lighted on Amiss’s tie. ‘Ah, how interesting. You are a member of ffeatherstonehaugh’s. That is a club one has occasionally been tempted to join. Wonderful cellar, one is told, though, forgive me, do its members not have a somewhat licentious reputation?’
‘Less so, these days, I think. I joined simply to oblige an old friend.’
‘Would this be a friend one might know?’
Amiss resisted the temptation to explain brightly that his friend had been head waiter at ffeatherstonehaugh’s when he had been a gallery steward; he chose instead to lie.
‘Baroness Troutbeck.’
‘Really!’ Lambie Crump almost squeaked. ‘Goodness gracious. Our paths have never crossed, but one cannot but respect the lady. Perhaps you might bring her to luncheon someday.’ He recollected that he was conducting an interview. ‘If you join us, that is, of course.’
His gaze swept again over Amiss, who sat there trying to look like the persona he was now adopting: amiable, unthreatening, conservative, intelligent but not too intelligent and an efficient but not too efficient mopper-up-of-messes, while not too innovative. In other words, someone who would serve Lambie Crump, make his life easier and make painless savings on the cost front sufficient to shut up the proprietor without threatening any aspect of the cushy life enjoyed by the Wrangler editor.
‘It would be wrong to pretend,’ said Lambie Crump sententiously, ‘that this place is not in need of a measure of administrative attention. When one is as busy as one is, one must eschew the minutiae of office routines.’ He steepled his fingers again and gazed down them at Amiss.
‘One must, however, be frank. One is so antipathetic to dreary technical matters that one has, perhaps, occasionally been a trifle remiss. It is true, for instance, that some innovations are overdue. The telephones, for instance, are not all they might be. Yet it cannot be stressed too strongly that the place must not be plunged into disharmony by any threats to the happiness and livelihood of Wrangler staff.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Editorial staff, anyway.’
Amiss smiled seraphically. ‘I think if you ask the Duke of Ormerod, whom I once had the honour of serving as a private secretary, he will reassure you that I have no aspirations to be the efficient Baxter.’
This was a double whammy. Lambie Crump was a notorious snob as well as an avowed admirer of P. G. Wodehouse, whose memorable secretary, Rupert Baxter, had so terrorized Lord Emsworth with his remorseless efficiency. Lambie Crump’s expression was so ecstatic that Amiss hugged himself mentally for his brilliance in agreeing that lie with Ormerod.
‘Since you lack the horn-rimmed spectacles, Mr Amiss, it is obvious that you are no Baxter.’ Lambie Crump neighed. ‘Any more than Bertie Ormerod is a Lord Emsworth. How long were you with him?’
‘Just for a few months when he needed a stand-in. Later, I performed the same function for the Bishop of Westonbury, before he headed back to academia.’
‘My dear chap.’ Lambie Crump’s suspicions were wholly allayed. ‘We have the same kind of friends, I see.’ A thought struck him. ‘One takes it you know about running offices and directing underlings and all that kind of tiresome business?’
Amiss laughed carelessly. ‘Oh that? ’Fraid so. Used to be a civil servant, I’m sorry to say. Couldn’t stand the bureaucracy though. Had to get out. And then of course the people were rather…’ He wrinkled his nose.
‘All is clear,’ said Lambie Crump. ‘How terrible for you.’ He launched into an assault on the wicked dirigisme of the home civil service and the scandalous iniquity of the Foreign Office, whose sole raison d’être was apparently to sell Britain out to
the enemy. Amiss felt it prudent not to mention that he lived with a diplomat and instead let the flow of anathematizing continue unchallenged, nodding and smiling mendaciously at appropriate times to indicate agreement. He endeavoured too to look impressed every time Lambie Crump mentioned yet another foreign secretary, senior functionary or government adviser who had demonstrated in conversation with him their intellectual puerility or absence of gung ho patriotism.
An hour and a half had passed amicably when there was a tap on the door. The supervisor came in, laid some papers reverentially on the desk and left. Lambie Crump picked then up. ‘This is regrettable, Robert—if one may make so bold as thus to address you, and you will, perhaps, be so kind as to call me Willie—but, alas, one has to get on. Delighted, delighted to make your acquaintance. It will be a pleasure to have you here. When will you come?’
‘Whenever suits you. Perhaps on a day you might have time to introduce me to the staff?’
‘Friday then,’ said Lambie Crump cheerily. ‘Come here to luncheon at one o’clock. Even with the lamentable condition of the roads, one should by then have returned from All Souls. Afterwards, we might pay a visit below stairs.’ He neighed and stood up. ‘There can be little doubt that you will fit in well. Just do remember how important it is that no one is upset. It is not easy to write limpidly when people are being emotional.’ He ushered Amiss out swiftly, led him through the anteroom and the typing pool, shook hands at the top of the staircase, bowed and bade him farewell.
As he walked down to the hall, Amiss heard from down the other corridor a sudden outbreak of angry voices—one high-pitched and female; the other deep and male. He tried to look unconscious of the noise while straining to hear what the row was about. The only word he picked up was ‘Aristotle’. Miss Mercatroid, who appeared completely unaware of the din, nodded a chilly goodbye. Slightly disconcerted, he smiled at her sweetly, and passing by the liveried lad, who had fallen asleep over his rag, he let himself out quietly.
Chapter Three
‘It’s Robert, Jack. I’ve got a proper job at last.’
‘Hah!’ shouted Baroness Troutbeck down the line. ‘And about bloody time too. What is it?’
‘It’s with The Wrangler.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Managing it.’
‘Why aren’t you editing it?’ she demanded. ‘You don’t aspire high enough, my lad. Anyone would be better than that little Crump twerp. Should have been drowned at birth.’
‘Odd. I thought you’d share The Wrangler’s prejudices.’
‘There’s more to life than prejudices. I grant you little Crump is ideologically sound, but he’s not a man to go into the jungle—or even into a restaurant—with. Heard him give an after-dinner speech recently. Christ, he’s so precious he should be deposited in a Knightsbridge bank vault. Preferably with no air supply.’
‘On the evidence so far, I can’t fault your analysis.’
‘Did he name-drop at you?’
‘Incessantly.’
‘I’m surprised he took you, considering you’re halfway to being a human being.’
‘You’re being less than encouraging, Jack. This is a real job. I haven’t had one of those for two years.’
‘I found you dozens.’
‘Three, to be precise: all temporary and leading nowhere and just a cover for being your fixer. This has the potential to be permanent, substantial and lead to greater things.’
‘It won’t be half as much fun as what I got you into.’
‘Thank God for that. I could do with a long respite from any collaboration with mad baronesses.’
She chortled. ‘Don’t get complacent: fate may yet throw us together.’
‘Not if I’ve got anything to do with it,’ said Amiss firmly.
***
‘Just us for luncheon today. Would not normally be able to entertain you here—or anywhere else for that matter. One is rarely free. But the Chancellor had to cancel because of the emergency summit, so it was possible to accommodate you. Thought of rounding up a few colleagues to meet you, but a tête-à-tête is preferable in the circumstances.’
Lambie Crump opened a door at the back of his office and ushered Amiss into a tiny mahogany-panelled, mirrored lift. ‘We’ll have a spot of luncheon and a chat, so we can be sure we’re both seeing things the same way. Too bad about the Chancellor, but I’m sure you’ll be better company. He’s so drearily Calvinist, don’t you think?’
He neighed. ‘One longs for some of these people to commit a few colourful sins.’ He pressed a button. ‘Anyway, after we’ve eaten, we’ll go and inspect the natives.’
They ascended at a stately pace to the sixth floor and disembarked into a large, L-shaped dining room. ‘It might have been pleasanter to eat in my rooms, but I thought you might as well have the benefit of the full Wrangler hospitality.’
On cue, a frock-coated butler hove into view bearing a silver salver. He inclined his head. ‘Good afternoon, sir.’
‘Ah, thank you, Tozer. This is Mr Amiss. He is joining us here to help run things more smoothly, so you will, no doubt, be seeing something of him. Robert, please to help yourself to champagne.’
As they each took a glass, Lambie Crump lowered his voice confidingly. ‘One finds it wise to drink little at luncheon, but a pick-me-up does not go amiss in the middle of a taxing day. Now let me take you on a perambulation around our rogues’ gallery.’
This tour of the portraits on the dining room walls was clearly one that delighted Lambie Crump, for it enabled him to scatter into his speeches aphorisms, quotations and bon mots, the apparent spontaneity of which he had burnished to perfection. ‘Ah, me. My predecessors. How their intellectual distinction weighs upon me!’ He delivered himself of a particularly happy neigh. ‘Here we have Seymour Spragge, our founder. Not perhaps, exceptionally gifted intellectually, but one cannot fault what vulgarians would nowadays no doubt deem his “marketing skills”. It was Spragge, after all, who persuaded the third Earl of Papworth in 1805 that he should provide all the capital to set up The Wrangler, leave Spragge to run it as he thought fit and pay him fifty per cent of the gross income.’
‘I’ve heard of blank cheques,’ said Amiss, ‘but that’s pretty spectacular. Unless, of course, Papworth had some control over the outgoings.’
‘Nothing so coarse,’ said Lambie Crump. ‘Papworth was uninterested in commerce and was also in thrall to Spragge, whom he regarded as the greatest mind of his age.’ He neighed again. ‘Sadly, one must challenge that assessment, for, alas, Spragge’s was not an original mind.’
He took a sip of champagne and smiled in a superior manner. ‘One must hope standards have risen a touch since then. Still, one should not disparage one’s predecessors. Spragge did put The Wrangler on the map. At the very least, even though his mind was superficial, he had a feel for the fashion of the times. One cannot go far wrong being an intellectual slave of Edmund Burke and a hero-worshipper of the Duke of Wellington. And I grant you, he had an eye for talent.’ Lambie Crump raised his glass patronizingly to his founder’s portrait. ‘So all in all, not a bad editor.’ He smiled at Amiss. ‘As they went.’
Amiss quickly learned that there had never been an editor on an intellectual par with Lambie Crump. This one was pedestrian, that one a crook and though these two had enlivened things by shooting each other in the head, their heads hadn’t been worth much anyway.
About the inadequates, Lambie Crump was relatively benign: the heretics earned only excoriation. There was the one who went all the way with Disraeli on extending the franchise, the reprehensible flirter with Gladstone over Irish Home Rule and—above all—the apostate who failed to admit that the only respectable intellectual position on the American Civil War was to back the South.
When it came to America—which to Amiss’s surprise loomed large in the pape
r’s concerns—all popular heroes were villains and villains were heroes. Abraham Lincoln was a counter-jumper and militarist bully, Franklin Roosevelt a fiscal nihilist and John F. Kennedy a priapic and unprincipled plastic-Irish scoundrel. Inevitably, therefore, the heroes were Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, the success of the century: Barry Goldwater was the best president America had never had.
‘President Clinton, Willie?’ Amiss said mischievously. ‘Any virtues?’
‘Please, Robert. Not before lunch. The very thought of the fellow makes one quite faint. Tozer, some more medicinal champagne, if you will be so kind.’
Revived by several more sips, he looked seriously at Amiss. ‘You must forgive one’s emotion at the very mention of that’—he paused—‘that hobbledehoy. But America matters to us on this journal. We care about it and take seriously our role in guiding it on a wiser path.
‘The Empire is dead, the Commonwealth beyond rescuing and Europe doesn’t speak English. But though we don’t have a big sale in America, we have an influential circulation among colonial brethren who draw from us intellectual and moral succour. It is our duty to continue to give them a lead in standing up against the barbarians, who have breached the walls of Washington.’
Lunch was light but expensive. The overheads, thought Amiss, must be horrendous, for there was a cook as well as a butler. They started with a spinach soufflé, accompanied by what Lambie Crump described as ‘a rather decent little Montrachet’. Dover sole, asparagus and tiny new potatoes followed, and although Lambie Crump and Amiss both refused the Stilton, in aroma and texture it was of a quality that would have made the baroness swoon lustfully. When they had finished their coffee—served in tiny and exquisite china—Lambie Crump looked at his watch and crumpled up his linen napkin. ‘Let us inspect the minions.’
Amiss—who was by now very tired of listening to Lambie Crump disparaging the intellect and the principles of apparently every politician and editor in London—jumped to his feet eagerly.
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