Conversations With Mr. Prain

by Joan Taylor

  “So I don’t write like an English lady.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “But how can I? It would be unnatural for me.”

  “It isn’t unnatural to consult a dictionary. If you cannot be bothered to do that, then you should go back to your mountains and All Blacks, though I get the feeling that this is the last thing you’d want. You don’t want to be identified as a New Zealand writer especially, or you would write about New Zealand.”

  I pursed my lips, affronted.

  He looked at me again and added, “It’s quite true that you should be yourself as a writer, and not try to imitate anyone else’s style. I’m simply asking you to watch your language. I am aware that you have used your own experiences, people you are familiar with and so on, in constructing the novel, and there is a refreshing authenticity about much of what you describe, but it doesn’t really carry the reader along. The environmental message seems like an intrusion into an otherwise predictable account of a relationship’s demise. There is a group of people something like you who might like this novel, but it’s a small group, and they don’t read much. They go to films and listen to music. We’ve done the market research.”

  He looked at me, examining my face to see how I was taking the onslaught.

  “You say it’s sloppy. Could I salvage it? Should I rework things?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  “For an exercise, yes.”

  “For publication?”

  “No, I think not.”

  Downcast, I found myself looking at my feet in second-hand pink shoes with pointed toes. Bare legs in pink shoes planted on a plush blue carpet. The novel had already gone to nineteen literary agents.

  Agents! What happened was that I had sent them a synopsis of my novel and a first chapter or two, with a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Sometimes they did not reply, even with the stamps. Sometimes I got a “with compliments” slip scrawled over with “Sorry,” or “not suitable for my list,” with my returned work. Most rejection letters from agents were in standard form with my name written into a space at the top, either by hand or, with some sophistication, in type via a computer word processing programme, so that it looked like it was a personal letter when it was not. Most of the time they replied to me that they had so many clients to look after already that they could not take on further work, and advised me to consult the Writers and Artists Yearbook.

  The best one of my agents’ rejections informed me that he received hundreds of book, film, T.V. and radio scripts every year and he probably took on 2-4 new clients, though he said that 95% of the submissions were hopelessly bad (assuming he read them?). Still, I figured, if he received, say, 600 submissions every year, then even removing the really bad ones, that would mean there were 30 that were middling to good, and if he only took on 2-4 new clients then that meant there were about 26-28 middling to good people who were rejected. Suppose 6-8 of these were actually very good but just not to his taste?

  When he used the term “bad” I had to wonder what that meant, given what was out there in the book-stores. Or was “bad” another way of saying “not commercial?” Agents surely would take on a novel if they thought they could sell it to a publisher who was willing to drive its sales hard, but given agents get only 10-15% of an author’s royalties, why would they bother with a work that might only sell 200 copies, or even 1000? On 200 copies, the agent might earn only £20-30! Blow great literature. How could they act in any other way? Wouldn’t I do the same? I bought in books I thought I could sell in my bookstall at Camden, not just anything that I found, even if I personally liked something. Just as the publisher anticipated the marketplace, the agent anticipated the publisher.

  I had rationalised things in this way. Supposing all agents had the same anxiety and you kept falling into the “not going to sell [enough]” category, for every single one? You’d never get published, because the chances of getting published without an agent are practically zero, at least if you write a “literary” novel, rather than straight genre (thrillers, science fiction, detective, fantasy, romance, adventure, etc.). So you could be very good but not clearly sellable. And then you would be stymied. You would be censored out by the market-place.

  What if that was my fate? I had almost decided it was, and given up. I felt that I had written something really good, something unusual and full of insight, but it was not commercial enough. I’d never had a break and could not even get past the guards to talk to the people who really mattered: the editors of the publishing houses. That was what was so miraculous about meeting the Managing Director of Coymans. I had pole-vaulted over the literary agents straight to a man at the top. Now, Edward Prain was telling me the truth: my novel actually wasn’t good at all. I was deluded. I was one of those 95% who thought they were writing brilliant literature, but I was in fact writing pig snot.

  This was one of three print-outs I had in circulation, on clean, white paper. I looked at it resentfully, held in Edward Prain’s hands. All my diatribe about paper, and I’d bought a cheap pack on sale at W. H. Smith.

  I felt that a large section of my life was being judged as inadequate. I, as a person, was deficient. My imagination was retarded. My literary skills were laughably substandard. I wrote in vain. And I had likened being a writer to being a prophet!

  I tried to look up at Mr. Prain, Mr. Edward Prain, who had begun to shuffle through my poetry. “But you should keep on writing,” he said. “The situation isn’t hopeless,” he added, in much the same way as one tries to be positive to someone lying critically ill in hospital.

  Then I tried to tell myself this was just his opinion, and that he could be wrong. He had warned me of this in the gallery. He was not the Delphic oracle. He had tried to prepare me for the harshness of his words. He had let things slip past him before, authors that went on to become successful. But I felt that this line of thinking was futile. For all his manipulation and mixed motives, he was being serious, and he did know much about writing, good writing. After all, this was his business, his work. He was right. I was not quite good enough, and not just for the market-place. No matter how original my novel was, it had not quite made the grade on literary grounds alone. Lack of commercial appeal was only one aspect of its failure.

  Failure. I had failed.

  “However,” continued Mr. Prain. “I think your main fault is laziness.”

  This made me sit up again. “You mean, that’s why I’m sloppy?”

  “You write poetry very well. I see you’ve given me some published material here. You’ve noted at the bottom of each page whether any piece has been printed in a literary journal, and I’m impressed by how successful you’ve been. I presume you’ve given these to me because you thought I would be interested in publishing a collection. Well, Stella, you should always do your homework. Coymans doesn’t publish any poetry at all.”

  “It doesn’t sell very well,” I said, blandly offering a reason.

  “No.” He smiled and glanced up. “But I’m glad you’ve included these, because they show your skills in a way that the novel does not. When you take the time to work at a piece, you manage to do something remarkable. I would not have believed that the woman who could write such poignant, and sometimes very moving, poetry could write this novel.”

  “It isn’t laziness,” I said, an appeal from the dock.

  “Then tell me what it is?”

  “I … it’s as I said. I don’t have enough time. I’ve got my stall in the Market, and I need to buy for that during the week, and-”

  “All right,” he interjected. “But, tell me, how long do you spend, roughly, on an average poem?”

  My mind raced. How long? That’s a crazy question, I thought. An average poem? I would write it during dull periods at work or in a fit of emotional chaos, tender it over the weeks, leave it, return to it, merge it with another poem, cut it in half, throw it away, retrieve it, toy with it in my mind for half a year, finish it in a final flurry, submit it to a journal, and let it
be. “It varies,” I said. “I don’t know. I don’t work at something constantly till it’s done. I go away and come back to it. Sometimes there are poems five years old I’ve rediscovered and worked into something good. I don’t just write one and that’s that.”

  “There’s no need to look so insulted,” he said quietly, almost with an avuncular tenderness that I found shocking, as if he had stroked my cheek unexpectedly. “I would not be giving you all this advice if I did not think you were worth the effort.” Ambiguous words. Then a return to his formal tone. “I would suggest that you have a different attitude to the writing of poetry to writing long works. You like style. You like words. If you could apply the attitude you have to writing poetry to writing a novel then you could succeed in producing something quite special. It is frustrating to see how you’ve wasted your talents in producing this second rate material. I read the poems first, you see. I was prepared to be delighted by more substantial work.”

  But he was not.

  He was right, I thought. I had not spent enough time on the novel. I did not have the time to spend, even if I were to devote every hour of my free time to literature and cut out my cultural, political and social activities. I felt he might as well have accused me of looking cheap, dressed as I was in Camden Lock’s second-hand clothes, when I did not have the money to dress in haute couture. What could I do? If I did as he suggested a novel might take me twenty years, with all the time I had for literary effort. What was the use? Be happy as a poet. Christ—how many people aspire to that alone? You’re a poet, I insisted to myself.

  But I felt like a deflated ball. I could not boost myself. The truth was I desperately wanted to write novels. I wanted to be widely read by my peers, to contribute my small parcel of perceptions to society, to change the world a little, to tell interesting tales. Was that so stupid, so misguided? But even more than this it felt as if I was programmed to invent stories. I did not have much choice in the matter. Even if not another word was written down, I would still invent plots, characters, adventures and tragedies, every week, at every turn, moving from fantasy to reality, workaday life to imagination, the same as I had always done. I was designed to do it like a machine was designed to do a certain job. I had no choice. It was true I could continue with poetry, even if few read it. I could consider that my medium. Eventually, I might publish a collection. And for a novel, I had to put in more effort, more time, much, much more, get serious, more serious, knuckle down, work harder, sleep less, socialise less, spend less, struggle on.

  Grappling with resolutions and surveying the landscape of folders, pages and paper-clips before me, I hardly wanted to continue talking. I wanted to close my eyes. I felt all afternoon I had been pulled in one direction and then in another, and I needed now to be still and take stock of it all. I felt curiously drained, as if everything had conspired to weaken some vital component in my usual character.

  Write poetry and dream, I said to myself; why bother with a novel? I had to endeavour to salvage further compliments to restore my confidence. “Did you like the short stories?”

  “Some, when you weren’t declaiming.”

  He cannot bear my ideology, I thought. That is surely his taste, his opinion. I tried to take hold of the positive comments he had made about my poetry, but found myself unable to tap much reassurance from these. Few people read poetry in literary journals. I was glad I had not shown him any more of my work. I had managed to get two stories of a romantic nature printed in women’s magazines, which was reasonable money and a wider audience, but I considered them an inferior product and had not included them in the selection, nor had I included my folk tales. I preferred to keep that unpopular genre unmolested by his judgement.

  I waited for him to say more, but he sat back as if he had finished. “Oh well,” I said, trying to be strong. “It was very good of you to—”

  “No, not at all. It fitted in perfectly with what I had intended to discuss with you. Everything has fallen into place.”

  I froze a little. There was too much to absorb all of a sudden, and I was too raw. I was being turned this way and that. I could not find the heart to challenge what he meant.

  “Of course,” he said. “There was the possibility that you would have produced something that was pre-eminently publishable, but that was a long shot.” He was continuing despite my obvious apathy. Having set him up for explanations, he was now rolling through them whether I was ready or not. “But I want something from you that has nothing to do with all this.”

  I believe I managed a perplexed expression. He leant forward again, with his elbows on his knees, directing his gaze in an intimidating manner. He paused. He was waiting for me to ask what he meant. My expression must have been enough.

  “As I said, I want to offer you a deal,” he said.

  “A deal,” I repeated.

  “As I read through your work, and while I have been speaking with you today, I have been trying to discover how important it might be to you to have a stretch of time set aside for your writing. I wanted to know whether writing was a hobby you did for extra money and interest, or whether it was something you felt bound to do, despite the obstacles, and had considered rationally. Reading your material has convinced me you have the necessary skills to produce something well worth my publishing in time, if that is what you want. Talking with you, I realise you do take your writing very seriously. You have the intelligence, the talent and the commitment. There may be a market for your work in the future. You haven’t worked hard enough yet to produce something polished and unique, and sellable, but you may well do. And I hate to see talent wasted as much as anyone.”

  This prompted me to react. “A stretch of time? Are you offering—?” I did not dare say what. I broke off.

  “Exactly,” he said, very calm. “A stipend.”

  He stood up, walked over to the fireplace, and leant against the mantelpiece, below the looming portrait of his mother. The unsolved mysteries of the afternoon returned out of a foggy haze into sharper relief. What had this to do with Monique and her sculptures? This must form part of the solution. The trapped fly buzzed past me and, fortuitously, out of the door.

  “A kind of conceptual stipend,” he continued. “A contract. I want something from you and I can give you something in return that I think you will want. There are no strings attached.” He said these last words emphatically.

  No strings? And yet I felt caught in them, bound to the chair, pulled and twisted with thick cords.

  “First of all,” he continued, “I want to explain my position. I may have stalled earlier, and been guilty of hiding the truth from you, and in a way you are justified in being upset with me for the way I have … arranged things. But I felt I had to proceed very slowly, in case you assumed … in case you supposed I was behaving improperly. I don’t want to stand accused of suggesting anything improper. You may think that what I am about to say is a little strange, but so be it. I am not trying to … to use you.” He cleared his throat, looked at me thoughtfully, and then continued, “I wanted you to come to the house, to see the photograph, to see the sculpture, and to meet Monique. Perhaps, since you have met her now, I should explain about Monique first.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Well, it’s quite simple really. Monique has duties here. She does occasional cooking. She deals with the gardener and the various other employees. I needed someone to supervise the house and grounds since I’m mostly in London and time does not permit me to live in these genial surroundings.” There was a shade of a smile when he mentioned time. “Monique is a sort of personal assistant. If I am here and need a letter posted, she’ll do it. She’ll drive into Banbury for something. She does a number of different things.”

  “Like playing chess?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Quite. We share that interest.”

  And what else did she do?

  “So, in short,” he continued, “she has a definite role here, a valuable role.” A pause. “I
get a return from my investment.”

  “Investment?”

  “Yes. In marble.”

  “You pay?”

  “I pay for all her expenses, and for all her materials. As I believe I mentioned, the British public are not the greatest consumers of sculpture. A few years ago, after Mother died, I was in the position where I needed someone to live here and look after things, but I had great difficulty in attracting suitable candidates for the job. It seemed impossible to find anyone who would not use the house as a dance-hall, or steal. I wanted someone who could manage the place, someone trustworthy. Then, when I was in Paris for a week on business, I happened to be invited to the opening of an exhibition by three promising French sculptors, one of whom was Monique Martin. I met her there. She expressed an interest in coming to Britain. Her work until then was in plaster and sandstone, but she confessed how much she would love to work in marble, if and when she had the money, or a commission. There was something marvellously down to earth and solid about Monique, most unlike an artist, I suppose. When I returned to London, it struck me I could kill two birds with one stone, if you’ll pardon the pun. I managed to find her again, and invited her to look after Walton Hall in return for a modest wage, and all material paid for, even if it was marble. In return, too, I have the satisfaction of being a patron of the arts.”

  “But good marble must cost a fortune. You’ve been incredibly generous,” I said, in some disbelief.

  “I have great confidence in her. She’s already received promising commissions. I believe in patronage, actually. I consider it a responsibility of those like myself to be patrons of the arts. I have already provided stipends for students and various fellowship funds, but this is more direct, and personal. However, this arrangement will soon draw to a close. She wants to return to France next year. She’s homesick. A shame, really, as it has been working terribly well,” he said, smiling a little sadly. “Monique is very good at administering this estate. The only difficulty is with the gardener. He accuses her of all sorts of things.” He looked at me askance. He did not know what the gardener had told me. I guessed he may have said much more than he did. It was not just that she apparently stole his nuts and bolts. “But you know, there’s always been a certain hostility towards the French on the part of some Englishmen.”