by Tom Sharpe
‘Who?’ said Hutchmeyer suspiciously.
‘Corkadales.’
‘Corkadales bought it? The oldest publishing—’
‘Not the oldest. Murrays are older,’ said Sonia.
‘So, old. How much?’
‘Fifty thousand pounds,’ said Sonia glibly.
Hutchmeyer stared at her. ‘Corkadales paid fifty thousand pounds for this book? Fifty grand?’
‘Fifty grand. First time off. No hassle.’
‘I heard they were in trouble,’ said Hutchmeyer. ‘Some Arab bought them?’
‘No Arab. It’s a family firm. So Geoffrey Corkadale paid fifty grand. He knows this book is going to get them out of hock. You think they’d risk that sort of money if they were going to fold?’
‘Shit,’ said Hutchmeyer, ‘somebody’s got to have faith in this fucking book … but two million! No one’s ever paid two million for a novel. Robbins a million but …’
‘That’s the whole point, Hutch. You think I ask two million for nothing? Am I so dumb? Its the two million makes the book. You pay two million and people know, they’ve got to read the book to find out what you paid for. You know that. You’re in a class on your own. Way out in front. And then with the film …’
‘I’d want a cut of the film. No single-figure percentage. Fifty-fifty.’
‘Done,’ said Sonia. ‘You’ve got yourself a deal. Fifty-fifty on the film it is.’
‘The author … this Piper guy, I’d want him too,’ said Hutchmeyer.
‘Want him?’ said Sonia, sobering. ‘Want him for what?’
‘To market the product. He’s going to be out there up front where the public can see him. The guy who fucks the geriatrics. Public appearances across the States, signings, TV talk shows, interviews, the whole razzamattaz. We’ll build him up like he’s a genius.’
‘I don’t think he’s going to like that,’ said Sonia nervously, ‘he’s shy and reserved.’
‘Shy? He washes his jock in public and he’s shy?’ said Hutchmeyer. ‘For two million he’ll chew asses if I tell him.’
‘I doubt if he’d agree—’
‘Agree he will or there’s no deal,’ said Hutchmeyer. ‘I’m throwing my weight behind his book, he has to too. That’s final.’
‘Okay, if that’s the way you want it,’ said Sonia.
‘That’s the way I want it,’ said Hutchmeyer. ‘Like the way I want you …’
Sonia made her escape and hurried back to Lanyard Lane with the contract.
*
She found Frensic looking decidedly edgy. ‘Home and dry,’ she said, dancing heavily round the room.
‘Marvellous,’ said Frensic. ‘You are brilliant.’
Sonia stopped cavorting. ‘With a proviso.’
‘Proviso? What proviso?’
‘First the good news. He loves the book. He’s just wild about it.’
Frensic regarded her cautiously. ‘Isn’t he being a bit premature? He hasn’t had a chance to read the bloody thing yet.’
‘I told him about it … a synopsis and he loved it. He sees it as filling a much-needed gap.’
‘A much-needed gap?’
‘The generation gap. He feels—’
‘Spare me his feelings,’ said Frensic. ‘A man who can talk about filling much-needed gaps is deficient in ordinary human emotions.’
‘He thinks Pause will do for youth and age what Lolita did for …’
‘Parental responsibility?’ suggested Frensic.
‘For the middle-aged man,’ said Sonia.
‘For God’s sake, if this is the good news can leprosy be far behind?’
Sonia sank into a chair and smiled. ‘Wait till you hear the price.’
Frensic waited. ‘Well?’
‘Two million.’
‘Two million?’ said Frensic trying to keep the quaver out of his voice. ‘Pounds or dollars?’
Sonia looked at him reproachfully. ‘Frenzy, you are a bastard, an ungrateful bastard. I pull off—’
‘My dear, I was merely trying to ascertain the likely extent of the horrors you are about to reveal to me. You spoke of a proviso. Now if your friend from the Mafia had been prepared to pay two million pounds for this verbal hogwash I would have known the time had come to pack up and leave town. What does the swine want?’
‘One, he wants to see the Corkadales contract.’
‘That’s all right. There’s nothing wrong with it.’
‘Just that it doesn’t mention the sum of fifty thousand pounds Corkadales have paid for Pause,’ said Sonia. ‘Otherwise it’s just dandy.’
Frensic gaped at her. ‘Fifty thousand pounds? They didn’t pay—’
‘Hutchmeyer needed impressing so I said …’
‘He needs his head read. Corkadales haven’t fifty thousand pennies to rub together, let alone pounds.’
‘Right. Which he knew. So I told him Geoffrey had staked his personal fortune. Now you know why he wants to see the contract.’
Frensic rubbed his forehead and thought. ‘I suppose we could always draw up a new contract and get Geoffrey to sign it pro tem and tear it up when Hutchmeyer’s seen it,’ he said at last. ‘Geoffrey won’t like it but with his cut of two million … What’s the next problem?’
Sonia hesitated. ‘This one you won’t like. He insists, but insists, that the author goes to the States for a promotional tour. Senior-citizens-I-have-loved sort of stuff on TV and signings.’
Frensic took out his handkerchief and wiped his face. ‘Insists?’ he spluttered. ‘He can’t insist. We’ve got an author who won’t even sign his name to a contract, let alone appear in public, some madman with agoraphobia or its equivalent and Hutchmeyer wants him to parade round America appearing on TV?’
‘Insists, Frenzy, insists. Not wants. Either the author goes or the deal is off.’
‘Then it’s off,’ said Frensic. ‘The man won’t go. You heard what Cadwalladine said. Total anonymity.’
‘Not even for two million?’
Frensic shook his head. ‘I told Cadwalladine we were going to ask for a large sum and he said money didn’t count.’
‘But two million isn’t money. It’s a fortune.’
‘I know it is, but …’
‘Try Cadwalladine again,’ said Sonia and handed him the phone. Frensic tried again. At length. Mr Cadwalladine was emphatic. Two million dollars was a fortune but his instructions were that his client’s anonymity meant more to him than mere …
It was a dispiriting conversation for Frensic.
‘What did I tell you,’ he said when he had finished. ‘We’re dealing with some sort of lunatic. Two lunatics. Hutchmeyer being the other.’
‘So we’re just going to sit back and watch twenty per cent of two million dollars disappear down the plughole and do nothing about it?’ said Sonia. Frensic stared miserably across the roofs of Covent Garden and sighed. Twenty per cent of two million came to four hundred thousand dollars, over two hundred thousand pounds. That would have been their commission on the sale. And thanks to James Jamesforth’s libel action they had just lost two more valuable authors.
‘There must be some way of fixing this,’ he muttered. ‘Hutchmeyer doesn’t know who the author is any more than we do.’
‘He does too,’ said Sonia. ‘It’s Peter Piper. His name’s on the title page.’
Frensic looked at her with new appreciation. ‘Peter Piper,’ he murmured, ‘now there’s a thought.’
They closed the office for the night and went down to the pub across the road for a drink.
‘Now if there were some way we could persuade Piper to act as understudy …’ said Frensic after a large whisky.
‘And after all it would be one way of getting his name into print,’ said Sonia. ‘If the book sells …’
‘Oh it will sell all right. With Hutchmeyer anything sells.’
‘Well then, Piper would have got his foot in the publishing door and perhaps we could get someone to ghost Search for him
.’
Frensic shook his head. ‘He’d never stand for that. Piper has principles I’m afraid. On the other hand, if Geoffrey could be persuaded to agree to publish Search for a Lost Childhood as part of the present contract … I’m seeing him tonight. He’s holding one of his little suppers. Yes, I think we may be on to something. Piper would do almost anything to get into print and a trip to the States with all expenses paid … I think we’ll drink to that.’
‘Anything is worth trying,’ said Sonia. And that night before setting out for Corkadales Frensic returned to the office and drew up two new contracts. One by which Corkadales agreed to pay fifty thousand for Pause O Men for the Virgin and the second guaranteeing the publication of Mr Piper’s subsequent novel, Search for a Lost Childhood. The advance on it was five hundred pounds.
‘After all, it’s worth the gamble,’ said Frensic as he and Sonia locked the office again, ‘and I’m prepared to put up five hundred of our money if Geoffrey won’t play ball on the advance to Piper. The main thing is to get a copperbottomed guarantee that they will publish Search.’
‘Geoffrey has ten per cent of two million at stake too,’ said Sonia as they separated. ‘I should have thought that would be a persuasive arguement.’
‘I shall do my level best,’ said Frensic as he hailed a taxi.
*
Geoffrey Corkadale’s little suppers were what Frensic in a bitchy moment had once called badinageries. One stood around with a drink, later with a plate of cold buffet, and spoke lightly and allusively of books, plays and personalities, few of which one had read, seen or known but which served to provide a catalyst for those epicene encounters which were the real purpose of Geoffrey’s little suppers. On the whole Frensic tended to avoid them as frivolous and a little dangerous. They were too androgynous for comfort and besides he disliked running the risk of being discovered talking glibly on a subject he knew absolutely nothing about. He had done that too often as an undergraduate to relish the prospect of continuing it into later life. And the very fact that there were never any women of marriageable propensity, they were either too old or unidentifiable – Frensic had once made a pass at an eminent theatre critic with horrifying consequences – tended to put him off. He preferred parties where there was just the faintest chance that he would meet someone who would make him a wife and at Geoffrey’s gatherings the expression was taken literally. And so Frensic usually avoided them and confined his sex life to occasional desultory affairs with women sufficiently in their prime not to resent his lack of passion or charm, and to passionate feelings for young women on tube trains, which feelings he was incapable of expressing between Hampstead and Leicester Square. But this evening he came with a purpose, only to find that the rooms were crowded. Frensic poured himself a drink and mingled in the hope of cornering Geoffrey. It took some time. Geoffrey’s elevation to the head of Corkadales lent him an appeal he had previously lacked and Frensic found himself subjected to a scrutiny of his opinion of The Prancing Nigger by a poet from Tobago who confessed that he found Firbank both divine and offensive. Frensic said those were his feelings too but that Firbank had been remarkably seminal, and it was only after an hour and by the unintentional stratagem of locking himself in the bathroom that he managed to corner Geoffrey.
‘My dear, you are too unkind,’ said Geoffrey when Frensic, after hammering on the door, finally freed himself with the help of a jar of skin cleanser. ‘You should know we never lock the boys’ room. It’s so unspontaneous. The chance encounter …’
‘This isn’t a chance encounter,’ said Frensic, dragging Geoffrey in and shutting the door again. ‘I want a word with you. It’s important.’
‘Just don’t lock it again … oh my God! Sven is obsessively jealous. He goes absolutely berserk. It’s his Viking blood.’
‘Never mind that,’ said Frensic, ‘we’ve had Hutchmeyer’s offer. It’s substantial.’
‘Oh God, business,’ said Geoffrey, subsiding on to the lavatory seat. ‘How substantial?’
‘Two million dollars,’ said Frensic.
Geoffrey clutched at the toilet roll for support. ‘Two million dollars?’ he said weakly. ‘You really mean two million dollars? You’re not pulling my leg?’
‘Absolute fact,’ said Frensic.
‘But that’s magnificent! How wonderful. You darling—’
Frensic pushed him roughly back on the seat. ‘There’s a snag. Two snags, to be precise.’
‘Snags? Why must there always be snags? As if life wasn’t complicated enough without snags.’
‘We had to impress him with the amount you paid for the book,’ said Frensic.
‘But I hardly paid anything. In fact …’
‘Exactly, but we have had to tell him you paid fifty thousand pounds in advance and he wants to see the contract.’
‘Fifty thousand pounds? My dear chap, we couldn’t—’
‘Quite,’ said Frensic, ‘you don’t have to explain your financial situation to me. You’re in … you’ve got a cash flow problem.’
‘To put it mildly,’ said Geoffrey, twisting a strand of toilet paper between his fingers.
‘Which Hutchmeyer is aware of, which is why he wants to see the contract.’
‘But what good is that going to do? The contract says …’
‘I have here,’ said Frensic fishing in his pocket, ‘another contract which will do some good and reassure Hutchmeyer. It says you agree to pay fifty thousand …’
‘Hang on a moment,’ said Geoffrey, getting to his feet, ‘if you think I’m going to sign a contract that says I’m going to pay you fifty thousand quid you’re labouring under a misapprehension. I may not be a financial wizard but I can see this one coming.’
‘All right,’ said Frensic huffily and folded the contract, ‘if that’s the way you feel about it bang goes the deal.’
‘What deal? You’ve already signed the contract for us to publish the novel.’
‘Not your deal. Hutchmeyer’s. And with it goes your ten per cent of two million dollars. Now if you want …’
Geoffrey sat down again. ‘You really mean it, don’t you?’ he said at last.
‘Every word,’ said Frensic.
‘And you really promise that Hutchmeyer has agreed to pay this incredible sum?’
‘My word,’ said Frensic with as much dignity as the bathroom allowed, ‘is my bond.’
Geoffrey looked at him sceptically. ‘If what James Jamesforth says is … All right. I’m sorry. It’s just that this has come as a terrible shock. What do you want me to do?’
‘Just sign this contract and I’ll write out a personal IOU for fifty thousand pounds. That ought to be a guarantee …’
They were interrupted by someone hammering on the door. ‘Come out of there,’ shouted a Scandinavian voice, ‘I know what you’re doing!’
‘Oh Christ, Sven,’ said Geoffrey and struggled with the lock. ‘Calm yourself, dearest,’ he called, ‘we were just discussing business.’
Behind him Frensic prudently armed himself with a lavatory brush.
‘Business,’ yelled the Swede, ‘I know your business …’
The door sprang open and Sven glared wild-eyed into the bathroom.
‘What is he doing with that brush?’
‘Now, Sven dear, do be reasonable,’ said Geoffrey. But Sven hovered between tears and violence.
‘How could you, Geoffrey, how could you?’
‘He didn’t,’ said Frensic vehemently.
The Swede looked him up and down. ‘And with such a horrid baggy little man too.’
It was Frensic’s turn to look wild-eyed. ‘Baggy I may be,’ he shouted, ‘but horrid I am not.’
There was a moment’s scuffle and Geoffrey urged the sobbing Sven down the passage. Frensic put his weapon back in its holder and sat on the edge of the bath. By the time Geoffrey returned he had devised new tactics.
‘Where were we?’ asked Geoffrey.
‘Your petit ami was calling me a horrid
baggy little man,’ said Frensic.
‘My dear, I’m so sorry but really you can count yourself lucky. Last week he actually struck someone and all the poor man had come to do was mend the bidet.’
‘Now about this contract. I’m prepared to make a further concession,’ said Frensic. ‘You can have Piper’s second book, Search for a Lost Childhood, for a thousand pounds advance …’
‘His next novel? You mean he’s working on another?’
‘Almost finished it,’ said Frensic. ‘Much better than Pause. Now you can have it for practically nothing just so long as you sign this contract for Hutchmeyer.’
‘Oh all right,’ said Geoffrey, ‘I’ll just have to trust you.’
‘If you don’t get it back within the week to tear up you can go to Hutchmeyer and tell him it’s a fraud,’ said Frensic. ‘That’s your guarantee.’
And so in the bathroom of Geoffrey Corkadale’s house the two contracts were signed. Frensic staggered home exhausted and next morning Sonia showed Hutchmeyer the Corkadale contract. The deal was on.
4
In the Gleneagle Guest House in Exforth Peter Piper’s nib described neat black circles and loops on the forty-fifth page of his notebook. Next door Mrs Oakley’s vacuum cleaner roared back and forth making it difficult for Piper to concentrate on this his eighth version of his autobiographical novel. The fact that his new attempt was modelled on The Magic Mountain did not help. Thomas Mann’s tendency to build complex sentences and to elaborate his ironic perceptions with a multitude of exact details did not transfer at all easily to a description of family life in Finchley in 1953 but Piper persisted with the task. It was, he knew, the hallmark of genius to persist and he knew just as certainly that he had genius. Unrecognized genius to be sure but one day, thanks to his capacity for taking infinite pains, the world would acclaim it. And so, in spite of the vacuum cleaner and the cold wind blowing from the sea through the cracks in the window, he wrote.
Around him on the table were the tools of his trade. A notebook in which he put down ideas and phrases which might come in handy, a diary in which he recorded his deepest insights into the nature of existence and a list of each day’s activities, a tray of fountain pens and a bottle of partially evaporated black ink. The latter was Piper’s own invention. Since he was writing for posterity it was essential that what he wrote should last indefinitely and without fading. For a while he had imitated Kipling in the use of Indian ink but it tended to clog his pen and to dry before he could even write one word. The accidental discovery that a bottle of Waterman’s Midnight Black left open in a dry room acquired a density surpassing Indian ink while still remaining sufficiently fluid to enable him to write an entire sentence without recourse to his handkerchief had led to his use of evaporated ink. It gleamed on the page with a patina that gave substance to his words, and to ensure that his work had infinite longevity he bought leatherbound ledgers, normally used by old-fashioned firms of accountants or solicitors, and ignoring their various vertical lines, wrote his novels in them. By the time he had filled a ledger it was in its own way a work of art. Piper’s handwriting was small and extremely regular and flowed for page after page with hardly a break. Since there was very little convention in any of his novels, and that only of the meaningful and significant kind requiring long sentences, there were very few pages with broken lines or unfilled spaces. And Piper kept his ledgers. One day, perhaps when he was dead, certainly when his genius was recognized, scholars would trace the course of his development through these encrusted pages. Posterity was not to be ignored.