I now sat looking out of the window and for a moment I wished I had someone to talk to, to tell of my excitement. But there was no-one, not even Hamilton. Now that was very strange, but since the reformation had begun on me I hadn’t seen him. I’d talked to him a number of times, but he hadn’t materialised. I wondered why.
When, sometime later, the door was pulled open, I started and looked at the attendant who smiled and said, ‘Would you like breakfast, madam?’
Breakfast? Breakfast on a train? I had ten pounds in my pocket. I’d borrowed that from Gran. ‘Yes, I would like breakfast. Thank you, yes.’
‘Whenever you’re ready, madam.’
The door closed. Whenever you’re ready, madam. This was a different kind of life. This must happen every morning to somebody. That man would say, Would you like breakfast, madam? Would you like breakfast, sir?
I waited five minutes before I walked along the swaying train and entered the dining car. Only one other passenger was seated at the tables, and he was at the far end reading a paper. I took the first seat I came to, and almost immediately the nice attendant came and hovered over me. ‘What would madam like: kippers? bacon, egg and sausages? boiled egg? poached egg?’
‘I’ll have bacon, egg and sausage, please.’
‘And to begin with, cereals? orange juice?’
‘Yes, yes.’ I said yes to everything.
I’d never enjoyed a meal like it in my life. At one point, when the train was rocking, I couldn’t get the cup of coffee to my lips and I started to shake inside with laughing.
Oh, Hamilton, Hamilton, what a beginning to a day. I looked along the car, expecting him to come galloping towards me and laughing his head off. But there was no sign of him. For a moment, I felt suddenly empty …
The train had filled up by now, and I sat in the compartment with five other people, and no-one spoke to anyone. But that suited me; I wouldn’t have known what to say anyway. Yet, I was bursting inside, shouting inside: I’ve written a book and it’s going to be published; it’s about me talking to a horse. At one point, I wondered what would have happened if I had yelled out in my excitement. Somebody would have undoubtedly pulled the communication cord and I would never have reached Houseman and Rington …
King’s Cross station was a maze, which made me feel dizzy. Just follow the crowd, I told myself, and you’ll get out of it. And I did. I’d thought I’d take a bus to the publishers. But where was it? And where would I get a bus?
I next found myself standing in a taxi queue, and when my turn came, and before I got in, I politely said to the taxi driver, ‘Do you know where 42 Chapman’s Yard is, please?’ And he answered just as politely but with a streak of something in it that I couldn’t put a name to, except perhaps patience, ‘Miss, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be sitting here. Get in.’ He hadn’t sounded nasty.
What had I expected from this address, Chapman’s Yard? It didn’t sound a very classy place, but here I was now, standing in a sort of courtyard of cobbled stones, and around it were a number of tall houses. They didn’t look at all like offices, but each house, I noticed, had a big brass plate outside. I walked towards one. It said, thirty-two. I walked to the next one. It said, forty-two. It had jumped ten. But underneath the forty-two I read the magic name of Houseman and Rington, Publishers. I went through a glass door and into a small hall where, behind a glass panel, a young girl sat typing.
Catching her attention, I said, ‘I’m Miss Carter. I have an appointment.’
‘Oh, yes, he is expecting you.’ She smiled pleasantly. ‘Just go straight up…The top floor, first door. I’ll let him know you’ve arrived.’
Inside, the place was like an ordinary house. I went up four flights of stairs and the treads were brass bound and my high heels caught against them, click, click, click, click. On the fourth floor, there was a widish landing and off it went four doors. I made for the first one, knocked, and when a voice said, ‘Come in,’ I opened the door, and a man rose from behind a desk and came towards me, his hand outstretched, saying, ‘Miss Carter. I’m very pleased to meet you.’
‘How do you do?’
‘Have you had a good journey?’
‘Yes, very pleasant, thank you.’
‘Do take a seat. What would you like, a cup of coffee? Or would you rather wait and have a drink before lunch?’
A drink before lunch. They were going to give me lunch. ‘I’ll…I’ll wait. It isn’t long since I had a coffee on the train.’
‘Well…well, now, I am so pleased to meet you at last.’
It sounded as if he had been trying to get in contact with me for years. I looked him over. He was tall, well built, rather florid, sixty I would say, very well groomed, and once must have been very good-looking.
He went behind the desk again, pressed a button, then spoke down to something on his desk, saying, ‘Tell Mr Rington and Mr Leviston to come in for a moment, will you, please?’
He turned to me now, saying, ‘These are the other directors. They would like to meet you; in fact, they must—’ he poked his head forward as he added, ‘for they’ll be working with you.’ There followed a short silence while we surveyed each other; then the door opened and Mr Houseman exclaimed, ‘Ah! Ah, Tom. Here is Miss Carter.’
I saw that Mr Rington appeared a little younger than Mr Houseman and was of quite different stature, being of medium height and plump, with a longish face that bore a serious expression. As we shook hands he bent towards me in a courtly manner, saying, ‘I am most pleased to meet you, Miss Carter.’
‘How do you do?’
‘Ah, here’s Nardy.’ Mr Houseman turned again towards the door through which was entering a small man. Well, he was small in comparison with the other two. And he was younger; I guessed in his middle forties, because his hair was going grey above his ears. I didn’t take much notice of his face at the time, only his eyes. They weren’t all that large, but they seemed to cover his face. I suppose it was their kindly expression.
‘Miss Carter.’ He held my hand and shook it up and down as he stared into my face, then said, ‘I’m delighted to meet you.’
When we were all seated, Mr Houseman smiled towards me in a benign way and, indicating Mr Leviston, he said, ‘You’d better not take a dislike to him, at least not right away, because it’s he you’ll see the most of, he being your editor.’
My editor. All this talk seemed to be floating around me. It wasn’t really being addressed to me, but to a sort of dream self. My feet weren’t on the ground; in fact the chair I was sitting on wasn’t on the floor. Mr Houseman was speaking again, saying, ‘It was Nardy. By the way that is short for Leonard; but I don’t know how Nardy came about, but Nardy it’s always been.’ The three men were laughing now, and when Mr Rington put in, ‘It should have been Narky,’ there was more laughter; and I accompanied it by smiling widely. They seemed to be on very good terms, these three, and they were all so gentlemanly. The whole thing didn’t seem real. And he went on, ‘It was Nardy who discovered you. He happened to glance through your manuscript, and that was that.’
‘I didn’t only glance—’ Mr Leviston was nodding at his partners now, and Mr Houseman answered, ‘No, from what you told us, you took it home and it kept you going till the early hours.’ He turned to me. ‘You have a keen sense of humour, Miss Carter. It’s very evident in your work. Have you been writing long?’
‘I…I’ve been scribbling for years, but nothing big like a book. It’s my first effort.’
‘Really!’ They were all nodding at me now, and Mr Houseman said, ‘Well, it certainly won’t be your last. It’s going to have a wide appeal, I think. Wouldn’t you say so, Tom?’
‘Yes, indeed, indeed. I thought it was very funny.’ Mr Rington’s serious expression moved into a smile. ‘The part where Rosie gets the mange, well, I’ve never laughed so much for a long time. And the cows and their udders!’
‘Oh, I thought the bit in the church with the priest capped that. Didn’t you think so
, Nardy?’
We were all looking at Mr Leviston now because he wasn’t smiling, and his head was moving slowly from side to side, and after a long pause, he said, ‘Those bits were funny, in a way, yes, but I…I didn’t find the book as a whole funny.’ He was now speaking directly to me. ‘I…I hope you don’t mind my saying this, Miss Carter, but I found it a rather sad book, full of pathos.’
I said nothing, but continued to look back at him.
‘You surprise me, Nardy.’ There was a stiff note in Mr Houseman’s voice now, and Mr Leviston turned to him quickly, saying, ‘Oh, some people may find it funny, Bernard, but what struck me forcibly was the pathos, the sadness of Rosie’s life, so lonely, so isolated that she had to create a horse for companionship and a sort of protection against her husband. But of course—’ he turned his eyes onto me again, saying softly now, ‘In Rosie, you have created a marvellous character. It isn’t often one can make a heroine out of a girl who is a bit, shall we say, gormless. Well, she must have been to be taken in by that brute of a man, and then to stay with him all those years. But of course there was the pull of the property, and so many women stick by such men just to keep a roof over their heads.’ He now glanced towards Mr Houseman as he ended, ‘You have only to read the daily papers.’
‘Yes, you’re right there, Nardy; and perhaps you’re right as you very often are in your summing up.’
Gormless! Must have been gormless to take on a man like that. But yes, yes, I had been gormless. I still was in a way. Did these gentlemen realise that I was sitting here with my mouth metaphorically so far open it had swallowed me …
‘What…? Oh, pardon.’
Before Mr Houseman could repeat what he had been saying Mr Leviston put in on a laugh, ‘That’s a habit that Rosie had in your story, saying what. It irritated the doctor. And you know, Miss Carter, it’s recognised the author puts quite a bit of himself over in his first novel.’
I looked at this kindly man because I recognised that he was a kindly man, and I answered him, ‘You’re quite right, it is a bad habit of mine, saying what.’
‘Not at all. How many of us go through life saying pardon, or excuse me …?’
‘Or, come again.’ Mr Rington’s face was bright now at his own quip, and once more there was laughter. But it was checked by Mr Houseman saying, ‘Well, time is going on and if you’ve got to get to the café, Nardy, you’ll soon have to be going. So, Miss Carter’—he inclined his head towards me—‘to business. Well now, we are prepared to offer you five hundred pounds advance on account of royalties on your novel, half to be paid on acceptance as now and the other half on publication. How does that appear to you?’
How did it appear to me? Five hundred pounds. I drew in a long breath prior to speaking, but no words came, and he went on, ‘Of course, there will be royalties. It all depends on how the book sells, and this kind of story, we think, will catch on. It could, if we are all very lucky, start a kind of series about Hamilton, because you make him more of a person than a horse; he is not just a talking animal in a Walt Disney film or a cartoon; I cannot describe exactly how I view Hamilton. So, what do you say, Miss Carter?’
What I said was simply, ‘Thank you.’
‘You’ll accept that?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Then the royalties. Shall we say ten percent on the first five thousand, twelve and a half percent on the next five thousand, and fifteen thereafter?’
It sounded like double Dutch to me, but I inclined my head in acceptance.
‘Well now—’ he lay back in his chair and smiled at me, saying, ‘that’s over. We’ll draw up a contract and send it to you. Now for the best part of the business, at least I always think it is. Lunch at the café.’
Lunch at a café. I was being taken to a café for lunch, not an hotel. Well, well. Mr Leviston now stood up, saying, ‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ and inclining his head towards me, he left the room.
Now Mr Rington shook me by the hand, saying, ‘I hope this is the beginning of a long association, Miss Carter.’ I mumbled something, and he too left the room.
Then Mr Houseman, coming round the desk once more, said, ‘We are always very excited when we spot new talent and of your particular type. And you know, Nardy is right, there is a great deal of pathos in your story. But then, the best stories in the world have been a mixture of humour and pathos. And by the way, I like your title. Titles are always very tricky things. We often have to discuss and discuss titles, because they are as important as the jackets. But you’ll come to that later on. Yet, I don’t think in this case we could have bettered Hamilton, just plain Hamilton. The only thing that might happen, as was pointed out at the committee meeting, is that it might be taken for Nelson’s lady, but as someone else remarked, not with a galloping horse in a bridal gown and wearing boots on the dust jacket.’
‘Are you going to make that the cover?’ My face and voice expressed my surprise.
‘Well, we’re seriously thinking about it.’
I laughed outright now; and at this moment Mr Leviston came back into the room. He was carrying a rolled umbrella and kid gloves. He looked very spruce and for a moment I felt dowdy, until I remembered that I had my new self on, right from my high heels to the top of my flat hair and, of course, my new hat with the cocky side. But that was another thing. Hardly any woman I’d seen in London so far was wearing a hat.
There was more handshaking, and then Mr Leviston led the way downstairs.
A taxi was waiting. ‘Café Royal, please,’ said Mr Leviston. Café Royal! Not just an ordinary café.
‘Do you know London at all, Miss Carter?’ said Mr Leviston, when he was seated next to me.
‘It is my first trip here.’
‘Really! Oh, then you have lots of surprises in store for you. But you can’t hope to see them in an hour or two.’
I was stunned into silence by the Café. It was evident that Mr Leviston was well known here. Before going into the dining room, we sat in a sort of lounge and he asked me what I would like to drink. When I hesitated, he said, ‘Sherry, or a long drink? Pimms?’
Oh yes, I’d like a long drink, I thought, so I replied, ‘Yes, thank you, Pimms.’
Pimms I found was very nice. It had fruit floating on the top. I’d never seen anything like it or tasted anything like it for a fruit drink. It took me some time to finish it, and when I did I felt warm inside, and for the first time in days, weeks, months, and, oh yes, years before that, I knew what it was to feel relaxed and to experience tenseness leaving my body …
In a long room that was all red plush, one of many waiters pulled out a chair for me to sit down. And I sat speechless, and felt even more so when I read the menu. Soup seemed the safest thing to start with. But no, no, this was a very, very, special day. Cocktail de Crevettes? That was a prawn cocktail. In plays on the television they usually started with prawn cocktails. Yes, I would have prawn cocktail…And what else?
Mr Leviston leant across the small table towards me from where he was sitting on what looked like a padded bench that went right along the room. Yet you couldn’t call it a bench because everything was so elegant. And he said, ‘The duck is very nice.’
‘It is?’
‘Yes. I can recommend it.’
‘Then I’ll have the duck.’ I smiled at him.
He, too, ordered duck, but started with smoked salmon, which I saw to my surprise was a large, pinkish, wafer-thin piece of fish on an equally large plate.
When the wine waiter came, Mr Leviston said to me, ‘Do you prefer sweet or medium? Ladies don’t often like a dry wine.’
I felt sophisticated; I said, ‘Medium, please.’
Steady, steady. I wasn’t used to drink. What if it got hold of me and I passed out. Don’t be silly. Don’t be silly. You can have one glass; and it’s different when you’re eating with it, at least so I understand.
I had two glasses. When, a long time later, which time seemed to have been filled up with
laughter, another waiter pushed a table towards us and began cooking pancakes which he then set alight with brandy, I knew that nothing more would surprise me. But something did.
The meal ended, the bill paid, our waiters all smiling, I stood up, and nearly toppled over. Mr Leviston, putting his hand out quickly, said, ‘It’s the chair.’ And his voice dropped lower. ‘Ladies’ vanity; high heels.’
What a nice man he was. What a nice man. But there was something wrong with my legs and my head. Was I drunk? No, no, of course not. On two glasses of wine and a thing called Pimms and some brandy sauce! Could one get drunk on that?
‘I will see you in the foyer.’ He took my arm and led me from the room. And did he point me in the way of the ladies? I’m not sure, but I found myself in that room being attended to by a very nice middle-aged woman. There was no-one else there, and I sat on a chair and she bent over me, saying, ‘It’s no good giving you a drink of water, it’ll only make things worse.’
‘I feel dizzy,’ I told her.
‘Well, love’—her face swam before me—‘it appears to me you mightn’t have had one over the eight but you’ve had two up to the seven.’ She sounded just like Gran, although her voice was different.
I nodded and smiled at her, saying candidly, ‘I’m not used to it.’
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