The nudists, p.15
The Nudists, page 15
It seemed to Venables that she had more virtues than even he had imagined. Her only vice was failing to see any virtue in him.
“I made that decision on our honeymoon in Greece,” she said, standing up. “We spent it in an hotel called the Panoramic. Everybody called it the Ram and Panic.” She laughed at the memory.
“Your honeymoon is at the top of a long list of things I don’t want to hear about,” said Venables, guiding her to the exit. Crowds were waiting for the tickets of early leavers, so that they could see the last hour cheaply.
Across the road an entire golf course was being used as a car park. They walked across the grass as Pym tried to remember where she had left her car. In huge marquees on this side of the road caterers hired by giant corporations served expensive food to business guests who often finished up watching the tennis on television in the marquee rather than stumble across the road to see it in the flesh.
Pym’s yellow Golf was several hundred yards from where she thought she had left it. She unlocked the driver’s door and threw her handbag on to the passenger seat.
“Do you want a lift?” she asked.
“No. It’s a short walk. Why did you marry him, Pym?”
“He asked me. I loved him. We were fun together.”
The reply relieved him. It was all in the past tense.
“Thanks, Simon, for … a memorable day.”
She smiled up from the car.
“Kiss?” he suggested.
She shook her head. “I don’t think we should, do you?” She slammed the door, but wound the window down a few inches. He leaned towards the opening that she had created.
“Won’t you throw a crust to a starving man, lady?”
“Not if his wife owns a sandwich bar.”
EIGHT
The day that Nick Bannerman always remembered arrived with a broiling sun in the first week of July. At this time of the year, encouraged by the bright light, he would leave his bed a full hour earlier than in the long, dark days of winter, and now that the desk-bound marathon was behind him he increased his jogging to a two-mile run before breakfast. In a day devoid of work, this breathless exertion seemed to appease those gods who demand that all of us each day must suffer a little, and Nick was able to face his first meal with the satisfaction that other men experienced after eight hours of hard but successful toil.
On this morning, however, he had only just broken into a trot when he was confronted by the postman who handed him a letter. It was a large, white envelope that was unmistakably more important than his usual mail, and turning it over he saw printed in raised blue letters the name and address of the publisher to whom, only three weeks previously, he had dispatched his bilious epic. His heart began to pound as if he had indeed completed his run – what was supposed to arrive in the post at this stage was a large brown parcel containing his own rejected manuscript. He sprinted back to the flat and sliced the envelope open with his kitchen scissors. Then he sat himself comfortably at his desk and, not familiar with the succinct missives of busy publishers, prepared himself for a long, literary discussion about the merits of his work.
“Dear Mr Bannerman,” he read. “We are interested in publishing Battered Husbands. Can you ring me? Yours sincerely, Theo Benson.”
Feeling an elation that actually made him lightheaded, he reached for his phone and was half-way through dialling the number before he realised that it was not yet half-past seven. He abandoned the phone and re-read the letter several times, searching for hidden meanings in its choice of words. He settled on the phrase “interested in publishing”, and worried at it while he waited for the world to start work. Did it mean they might not publish it? What did it depend on? His appearance? His suitability for a chat show? His price?
He put the letter down and made tea. He had a strong urge to ring the Brocks but a native superstition decided him to delay the celebrations until a contract had been signed. He rang Theo Benson at half-past eight, nine o’clock and half-past nine, but there was no reply. At five past ten he established contact and an hour later he was on a train to London. He bought The Times to calm himself down, but the only item to hold his restless mind was the discovery by excited palaeontologists in Ethiopia of the fossilised remains not of a yeti, as he had hoped, but of man’s oldest direct ancestor, a four-foot-tall creature who walked upright four million years ago. It did not seem to Nick, given the timespan, that man’s progress since had been as sensational as man liked to imagine, an impression reinforced when the train broke down, holding them up for half an hour.
A taxi took him to Bloomsbury, an area he had become familiar with when he first left home. In this quiet hinterland, between the museum and the zoo, publishers squabbled over manuscripts like chickens over corn. He found his in a splendid Regency house that looked more like a rich man’s home than an office. Across the road, in an identical building, was another even more famous publisher.
Theo Benson looked as if he had been kept alive in the Kremlin hospital’s reanimation unit. His dark eyes stared from a cadaverous head, and his body twitched. He worked in a surprisingly cramped room, the walls of which were totally covered in books. Glancing fascinated at the names of the famous authors on the spines, Nick realised that all of these literary lions had been dead for some time.
“I very much enjoyed your philippic, Mr Bannerman,” he said. He was an old man in a black suit. “Do sit down.”
Nick sank into a leather chair and looked across a cluttered antique desk at Mr Benson. “Do you think it’s going to change any attitudes?” he remarked conversationally.
Mr Benson twitched and shook his head. “In my experience neither books nor newspapers have any effect on anybody.”
“Isn’t that rather pessimistic, coming from a publisher?” Nick asked with what was meant to be a smile.
Mr Benson stared back. “In a conservative country like Britain it takes twenty years to get an idea into our heads and a hundred years to get it out. I’ve no illusions. Tell me about yourself, Mr Bannerman. How old are you? What do you do?”
“I’m thirty. I write. Freelance journalism, that sort of thing.”
“Have you plans for other books? If we launch a new writer we like to know that he’s not just a one-book man. Names catch on slowly in this business.”
“I’m planning a novel. Called Memoirs of a Streaker.”
Mr Benson managed to conceal his enthusiasm for this project. “A novel?” he said, staring at the ceiling and twitching.
Nick’s elation had now gone. He did not like this room or this conversation. He was not sure that he liked Mr Benson.
“You see,” said the old man, “what you have written is non-fiction. Didactic, readable, a certain mordant wit. But non-fiction.”
“I don’t see your point, Mr Benson,” said Nick, feeling a growing impatience. “All the other writers seem to do fiction and non-fiction. Orwell, Greene, Hemingway.”
“Not any more they don’t,” said Mr Benson. “Have you got an agent?”
Nick shook his head. “Do I need one?”
“It’s a matter for you. Well, look. I’d like to publish Battered Husbands. I believe it will cause a stir. What I propose is an advance of five hundred pounds, half payable now and half on publication, and then the usual royalties on sales.”
“Five hundred pounds?” said Nick, feeling sick. “I can earn that in two days.”
“I’m sure we’d sell the paperback rights and that would provide your major source of money later. You would get sixty per cent of the paperback money.”
“Where does the other forty per cent go?”
“We get that. It’s standard practice in publishing, Mr Bannerman.”
“How many copies would you print in hardback?”
“Fifteen hundred.”
“Fifteen hundred?” said Nick, standing up. “I think I’m in the wrong office, Mr Benson.” He reached over and picked up his manuscript. “I’m going to try the firm over the road.”
Amazed and frightened by his own temerity, he walked out of the room. Was he turning down publishers already?
As the door shut, Theo Benson picked up his phone and dialled a number.
“Give me Arthur Scott,” he said. There was a pause. “Arthur? Theo. You were reminding me the other day that I owe you a favour. I’m about to repay it. There’s a temperamental young man called Bannerman heading in your direction. He’s got a certain bestseller under his arm. Be nice to him.”
Nick was so surprised by the cordial reception he received from the second publisher that he would probably have signed away his book for an advance of £5.
“Mr Bannerman?” said the girl at reception, as if she was expecting him. “Our editorial director, Arthur Scott, will see you now.” She left her desk to guide him up the stairs. A door at the top opened and Arthur Scott came out with a pretty dark-skinned girl. He shook her hand and said: “You’ll have the dust jacket next week.” He turned and gripped Nick’s hand. “Mr Bannerman. Do come in.” He shut the door behind them and pointed to an armchair. “Do sit down. Marvellous girl, that. Hitch-hiked to India and got gang-banged in the mountains by some trachoma-ridden Kurds. It’s going to make a wonderful book. Would you like a coffee, or something stronger?”
Arthur Scott was in his thirties. He had a small, pleasant face and receding hair, and he had a quiet, cultured voice. Nick was thrown by the contrast between this office and the last. Although their exteriors were identical, Arthur Scott’s firm had torn the inside of this one apart and built a 1980s office in a Regency shell. The walls were lined not with books but with bulletin boards, posters and press cuttings. “A coffee would be nice,” Nick said.
Arthur Scott sent this message into an intercom and, ignoring his high-back swivel chair, perched himself on the corner of the desk. He was wearing jeans and a dusty-pink cotton-voile shirt with rolled-up sleeves.
“You’ve written a book,” he said. “I can tell by the manuscript on your lap.”
Nick gathered it up and handed it across. “I would like you to publish it,” he said.
“Battered Husbands,” read Arthur Scott. “I like the title already. What’s it about? No, don’t tell me. I’ll read it.”
“It’s a male answer to the feminist movement,” Nick said.
“Is it?” said Arthur Scott. “Is it really? I was only saying yesterday that there is a gap in the market there. I’m excited.”
“If you’re excited, I’m excited,” said Nick. “The man over the road offered me a five hundred pounds advance.”
“Theo? I’m afraid they haven’t quit the nineteenth century yet. All their authors are dead.”
“I noticed.”
“They haven’t. I’ll give you a five thousand advance and make sure it’s sold in the States. But I’d better read it first.”
“How long will that take you?”
“When I ring you tomorrow I’ll have read it. Let me have your number.”
A girl came in with the coffee. As he drank it, Nick studied the posters on the wall, each of them featuring an author and a book. All the authors, according to the newspapers that Nick had read, were millionaires, all the books bestsellers in several countries. It seemed to him that he was sitting in the right office.
He was dreaming about a poster that featured his own face and his own book when the telephone rang the following morning. It was seven o’clock.
“I hope I didn’t wake you?” Arthur Scott’s voice said. “I’ve been up all night reading your book, Mr Bannerman, or may I call you Nick?”
“Please do,” said Nick, waking quickly. “Did you really stay up all night?”
“Work comes first with us, Nick. That’s why we get the bestsellers the others miss. Your book is tremendous and the potential is frightening. I see it as being big on both sides of the Atlantic. It’ll be the vade-mecum of demoralised family men, the bible of defeated males everywhere.”
“I like what you’re saying, Mr Scott.”
“Arthur, Nick. Listen, I’ll print twenty thousand copies, and fix a deal in the States. Have you got a carbon?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s have it. I’ll put a contract in the post this morning. Read it and ring me with any questions. I’ll pay you the five thousand I promised, half on signature, half on publication.”
“When would that be? Publication, I mean.”
“I was thinking about that as dawn crept over West Hampstead. It normally takes a year to bring out a book, but yours has a topicality which makes it urgent. We could do it in the autumn and catch the Christmas market.”
“The sooner the better,” said Nick.
“I shall aim for October. We could just do it in three months. When you’ve signed the contract, bring it in with your carbon copy and I’ll take you out to lunch.”
“Thanks.”
“Not at all – and congratulations.”
Nick put the phone down. It took all his concentration to keep the tears from his eyes.
The blacker his future looked, the more determinedly Ben Brock pursued the life of a millionaire. To start trimming at the edges of his extravagant lifestyle now would somehow be an admission of defeat, a tacit encouragement to the fates who plotted against him, a conscious acknowledgement that he was on the skids. Breakfast on the patio today was only scrambled eggs and grilled bacon, but it was accompanied by what Ben regarded as the ultimate early-morning luxury: freshly squeezed Spanish oranges and a bottle of Dom Perignon. He sat in the sun watching a blue tit land precariously on a swinging cage of peanuts that hung from a beam above his head.
“This is the way to live,” he said.
“But can we afford it?” Pym asked, guiding scrambled eggs to her son’s reluctant mouth. “What’s happening, Ben? Is it going to be all right?”
“The prognosis ain’t that delightful.”
“What does that mean?”
Ben drank Buck’s Fizz. No husband was less communicative on the subject of his work. He had once had fancy ideas about keeping his family and his firm in separate compartments.
“No one will buy it,” he said.
“Buy what?”
“The agency.”
“You’re selling up?” Pym was surprised.
“I’m trying to sell, aren’t I, Greg? But no bugger wants to buy it. Not that I blame them. It’s a long time since we had good news.”
“Isn’t this just one of those bad patches that you will pull through?”
“Not with this government in power for the next ten years, and I think the Falklands is going to set them up for a long innings. They’ve got a thing about public expenditure. That means the Health Service. That means drugs. That means me.”
“Get out of pharmaceuticals.”
“We’ve tried. We haven’t won a single account. All our eggs-pertise is in one basket.” He poured some more Buck’s Fizz. “The Health Service has made me a millionaire. It’s not exactly what Aneurin Bevan intended.”
“Ben, there must be somebody who would buy the agency.”
“What would they be buying, Pym? The last seven years of a lease in Chelsea.”
“What’s going to happen then?”
“I don’t know.” He looked at the immaculate lawn that rolled down to the cross-shaped pool and at the new tennis court beyond and wondered whether he could hang on to them. But he was saved from further contemplation of the possible horrors in store by the arrival of a wild, singing, dancing figure on the patio.
“I’ve made it! I’ve done it! I’m rich!” he shouted.
Pym stood up. “Good morning, Nick.”
“What’s he on about?” asked Ben. “Has he been sniffing glue?”
“The book,” sang Nick. “It’s going to be published!”
“It’s not!” said Ben, leaping up. He had got used to the idea of Nick writing a book. Nearly everyone he knew was writing a book. The thought that Nick’s would actually be published had never occurred to him. “Who’s doing it?”
Nick whispered the publisher’s name in reverential tones.
“They’re great,” said Ben, deeply impressed. “In fact, the best.”
“That’s wonderful, Nick,” Pym said. “You may kiss me.”
“You can’t kiss me,” said Ben. “But you can help me to drink this champagne.”
“Quite right,” said Nick. “In the old days when I was poor I used to have a cup of tea for breakfast.”
“When did you hear?” Ben asked him.
“About five minutes ago on the phone. This man stayed up all last night reading it. He says he will get it published in America. You heard of America?”
“The land of the topless shoeshine?”
“They also invented the brash, ball-kicking wife. The book should go down like a bucket of cold vomit over there.”
“Perhaps it will help to liberate the ulcer-ridden American male,” said Ben. “Actually, I’m not too sure about America. Any country that was carrying out public executions as recently as 1936 and could bring itself to elect Eisenhower rather than Stevenson, and Nixon in preference to Humphrey can’t be all good.”
“I won’t hear a word against them,” said Nick. “That vast, literate country, thirsty for ideas, with its educated millions who actually read books without their lips moving! I shall probably have to tour the country and plug my work in obscure television stations …”
“Before having your balls cut off and rammed down your throat by the Sisters of Feminist Advance, Alabama chapter.”
“On second thoughts, I may make a video here and send it over instead.”
“Harangue them in your absence,” said Ben. “Much safer.” He stood up. “Well, congratulations, Nick. I’m really delighted for you. But I have to go to work. I’m sure Pym will find some scrambled eggs for a famous author.”
Nick played with Greg on the patio while Pym cooked him breakfast. She returned with a plate of eggs and bacon and, as she bent over, he saw her eye.
“What happened?” he asked, pointing at a bruise.
“A little keepsake from Ben. I went to Wimbledon with Simon and he didn’t like it.”
