Think Yourself Lucky (4 page)

"Aren't you bothered by the competition?" another woman seemed to want him to confirm.

"You're just competing with the ruling class. Creativity has room for all of you. It's as big as your imagination."

When several people in the room full of mismatched chairs wrote down some of this a man said "Watch out, Mr Hall. They're pinching your ideas."

"You can't control an idea. You never know where one will end up. Just buy the books and that's reward enough for me."

"How do you get an agent?"

"Do you really want to give away a percentage of yourself? Maybe the electronic age will do away with that and publishers as well."

"You're published by one," a woman objected. "Don't writers need an editor?"

"Try thinking editing is bullying, just like criticism. And anybody saying you can't write, that's the worst kind. It's like gagging you, the way they used to do to women. Yes, lady at the back."

"When you read a book don't you criticise it in your head?"

"That's not the way to read a book. Read it for whatever you can take away from it. Send your mind places you didn't think it could go. If you can read a book you can write one. And if you can't read one you can still write."

Len Kinnear picked up a copy of Hall's latest novel from the trestle table loaded with his work. "I hope you'll all be buying this," he said and flourished it—
The Red and the Grey
, in which foreign squirrels united with the natives to defeat the disease that a government agency had created to discredit the immigrants. "I reckon we've all been inspired tonight. Let's do our best to measure up to Darius."

Hall met the applause with an oblique smile and a heavy-lidded blink and a deprecating shake of the head, and David felt worse than cynical for wondering if all this could be a response to Kinnear's last remark. Suppose Hall's advice was designed to ensure that no editor would help his rivals to improve? As David put the surely unworthy thought out of his mind Kinnear said "Start by remembering you're writers even if you don't think so. Maybe there's somebody that doesn't yet but should."

At first David was able to hope Kinnear didn't mean him—he wouldn't have been there if he hadn't given in to persuasion—and then Kinnear said "That's right, David, you're the man."

Hall gave David a long but inexpressive look. "David..."

"Botham," David had to say, and felt as if he were owning up in a classroom.

"I should look you up online, should I, if you haven't brought your books."

"You wouldn't find me if you did. I really—"

"I saw it in him the first time we met," Kinnear declared. "You've got to know that, David."

When David turned up his open hands—a magician displaying how empty they were, a suspect ready to deliver his fingerprints, a writer with no pen and nowhere near a keyboard—Hall said "Let's hear the story, Len."

"I was plugging the bookshop and I tried to give David a flyer. I'll tell you, you never heard the like. Everybody round us in the street looked like they hadn't either. He'd just come up from the station and he'd had, what were they, David, people trying to sell you insurance and get you to change your phone provider and hoping you'd had an accident at work so they could help you claim. And you'd missed calls while you were underground and when you rang them back they were all spam. So me and All Write were the last straw and David just let rip. Five minutes' worth of rant, it felt like, and I'm not saying in a bad way. Things I bet we all feel and never let out, but he did. Someone that was listening said he ought to be on the stage, but I'm telling him he ought to write it down for us all to read. That's another way of giving everyone a voice."

"Is that right, everyone thinks like me?" When David heard some murmurs of assent he said "Then someone else can write it, someone who's had more experience."

"You've had all you need. You've lived it," Hall told him.

As David took a breath—he was only there from being too polite to refuse, because he was too often too polite—Hall said "What you need to get you started is a title."

"I haven't got one," David said with a good deal of relief.

"That's what you're wanting. Come up with one."

"Darius means now," Kinnear said.

Was the author amused by the notion? Perhaps he was by the entire audience. David would have been ashamed to own up to his suspicion, but at least his reluctance suggested a title, though he felt desperate for mumbling "
Better Out Than In
."

"You oughtn't to have told us, Mr Botham," said the man who'd protested about people taking notes. "Watch out nobody pinches it."

David thought of using this as an excuse to say he couldn't write whatever was expected of him, and then he saw it was a pretext to escape. "I'd better go and make sure, then."

He stood up so hastily that he almost felled the folding chair. Hall sent him an unreadable look as David hurried to the stairs down to the bookshop. Only streetlamps lit the bookcases full of hardcovers that smelled stale, the shelves of nondescript glossy self-published paperbacks. All the way to the door David felt as if he was toiling through a medium composed of dimness and haphazard thoughts. He was never going to be a writer, he promised himself. Even Kinnear hadn't mentioned all of David's diatribe; he'd left out David's gripe about the homeless man who'd tried to sell him a magazine. If this left David feeling even more shameful, at least it guaranteed that he would never publish any of the thoughts he should have kept to himself. Better yet, he wouldn't have them. As he stepped out of We're Still Left he saw the roofless church across the road, the walls left standing as a monument to the blitz, and it put him in mind of a hollow prayer. He suspected that was how a writer might think, and he expelled the fancy from his mind as he tramped downhill to the station.

As she and Emily came back from the staffroom Helen said "So there's some justice after all."

"Send up the fireworks," Bill said. "They're going to pay us what we're worth at last."

His comic grimace failed to moderate the frown Andrea sent him from the currency desk. With a rueful grin he muttered "We can dream."

"Which justice was that, Helen?" David said.

"The man the police wouldn't take to court," Emily said. "He fell all the way down an escalator."

"He's making out he was pushed," Helen said. "Maybe he met someone nastier or crazier than him."

"Are we talking about Benny Moorcroft?"

The instant this was out David regretted asking. "How did you know that?" Emily said while patches of her face turned pink. "I didn't say who he was."

"I don't suppose you'll like this, but my mother is his social worker."

"I expect someone has to be," Emily said as if she was forgiving him.

"I'm saying nothing," Helen declared, "since she's your mother."

As the unspoken comment lingered Andrea gave a pointed cough and tapped on the window of the currency desk with the back of her engagement ring. "You could make that the last word on the subject, David."

At least nobody had asked him about the writers' group. He was happy to forget the dilapidated room full of chairs that looked homeless, the battered shaky table piled with books their authors hoped to sell, Darius Hall assuring questioners that grammar and spelling were forms of oppression—ways of denying the downtrodden a voice—while publishers and booksellers were involved in a capitalist conspiracy... He might have amused his colleagues with some of the titles on sale—
The Yodelling Killer
,
No Ham for Mohammed
, a book of science fiction tales called
Stories Set to Stun
—but that seemed more mean-spirited than he liked to think he was. He turned away from Andrea and saw Stephanie watching him.

She would be on her way to work. She waved at him over a poster for a fortnight in Tunisia and then, having hesitated, came into the shop. On her way to the counter she put a finger to her lip as if enjoining silence or thinking how little to say. She leaned towards David to murmur "Can I just have a word?"

"He's already had quite a few," Andrea wanted her to know. "Stephanie, isn't it? Aren't you the cook?"

"I'm in charge of the kitchen, that's right. And you're, don't tell me." When Andrea didn't Stephanie said "I expect you have to be Andrea. Has David been talking about me?"

"I've heard him talking, yes." Not quite so haughtily Andrea said "The only reason I asked about your job was that I wondered if you have promotions where you are."

"Promotions?" 'This seemed to antagonise Stephanie. "How do you think I'd get one of those where I work?"

"Promotions." When repeating the word in a patient tone failed to render it more eloquent Andrea said "I'm asking do you take advertising."

"I don't think the management can expect me to deal with that as well."

"I'm sure they make the important choices. Do you know them well enough to say if they'd go for it?"

"I know him better than I want to. Go for what exactly? You aren't very clear."

"I don't believe David and the rest of my team would say that. You don't get to my position by not being clear." As David and his colleagues stayed quiet Andrea said "I've decided we should print out our offers every week. Perhaps you can ask your manager if the restaurant will take them."

"I don't know how much longer I'll be there."

"If you're moving on I hope you'll still be able to help us."

"I'm waiting to see what the manager's planning. He seems to think I can handle the kitchen all by myself."

"Can't you? Some cooks manage. We're quite a large family, and our grandmother always did at Christmas."

As Bill risked a muffled chortle and a wink at Stephanie, she told David "Mick keeps threatening to let someone go."

"These decisions have to be made," Andrea seemed to feel provoked to say. "I'm having to consider some reduction in the personnel myself. Now please do have the word you came in for."

"I've had a lot more than I meant to," Stephanie said with a wide-eyed highbrowed look, though not at her. "You've heard what I came to say, David."

"Give me a call whenever you need to," David said and reached across the counter for her hand, which was soft and chill. "Who's where tonight?"

"I'll make my way to yours if we close early enough."

He shouldn't hope the restaurant was sufficiently unsuccessful to give her time to catch the last train, though he wouldn't mind her working for somebody other than Mick, He kept hold of her hand long enough to let Andrea see that he hadn't let go because she was watching. As the door closed behind Stephanie, Helen asked the question that the silence seemed to consist of. "What were you saying about personnel, Andrea?"

"I shouldn't have let myself be provoked. I'm sorry I spoke."

"All the same," David said, "you did."

"I don't need you to tell me, David." When everyone continued watching her Andrea said "Unless there's a significant increase in sales very soon we may have to look at rationalising the staff."

"Rationing, you mean," Bill said and had to find a grin.

As Emily's face grew pinker Helen said "Who will?"

"I hope we feel we're all part of the firm," Andrea said. "I hope we'd want to do everything we can for it, even if that means making sacrifices,"

"Have you thought which one you're going to make?"

David thought of saying that, but it was Bill who did. "Let's hope it won't be necessary," Andrea told him. "I asked you all to think of ways we can promote ourselves."

"When did you ask that?" David wondered. "I've forgotten if you did."

"Who's in charge here, David? Here's a hint. It isn't you."

The silence felt like suffocation until Emily whispered "You don't need to let her talk to you like that, David."

"I don't suppose she would," Helen said not much louder, "if you hadn't been together."

"I'm staying out of it if you don't mind, Dave," Bill muttered. "Too many ladies."

"I hope you're all discussing how to improve things," Andrea said.

David was assailed by a thought more vicious than he would have liked to think he had in him. Not least in a bid to suppress it he said "How about you? Any ideas?"

"I'm asking nothing of the rest of you that I don't expect of myself." She gave this a moment for appreciation before saying "When I've printed out the offers some of you can distribute them on the street. Now that's enough of me, and let's hear from someone else."

David mimed pondering, only to find that he'd driven every thought out of his head. He gazed at the brochures in the racks, but their sunny images seemed too remote from him. He glanced towards the window in case the posters inspired him, even if he might as well have been trying to read them in a mirror, and saw someone watching him. As soon as their eyes met the man dodged along the pavement and came into the shop to thrust his large blunt wide-featured face at David. "Mr Botham," he said. "Frank Cubbins. All right."

Once David grasped what the last phrase had actually been he recognised the man. Cubbins had warned the speaker at the writers' group that his audience was taking notes. "Can I send you somewhere, Mr Cubbins?" David found he hoped.

"You never said this was your day job." Before David could judge what kind of criticism this was Cubbins said "You know what I told you."

"You needn't worry about me. As I said—"

"You let everybody know your title and now someone's used it online."

"I expect it was there already, but it doesn't matter. I won't be writing anything at all."

"You're a writer, are you, Mr Cubbins?" Emily said. "What do you think of our David?"

"If Len says he's the gear that's good enough for me."

"There you are, David," Helen said.

Surely she was being as ironic as he wanted her to be, and he trusted Bill was joking when he said "They'll know more about it than us." He wasn't going to be forced to articulate ideas he would rather not have. "Thanks for thinking of me, Mr Cubbins," he said, "but you won't be hearing from me, I'm afraid. Some people just oughtn't to write."