The Editor's Wife (11 page)

Dear Mr Flinders

I enjoyed the first three chapters of your novel and would be keen to see more. Perhaps, since you live in London, you would like to come in for a chat. If so, please give me a call on the above number.

Yours sincerely

Owen Goddard

Editor

Nothing would ever be as good as those first few words of affirmation: not signing my first contract, receiving my first advance or seeing my finished novel in hardback for the first time, with my name on the jacket.

I had to exercise the utmost will power not to pick up the phone and call him straight away. Rather than appear callow and over-eager I forced myself to be patient and allow a dignified interval to elapse. I judged three days to be ideal – any longer and Owen Goddard, Editor, might have forgotten me or changed his mind – and for three days I carried his letter in my pocket, in a fever of anticipation, and read it again and again to check that I hadn't missed any nuance.

When at last I called he was out of the office and I had to leave a message with a secretary, who assured me he would ring back. The phone was a communal one, three flights down in the hall, and I had no great confidence that any of my anonymous housemates would bother to come and fetch me. I haunted the stairwell, afraid to go out in case he rang in my absence.

At five thirty on the following day he called, full of apology for the delay. I couldn't put an age to him, but he had a warm, cultured voice and I pictured him with glasses and a beard. He repeated his invitation to meet and an appointment was fixed for the next Monday morning.

‘Are the first three chapters all there is?' he asked. When I explained that I had a further hundred and fifty pages or so, and another couple of hundred still to write, he told me to bring along whatever I had that I was pleased with. ‘I'll look forward to reading on,' he said. ‘What I've seen so far is tremendous.'

I burbled my thanks, forgetting all my own edicts about over-eagerness, and completely disarmed by his kindness.

The Premises of Kenway & Luff, identified only by a discreet brass plate, were the upper floors of a Regency house in a smart Bloomsbury terrace, a short walk from University College. There was a blue plaque on the door commemorating the brief residency of an architect called Basil Christopher, which struck me as highly auspicious.

At exactly eleven o'clock I rang the bell and was buzzed
into a narrow hallway, piled high with cardboard boxes, leading to a flight of crooked stairs onto which more boxes had overflowed. On the walls, which were scuffed and in need of decorating, were numerous oil paintings: originals – even to my inexpert eye – but all slightly skew-whiff and disfigured by pelts of dust.

On the first landing was a reception desk at which a pretty, dark-skinned girl was sitting, turning the pages of a manuscript and eating a very ripe pear. Beside her a switchboard winked and bleeped, ignored. An obese blond Labrador occupied most of the space between the desk and a chewed leather couch – the waiting room. At my approach the dog struggled to his feet, tail wagging, and having been patted, collapsed back under his own weight, panting with exertion.

The girl gave me a smile of welcome. ‘Mr Luff,' she said, mysteriously.

‘I'm here to see Owen Goddard,' I said, glancing at the manuscript she was reading, and wondering if all submissions, mine included, were vetted by the switchboard operator before passing to a higher power. She put down her pear and looked for somewhere to wipe her hand, settling eventually on the dog, before picking up the phone and relaying my message.

‘Take a seat. He'll be down in a minute,' she said, indicating the couch, on which there was a pile of catalogues, with a photograph of Ravi Amos on the cover.
Kenway & Luff. New Titles. Spring 1985.

I sat down, as instructed, and only had time to take in
the background noise – the patter of a manual typewriter, and the click and swish of a photocopier – and the fact that there were more works of art on the walls, not one of them hung straight, before a man erupted through a doorway in a cloud of cigar smoke. He had long, unkempt white hair and was dressed in a jacket, brocade waistcoat, trousers and bow tie of competing patterns. I began to rise to my feet, but he ignored me and barked, ‘Get me that idiot!' at the receptionist, before retreating behind his door and shutting it with a crash. The girl didn't turn a hair, but calmly tapped out a number on the keypad. Kenway or Luff? I wondered, but before I could enquire there came the clump of feet on the stairs and a voice said, ‘Christopher Flinders?'

There he was, Owen Goddard, with a smile and an outstretched hand: the best man I ever met.

I was predisposed to like him, because he had complimented me on my writing, but I would have liked him anyway, because he was so genuine and unaffected, and presented such a contrast to the dandified character who had just stormed in and out. He was dressed in light brown cords, a blue shirt and a dark tweedy jacket: the sort of decent, boring outfit of a man who, without being shabby, sets no store by appearances. He had a pleasant, cheerful face, slightly receding hair and small wire-framed glasses. I guessed him to be in his late thirties.

His office, into which he now showed me, was at the top of the house, a garret room in fact, and exactly what
a publisher's office should look like. One whole wall of shelving was given over to finished hardbacks, all with the Kenway & Luff logo on the spine, a favoured few turned face out to display their dust jackets. The opposite wall was given over to accommodating the various stages of still-embryonic books. Drifts of proofs hung over the edges of the deep shelves like snow on a roof, and in the corner stood two towers of dog-eared manuscripts, marked unambiguously IN and OUT.

On the smallest desk on which anyone could conceivably be expected to work was an overflowing tray of letters, labelled URGENT. And on the room's only two chairs were still more papers, folders, memos, copies of
Publishing News
and
The London Review of Books
, which Owen now attempted to relocate so that we could sit down.

‘You only have to leave your seat for two minutes and someone comes in and dumps a pile of stuff on it,' he said. ‘It's to force you to deal with it before you get back to work.'

Having displaced these heaps onto the window ledge, next to a thirsty-looking pot plant, he offered me the more comfortable of the two chairs and telephoned downstairs for coffee.

‘I thought your opening chapters were brilliant,' he said, without further preamble. ‘Is that the rest of it?' He indicated the brown envelope under my arm.

I nodded, handing it over. ‘It's not finished,' I reminded him. ‘It's not even half finished.'

Perhaps out of courtesy, he placed the package on top
of the tray marked URGENT. ‘I don't normally read works-in-progress,' he explained. ‘But I got the sense from your letter that you might stall without some encouragement.'

‘I'd already stalled,' I said, impressed by his acuity. I certainly didn't remember intending to hint at any such weakness. ‘The funny thing is, since your reply, I've done my best stuff in ages. It seems to have inspired me again.'

‘Well, likewise. In this job I read so much drivel, sometimes I forget what good writing's like. And then suddenly, out of the blue I read something really fresh and original, like yours, that makes me sit up and realise what it's all about.'

We exchanged smiles of mutual admiration and gratitude. What a great guy! I thought.

‘But I don't want you to think I've got you here under false pretences, so I've got to tell you now that even if I love what you've given me,' he patted the brown envelope, ‘I wouldn't make you an offer for an unfinished novel. All I'd be able to say is carry on, finish it, and whenever you're ready to show it, I'll be ready to read it. That's all.'

I nodded. I don't know if I'd really expected to walk out of the office holding a cheque or a contract, but I suppose I was a little disappointed.

‘Likewise you're under no obligation, and if you get a better offer you should take it. Anyway, that's the boring bit out of the way. Now tell me some more about yourself. Your letter didn't give much away.'

I gave him a brief résumé of my uneventful upbringing and recent high-minded departure from university – at which he pulled a face – ending with the fish delivery, Brixton, and so forth.

‘I suppose it's courageous to throw in your degree,' he said, doubtfully. ‘But there's no money in writing. Your sort of writing. You know that?'

‘I haven't really thought too hard about anything beyond getting it finished,' I admitted.

The coffee arrived, brought by the girl from reception. Now that she was out from behind the desk I could see that she was dressed in frayed jeans and jewelled flip-flops. I thought of the Chicago mobster's suit that Mum would have had me wearing to work.

Owen jumped up to take the tray, and said, ‘How are you getting on with that manuscript, Bina?'

She gave him a thumbs-down sign. ‘Horseshit. I'll give you a report.'

He nodded. ‘I thought so. Thanks.'

‘So even the receptionist has a say in what gets published,' I said, when she'd gone. ‘That's very democratic.'

Owen gave a dry laugh. ‘Oh Bina's probably the best-educated person in the building. It's not that we delegate important things down, it's more a case of menial jobs going to the vastly overqualified. This isn't a democracy, it's a Hermanocracy.'

I smiled blankly.

‘Herman Kenway,' Owen explained. ‘His is the huge
office downstairs. You might have seen him on your way up.'

‘Small, angry man in a bow tie and loud jacket?' I asked.

‘That's him,' Owen agreed. ‘I think it's what's called
dapper
.'

‘He was rude to the receptionist.'

‘Ah yes. He has an unfortunate manner. Or perhaps an unfortunate lack of manners. But his authors love him. He's a good publisher.'

‘What about Mr Luff?'

Owen smiled. ‘Mr Luff is Herman's Labrador. He liked the idea of having a co-founder, but didn't trust anyone enough to go into partnership. So he named the firm after his dog. That's not the original one downstairs. We're onto the third Mr Luff now.'

‘He sounds quite eccentric, this Mr Kenway,' I said. ‘Are all publishing houses like this?'

‘No,' said Owen emphatically. ‘What on earth made you choose us?'

‘Ravi Amos.'

‘Oh, well, that's not a bad reason.' Owen reached over and pulled a slim volume from the shelf. ‘We've just got finished copies of his new book in. Here, take it.'

I turned it over in my hands.
The Amazement of Dr Oberon
.

‘Are you his editor?' I asked, awestruck to be at one remove from the great man.

‘Nominally. I inherited him when his original editor retired. But you don't really edit him. I don't think I've
ever had to alter so much as a comma. There aren't many like that,' he added hastily, leaving me in no doubt that I shouldn't consider myself similarly blessed.

‘What's he like?'

‘Well . . . um,' Owen made throat-clearing noises. ‘Let's just say he's a genius so we make allowances.' He asked me what other novelists I particularly admired, and in the ensuing discussion it came up that we were both fans of John Cowper Powys, considered him unjustly overlooked, etc. Shared enthusiasm for a writer – particularly a neglected one – is a great accelerant of friendship, and within a quarter of an hour we were talking and laughing like old buddies.

There was a tap at the door and a tall woman with fluffy blonde hair peeped round. ‘Meeting,' she said, in a sing-song voice, and as if at a signal there was a distant rumble of feet, as people all over the building emerged from their burrows, drawn by some herd instinct down the stairs.

Owen stood up and I followed suit a fraction later. ‘Isobel, this is Christopher Flinders, who has just sent in something rather wonderful. Isobel is our sales director,' he said to me, with that easy, courteous way he had of making everyone from highest to lowest feel significant. Perfect manners, I suppose you'd call it. Isobel looked at me with the sort of ravenous admiration that could only be put on.

‘How exciting,' she purred, emitting powerful signals from her green eyes. For a moment I was convinced that
if Owen hadn't been present she'd have taken me right there on the office floor, but I came to my senses as she snapped her attention from me to an unseen figure approaching along the corridor, and hailed him or her with equal intensity.

‘I'm sorry. I've overstayed,' I said, tucking
Dr Oberon
in my jacket pocket and making for the door.

‘Not at all,' said Owen. ‘It was great to talk. I'll get back to you as soon as I've read this.'

‘No hurry,' I said bravely.

As I left he pressed me to accept another half a dozen hardbacks plucked from the shelf. ‘Try these, though I should be encouraging you to write, not read. This one's superb.' He tapped the topmost volume,
The Magenta Staircase
by Lawrence Canning. ‘Sunk without trace. Not a single review.'

Over the next weeks and months I would pick up this book many times with the intention of starting it, but something in me always shrank from it. I didn't want the taint of failure to rub off on me.

AS I LEFT
the building, the sun was shining, its warmth leaping from the pavement. The trees in the square were newly in leaf, an astringent yellow-green against the sky. It was lunchtime and students were emerging from the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine into the brightness and heat of the street. London looked beautiful and benign as never before.

Even though I had come away from Kenway & Luff with nothing, I was brimming with confidence, in my own talent, in Owen's sound judgement and integrity, in the random favouritism of a universe which had chosen to settle its riches on me. I wanted to share my news with someone, but I couldn't think of anyone to call and, besides, I had no real news, nothing firm or impressive, just hopes perilously raised. I thought of Gerald, busy
processing windscreen claims in Croydon, and decided to wait.