(1969) The Seven Minutes (4 page)

‘Mike Barrett here. Any calls?’

‘Oh, I’m glad you’re back, Mr Barrett. Two longdistance calls, urgent, in the last half hour. They were both from the same party. A Mr Philip Sanford in New York. He wants you to call him the minute you get in. He left his business and home numbers.’

‘Let’s see. It’s only twenty after three in New York. Try his office.’

Rising from the sofa, stripping off his shirt and tossing it aside, he went into the kitchenette for a soft drink. As he prepared it, his mind went to Phil Sanford. There were two things odd about Sanford’s successive calls. He telephoned at long intervals, but when he did, a few times each year, it was always in the evening. Furthermore, the calls were always casual, unhurried, the reaching put of a lonely friend for a reaffirmation of friendship. Poor Sanford got little warmth from his wife and none at all from his tyrannical father. But this morning’s calls apparently had not been social. They had been urgent. And now Barrett wondered why.

Sipping his root beer, Barrett thought of his old friend and of their friendship, a friendship that was older although less easy than the one with Abe Zelkin. After Harvard, when he and Philip Sanford had both gone to New York, he to become a disenchanted do-gooder, Sanford to start out as an editor in his father’s famous publishing house, he saw his college roommate frequently. Not only did he like Phil, but he owed him much after all that Phil had done during Barrett’s year of crisis with his mother. Even after Phil Sanford married, Barrett continued to meet his friend for their weekly lunch at the Baroque Restaurant and to go occasionally with him to some sports event at Madison Square Garden. Since moving to California, Barrett had seen Sanford only a half-dozen times. These occasions had afforded Barrett no pleasure. Phil Sanford had always sounded gloomy when talking about his wife and two children, and he had been as miserable as ever over his helpless serfdom in Sanford House, which his father ran as a one-man operation.

But the last time Barrett had seen Phil Sanford, only three months ago or less, when Barrett had flown into New York on some overnight business and they had dined together in the Oak Room of The Plaza, it had been a happier meeting than usual. Sanford’s life had changed short months before this reunion with Barrett. For the first time, he had been given an opportunity to prove himself. While he was filled with anxieties, he was also filled with enthusiasm.

That giant of publishing, Wesley R. Sanford, Phil’s father, had been felled by a sudden stroke. While it had not been a massive stroke, it had been a warning one, severe enough to force him into retirement. In the eyes of the stricken gray giant, Sanford House, so long the discoverer and sponsor of authors who had been knighted with the Nobel Prize in literature, the Pulitzer Prize, the Prix Gon-court, was now a house without a head. Phil Sanford, the only heir, had always been regarded with condescension, even disdain, by his mighty father. It was as if the self-made giant had always known that he could not sire another in his image. He had regarded his son as a pygmy, a weakling, an incompetent, a total disappointment. This had been Phil’s Cross, and the fact that he had suffered such treatment for so long without going off on his own had infected Phil’s wife, who had also come to see him as weak and gutless.

The word that Wesley R. Sanford had left a flourishing publishing business without a satisfactory heir had passed rapidly from Publishers’ Row to Wall Street. Great communications complexes, conglomerates seeking diversification of their holdings, were eager to buy up the firm, with its valuable back list and prestigious name. Only partially recovering from his stroke, Wesley R. Sanford, it had appeared, would decide to sell. And then his only son had gone to his bedside and, for the first time, pleaded for a chance. Whether illness had deprived the convalescing giant of resolution or whether he had been waiting for such an appeal from his heir and been impressed by it, Wesley R. Sanford had gruffly told his son that he would have his chance.

Philip Sanford had been given two years to prove himself as a capable independent publisher. If in that period he kept the firm in the black, maintained and expanded its prestige, the firm would remain in the family, with Philip as its president and eventual owner. However, if Philip’s guidance proved faulty in that period, he would be removed from the head office, and the publishing house would be sold off lock, stock, and back list to one of the communications industries vying for it.

Unused to decision-making and authority, Philip Sanford had got off to a poor start. Of the first twenty books published under his direction in his first year, the majority had been failures, and the rest had either barely broken even or made only minor profits. Not one could be called distinguished or had become a best seller. Not one had made a major subsidiary-sales strike to book clubs or paperback reprinters. At last, with the courage born of sheer desperation, Philip Sanford had made an effort to escape his father’s shadow and become his own man. He had determined to publish what he wanted to publish and not what he thought his father might have published. He had acquired a novel that he had read and admired during a sea crossing from Le Havre to New York, a book that had never been permitted to be published openly in any English-speaking nation in the world. It was a work called The Seven Minutes, and on the publication and success of this novel Philip Sanford had staked his entire future.

When Barrett had dined with Sanford in New York that last time, Sanford had been manic about the book’s possibilities. For the first time in modern literary history, the climate was right for the appearance of such a book, Sanford had insisted. A Western world that had finally accepted Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Fanny Hill would be mature enough to accept The Seven Minutes. The book was already on the presses. Interest within the trade was mounting. It promised to be a smash hit. And then Sanford would have his publishing house, his haven, his future, and he would finally be his own man. Discussion of Phil’s survival had occupied most of their evening together. Only in the last ten minutes had Barrett been asked about himself. He had complained about his own crawling career at Thayer and Turner. He had cited as the only bright spots Abe Zelkin’s offer and his own fondness for Willard Osborn’s daughter.

And now, suddenly, Philip Sanford wanted to speak to Barrett about something urgent. Considering what he knew of Sanford’s life, what could possibly be urgent that might concern him?

The telephone at his elbow was ringing.

He snatched up the receiver. ‘Hello?’

‘Mike ?’ It was Sanford’s voice. No secretary had preceded him. That underlined urgency. ‘Is that you, Mike?’

‘None other. How’ve you been, Phil ? Sorry to have missed your calls. I just got in. How’s everything?’

‘As usual, as usual, if you mean the family. This is something else. It’s a business matter. Mike, I’m certainly relieved you called this soon.’

Barrett was immediately aware of the tone of Sanford’s voice. It was nervous, harried. ‘You sound as if there’s something important on your mind. If it’s anything I can - *

‘You can, you can help me.5

‘Shoot.’

‘Mike, remember when you were here last, I told you that I was having a rough go of it with my first list, my books, not the carryovers from Wesley R?’

Barrett remembered that Sanford had always referred to his father, Wesley R. Sanford, as Wesley R. He had never been able to call him Father. ‘Yes, but you were optimistic -‘

‘Exactly. Because of one book I had in the works. The Seven Minutes, by J J Jadway. I was putting all my chips on that one. All or nothing. Remember?’

Barrett nodded at the telephone. “That’s right. The novel no one had dared publish in thirty-five years. I saw your opening ad last Sunday. Tremendous.’

Sanford’s voice had become anxious. ‘You’ve seen the book, haven’t you? I had an advance copy airmailed to you.’

Guiltily, Barrett’s eyes flicked toward his bedroom door. He had received the advance complimentary copy about three weeks ago, and the book had been resting unopened on the lamp table beside his double bed ever since. He had intended to read it so that he could write his friend an encouraging thank-you note, but there had been so much happening to him since that he had been unable to get to it. Goddam good intentions. ‘Yes, I received it, Phil. It’s next to my bed. Every day I’ve resolved to write and thank you, wish you well, but I’ve just been up to my ass in a million things. I skimmed the whole thing, and I’d say the book is everything you’ve been saying, a winner, a real winner.’

‘It is,’ Sanford affirmed excitedly. ‘It’s shaping up to be the blockbuster of the year, maybe the biggest seller in a decade. You’ve no idea what’s been going on with the wholesalers and the stores. We’re still days from official publication, and we’ve had a second printing. We’ve got two hundred thousand in print, and we’ve already shipped a hundred thirty thousand. Do you realize what that m ;ans, Mike? Hell, you know plenty about the book business from listening to me over the years. Take your average novel. If it’s a first book, and Jadway’s is a first book, his only book, well, maybe you print four thousand copies for openers, and maybe your salesmen pick up two thousand advance orders and you ship these on consignment - any of them can be returned if they don’t sell -and maybe a half year or year later we wind up having sold seven

hundred fifty copies. That’s the part of the book business, behind the hullabaloo of reviews and advertising, that the public knows nothing about. But once every few years, if you’re lucky, you get hold of a blockbuster, a first novel that just takes off like a jet. And that’s The Seven Minutes. Of course, it had built-in propulsion. All the bannings. The talk about its being dirty, which it isn’t. Now, for the first time in thirty-five years, people can see what it’s really about. So we have orders for a hundred thirty thousand copies, and we’ll have had the whole two hundred thousand ordered a week after it’s out. That’s only the beginning, Mike. Once it’s on display everywhere, and selling, and people are talking about it, arguing about it, word of mouth will keep it soaring. We could go to three hundred thousand or four hundred thousand copies in a few months. And that’s the least of it. We’ll put it up for bidding with the paperback reprinters. Once we’ve made it respectable, shown it’s been accepted, they’ll be outbidding one another for the reprint rights. That can be a million dollars as a start, not counting future sales and royalties, and don’t forget that Sanford House, the publisher, keeps fifty per cent of the paperback income. You see what I mean, Mike? No limit. Do you know what Lady Chatterley’s Lover had sold at the last report? In hardcover and paperback it had sold over six million copies, and it is probably closer to seven million copies by now. Well, that’s what we’ve got here, maybe bigger, much bigger, with The Seven Minutes. And you know my situation, Mike, that’ll make Wesley R. sit up, sick as he is, and that’ll put me in business on my own for keeps. You know what that means to me, Mike, nobody but you outside the family knows what that means.’

The almost hysterical torrent of words abruptly stopped. There was only heavy breathing to be heard over the transcontinental telephone.

Barrett said, ‘Yes, I know.’ Then he wondered. ‘It sounds to me as if you’ve got your winner.’

‘I have my winner, Mike - if nothing goes wrong.’

Not thinking, almost automatically, Barret started to say, ‘But what could go -‘

‘Censorship,’ Sanford interrupted. ‘I’ve got nothing if the police won’t let the stores sell the book and won’t let people buy it. If that happens, I not only won’t have a success, I’ll have an utter disaster. Wesiey R. will boot me out of here in nothing flat, and so will my sweet Betty girl. I’ll lose the business and my kids. I won’t have anything except the trust fund from my mother, and that’s not enough to keep the insides of a man alive, believe me, Mike, it’s not.’

Barrett was becoming mildly irritated with his friend’s foreboding. ‘Phil, you’ve got a good thing going, so why anticipate a disaster when there’s no likelihood of one ? Censorship ? Littlechance. We’re living in a different age now. Everything’s open and on the

table. Everyone knows the Queen has legs. In fact, they know she’s got a damn sight more. You can get Fanny Hill on any drugstore rack. Remember when we used to rent mimeograph copies at school ? Remember reading about “that delicious cleft of flesh, into which the pleasing hairgrown mount over it, parted and presented a most inviting entrance” ? AndLady Chatterley, remember Connie “putting her arms round his white slender loins, and drawing him to her so that her hanging, swinging breasts touched the top of the stirring, erect phallos” ? And that sold - what did you say ? - six to seven million copies. That’s the way it is now and will be for some years, maybe forever, unless people get tired of truth and we slide back to the age of the asterisk again. But not now. People are less afraid of sex, especially when it’s presented artfully-‘

‘Jadway’s book hasn’t been repressed just for sex alone,’ Sanford interrupted. ‘It’s because some of the sex is sacrilegious.’

‘I don’t give a damn what it is,’ said Barrett. ‘Plenty of experts who’ve read it secretly have proclaimed publicly that it is a work of art. You have no problems. Don’t anticipate problems that don’t exist.’

‘Mike, wait, I’ve been leading up to it. That’s why I’ve been trying to get hold of you. You see -‘

A sudden suspicion hit Barrett. His friend was used to living in the future, picturing future success, future trouble maybe this, maybe that, just as some people lived in the past. This was one of Sanford’s most exasperating shortcomings, since it kept him from speaking honestly of the present.

‘One moment, Phil,’ Barrett cut in. ‘You’ve been saying over and over you’ve got it made if nothing goes wrong.’ He paused. ‘Has something gone wrong?’

There was the briefest silence. ‘Yes,’ said Sanford.

‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place?’

‘I was trying to explain how important all this is to me.’

‘What’s happened?’ Barrett demanded to know.