Far Cry from Kensington (10 page)

The Box was in fact a small black box about the size of a dressing case. The Tooley
model, one of the first of its kind, opened up to reveal a row of different coloured
lights and a few knobs. There was a place for inserting a piece of hair or a
blood-smear, and this was supposed to cure the ailments of those from whom the blood
or the hair had been taken. I am describing my first sight of the electronic Box, as
Abigail showed it and explained it to me, with a sort of casual solemnity. So far as
I could see it was as devoid of any functional possibility as one of those
children’s toy telephones with which they go through the motions of dialling a
number and talking, but never get anywhere. That was at first sight, and I will say
here that at last sight (only the other day) and after much study of radionics
literature, the more elaborate and complicated instrument seemed to me equally
unserviceable. At the time Abigail showed me her Box I was somewhat relieved to find
it futile, because, as I pointed out, if the Box could do good it could also do evil.
‘It stands to reason,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ said Abigail de Mordell Staines-Knight, ‘how right you are. But
don’t let Ian hear you say so. To him, it’s impossible to do anything
wrong with the Box. And in fact, it does nobody any harm, let’s face it.’

She was a really nice girl in spite of her name. I, too, didn’t think you could
do wrong with the Box, nor right with it, nor anything. I was more curious to know
what, in reality, Ian Tooley fancied she was doing with it. Who, at the behest of Ian
Tooley, was she aiming to affect or cure?

‘It’s rather confidential,’ she said, shyly.

Those strange memories I have retained of Mackintosh & Tooley are,
however, overspread with a sort of tenderness. I know I shouldn’t have liked
being there as much as I did, for the happiness of the firm was based first on the
happiness of its members and only second on principles. Principles were the last
thing anybody bothered about, although it was a very different establishment from
that of the Ullswater Press, in that, for one thing, Mackintosh & Tooley
flourished in their business affairs and were prosperous. But the mere fact of being
able to balance your books and do good trade doesn’t mean that you are a person
of moral principle. And in many ways poor Martin York was more principled than the
Tooleys.

Often, now, in my beloved insomnia I recall the fine old offices of Mackintosh &
Tooley, in a street off Covent Garden, those high-ceilinged offices which, eighteen
years later when Mackintosh & Tooley merged and moved in with another publisher,
were gutted and made modern, and even the exterior was fresh-painted and hardly
recognizable to me, passing it in the street.

I see again, in my wide-eyed midnights, my own small office which looked out into the
well of a back courtyard, and was ill-lit; but it felt good to have an office to
myself, a step up in the world. Here I dealt with new and aspiring writers, in other
words the authors; for generally the writers published by Mackintosh & Tooley
were placed into two categories: Authors and Names. The latter were the few
established living authors on the firm’s list, and these Names dealt with Ann
Clough whose father, though completely crazy, had nonetheless been hanged.

My editorial colleague’s name was Connie, she with the port-wine birth-mark on
her face and a timid vague air; try as I do, I can’t recall her surname.
Indeed, her very abstractedness and insubstantial personality seemed to say
‘forget me’; she seemed to live in parenthesis; but I haven’t
forgotten her, only her surname. And even the birth-mark on her face became
unnoticeable as I got used to her, as blemishes do.

Connie occupied the office next door to mine. She received the manuscripts of new
authors, glanced at them and, if they were fairly literate, sent them out to be
reported on by readers who were mainly retired and indigent unmarried people who
lived in the country, had a certain amount of education, were glad of the occupation
and the extra money, and who were supposed to represent the average reader. Connie
enjoyed a prolific correspondence with these readers. Their lengthy reports were
generally gloomy, beginning with phrases like ‘I’m afraid that
The
Café on the Corner
is hardly a masterpiece …’ or
‘This novel is
not
to be recommended. The sordid element in some of
the scenes cannot be redeemed by the seriousness of the subject-matter.’ A
synopsis of the story would follow at the undisciplined length of four or five pages.
The end of the report would invariably be a paragraph of one sentence, put in for
effect, such as: ‘No, and again, no, to your novel, Mr Travers,’ or
‘This author should definitely be rebuffed.’ These scornful missives
were, however, enlivened for Connie by an accompanying letter informing her of the
weather in Shropshire, the progress of the roses and geraniums, the nephews, the
nieces and occasionally an ailing mother. Connie would reply to these pen-friends
cheerily and at length, as soon as she had finished sending to the packing department
the condemned manuscripts, with a rejection slip, there to be dispatched to their
owners. God knows if any masterpieces were actually lost to the public through this
means of selection. I wonder how many of the aspiring writers of those days still
have in a drawer the leaf-eared typescripts that they sent to sea in a sieve.

Connie’s other job was proof-editing, which she did very badly. Transferring the
author’s corrections to a clean sheet of proofs was something Connie was unable
to do without missing an average of three corrections a page, or transcribing newly
inserted material all wrong. In those days the authors had long galley-proofs
followed by page-proofs. It was only when the book finally appeared that
Connie’s mistakes were discovered, but she was incorporeal about them. She put
angry authors’ letters about the mutilation of their books under the cushion of
her chair to deal with later; she timidly suggested to their irate voices on the
phone that they should write a letter putting down their grievances which would be
attended to in the next edition. But if they insisted on calling in to see her
face-to-face, the authors were so overcome by the first sight of Connie’s poor
port-wine mark that their rage immediately subsided. You couldn’t be nasty to
Connie, and a friendly arrangement was always reached by Connie’s
gossamer-voiced assurance that the matter would be put right in the next printing.
Since the next printing hardly ever happened that was safe enough.

Sometimes an author’s agent would go over Connie’s head and complain about
Connie, as when she overlooked a printer’s error on the first page of a book,
which had been corrected accurately by the author, and by which a ‘blond’
man became a ‘blind’ man, so that nobody could make head or tail of the
subsequent story. Situations like these were smoothed over by an expensive lunch
given to the agent by breezy Colin Shoe, he who had been scored off the medical
register, and whatever the outcome of these peace-revels, none of it reached the ears
or the desk of Connie. ‘We can’t have our staff upset,’ many a time
was one of the statements of charming Colin Shoe.

I used to spend my coffee-break and my tea-time with Connie, sometimes in her office,
sometimes in mine. My job was to collect from her those few new manuscripts that had
a faint possibility of being shaped into a book for publication, or whose authors
should perhaps be nurtured. It was a very tentative affair, as Colin Shoe put it. I
had to talk to authors. Colin didn’t, he said, envy me my job, amiably adding
one of his more regular maxims, ‘The best author is a dead author.’ And
it is true we would have had an easier time if we only had the books to deal with and
no live authors; Mackintosh & Tooley had a small back-list of dead writers who
caused very little trouble (except occasionally through their heirs and executors,
who got taken out to lunches if they became too difficult).

I was quite aware of this feeling, at the same time that I wanted human contact in my
work.

‘Books don’t wriggle. Authors do,’ was one of Colin Shoe’s
remarks. ‘They take everything personally,’ Colin Shoe would say.
‘There isn’t an author who doesn’t take their books
personally.’ I felt this was obviously a virtue on the author’s part;
but, at the same time, these airily expressed prejudices gave us of the firm a
coterie sensation which, amoral as it was, I shouldn’t have liked but rather
did.

But I was glad of my authors, admitted that most of them were more or less
pisseurs de copie.
‘In a way,’ said Colin, ‘you’re
lucky to have authors, not Names, to deal with.’ He was full of euphoria at
that moment, for he was about to lunch with famous Emma Loy who had hinted she might
want to bring her next novel to Mackintosh & Tooley. Colin Shoe made a great
occasion of his heavy responsibility in connection with this new Name. I earnestly
hoped that Colin’s efforts would fail and Emma Loy take her book elsewhere.

I invited the new and aspiring authors to visit me. A few of them I had already been
in correspondence with when I was at the Ullswater Press. I rigged up an electric
hot-plate and a kettle in a corner of my office and so was able to offer tea and
biscuits in the afternoon, coffee and biscuits in the morning, without applying to
the typists who usually prepared the office teas and coffees. I suppose I must have
been a formidable, somewhat maternal figure while I dished out tea, biscuits and
advice. I can see now those men and women, mainly young, who came one by one, twice,
three times a week to sit in the armchair I had placed for them and listen to what I
had to say about their manuscripts. Very, very few were destined to make a literary
career, but a great many of them were far better informed than I was, which made it
difficult for me to deal with clever authors of uncertain talent. I have always been
free with advice; but it is one thing to hand out advice and another to persuade
people to accept it. At Mackintosh & Tooley, at this stage, my large presence
assisted me sometimes but not always.

I remember random scenes and I also remember my subsequent memories; so that I recall
that I was lying awake in the dark, about ten years ago, when to my mind came the
image of a meeting I had had in my office at Mackintosh & Tooley with a young
man, one of the most beautiful I have ever seen, the author of a large novel about
nothing in particular. It proved only that he passionately wanted to write, and I
told him we couldn’t take the book but he should try another, more concise, not
so long and rambling, and about something in particular. I recall very little else of
that interview but that he embarked on a lengthy discourse, citing famous long novels
about nothing in particular. Had I read
Finnegans Wake?

I had to admit I hadn’t, not from cover to cover. I didn’t know at the
time that very few people had.

He spoke for an hour. He accepted my coffee and biscuits and went on talking. I wish I
could remember more of what he said; it was extremely above my head. Had I read
Buddenbrooks
by Thomas Mann?

I hadn’t but I had heard of it. I evaded the question by taking a chance:
‘But that is about something in particular.’

He said it contained nothing but details, and went on. Had I read Proust?

Yes, I had read Proust.

‘And you say it’s about something in particular?’

It was twelve noon.
The angel of the Lord brought the tidings …
‘Well, it’s about everything in particular, isn’t it?’

The word was made flesh …

‘Well, my novel is about everything in particular.’

Hail Mary, full of grace …

‘So it is,’ I said. ‘But it isn’t Proust.’

‘So you’re looking for another Proust?’ he said. ‘One
isn’t enough?’

I forget how I got him out of the office; I only remember his going. I recall that the
date was 1st November and that an evening paper showed the portrait of Winston
Churchill by Graham Sutherland which was presented to him by the Houses of
Parliament, and which, after his death years later, his wife awesomely destroyed; and
I wonder in the night what her real reason was. I wonder, too, what has happened to
the beautiful young man and his large book, so large that he had to hold it in two
parts, one under each arm, as he left the office.

Now, it fell to me to give advice to many authors which in at least two cases bore
fruit. So I will repeat it here, free of charge. It proved helpful to the type of
writer who has some imagination and wants to write a novel but doesn’t know how
to start.

‘You are writing a letter to a friend,’ was the sort of thing I used to
say. ‘And this is a dear and close friend, real — or better —
invented in your mind like a fixation. Write privately, not publicly; without fear or
timidity, right to the end of the letter, as if it was never going to be published,
so that your true friend will read it over and over, and then want more enchanting
letters from you. Now, you are not writing about the relationship between your friend
and yourself; you take that for granted. You are only confiding an experience that
you think only he will enjoy reading. What you have to say will come out more
spontaneously and honestly than if you are thinking of numerous readers. Before
starting the letter rehearse in your mind what you are going to tell; something
interesting, your story. But don’t rehearse too much, the story will develop as
you go along, especially if you write to a special friend, man or woman, to make them
smile or laugh or cry, or anything you like so long as you know it will interest.
Remember not to think of the reading public, it will put you off.’

In the two cases where this method succeeded with first novels they did very well. It
was also successful in other cases with short stories.

On 1st December Martin York was sentenced to his seven years’
imprisonment. Later, for Christmas, I wrote to him at Wormwood Scrubs but like so
many others who had written, I got no reply. He had gone into the shadows. The day
after the sentence the papers were full of articles by some of his former
acquaintances testifying to his chaotic world, his boyish charm, his reckless
drinking and spending, his wild schemes and ambitions to become a world tycoon. Among
the writers of the articles were some who I knew had been heavily in Martin’s
debt. There was the first of many pieces by Hector Bartlett. He insinuated, without
actually stating, that he himself had been a victim of Martin York’s
fraudulence, which I knew to be totally untrue.