The Great Pursuit (2 page)

It was thanks to Jamesforth's itinerantly drunken progress from one tax haven to the next that
Frensic found himself in the witness box in the High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division in
the libel case of Mrs Desdemona Humberson versus James Jamesforth, author of Fingers of Hell, and
Pulteney Press, publishers of the said novel. Frensic was in the witness box for two hours and by
the time he stepped down he was a shaken man.

'Fifteen thousand pounds plus costs,' said Sonia Futtle next morning, 'for inadvertent libel?
I don't believe it.'

'It's in the paper,' said Frensic handing her The Times. 'Next to the bit about the drunken
lorry driver who killed two children and got fined a hundred and fifty pounds. Mind you he did
lose his licence for three months too.'

'But that's insane. A hundred and fifty pounds for killing two children and fifteen thousand
for libelling a woman James didn't even know existed.'

'On a zebra crossing,' said Frensic bitterly. 'Don't forget the zebra crossing.'

'Mad. Stark staring raving mad,' said Sonia. 'You English are out of your minds legally.'

'So's Jamesforth,' said Frensic, 'and you can forget him as one of our authors. He doesn't
want to know us.'

'But we didn't do anything. We aren't supposed to check his proofs out. Pulteney's should have
done that. They'd have spotted the libel.'

'Like hell they would. How does anyone spot a woman called Desdemona Humberson living in the
wilds of Somerset who grows lupins and belongs to the Women's Institute? She's too improbable for
words.'

'She's also done very nicely for herself. Fifteen grand for being called a nymphomaniac. It's
worth it. I mean if someone called me a raving nymphomaniac I'd be only too glad to accept
fifteen '

'Doubtless,' said Frensic, forestalling a discussion of this highly unlikely eventuality. 'And
for fifteen thousand I'd have hired a drunken lorry driver and had her erased on a zebra
crossing. Split the difference with the driver and we would have still been to the good. And
while I was about it I would have had Mr Galbanum slaughtered too. He should have had more sense
than to advise Pulteneys and Jamesforth to fight the case.'

'Well it was innocent libel,' said Sonia. 'James didn't mean to malign the woman.'

'Oh quite. The fact remains that he did and under the Defamation Act of 1952 designed to
protect authors and publishers from actions of this sort, innocent libel demands that they show
they took reasonable care '

'Reasonable care? What does that mean?'

'According to that senile old judge it means going to Somerset House and checking to see if
anyone called Desdemona was born in 1928 and married a man called Humberson in 1951. Then you go
through the Lupin Growers Association Handbook looking for Humbersons and if they're not there
you have a whack at the Women's Institute and finally the telephone directory for Somerset. Well,
they didn't do all that so they got lumbered for fifteen thousand and we've got the reputation of
handling authors who libel innocent women. Send your novels to Frensic & Futtle and get sued.
We are the pariahs of the publishing world.'

'It can't be as bad as all that. After all, it's the first time it's happened and everyone
knows that James is a souse who can't remember where he's been or who he's done.'

'Can't they just. Pulteneys can. Hubert rang up last night to say that we needn't send them
any more novels. Once that word gets round we are going to have what is euphemistically called a
cash flow problem.'

'We're certainly going to have to find someone to replace James,' said Sonia. 'Bestsellers
like that don't grow on trees.'

'Nor lupins,' said Frensic and retired to his office.

All in all it was a bad day. The phone rang almost incessantly. Authors demanded to know if
they were likely to end up in the High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division, because they had
used the names of people they were at school with, and publishers turned down novels they would
previously have accepted. Frensic sat and took snuff and tried to remain civil. By five o'clock
he was finding it increasingly difficult and when the Literary Editor of the Sunday Graphic
phoned to ask if Frensic would contribute an article on the iniquities of the British libel laws
he was downright rude.

'What do you want me to do?' he shouted. 'Stick my head in a bloody noose and get hauled up
for contempt of court? For all I know that blithering idiot Jamesforth is going to appeal against
the verdict.'

'On the grounds that you inserted the passage which libelled Mrs Humberson?' the editor asked.
'After all it was suggested by the defence counsel '

'By God, I'll have you for slander,' shouted Frensic. 'Galbanum had the gall to say that in
court where he's protected but if you repeat that in public I'll institute proceedings
myself.'

'You'd have a hard time,' said the editor. 'Jamesforth wouldn't make a good witness. He swears
you advised him to jack Mrs Humberson up sexwise and when he wouldn't you altered the
proofs.'

'That's a downright lie,' yelled Frensic. 'Anyone would think I wrote my authors' novels for
them!'

'As a matter of fact a great many people do believe just that,' said the editor. Frensic
hurled imprecations and went home with a headache.

If Wednesday was bad, Thursday was no better. Collins rejected William Lonroy's fifth novel
Seventh Heaven as being too explicit sexually. Triad Press turned down Mary Gold's Final Fling
for the opposite reason and Cassells even refused Sammy The Squirrel on the grounds that it was
preoccupied with individual acquisition and lacked community concern. Cape rejected this, Seeker
rejected that. There were no acceptances. Finally there was a moment of high drama when an
elderly clergyman whose autobiography Frensic had repeatedly refused to handle, explaining each
time that there wasn't a large reading public for a book that dealt exclusively with parish life
in South Croydon, smashed a vase with his umbrella and only consented to leave with his
manuscript when Sonia threatened to call the police. By lunchtime Frensic was bordering on
hysteria.

'I can't stand it,' he whimpered. The phone rang and Frensic shied. 'If it's for me, tell them
I'm not in. I'm having a breakdown. Tell them '

It was for him. Sonia put her hand over the mouthpiece. 'It's Margot Joseph. She says she's
dried up and doesn't think she can finish '

Frensic fled to the safety of his own office and took his phone off the hook.

'For the rest of the day I'm not in,' he told Sonia when she came through a few minutes later.
'I shall sit here and think.'

'In that case you can read this,' said Sonia and put a parcel on his desk. 'It came this
morning. I haven't had time to open it.'

'It's probably a bomb,' said Frensic gloomily and undid the string. But the package contained
nothing more threatening than a neatly typed manuscript and an envelope addressed to Mr F. A.
Frensic. Frensic glanced at the manuscript and noted with satisfaction that its pages were
pristine and its corners unthumbed, a healthy sign which indicated that he was the first
recipient and that it hadn't gone the rounds of other agents. Then he looked at the title page.
It said simply PAUSE O MEN FOR THE VIRGIN, A Novel. There was no author's name and no return
address. Odd. Frensic opened the envelope and read the letter inside. It was brief and impersonal
and mystifying.

Cadwalladine & Dimkins Solicitors

596 St Andrew's Street Oxford

Dear Sir,

All communications concerning the possible sale, publication and copyright of the enclosed
manuscript should be addressed to this office marked for the Personal Attention of P.
Cadwalladine.

The author, who wishes to remain strictly anonymous, leaves the matter of terms of sale and
choice of a suitable nom de plume and related matters entirely in your hands.

Yours faithfully,

Percy Cadwalladine.

Frensic read the letter through several times before turning his attention to the manuscript.
It was a very odd letter. An author who wished to remain strictly anonymous? Left everything
concerning sale and choice of nom de plume and related matters entirely in his hands? Considering
that all the authors he had ever dealt with were notoriously egotistical and interfering there
was a lot to be said for one who was so self-effacing. Positively endearing, in fact. With the
silent wish that Mr Jamesforth had left everything in his hands Frensic turned the title page of
Pause O Men for the Virgin and began to read.

He was still reading an hour later, his snuff box open on the desk and his waistcoat and the
creases of his trousers powdered with snuff. Frensic reached unthinkingly for the box and took
another large pinch and wiped his nose with his third handkerchief. In the next office the phone
rang. People climbed the stairs and knocked on Sonia's door. Traffic rumbled outside in the
street. Frensic was oblivious to these extraneous sounds. He turned another page and read on.

It was half past six when Sonia Futtle finished for the day and prepared to leave. The door of
Frensic's office was shut and she hadn't heard him go. She opened it and peered inside. Frensic
was sitting at his desk staring fixedly through the window over the dark roofs of Covent Garden
with a slight smile on his face. It was an attitude she recognized, the posture of triumphant
discovery.

'I don't believe it,' she said standing in the doorway.

'Read it,' said Frensic. 'Don't believe me. Read it for yourself.' His hand flicked
dismissively towards the manuscript.

'A good one?'

'A bestseller.'

'Are you sure?'

'Positive.'

'And of course it's a novel?'

'One hopes so,' said Frensic, 'fervently.'

'A dirty book,' said Sonia, who recognized the symptoms.

'Dirty,' said Frensic, 'is hardly adequate. The mind that penned if minds can pen this odyssey
of lust is of a prurience indescribable.' He got up and handed her the manuscript.

'I will value your opinion,' he said with the air of a man who had regained his authority.

But if it was a jaunty Frensic who went home to his flat in Hampstead that night, it was a
wary one who came back next morning and wrote a note on Sonia's scratch pad. 'Will discuss the
novel with you over lunch. Not to be disturbed.' He went into his office and shut the
door.

For the rest of the morning there was little to indicate that Frensic had anything more
important on his mind than a vague interest in the antics of the pigeons on the roof opposite. He
sat at his desk staring out of the window, occasionally reaching for the phone or jotting
something on a piece of paper. For the most part he just sat. But external appearances were
misleading. Frensic's mind was on the move, journeying across the internal landscape which he
knew so well and in which each publishing house in London was a halt for bargaining, a crossroads
where commercial advantages were exchanged, favours given and little debts repaid. And Frensic's
route was a devious one. It was not enough to sell a book. Any fool could do that, given the
right book. The important thing was to place it in precisely the right spot so that the
consequences of its sale would have maximum effect and ramify out to advance his reputation and
promote some future advantage. And not his alone but that of his authors. Time entered into these
calculations, time and his intuitive assessment of books that had yet to be written, books by
established authors which he knew would be unsuccessful and books by new writers whose success
would be jeopardized by their lack of reputation. Frensic juggled with intangibles. It was his
profession and he was good at it.

Sometimes he sold books for small advances to small firms when the very same book offered to
one of the big publishing houses would have earned its author a large advance. On these occasions
the present was sacrificed to the future in the knowledge that help given now would be repaid
later by the publication of some novel that would never sell more than five hundred copies but
which Frensic, for reasons of his own, wished to see in print. Only Frensic knew his own
intentions, just as only Frensic knew the identities of those well-reputed novelists who actually
earned their living by writing detective stories or soft porn under pseudonyms. It was all a
mystery and even Frensic, whose head was filled with abstruse equations involving personalities
and tastes, who bought what and why, and all the details of the debts he owed or was owed, knew
that he was not privy to every corner of the mystery. There was always luck and of late Frensic's
luck had changed. When that happened it paid to walk warily. This morning Frensic walked very
warily indeed.

He phoned several friends in the legal profession and assured himself that Cadwalladine &
Dimkins, Solicitors, were an old, well-established and highly reputable firm who handled work of
the most respectable kind. Only then did he phone Oxford and ask to speak to Mr Cadwalladine
about the novel he had sent him. Mr Cadwalladine sounded old-fashioned. No, he was sorry to say,
Mr Frensic could not meet the author. His instructions were that absolute anonymity was essential
and all matters would have to be referred to Mr Cadwalladine personally. Of course the book was
pure fiction. Yes, Mr Frensic could include an extra clause in any contract exonerating the
publishers from the financial consequences of a libel action. In any case he had always assumed
such a clause to be part of contracts between publishers and authors. Frensic said they were but
that he had to be absolutely certain when dealing with an anonymous author. Mr Cadwalladine said
he quite understood.

Frensic put the phone down with a new feeling of confidence, and returned less warily to his
interior landscape where imaginary negotiations took place. There he retraced his route, stopped
at several eminent publishing houses for consideration, and travelled on. What Pause O Men for
the Virgin needed was a publisher with an excellent reputation to give it the imprimatur of
respectability. Frensic narrowed them down and finally made up his mind. It would be a gamble but
it would be a gamble that was worth taking. He would have to have Sonia Futtle's opinion
first.