The Jewel Box (8 page)

“Gracie,
have you ever read
The Vision
?”

Dickie had chosen a bad time to call. Mondays were always frenetic at Pearson’s, and this Monday morning had been more so than usual. Grace had just emerged from a long meeting with all of the copywriting department and the two Mr. Pearsons—a “buck your ideas up” meeting, the sort which took place every time another advertising agency seemed to be running ahead of them. On this occasion they’d lost a longstanding client—Potter’s meat spread—to a rival. They’d sat in the boardroom with the air of a bunch of skulking schoolboys waiting to be given a good thrashing. All but Grace, the only female copywriter, who made it her habit to be perversely chirpy at such meetings—giving her best, brightest smiles to the slightly doddery Mr. Henry Pearson, while insisting to Mr. Aubrey Pearson that the problem, in the case of Potter’s, was
not their advertising campaigns, but the name of the product itself.

“What does ‘meat spread’ conjure up in one’s mind?” she’d asked the room at large. “Brown stuff in a jar, that’s what. It’s a lot of meaty nothing. We should have come up with a new name for the product—something to make it sound exciting and give it an identity all its own. Something like…Wonderlunch.”

“This is all very well, Miss Rutherford,” said Mr. Aubrey. “But it’s not our job to come up with new names for the products we advertise. And what’s the use of inventing a new name for an account we’ve lost?”

“The point is to work out how we could do better next time. How we can avoid losing any more accounts.”

But they weren’t interested, of course. They never were.

After the meeting, Grace called Margaret, her favorite of the typists, into her office, and closed the door.

“Take this down, would you? ‘Dear Frank, We are very disappointed to have lost your account, not least because we were just about to put forward a new idea to relaunch your product. We are confident that we can do a better job for you than Benson’s, and suggest you reconsider before it is too late.’” She paused to think. “‘Our confidence is such that I shall confide our idea’…Hmm—is
confide
right, do you think?”

“Not after two mentions of ‘confidence.’” Margaret brushed invisible fluff from her immaculate white sleeves. “How about
divulge
?”

“Divulge…yes, why not? Where was I? ‘Our confidence is such that I shall divulge our idea. Your product needs a new name—Wonderlunch. We feel certain you will agree that this name bestows a new identity on a, frankly, tired brand,
and opens up the possibility for a whole new approach to the advertising. I beseech you to think again and come back to Pearson’s—’”

“No, Miss Rutherford.” Margaret patted at her thickly coiled black hair, not a strand of which was loose. “Pardon me, but you don’t want ‘beseech.’ Sounds like you’re begging.”

Grace smiled. This was why she liked Margaret. “You’re right, of course. ‘I
urge
you to think again and come back to Pearson’s. Our door is always open.’” She paused. “I like that bit about the door,” she added.

At that moment the telephone rang. Grace nodded to Margaret to answer it.

“Grace Rutherford’s office.” She put a hand over the receiver. “A Richard Sedgwick for you?”

“Gracie, have you ever read
The Vision
?”

“Hasn’t everyone? Why?”

“I’d like you to interview Dexter O’Connell for the
Herald
.”

Grace sat up straighter. “You want
me
to interview
Dexter O’Connell
?”

“It’s to be written up as a conversation between O’Connell and Diamond Sharp. All the usual Sharpisms. I don’t want you to spare him. Got it?”

“Yes. Of course.” Grace was smiling all over her face. “How marvelous.”

“He’s in London. The rumor is he’s just finished a new book—the masterpiece he’s been threatening for years.”

“You want me to ask him?”

“Don’t mess it up. He almost never gives interviews. It’s an exclusive. How well do you remember
The Vision
?”

Grace scratched her head. “Well, I’ll reread it, of course. It’s been years. I was still at school—”

“There won’t be time for that. You’re meeting him tonight.”

“Tonight! I can’t possibly…I have plans and…” But Grace was already rethinking her evening, adjusting her priorities. “All right. Tonight it is. I just wish I could remember the book better.”

Margaret was mouthing something. Grace turned away from her, vaguely annoyed.

“Tour Eiffel at eight,” said Dickie. “The table’s booked in his name.”

“Tour Eiffel again…You’re obsessed with the place, Sedgwick.”

“His choice. I’ll need your copy by the end of tomorrow. Two thousand words should do it.”

“Crikey—you don’t ask much, do you!”

Margaret was mouthing to her again—tapping her on the shoulder to try to get her attention. Grace scowled and brushed her off.

“Charm him.” Dickie sounded oddly sheepish. “All your feminine wiles. I want the piece to be personal. Intimate.”

“Goodness, Dickie, what do you think I am?”

“I know what you are, Grace.” His voice was softer now. “And I know how you can get the best out of him. I’ll have a boy run a copy of
The Vision
around to your office just in case you have a little reading time this afternoon. That and anything else we have on file about O’Connell.”

“Very good.” Grace attempted a clipped, businesslike tone. “Oh—and Dickie, thanks for giving me a chance at this.”

“It’s not me you have to thank.” There was an edge to his
voice. “It’s O’Connell that wanted you. Good luck. And be careful. He has quite a reputation.”

“Bye, Dickie.”

Grace placed the receiver back in its cradle and turned to face Margaret.

“Miss Rutherford—”

“Let’s just finish this letter before I lose my thread, shall we?” She cleared her throat. “Now, where was I?”

Margaret read from her dictation pad.

“Ah, we’d pretty much finished. Sign off from Mr. Aubrey Pearson: All the best, or whatever he usually says.”

Margaret gaped. “You’re sending this in Mr. Pearson’s name?”

“That’s right.” Grace looked her straight in the eye. “Our secret—right? Don’t worry. If there’s any trouble, I’ll take full responsibility. It won’t rebound on you.”

“But, Miss Rutherford…”

“Yes?”

Margaret chewed the end of her pencil. “The letter would be better as coming from Mr. Henry Pearson. He’s closer to Potter. And if it works—well—I think he’ll just be pleased. Mr. Aubrey—he’s likely to go off at the deep end whether it works or not.”

Grace stared at the inscrutable face: the thick, black-rimmed glasses. “You’re quite right.”

“Grace.” Margaret had seemingly forgotten her place. “Why are you doing this? You could lose your job.”

Grace decided to tell the truth. “Because I’m someone who has lots of responsibilities—too many. Sometimes they weigh heavily on me. And it’s then, when I should be extra careful about doing the right thing, that a little devil pops up in me and just won’t stay quiet. Now and then, every so often,
up it comes to make trouble. And when it does, there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

Margaret seemed to consider this for a moment and nodded silently. Then she said, “I’ve read
The Vision
eight times. I’ve read everything Dexter O’Connell has ever written. His novels, his short stories and essays. I’ve heard him read aloud from his work on three occasions. If you’ll take me for a nice lunch at one o’clock, I’ll tell you everything I know.”

Every once in a while, I meet a man who is truly, head-turningly, staggeringly, and yes, mouthwateringly handsome. To all you girls who bit your nails to the quick and went goggle-eyed late into the night devouring
The Vision
a few years back, I now confirm that its infamous author, Dexter O’Connell, is one such marvel of American manhood. Yes,
American
is quite the right label here. For when did you last spot one of our nice English boys with shoulders and chest of such remarkable broadness? The body—dare one comment, even in these enlightened days, in print, on the
body
of a man?—well, the body is the sort one simply can’t ignore. Yes, it benefited from being clad in the very best of bespoke suits (a silk and cotton blend in a delicate dove-gray, no doubt from Savile Row, or whatever the New York equivalent calls itself), the kind of suit that would certainly make the best of any body, however run-of-the-mill, and disguise
its more saggy aspects with expensive cunning. But the sheer, tall, athletic overwhelmingness wasn’t due to the suit, I promise you, girls.

This particular body, I would suggest, is the end result of all that sport they play in the American college education (O’Connell went to Yale). Also from a brief but physically demanding stint in the Ambulance Corps during the war (yes, he was one of those good eggs who came to Europe early on to do his bit alongside our men). And from a wholesome southern upbringing involving home-cooked foods with names like “grits” and “succotash” and “meat loaf” (how unappetizing they sound, but there must be something to it).

One shouldn’t forget to mention the face, either. The easy smilingness of the mouth; the Roman fineness of the cheekbones and the nose. The flirtatious flyawayness of the fair hair; the clear, cold cleverness of those blue eyes that don’t seem to want to meet yours except when you’re doing your best to evade their glintingly perceptive gaze.

Trouble is, I don’t much like good-looking men. I don’t trust ’em as far as I can throw ’em.

He was seated at the best corner table—the table where he’d sat on the night she first met him. She spotted him a few seconds before he looked up and saw her. Just a very few seconds but it was long enough for her to compose herself and arrange her face into a suitably cool expression. Long enough, she felt, to give her the advantage in that instant of discovery—so that when he did look up, it was he and not she who seemed, albeit ever so fleetingly, unsettled.

“Miss Sharp.” He’d stood up for her, and he took her hand and kissed it with a gallantry that struck her as ludicrous—then continued to stand there, sizing her up in an overtly male
way that made her sense the advantage sliding in his direction. Her dress—a loose chiffon number with floral print, ever so slightly transparent, hinting at the presence of the simple silk shift beneath—was too floaty for the occasion. If she’d had time to go home and change, she’d have put on her plain black Chanel suit and some chunky glass beads.

“Good evening, Mr. O’Connell. I suppose I’m meant to feel flattered by all the subterfuge?”

“Meaning that you don’t?”

She sat down, and he did likewise.

“You’ve contrived a situation in which the focus is absolutely on you, and in which I’m forced to be diminutive and servile. Why on earth should I be flattered by that?”

“Well, that’s one way of looking at it. Maybe I just wanted to see you again. Are you going to tell me your real name now?”

Without replying, she began searching about in her bag for her notebook and pen, producing them with a flourish.

“All right, then.” He sighed. “But don’t you find this kind of combat a little wearying?”

“Poor Dexter. Are you
terribly
weary?” She flipped open the notebook.

He shook his head. “Miss Sharp, this isn’t how it’s going to work.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No.” He reached across the table and took the notebook and pen out of her hands. Joe, the waiter, had come across while they were talking, and was standing beside them.

“Good evening, Mr. O’Connell. Miss Sharp. May I be so bold as to suggest you share the Chateaubriand? It comes with potatoes and green beans.”

“Sounds perfect,” said O’Connell. “And bring us a bottle of red, would you, Joe? Your selection—make it a really good one.”

“Excuse me,” said Grace. “Do I have any say whatsoever in this?”

“No. You’re to be diminutive and servile, remember? We’ll have it medium rare, Joe. And would you be so kind as to look after these, please?” He handed over Grace’s notebook and pen.

“Now,” he continued, as the waiter disappeared, “if you won’t tell me your name, could you at least tell me something interesting about yourself?”

“Such as?”

“Such as, the reason you haven’t married.”

“Writers are ugly,” O’Connell announces, over a leathery Chateaubriand at Tour Eiffel. (Sorry, Mr. Stulik, but it was leathery. Your chef should stop making allowances for the bien-cuit English, and reacquaint himself with the Cuisine Française. The potatoes, conversely, were slightly underdone. Forgivable in the case of certain other vegetables, but in a potato?) “We do nasty things to people in novels,” O’Connell says. “We watch them carefully, and then we twist them into the shapes that suit our purposes. They end up like reflections in fairground mirrors. Writing is a cruel business.”

I ask him if this was true of the creation of Veronique in
The Vision
, whether O’Connell’s first and original flapper was a horribly distorted version of someone he’d once known.

“Of course,” he says. “She was a girl I was in love with—a girl who broke my heart. There was much more passion in
The Vision
than in anything else I’ve written. That’s why it’s my best novel. It was horrible passion, of course. Hatred, even. But it was passion, all the same.”

I ask what’s become of the girl who broke his heart.

He shrugs. “It doesn’t matter anymore.” His face, when he says this, is more ugly than handsome.

“I don’t believe that nobody’s asked you.” O’Connell forked a pile of beans into his mouth without bothering to cut them up.