Uncle Dynamite (26 page)

‘Mr
Popgood?’

Hermione
laughed a short, dry laugh. In an association which had lasted three years
Augustus Popgood, the sponsor of her books, had never offered her so much as a
cheese straw. Nor had his partner, Cyril Grooly.

‘No,’
she said. ‘This is a new one. He wrote to me a few days ago, saying that he
would like to have me on his list and suggesting luncheon. He seems a most enterprising
man, quite different from Popgood and Grooly. He is the head of a firm called
Meriday House, a Mr Pointer or Punter or Painter. I couldn’t make out the
signature on his letter. Goodbye, mother. I’ll try to get back about three.’

‘I’ll
wait for you, dear.’

‘It’s
something important, you say?’

‘Very,
very important.’

‘About
Reginald?’

‘Yes,
dear. We find that he —‘

‘I’m
sorry, mother,’ said Hermione. ‘I must rush.’

She was
not without a normal girl’s curiosity, but she was also an ambitious young authoress
who believed that there is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the
flood leads on to fortune, and there was awaiting her at Barribault’s Hotel a
publisher who, judging from his letter, was evidently a live wire endowed with
pep and ginger and all the other qualities which ambitious young authoresses
like to see in those responsible for the marketing of their books.

The car
moved off. Seated at the wheel, she gave herself up to agreeable thoughts about
this pushful Mr Pointer.

Or
Punter.

Or possibly
Painter.

Painter was the name. Not
Pointer. Not Punter. Painter. It was Sally’s brother Otis who was waiting for
Hermione in the lobby of Barribault’s Hotel, and at the moment when her
two-seater joined the stream of traffic he had sprung from his chair, too
nervous to sit any longer, and begun to stride to and fro, his eyes from time
to time straying to his wrist watch. The coming luncheon marked a crisis in his
affairs.

It was
no mere coincidence that Otis Painter, in his capacity of publisher of the book
beautiful, should have written to Hermione suggesting a meeting with a view to
an agreement. The invitation had been the outcome of some very rapid thinking
on his part.

Right
from the start it had been plain to Otis Painter that if anything like a happy
ending was to be achieved in that matter of the lawsuit which was brooding over
him like a thunder cloud, Sir Aylmer Bostock would have to be pleaded with, and
he had told Sally to tell Pongo to perform the task. And it was while he was in
the grip of that unpleasant sinking feeling which always came to those who
placed their affairs in Pongo’s hands that he had happened upon the issue of
the
Tatler
containing Hermione’s photograph.

‘Miss
Hermione Bostock,’ he read, ‘daughter of Sir Aylmer and Lady Bostock of
Ashenden Manor, Hants. In addition to being prominent in Society, Miss Bostock
has written several novels under the pseudonym of Gwynneth Gould.’

The
words had brought inspiration. His thoughts, as he gazed at the photograph and
the caption beneath it, had run roughly as follows. And they seem to us to
display an intelligence considerably above the average of what might have been
expected in one who had been in his time both an interior decorator and a
seller of antiques, besides running a marionette theatre in the Boulevard
Raspail.

Q.  Who
is the best possible person to plead with an old crumb who is threatening to
bring a ruinous suit for damages against a shaky young publishing firm?

A.  Obviously
the crumb’s daughter, the apple of his eye to whom he can refuse nothing.

Q.  Get
hold of the daughter, then, and enlist her in one’s cause?

A.  Exactly.

Q.  But
how?

A.  Easy.
She’s an author. Offer her a contract. Her interests will then be identical
with those of her publisher, and she will exert her tremendous influence to
save him from ruin. Better ask her to lunch.

Q.
Right.

A.  At
Barribault’s.

Q. 
What?
Have you ever been to Barribault’s and seen the prices on the right-hand
side?.

A.  No
good spoiling the ship for a ha’porth of tar. You can’t swing a deal like this
on bottled beer, a mutton chop and two veg.

So now
Otis was pacing Barribault’s lobby, wondering why his guest did not arrive and
what the lunch was going to set him back when she did. A few thoughtful words
about acidity might steer her off champagne, but at a place like this even hock
was likely to inflict a ghastly gash on the wallet.

Watching
Otis Painter walk to and fro with his mouth ajar and his knees clashing like
cymbals, for he had the misfortune to suffer from adenoids and to be knock-kneed,
a spectator would have been surprised to learn that he was so closely related
to Sally. But just as daughters have a way of being easier on the eye than
their fathers and mothers, so are sisters frequently more attractive than their
brothers. Otis was a stout young man with a pink nose, horn-rimmed spectacles
and short side-whiskers, who looked like something from the Anglo-Saxon colony
on the east bank of the
Seine
.

It was,
indeed, to the east bank of the
Seine
that he had migrated immediately after graduating from the college
where he had received his education, having sprouted a soul and the
side-whiskers simultaneously towards the end of his sophomore year. From the
rive
gauche
he had drifted to London, there to try various ventures with a uniform
lack of success, and here he was, five years later, the directing executive of
Meriday House, formerly Ye Panache Presse, waiting in Barribault’s lobby to
give lunch to Hermione Bostock.

The
hands of his watch were pointing to twenty-seven minutes past one when through
the glass of the outer door he saw the gaily apparelled official who stood on
the threshold to scoop clients out of their cars and cabs suddenly stiffen
himself, touch his hat convulsively and give his moustache a spasmodic twirl,
sufficient indication that something pretty sensational was on its way in. And
a moment later the door revolved and through it came a figure that made him
catch his breath and regret that the pimple on the tip of his nose had not
yielded to treatment that morning. There is nothing actually low and degrading
about a pimple on the tip of the nose, but there are times when
a
susceptible
young man wishes he did not have one. He stepped forward devoutly.

‘Miss
Gould?’

‘Oh,
how do you do, Mr Pointer?’ ‘Painter.’

‘Punter?’

‘Painter.’

‘Oh,
Painter. I hope I’m not late.’ ‘No, no. Cocktail?’

‘No,
thank you. I never drink.’

Otis
started. The wallet in his hip pocket seemed to give a joyful leap.

‘What,
not even at lunch?’

‘Only
lemonade.’

‘Come
right in,’ said Otis with an enthusiasm which he made no attempt to conceal.
‘Come right along in.’

He led
the way buoyantly towards the grill room. Lemonade, he happened to know, was
half-a-crown.

It was probably this
immediate striking of the right note that made the luncheon such a success. For
that it was a success not even the most exacting critic could have disputed.
From the first forkful of smoked salmon it went with all the swing of a
Babylonian orgy or of one of those conferences between statesmen which are
conducted throughout in a spirit of the utmost cordiality.

Too
often when a publisher entertains an author at the
midday
meal a rather sombre note tinges the
table talk. The host is apt to sigh a good deal and to choose as the theme of
his remarks the hardness of the times, the stagnant condition of the book trade
and the growing price of pulp paper. And when his guest tries to cheer him up
by suggesting that these disadvantages may be offset by a spirited policy of
publicity, he sighs again and says that eulogies of an author’s work displayed
in the press at the publisher’s expense are of little or no value, the only
advertising that counts being — how shall he put it — well, what he might
perhaps describe as word-of-mouth advertising.

There
was nothing of that sort here today. Otis scoffed at the idea that the times
were hard. The times, in his opinion, were swell. So was the book trade. Not a
trace of stagnation. And as for pulp paper, you might have supposed from the
way he spoke that they gave him the stuff.

He then
went on to sketch out his policy as regarded advertising.

Otis,
said Otis, believed in advertising. When he found an author in whom he had
confidence — like you, Miss Gould, if he might say so — the sky was the limit.
A column here, a column there. That sort of thing. The cost? He didn’t give a
darn about the cost. You got it all back on the sales. His motto, he said,
coming through smoothly with the only bit of French — except
Oo-la-la
—
which had managed to stick from the old left bank days, was
L ‘audace, l’audace,
et toujours l’audace.

It was
a statement of faith well calculated to make any young authoress feel that she
was floating on a pink cloud over an ocean of joy, and that was how Hermione
felt as she listened. The sensation grew even more acute as her host spoke of
commissioning her next three books, sight unseen, and paying royalty on them at
the rate of twenty per cent, rising to twenty-five above three thousand. Even
when uttered by a man with adenoids the words were like the strains of some grand
anthem.

It is
possible that the reader of this chronicle, misled by Bill Oakshott’s
enthusiasm, may have formed an erroneous idea of Hermione Bostock’s standing in
the world of literature, for her career had been a good deal less triumphant
than he had appeared to suggest. She had published three works of fiction
through the house of Popgood and Grooly, of which the first two had sold eleven
hundred and four and sixteen hundred and eight copies respectively. The last,
just out, was reported by Popgood, a gloomy man, to be ‘moving slowly’. Grooly,
the optimist of the firm, spoke in brighter vein of a possible sale of two
thousand.

But
even if you strung along with sunny young Grooly you could not say that figures
like these were anything but a poor return for a great deal of hard toil, and
Hermione attributed them not to any lack of merit in the books themselves, for
she knew their merit to be considerable, but to the firm’s preference for
keeping its money in the old oak chest instead of spending it on advertisements
in the papers. She had once taken this matter up with the partners, and Popgood
had said that it was no use advertising in the papers, because the only form of
advertising that counted was … how should he put it?

‘Word
of mouth?’ suggested Grooly.

‘Word
of mouth!’ assented Popgood, looking gratefully at the ingenious phrasemaker.

Little
wonder, then, that as Hermione drank in Otis’s intoxicating words, soft music
seemed to fill the air and even the directing executive of Meriday House became
almost beautiful. She listened as if in a dream, and the more he talked the
more she liked it. It was only as she was sipping her coffee (two shillings,
but unavoidable) that anything crept into his remarks that suggested that all
was not for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Quite suddenly, after
an eloquent passage surcharged with optimism, he struck a minor chord.

‘Yay,’
he said, ‘that’s how I feel. I admire your work and I would like to take hold
of your books and push them as they ought to be pushed. But —‘

He
paused, and Hermione, descending from her pink cloud, looked at him with concern.
When a publisher has offered you twenty per cent rising to twenty-five above
three thousand and has been talking spaciously of column spreads in all the literate
Sunday papers, you do not like to hear him use that word ‘but’.

‘But
—?‘ she echoed.

Otis
removed his horn-rimmed spectacles, polished them and replaced them on a nose
which an excellent luncheon had turned from pink to scarlet. He also touched
his pimple and polished that, and with a pudgy hand stroked his starboard
whisker. The interview had reached its crux, and he wished to reflect before
proceeding.

‘But….
Well, the fact is,’ he said, ‘there’s a catch. I’m not so sure I’m going to
have the money to do it with. I may go bankrupt before I can start.

‘What!’

‘You
see, I’m faced with a darned nasty legal action, and my lawyer tells me the
damages may be very heavy.’

‘But
why do you speak as if you were certain to lose?’

‘I am,
if it ever comes into court. And I don’t see how I’m going to stop it coming
into court. This man Bostock —‘

‘Bostock?’

‘Sir
Aylmer Bostock. He used to be Governor of one of those African colonies, and he
wrote his Reminiscences and got me to publish them —‘

‘But
that was Ye Panache Presse.’