Category: Creativity

Chapter 38. A Chat With a Publisher

Miss Bottomley seemed amazingly welcoming to this new body arriving to stay beneath her roof. Scarlet didn’t even manage to sink the fact that Enid was a fan into the conversation before Miss Bottomley was asking her new acquaintance, “Do you know anything about cats?”

Enid Rumson, as it turned out, knew quite a lot about cats and she was full of suggestions for why The King of Wessex might be off his feed. She didn’t think a diet of cream and pancetta was helping him expel his hairballs properly and suggested serving a “fatty fish” as a curative or, if desperate, olive oil.

“We have both,” said Scarlet.

“Oh, God bless you!” cried Miss Bottomley, wringing her hands, and Scarlet showed her the pile of tinned sardines Pom had insisted on throwing into the cart – because, as he said so wisely, “You never know.”

The King allowed himself to be tempted and was soon hawking and gulping while all three women gazed at him fondly.

“We can certainly use YOU around here,” Miss Bottomley said thankfully to the new recruit.
“By the way,” offered Scarlet, “Mrs. Rumson is a great fan of your work.”

“Call me Esmé,” said Miss Bottomley, offering a hand.

Scarlet did her best not to feel offended. This sign of favor had not yet been extended to her! On the other hand, Enid was older, and not directly in Miss Bottomley’s employ so perhaps it made sense.

Enid was suitably impressed by her quarters.

“You can stay on the third floor if you’d like a private bath,” Scarlet offered.

“No, thank you,” said Enid, “I want to be as close to this dear little boy as I can get.”
It took a couple of trips to get all four of her ancient, heavily loaded suitcases upstairs.

“Sorry,” puffed Enid, “You see, it’s because I’ve already decided that I’m never going back.”

Scarlet, equally out of breath, said, “It’s fine. I’ve been wanting to get back into trim. These stairs are so much less expensive than a health club.”

Now that she had someone to watch Nick she told Miss Bottomley that her first order of business would be to arrange a meeting with Mr. Mountjoy of Coltsfoot and Briggins so that Scarlet could find out exactly what his plans were.

“In the meantime, I’ll make dinner, shall I?” suggested Enid. Nick was enjoying a bottle in the carrycot. They were standing in the kitchen at the time. “I love cooking and at the Embassy I never got the chance. I can tell you I’m very tired of mutton, olives and couscous.” Enid turned to Miss Bottomley and asked, “What’s your favorite meal?”

Mutton, olives and couscous sounded heavenly to Scarlet but Miss Bottomley gazed at Enid reverently. “Shepherd’s pie,” she sighed. “With minced lamb. Order anything by phone and you will see they just deliver.”

“Oh, do they? Shall we then have apple tart to follow? I’m a dab hand with pastry.” She flexed her burly arms.

Miss Bottomley turned eyes swimming with tears to Scarlet. “As long as Enid is our cook, please consider her compensation covered by me.”

“It’ll never interfere with looking after the baby,” Enid promised, and Miss Bottomley agreed, “Babies come first. Everyone knows that.”

As Scarlet turned away to hide her glee she heard Miss Bottomley confide to her new chef, “You know, it turns out that I am quite a rich woman.”

Nigel Mountjoy had an opening that very afternoon, and it’s no wonder, thought Scarlet, after puffing up the six flights to Coltsfoot & Briggins’ three room suite beneath the eaves, because business seemed definitely to be on the slide. The partner’s (Mr. Briggins’) door was closed, (“he prefers to work from his club”), the receptionist’s desk was empty (“Miss Plympton only works half-days”) and in case she missed these symbols of deterioration, Mr. Mountjoy, a sad-eyed hound-dog of a man in his fifties, treated Scarlet to a long disquisition on the essential, desperate unprofitability of publishing.

“We’ve had a modest success Westernizing adventure yarns,” he told her, as he spread a series called “Reverend Rod to the Rescue” across his desk. In the new version, Reverend Rod had dropped holy orders and become, it seemed, a free-lance spy as well as something of a ladies’ man. Scarlet tried to conceal her revulsion by sipping the lukewarm Earl Grey tea Mr. Mountjoy had made himself. Seemingly no one had ever told him that the water needed to actually boil and she feared he was probably applying this same makeshift attitude to literature.

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” he said enthusiastically. “Not to put too fine a point on it, I knew the old girl wasn’t up to it. She’s almost ninety for heavens’ sake and hasn’t written a thing for years! It’s a miracle she’s not gaga, but confusion is setting on apace if you catch my drift.

We usually put these things out to bid – it’s astonishing how little money is required to set a writer to work – but there’s no reason at all why you might not do as well.” (And Miss Bottomley would be paying for it! thought Scarlet. Win-win from his point of view.)

“I’ve taken the liberty to jot down some requirements.” He proffered a handwritten page.
“First, twenty chapters instead of the twenty-five she used to have. Boil the thing down. Speed is of the essence. Have every chapter end with a cliffhanger – our Rod the Spy fellow is very good model there. Here, take a copy. Gratis. This fellow Clovis is quite willing to do Miss Clew but we felt it requires the feminine touch.

Then, language. Our target audience has an O-level education – no point using words they’ll only have to look up. They want something that can be read in a couple of railway journeys.”

He opened up The Poltergeist Problem to a random page and pointed to the word “deleterious.”
“See what I mean? Nothing double or triple-barreled like that, use your thesaurus to find some other term” – he shuffled through a well-thumbed Roget’s – “There you go. “Bad.” First word out of the gate! Everybody knows what that means!

Secondly, update the era. Get rid of the Victorian stuff – nobody wants those dreadful memories – we’ve been fleeing them ever since the First War. Make Miss Clew younger, and she doesn’t need to be a spinster. Get it? I’m giving you a free hand here – insert some romantic interest. Keep it light – a different chap for each book would be ideal. No reason she can’t be a bit of a siren – that attracts the male reader as well as the ladies, see.

It’s a stroke of luck that you’re American – perhaps Miss Clew could have an American mother – appeal to our cousins across the pond. We’ve had no luck getting Rod picked up there but this could break the ice between us and our Boston counterparts – they’ve been freezing us out if I may be so honest. They want to get into “youth” textbooks and religious publishing – we’ve got no market for that sort of thing going here.

Most of all, mood. Keep it upbeat! It’s the modern tendency to be devil-may-care, not take things too seriously.”

He tried to smile when he said this but his droopy face couldn’t cooperate – the result was ghastly, even sinister, like a funeral director mewling mawkishly about “loved ones.”

“I just re-read the series recently – well, not all of them, I confess, there’s a limit to what a fellow can stand – and it’s very difficult going. The woman has – not to put too fine a point on it – an axe to grind. Everybody’s always in the wrong. World saturated with evil – that awful revivalist point of view. People today don’t read to be told life’s some sort of grim masquerade, but to have fun, learn something new and feel a part of some previously unknown but thrilling world that takes them right out of their worries, cares and fears. Follow me? I’ve always found this little volume helpful.”
He extracted a slim book from the bookcase behind them, Pack Up Your Worries.

“This is non-fiction, of course, but we’ve had an amazing success with this modest little book published a dozen years ago – right after the war. It keeps the lights on around here, I don’t mind telling you.”

As if disagreeing, the lights flickered at just that moment.

Mr. Mountjoy cracked the book open to pages of lists in what Scarlet considered suspiciously large type. The thing was more like an “expanded pamphlet” than a real book.

“Here, take this copy. I’ve benefited from this advice myself, everyone has. It’s common sense really, no self-pity, no wallowing, each day a fresh voyage of discovery. Appeals to people right across ages, classes, this fellow’s amazing. Sorrowfully Bonamis died a few years ago – he was an untreated diabetic – but we’ve the rights to his name if you’d like to attempt to carry on. You Americans are wizards at this sort of thing. According to him it’s your surface mind you should be cultivating. Ignore the “depths” – whatever dark things are lurking down there. Just the opposite of that fellow Freud, who’s done a lot of damage in my opinion. Keep your chin up, see? Whistle a happy tune even when you don’t feel like it – because modern science has conclusively proven that it’s possible to cheer yourself up by overlooking all the depressing stuff you can’t do anything about anyway.”

Her pushed the book at her and opened his datebook.

“I’ve had a lot of experience with the ghostwriting racket and I can tell you the secret is not to wander too far in the wrong direction. Why don’t we meet once a week to see what you’ve got and we’ll discuss. If you wander off the path I can set you right. Think of me as your tutor talking about essay ideas and looking over your first attempts with a view to a “First Class” ranking for the pair of us.”

He beamed at her, showing a gap between his front teeth that made him resemble a gargoyle. It was all Scarlet could do to keep from blanching.

“How about Monday? Fresh from the weekend, eh?”

“How about the following Friday?” Scarlet gasped, trying not to choke.

“No Friday – nobody’s here on Fridays – the place is a desert. Thursday, then? Four o’clock? I think we can spread out a bit more when Miss Plympton is gone.”

“Fine,” said Scarlet with no intention of ever seeing this man again if she could possibly help it.
“Don’t forget to take your books,” he sent her off, rubbing his hands together. ‘This has been a MOST productive meeting.”

Scarlet would have thrown the books into the nearest trash can if she didn’t need them to show Miss Bottomley. Who would believe any of it, otherwise?

As she clung to a strap and braced herself on her Tube journey – the work day was just ending and seats were invisible – she wondered at how far she had come already. How long ago was it – days really – that she would have jumped at the chance to be that writer or that receptionist slaving for that pittance! What a different world Miss Bottomley had opened up for her! And the best thing about it was that she clearly needed Scarlet every bit as desperately as Scarlet needed her.