Longshot

‘Not on the terms he’s looking for.’ Ronnie considered things. ‘I suppose I can tell you,’ he said, ‘as he made an approach to you. He’s asking for a writer to stay in his house for at least a month, to go through all his cuttings and records and interview him in depth. None of the top names will do that, they’ve all got other lives to lead. Then he wants seventy per cent of royalty income which isn’t going to amount to much in any case. No top writer is going to work for thirty per cent.’

‘Thirty per cent... including the advance?’

‘Right. An advance no bigger than yours, if I could get one at all.’

‘That’s starvation.’

Ronnie smiled. ‘Comparatively few people live by writing alone. I thought you knew that. Anyway,’ he leaned forward, dismissing Tremayne and saying more briskly, ‘about these American rights...’

It seemed that a New York literary agent, an occasional associate of Ronnie’s, had asked my publishers routinely whether they had anything of interest in the pipeline. They had steered him back to Ronnie. Would I, Ronnie asked, care to have him send a copy of my manuscript to the American agent, who would then, if he thought the book saleable in the American market, try to find it an American publisher.

I managed to keep my mouth shut but was gaping and gasping inside.

‘Well?’ Ronnie said.

‘I... er... I’d be delighted,’ I said.

‘Thought you would. Not promising anything, you realise. He’s just taking a look.’

‘Yes.’

‘If you remember we gave your publisher here only British and Commonwealth rights. That leaves us elbowroom to manoeuvre.’ He went on for a while discussing technicalities and possibilities his pendulum way. I was left with a feeling that things might be going to happen but on the other hand probably not. The market was down, everything was difficult, but the publishing machine needed constant fodder and my book might be regarded as a bundle of hay. He would let me know, he said, as soon as he got an opinion back from the New York agent.

‘How’s the new book coming along?’ he asked.

‘Slowly.’

He nodded. ‘The second one’s always difficult. But just keep going.’

‘Yes.’

He rose to his feet, looking apologetically at his waiting paperwork, shaking my hand warmly in farewell. I thanked him for the lunch. Any time, he said automatically, his mind already on his next task, and I left him and walked along the passage, stopping at Daisy’s desk on the way out.

‘You’re sending my manuscript to America,’ I said, zipping up my jacket and bursting to tell someone, anyone, the good news.

‘Yes,’ she beamed. ‘I posted it last Friday.’

‘Did you indeed!’

I went on out to the lift not sure whether to laugh or be vaguely annoyed at Ronnie’s asking permission for something he had already done. I wouldn’t have minded at all if he’d simply told me he’d sent the book off. It was his job to do the best for me that he could; I would have thought it well within his rights.

I went down two floors and out into the bitter afternoon air thinking of the steps that had led to his door.

Finishing the book had been one thing, finding a publisher another. The six small books I’d previously written, though published and on sale to the public, had all been part of my work for the travel firm who had paid me pretty well for writing them besides sending me to far-flung places to gather the knowledge. The travel firm owned the guides and published them themselves, and they weren’t in the market for novels.

I’d taken my precious typescript personally to a small but well-known publisher (looking up the address in the phone book) and had handed it to a pretty girl there who said she would put it in the slush pile and get round to it in due course.

The slush pile, she explained, showing dimples, was what they called the heap of unsolicited manuscripts that dropped through their letter-box day by day. She would read my book while she commuted. I could return for her opinion in three weeks.

Three weeks later, the dimples still in place, she told me my book wasn’t really ‘their sort of thing’, which was mainly ‘serious literature’, it seemed. She suggested I should take it to an agent, who would know where to place it. She gave me a list of names and addresses.

‘Try one of those,’ she said. ‘I enjoyed the book very much. Good luck with it.’

I tried Ronnie Curzon for no better reason than I’d known where to find his office, as Kensington High Street lay on my direct walk home. Impulse had led to good and bad all my life, but when I felt it strongly, I usually followed it. Ronnie had been good. Opting for poverty had been so-so. Accepting Tremayne’s offer was the pits.

Chapter 2