‘Well, good luck to her. She won’t get far,’ said Graham Chadleigh-Bewes with childish satisfaction. ‘The best authorities on Esmond are sitting here in this room as we speak. And so long as none of us agree to speak to this dreadful woman, then we’ll be fine.’
‘How do you know she’s a dreadful woman?’ asked Carole, intrigued.
‘With a name like that, she’s got to be, hasn’t she?’ There was a playground snigger in his voice. ‘So . . . absolute solidarity, all right? None of us must talk to her.’
‘I’m not so sure about that, Graham.’ There was an evil twinkle in George Ferris’s gnome-like eye. ‘A bit of competition might be healthy. Might put a rocket up you to get your bloody biography finished.’
‘Now that’s not fair. As a Literary Executor, I’m kept incredibly busy, talking to publishers about new editions of Esmond’s work, getting together a selection of the letters, going round doing readings at schools, lobbying Literary Editors to—’
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen!’ Once again Lord Beniston felt the meeting was getting too far out of his control. ‘Could we get back to the agenda, please? We’ve agreed we are not going to co-operate with Professor Marla Teischbaum’s proposed biography. If we have any trouble from her, we will deal with it as the need arises.’
‘Which may be sooner rather than later,’ murmured George Ferris.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I happen to know . . .’ The former librarian slowed his words down to give his revelation full impact ‘ . . . that she will soon be in Sussex – if she isn’t here already – to continue her researches.’
‘That’s not a problem. So long as none of we Trustees tell her anything.’
‘But we can’t stop her coming round Bracketts as a member of the general public, can we?’
‘No, of course we can’t, but she’s hardly going to be able to write a definitive biography on the basis of one Guided Tour, is she? I really think you’re making rather too big a thing of this.’
George Ferris looked suitably deflated – and not a little peeved – as the Chairman moved the agenda on. Gina Locke, without much optimism, enumerated various possible sources of funding, and Sheila Cartwright compounded the gloom by saying that all the Director’s suggestions had been tried in the past, without success. Sheila hinted at the existence of potential sponsors, to whom she had exclusive access, who might save the day. But she couldn’t provide detail at that time. Everything, she said, building mystery around herself, was at a delicate stage of negotiation.
Carole got the feeling Gina was only going through the motions, providing the data Lord Beniston had asked from her, but awaiting the right moment to put forward her real agenda.
The moment came after Josie Freeman had asked Graham Chadleigh-Bewes about ‘any developments on the film front?’ At a meeting some two years previously he had announced to the Trustees with enormous excitement that a production company had been enquiring about the rights in The Demesnes of Eregonne, a children’s fantasy novel by Esmond Chadleigh which had had a considerable vogue in the 1930s. The delusion had spread of a block-busting movie, generating huge book sales, and of the elevation of Esmond Chadleigh to Tolkien-like status. The huge publicity build-up surrounding the film of The Lord of the Rings fed this fever. If ever the time was right for a movie version of The Demesnes of Eregonne, it was now.
But after the initial spurt of enthusiasm, the project seemed to be going the way of all films. At first the production company was going to commission a draft screenplay; then it was going to take the idea to Hollywood (‘where it’s just the kind of thing they’d love’); then the name of an A-List international star was attached to the project; then there was talk of Anglo-Australian funding; then an actor about to leave a popular British soap was said to be ‘looking for a vehicle’ and The Demesnes of Eregonne ‘could be the one’; then there was a suggestion of repackaging the idea and pitching the book as the basis for a six-part children’s television series. Then everything went quiet.
When Graham Chadleigh-Bewes had last spoken to the production company (which, incidentally, had never come up with any evidence of actually having produced anything), he had been told that ‘while the enthusiasm for The Demesnes of Eregonne within the company remained as strong as ever . . . it wasn’t really a good time.’ The trouble was, they said, the hype and success surrounding The Lord of the Rings had really ruined the chances of any other project in the same genre.
It was when Graham came to the end of this predictably depressing saga that Gina Locke moved up a gear and started to put forward what she really believed in. ‘All of which leads me to the conclusion, Mr Chairman . . .’ (she wasn’t going to risk stumbling on meeting protocol now she was talking about something important) ‘ . . . that Bracketts can no longer go on with its current amateurish attitude to money, crossing our fingers and living on hope. If this organization is going to have any future at all, it is time we employed the services of a professional fund-raiser.’
‘That’s ridiculous!’ snapped Sheila Cartwright, too incensed even to be aware that meeting protocol existed. ‘That’s just creating another job for some Media Studies graduate with no knowledge of the real world!’
Even if she hadn’t herself been a Media Studies graduate, Gina Locke would have bridled at that. ‘No, it is not! It is living in the real world. Bracketts may have been founded on Volunteers and goodwill—’
‘And what’s wrong with Volunteers and goodwill?’
‘There is nothing wrong with—’
‘When I think of the work I put in to build up the network, then opening it out to gap-year students, helpers with learning difficulties, day-release prisoners from Austen Prison, not to mention—’
‘No one is diminishing your achievements, Sheila, but the heritage industry is now a highly sophisticated professional business.’
‘Are you suggesting my methods weren’t sophisticated?’ blazed Sheila Cartwright. ‘Are you calling me an amateur?’
‘I am saying,’ said Gina with great restraint, ‘that what you did worked wonderfully at the time. But that time was twenty years ago and, in the leisure industry particularly, times have changed.’
‘Leisure industry!’ Sheila Cartwright had considerable supplies of contempt and she loaded them all on to the two words. ‘Bracketts is not part of the leisure industry. Bracketts is a vision, the vision of Esmond Chadleigh, shared by me and by other lovers of his work. Heaven forbid that this beautiful place should ever be turned into a kind of literary Disneyworld.’
Her adversary knew the power of cheap rhetoric, but Gina Locke managed to sound calm as she pressed her point. ‘I agree, Sheila, and there is no danger of that happening. All I am saying is that Bracketts can’t continue to lurch from crisis to crisis. There are many more demands on potential sponsors and benefactors than there were twenty years ago, and in that time the business of fund-raising has become a deeply specialized one. Most other heritage organizations of this size employ professional fund-raisers, and I think such a post should be an accepted part of the management structure at—’
‘Management structure!’ Sheila Cartwright dug even deeper into her reserves of contempt to smother these two words. ‘That I’d ever hear an expression like that used in Bracketts! In the house of the man who wrote these words: