‘Think I’d care? They pay me next to nothing.’ She looked for something on the desk, which he thought might be a perfumed clothes peg to put on her snout, then fastened a few papers together. ‘What are you going to see Mr Humphries for?’
You may be Bert Gedling, he thought, but you don’t have to think like Archie Bleasby. He went up close. ‘It’s about a novel.’
‘And you have an appointment?’
‘I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. Bert Gedling’s the name.’
‘Oh.’ She pressed a button on the intercom, and a Donald Duck squawk came back. ‘Sit down.’ She pointed to a chair, as if he was blind. ‘He shouldn’t be long.’
He preferred to stand, sniffing the dusty upholstery of the sofa while relishing a whiff of the girl’s scent. To bolster the role of Bert Gedling, which he must put on in no uncertain terms, he recalled acting in the Ovid play at school. Now that he was on a real stage the experience would be put to more practical use, though the encounter with a publishing firm was a come-down compared to Phaeton’s fatal drive across the universe in the Sun God’s horse and cart. Life and death stakes weren’t on the cards, but if this wasn’t a metamorphosis he didn’t know what was.
Perhaps the file box under Humphries’ arm was to give the idea that he was hurried, the ruse wasted on Herbert, who saw him as ordinary enough in that he only had one side to his personality, and wouldn’t be difficult to deal with. If he was a worried man he was the sort who had been born that way, and so was able to put on a smile of pretending to be at ease, betrayed by lines across his brow as close as contours defining a steep hill.
He looked at Bert from the doorway and, twiddling a watch chain across his waistcoat, came forward to shake his hand. ‘Humphries,’ he said, unable to meet his eyes. He led the way to a large office on the first floor, the stair walls decorated with framed photographs of authors who looked as if they had been to the same school as Herbert Thurgarton-Strang.
They sat at opposite ends of a leather-covered couch. ‘Well, Mr Gedling,’ Humphries said, still hugging the file box as if his lunch was in it. ‘I don’t see any point in beating about the bush. We’ve read Royal Ordnance, and we’re very impressed. We want to publish it.’ He paused for a look of surprise, or even pleasure, but Herbert, knowing it was called for, and in spite of a bumping heart, gazed across at a shelf of novels, deciding it was unlikely that he had read books with such gaudy spines.
‘Mind you, it’s an unusual piece of work, and there’s no saying how well or otherwise it will sell, but we’ll certainly do our best to push it. I don’t think there has been a working-class novel quite like it, though I’m afraid you might have to alter a few of the more explicit words.’
‘Oh, well, ’appen I will,’ he grudged. ‘People’ll know what I mean, anyway.’
‘No doubt about that.’
Above the bookcase stood a large framed photograph of a school cricket team, and Bert walked across as if interested in the books. ‘You published all these?’
Humphries laughed. ‘Oh, many more than that.’
‘It’s a lot.’ He managed a look at the photograph and saw, among the lines of faces, his old adolescent self, not as he would like to have imagined — head half backwards, with a sneer at the world, or at least an aspect of Byronic contempt — but as a sixteen-year-old with a look of trepidation, he would almost say fear, certainly anxiety, unease, a nervousness at the lips and a stare showing how at bay and unhappy he must have been. To cover the shock and before turning round he took out a packet of Woodbines. ‘Fag?’
‘No, thank you. Are you all right?’
‘I was only thinking I ain’t read any o’ them books. I’ve got a lot to mek up for.’ The cigarette hid his face in smoke. Isaac’s advice had been to let them do most of the talking, but it was necessary to emphasize his identity as Bert Gedling, so he couldn’t stay dumb.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve had much time.’
‘True. I’ve slogged my guts out in a factory since I was fourteen, but at least I learned how to write a novel about that life.’
‘You certainly did. Do you still work there?’
Thoughts and talk lived on different levels, and he decided it was best not to speculate on how the photograph of the old cricket team came to be in Humphries’ office. ‘I’ve got to earn a living, ’aven’t I?’ He looked around the room. ‘There are worse places.’
‘What about your family?’
Bert’s impulse, which Herbert trod on, was to tell him that his family was none of his fucking business. Instead he decided he would be more convincing if he didn’t clip off too many aitches. ‘Mam and Dad was killed in an air raid, so an aunt took me in. When she couldn’t stand me going out to pubs and coming back kay-lied she threw me on the street and I ’ad to live in digs.’
A real son of the people. Amazing. Humphries shook the money up and down in his left trouser pocket. ‘How did you learn to write so well?’ — not a grammatical slip anywhere, and the neatest-cleanest typescript I’ve seen for a long time. They’d even wondered whether it wasn’t a novel cooked up by some university chap pulling a fast one, but it was far more authentic than that.
Bert smiled. ‘Easy. I read a lot o’ books. Then again, I went to a good school till I was fourteen. If yer didn’t spell right yer got bashed.’
Humphries stared, as if not entirely believing that he had before him an all-round twenty-two carat, totally unspoiled self-taught novelist from the working class. Bert gave the stare back, then crumbled his expression into the cheery open-hearted smile of a workman which, he knew from much practice with the mirror, would make him look like a berserker only halfway gone from self-control. Humphries cleared phlegm from his throat for a further question. ‘Where did you acquire that scar? And the sling? You seem to have been in the wars.’
Humphries felt free to ask about the scar because he looked on him as from a lower sort of life. He may not know why he’s doing it, Herbert thought, but that’s how it is. If he took me as one of his own kind he would have waited for me to tell him about it. The trouble is he doesn’t even know he’s being supercilious, and because I do, and because I want him to think I’m somebody I’m not, I won’t give him a mouthful of well-delivered execration, but get back to being Bert.
‘I was. Life’s a battlefield where I come from.’ He lifted the sling an inch or two. ‘Industrial accident, this. As for the scar, they’re a rough lot up north. I offended a bloke in a pub, but don’t ask me what I said. Maybe I only just looked at him, and the ponce came for me with a knife. Got a swipe in before I could dodge. He thought he’d frightened me off, but nowt frightens me. I had my boots on, so I went straight back in and kicked the knife out of his hand. Then I cracked ’is ribs to stop his complaints. He didn’t look very pretty after I’d done.’
He flipped his cigarette end into the empty fireplace, as if ready to go out and manufacture another fracas, or give a performance on the spot, should there be any sign of trouble.
Don’t overdo the Bert bit. Pull back. Yet it was irresistible, because playing the role was as near as he’d get to driving a chariot across the sky — better in fact because he wasn’t as daft as Phaeton, so it wouldn’t be fatal. Functioning through the eyes, brain and heart of Bert made Herbert wonder how long he could keep up the stance, a long part to play, and not always easy, calling every moment for care and dexterity. It was hard to understand how Humphries was unable to penetrate such an everyday person and see the real man within. Had he led such a sheltered life? Still, didn’t Archie always say that if you live a lie you become the lie itself, and didn’t feel you were living a lie at all? He was acting out of inspiration, and knew it was safe to carry on. ‘I enjoy a bit of a bust-up on a Saturday night.’