‘Like it?’
He didn’t know what to say. Humphries obviously thought it was the best thing since he’d been to Rome on ten pounds and seen the Sistine Chapel. Herbert wouldn’t look at such a cover on a shop table. He’d run a mile. It was ghastly. Even a half-undressed woman on the front would be better. ‘Love it.’
‘We all do.’ He named the famous artist. ‘He did us a jacket for Walter Hawksworth’s novel a few years ago. The book wasn’t very good, though it sold well.’
Herbert was sure it did. Still, the cover wasn’t the fault of his book, which he lifted high to examine as the one object that might join his disparate parts. The greater the distance between them the more he felt himself an author, whether Bert Gedling who everyone should be wary of (or feel superior to) or Herbert Thurgarton-Strang who carried a bag of iron filings in his soul. Either way, he sensed people’s unease as he signed the book, and lifted another glass of wine as if such work was wearing to an extent that factory graft never could be, and he needed a reward for tackling the unfamiliar system with such panache. Despite its murkiness, the drink went down like a well-greased adder.
Dominic showed him into a small office. ‘It’ll be quiet in here.’
Herbert wondered whether sharp questions on his past weren’t about to commence, but Daniel Sloper the photographer turned Dominic and a couple of others out so that the flashing could happen in peace. ‘All the pictures I’ve ever ’ad took mek me look like the back end of a tram smash,’ Bert grumbled.
‘These won’t.’ Sloper was a tall and well-stocked man in his twenties. He threw his brown leather jacket over a chair in the best motorbiker’s style, but kept his silk scarf tied on like a Battle of Britain fighter pilot, which garment seemed to Herbert the social equivalent of his own white muffler.
Bert offered a glass from a tray of drinks on the desk. ‘Sup this, mate. It’s good for a cough.’
‘Chin-chin, old boy!’ Sloper took a modest swig and, as if knowing what real wine was, poured the remains into an ashtray. He set up screens and tripods, holding a light meter here and there, Herbert noting the thoroughness of a man who knew his trade. Using few words but with amiable and persuasive gestures, he got Bert to stand by the window, and then the door and, lastly, against a solid background of books. A dozen scar-side shots made Bert, in his formal suit and tie, look both villainous and interesting.
Sloper folded up the photographic trappings, waved cheerio, and trundled downstairs in his riding boots.
Herbert felt knackered already, as if his soul had been sucked out and spat into the gutter. ‘You’ll have to get used to it.’ Dominic tried for nonchalance in lighting a Black Russian cigarette, but the match broke in two, and fell flaring on to the carpet. Before he could get down and put it out, Bert stamped on it, glad to see Dominic’s face red with futile exertion as he came up. ‘Yer’ve got to be quick where I come from.’
‘I suppose it will take you some time to become accustomed to life in London. We had thought you’d come to the party wearing overalls. Just to play the part, of course.’ Being jocular, he was unaffected by Herbert’s scowl, who was wondering how he could enquire about Rachel he’d had such a crush on at school. ‘Ah well, where I come from yer put yer best rags on for a party. My sister Rachel allus towd me I’d got to dress smart. She’s good at that. ’Ave yo’ got a sister, Dominic?’
‘I did have.’ The cold-blooded toad-faced bastard was barely interested. ‘She married an oaf who works in the City. Hardly see her now. Got three nippers.’
‘If you don’t like her ’usband me and some mates can do yer a favour and kick the snot out of ’im. I’ll get some o’ the lads down from Nottingham, to mek a proper job of it. All you need to do is give ’em a bit of beer money and their train fares. It’ll be a day’s outing for them. They’ll love it.’
Dominic shuddered in trying to stop him. ‘No, I don’t think so, certainly not. We don’t do that sort of thing here.’
Herbert turned away. That was that, then. He knew Dominic’s old style, of being too icy to say his sister was also called Rachel, and not chiming in about her for a bit. Can’t let these low-born types get too familiar, was what no doubt swamped into his unfriendly prep school mind.
A girl with short brown hair leaned on the top rail of the stairs, glass in hand, talking to a man whose suit even Bert knew to be very expensive. ‘In’t she marvellous, that one there. Deborah, in’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Humphries said. ‘I think you saw her before. But come along, it’s time to be interviewed.’
A short-arsed putty-faced bloke smoking a curved pipe lifted himself from the sofa to shake the toiler’s hand. Touch it, rather. ‘I’ve read your book, and liked it. It’s unique, in its portrayal of the working class.’
‘You don’t say?’
‘I’m not the only one who thinks so.’ At least he had humour enough to laugh. ‘But I’m sure you must have read a lot to produce a book like that. You can’t deceive me. Impossible to fault it.’
‘Neither could I. That’s why I sent it ’ere. I suppose yer was just waiting for somebody to come up with that sort o’ novel and barge his way in. Still, I would say summat like that, wouldn’t I?’
Jacob looked as if thinking he might not turn out to be as naive as he appeared. ‘How did you start writing? But let’s sit down, and be comfortable.’
‘I’m used to standing on my feet eight hours a day. Well, I don’t know. I just got into it. When I was twenty-five I looked round and thought I might ’ave summat to say about the world. Are you doin’ shorthand?’
‘I am. But go on. It’s interesting.’
‘So I got a pen and a packet of paper, and wrote about what I knew. One o’ my mates sold me a typewriter that fell off the back of a lorry, and I was on my way. Mind you, it took a few years to gerrit all clear.’
‘So how many drafts did you take it through before sending it to Humphries?’
‘You’ve got more questions than a copper who puts his hand on your shoulder after a bust-up in a pub. I lost count at fifteen.’ Bert set the tone to be aggressive rather than complaining, wanting only to get back among the booze and women. What else was he here for? Such a party had nothing to do with Royal Ordnance, though it was obvious Jacob must be dealt with. ‘It looks like you’re writing your own book about me, putting everything down on that jotter.’
‘It could happen one day. We haven’t had a book like this before, from a real working-class novelist.’
‘How is it different?’ Bert asked naively.
‘Well, you’ve written about men who don’t even think to better themselves.’
‘Better themselves? What would they want to do a thing like that for when they’ve got good jobs in a factory?’
Jacob’s shorthand swirled along. ‘I see what you mean. It does give authenticity.’
Bert thought a lecturing tone was called for. ‘I’m not a working-class novelist, anyway. Where I come from, if you call somebody working class, they smash yer face in. But I suppose you want to pigeonhole me, like everybody else. I’m just a novelist, or I will be when I’ve done a few more,’ which intention Herbert thought a fair ploy to confirm that he would go on to become a real writer, certainly a better occupation than standing at a lathe. ‘In a few years the fact that I’m an author from what you fucking well call a working-class environment’ — let him wonder where he got that word — ‘won’t get anybody on the hop, because everybody’ll be doing it.’
Jacob wiped sweat from both sides of his face. ‘I’ll quote that statement, but tell me something about your family.’