He nodded. ‘I’ll try not to.’ Having already decided to climb out of Bert Gedling’s boots as soon as he unobtrusively could, he wondered, when Deborah went on, if she hadn’t been put on to him by Humphries. ‘You’d better do as I tell you,’ he would say, ‘and let him think you’ve fallen in love with him, or you won’t have a job any more.’ The only way to find the truth was by asking her to marry him, but she had to know who he was first. Even if she was Humphries’ secret agent or, worse, that shitmouth Dominic’s, her loving performances in bed were so genuine he had nothing to complain about.
At his first television interview she thought he’d scored about seventy per cent, which was good, she added, though it might have been better. The producer, Arthur Hornbeam, said everything was marvellous, but he would, wouldn’t he? All the same, he seemed happy with it, and went on to wonder whether Mr Gedling would consider writing plays for the medium. ‘Someone like you would be paid top rate. The time’s just about right for that kind of stuff.’
He drained his paper cup of cheap whisky, and threw it into the bin. ‘I’ll think about it.’
‘But can you go on churning out the same old thing?’ Deborah asked, as they lay in bed.
‘Standing on my head, I should think.’
He wasn’t so sure, didn’t care to deal only with the rough and tumble of low life for the rest of his days. After a few further books from the dustbin of his experience he would scribble about more worldly happenings, expand his imagination, alter the scenery, and become a real novelist, as everyone would expect him to do. Still, it wasn’t yet time to disillusion Deborah about his ability to suck at the cow’s teat forever, in case she let something drop to Humphries.
Waking in the morning, care had to be taken not to let his accent slide too far into the public school twang. ‘I’ll tell you another thing, luv, it’s a lot better writin’ books than it is sweatin’ blood all week in a factory.’
‘I’m sure it is, Herbert. You don’t mind the Herbert bit, do you?’
‘Call me what you like. Loves yer, don’t I?’
‘And I love you. More coffee?’
‘Another thing is, I reckon it’s time I did a bunk from my hole and corner billet near the Elephant. It’s too far on the wrong side of the river.’ People who assumed he was already a millionaire might wonder where he really came from if he stayed in such a squalid area.
She adjusted a fold of breast inside her brassiere, and reached for a pair of clean pants. ‘Why not lease a flat for a few years in Belsize Park? That way you can commute between here and there.’
She used her London expertise, and looked at the Roy Brooks column in the Sunday papers. After a couple of weeks she found a place. ‘They want three hundred and fifty a year, as well as five hundred for carpets and curtains. I went there this morning, and it’s fine. Let’s see it, before someone else makes an offer.’
A woeful Bert tone came up in Herbert’s throat on hearing such sums spoken of so lightly. ‘Eight ’undred and fifty quid’s as much as I used to earn in a year,’ but Herbert, who knew the price to be realistic if not reasonable, choked back more of the same on seeing the flat. ‘I’ll have it.’
Deborah led the helpless booby into Heals to buy the basic amount of utilitarian furniture that would fit with the newly painted walls. Selfridge’s was for pots, pans, cutlery and provisions. Cheques fluttered away like leaves from an autumn tree, a day’s shopping to suck out all energy. At lunch in the White Elephant neither could say much, though a surreptitious holding of hands and the warm touch of knees seemed to deepen their attachment, as if exhaustion was a more potent fuse than any talk about love.
The time was right to reveal himself as Thurgarton-Strang, yet he hesitated. The chariot was clicking along smoothly at the moment. ‘You’ve got to tell her sooner or later,’ Bert said. ‘No use putting it off.’
‘Tell her what?’ — as if he didn’t know.
‘That ye’re not me, and never was.’
‘I’ll do it in my own good time.’
‘There’s no such thing. And when you do she won’t like it.’
‘What do you mean?’
Bert laughed. ‘Well, she likes me better than you. I know for a fact she won’t want to see the back of me.’
‘I doubt that’s the case,’ he said huffily.
‘Oh, don’t yer? You wait. It’s me she fell for, not you. Yer can’t deny it. You’ll find out when you tell ’er.’
‘It’s got to be done, though,’ Herbert sighed.
Bert changed his tone. ‘Ye’re not going to leave me, are yer?’
‘Afraid I’ll have to.’
‘Well, I shan’t cry about it. Good luck to yer, is all I can say.’
‘You’ve been a good sport, Bert. I’ll never forget you.’
‘You wain’t be half the man you was before.’
‘Oh, I think I will. In any case I won’t need to be.’
‘You’d better do it now. I would if I was you.’
Deborah, from looking at two women waiting for a table, turned back to her coffee. ‘I’d like to know what profound thoughts I’ve disturbed you from, darling.’
‘Oh, I was only thinking how much I loved you.’
‘What a simple uncomplicated mind you have.’
‘That’s how I am.’
‘I know. And I love you, too.’
The Other Side of the Tracks had been in Humphries’ office a week and Herbert went to see him. ‘Well, what do you think?’
‘We’ll do it in the autumn.’ He reached for a box: ‘Cigar, Bert?’
‘No thanks.’
‘I read it on the train, going home the other night, after Dominic had finished with it.’
Herbert lit a cigarette. ‘You must have read it as quickly as you can turn the pages.’
‘Almost.’ He cut his cigar. ‘I think Dominic wants to suggest a few alterations.’
The stack of typescript lay on his desk, next to a new effort by Walter Hawksworth, and Herbert put a hand over his own. ‘I’ll buy a cross from an ex-service stores and crucify anybody who touches a word of this. You can come to the party if you like. There’ll be champagne, not fucking red vinegar. I’ll invite all the reviewers. Calvary won’t be a patch on it, especially if I nail up two publishers as well.’
Humphries laughed. ‘There’s no need to go to such expense. The book’s marvellous. It might even get a Book Society Recommendation, and do better than Royal Ordnance.’ He didn’t want the bloody fool taking his novel to another firm, after all they’d done for him.
‘What about the advance, then?’
‘Oh that? Well, we’ll up it a bit this time.’ He spun the fine gold chain till the watch hit his finger. ‘We’ll do you proud, in fact. What do you say to five hundred?’
Bert picked up the typescript. ‘I’d better show it somewhere else — unless you make it a thousand.’
‘A thousand?’
‘Seems reasonable to me,’ he said in a tone which suggested to Humphries that he wasn’t a bad mimic. ‘And keep Dominic’s hands off it, or I’ll give him a good hiding.’
‘Now look here, Bert, you just can’t talk like that.’
He laid the typescript on a bookcase by the door, and flopped into an armchair, pushing out his legs. Deborah had Roneoed a letter which Humphries had written to Reginald Stone the paperback publisher, giving reasons for expecting a larger advance than the one offered.
‘It’s uncanny. He’s writing about the workers in just the way we’ve always thought in our secret hearts they should be written about. We could barely have hoped for it, but now it’s here. Of course, some strait-laced old vicars and JPs in certain places will complain about the obscene way it’s done, and tell us that the “lower orders” shouldn’t be written about at all, since it will give them ideas above their station, but Mr Gedling has given the working classes, whatever else one says, a genuine portrait of themselves, as well as a voice. All we have to do, as time goes on — if he doesn’t do it himself, of course — is to steer him into our mouth instead of his mouth, a little more like Walter Hawksworth, if you see my drift. If we can do that we’ll have real bestsellers on our hands, not retailing in tens of thousands but by the million. Meanwhile the joy of it is, he’s absolutely one of them, and how he came to write novels I’ll never know, because he’s quite uneducated. But he certainly deserves what money he can get, and the wealthier he becomes, and the sooner he gets to depend on it, and is able to settle into a respectable life, the better it will be for everybody. So I think it’s just as much in your interest as it is in mine that you see if you can’t double your offer. You won’t lose by it, I assure you.’