“I want you to meet Mr. Attery-Squash, my publisher. He’s on our side, so play nice, sweetheart.”
She steered him toward a large, friendly-looking man who seemed to be trying to avoid the many unpublished writers who milled around him like bees to a honeypot, hoping to be discovered. Attery-Squash was a sprightly octogenarian with a center part in his white hair and a matching beard decorated with a single red ribbon. He wore a suit in large checks of decidedly dubious taste and had a jolly red face that reminded Jack of Santa Claus. He had run Crumpetty Tree Publishing since he bought it from QuangTech in the sixties, and was reputed to be one of the few people who knew the Quangle-Wangle personally.
“Hello, Mr. Spratt,” said Attery-Squash kindly, “good to finally meet you. We were just discussing Reading by Night. Do you like it?”
“I love all Madeleine’s work, but no one seems to want to buy photographic books these days.”
Mr. Attery-Squash took a sip from his champagne.
“Publishing photography is a tricky game, Mr. Spratt. Much as I love Madeleine’s work, I’d be a whole lot happier if she’d start concentrating on the bread and butter of the photography world—celebrities misbehaving themselves and kittens in beer mugs.”
“Kittens in beer mugs?” echoed Jack.
“Yes,” continued Attery-Squash, eager to get Jack on board and somehow sway Madeleine away from her doubtlessly artistic but wholly unprofitable images, “babies with spaghetti on their heads, ducklings snuggling up to kittens. That’s where the real money is—that and puppies, lambs and calves shot with a wide-angle lens to give them big noses and make them look cuter, and chimpanzees dressed up as humans sitting on the toilet.”
“Babies with spaghetti on their heads?” said Jack, thinking of a typical mealtime with Stevie. “Sounds like you might have something there.”
He nudged Madeleine, who said, “Yes, I’ve often considered spreading my creative wings. I thought swans during sunset might be a good idea, too.”
“Mr. Ottery-Squish?” inquired a young man dressed in a faded sports jacket and a necktie that looked as though it would have been better tied by his mother.
Attery-Squash smiled politely, despite the interruption.
“Yes?”
“My name’s Klopotnik. Wendell Klopotnik. I have a novel that I’ve just written, and I’ve chosen you to publish it for me.”
“That’s very kind of you,” replied Attery-Squash, winking at Madeleine.
“I have a résumé somewhere,” Klopotnik muttered, rummaging through his pockets. “It’s called Proving a Point—a psychological thriller set in an all-night bakery.”
Jack and Madeleine excused themselves and walked off to find their table.
“What did Hatchett want?” whispered Madeleine as they threaded their way through the crowded ballroom.
“Help. His sister’s gone AWOL.”
“I hope you told him to get lost.”
“On the contrary. Politically it could be a good move. I’ll make a few inquiries and see what I can dig up—metaphorically speaking, of course.”
She shook her head and smiled at him. Jack rarely bore a grudge. It was one of his better features.
They sat down at their table, and Jack introduced himself to his neighbor, a shabby-looking individual named Nigel Huxtable. He was, it transpired, another Armitage Shanks finalist, and he jumped when Jack spoke, as he had been trying to hide two bread rolls in his jacket pocket.
“So what’s your book about?” asked Jack brightly.
“It’s called Regrets Out of Oswestry,” he said, fixing Jack with an intelligent gaze that was marred only by a slight squint. “It traces one woman’s odyssey as she returns to the place of her childhood in order to reappraise the relationship with her father and perhaps reconcile herself with him before he dies of cancer.”
Jack frowned. “Didn’t you submit that book to the competition last year?”
Huxtable looked hurt. “No.”
“Oh. It just sounded familiar, that’s all.”
Madeleine hid a smile.
“I know what you’re saying,” said Huxtable in an aggrieved tone, “but I tell you, more copies of my book have been stolen from bookshops than all the other Armitage Shanks finalists’ put together.”
“Do stolen books count on the bestseller lists?”
“I should certainly hope so,” replied Huxtable, thinking that it had been a colossal risk and a waste of his time if they didn’t, “but in any event it’s a modern benchmark of success, you know.”
Jack couldn’t avoid a smile, and Huxtable gave up on him, striking up a conversation along similar lines with his other neighbor.
In the end neither Huxtable nor Sphincter won. The first prize went to Jennifer Darkke’s Share My Rotten Childhood. Lord Spooncurdle gave a pleasant after-dinner talk. He made several obscure puns about cheese making and wondered why no one laughed.
That night Jack lay awake in bed, staring at the patterns on the ceiling. He was thinking about Goldilocks and the Gingerbreadman, the NCD, his career and the psychiatric assessment—and just how noisy Mr. and Mrs. Punch’s lovemaking was next door.
“How long have they been at it now?” asked Madeleine sleepily, pillow over her head to block out the thumping, groans and occasional shrieks that penetrated through the shared wall.
“Two and a half hours,” replied Jack. “Go to sleep.”
10. Porridge Problems
Most illegal substance for bears: The euphoria-inducing porridge (“flake”) is a Class III foodstuff, and while admitting a small problem, the International League of Ursidae considers that rationed use does no real harm. Buns (“doughballs”) and honey (“buzz” or “sweet”) remain on the Class II list and are more rigorously controlled, except for medicinal purposes. Honey addicts (“sweeters” or “buzzboys”) are usually weaned off the habit with Sweet’n Low, with some success. The most dangerous substance on the Class I list is marmalade (“chunk,” “shred” or “peel”). The serious pyschotropic effects of marmalade can lead to all kinds of dangerous and aberrant behavior and are generally best avoided as far as bears are concerned.
—The Bumper Book of Berkshire Records, 2004 edition
The day broke clear and fine. A light breeze in the night had cleared away the haze, and the morning felt crisp and clean and sunny—the sort of morning that is generally reserved only for breakfast cereal commercials, where members of a nauseatingly bouncy nuclear family leap around like happy gazelles while something resembling wood shavings and latex paint falls in slow motion into a bowl.