Tremayne and I looked blank over this piece of sociology, and Ronnie further told us, without noticeably cheering us up, that for a publisher in the modern world turnover was all very well but losses weren’t, and that it was getting more and more difficult to get a marginal book accepted.
I felt more grateful than ever that he’d got one particular marginal book accepted, and remembered what the lady from the publisher’s had said when she’d taken me for the getting-acquainted lunch.
‘Ronnie could sweet-talk the devil. He says we need to catch new authors like you in their early thirties, otherwise we won’t have any big names ten years from now. No one knows yet how you’ll turn out in ten years. Ronnie says that all salmon are small fry to begin with. So we’re not promising you the world, but an opportunity, yes.’
An opportunity was all one could ask, I thought.
Daisy at length appeared in the doorway to say the food had arrived, and we all went along to the big room where the central table had been cleared of books and re-laid with plates, knives, napkins and two large platters of healthy-looking sandwiches decorated with a drizzle of cress.
Ronnie’s associates emerged from their rooms to join us, which made seven altogether, including Daisy and her sister, and I managed to eat a lot without, I hoped, it being noticeable. Fillings of beef, ham, cheese, bacon: once-ordinary things that had become luxuries lately. Free lunch, breakfast and dinner. I wished Ronnie would write summoning notes more often.
Tremayne harangued me again over the generic shortcomings of racing writers, holding his glass in one hand and waving a sandwich in the other as he made his indignant points, while I nodded in sympathetic silence and munched away as if listening carefully.
Tremayne made a great outward show of forceful self-confidence, but there was something in his insistence which curiously belied it. It was almost as if he needed the book to be written to prove he had lived; as if photographs and records weren’t enough.
‘How old are you?’ he said abruptly, breaking off in mid flow.
I said with my mouth full, ‘Thirty-two.’
‘You look younger.’
I didn’t know whether ‘good’ or ‘sorry’ was appropriate, so I merely smiled and went on eating.
‘Could you write a biography?’ Again the abruptness.
‘I don’t know. Never tried.’
‘I’d do it myself,’ he said belligerently, ‘but I haven’t got time.’
I nodded understandingly. If there was one biography I didn’t want to cut my teeth on, I thought, it was his. Much too difficult.
Ronnie fetched up beside him and wheeled him away, and in between finishing the beef-and-chutney and listening to Daisy’s problems with scrambled software I watched Ronnie across the room nodding his head placatingly under Tremayne’s barrage of complaints. Eventually, when all that was left on the plates were a few pallidly wilting threads of cress, Ronnie said a firm farewell to Tremayne, who still didn’t want to go.
‘There’s nothing I can usefully offer at the moment,’ Ronnie was saying, shaking an unresponsive hand and practically pushing Tremayne doorwards with a friendly clasp on his shoulder. ‘But leave it to me. I’ll see what I can do. Keep in touch.’
With ill grace Tremayne finally left, and without any hint of relief Ronnie said to me, ‘Come along then, John. Sorry to have kept you all this time,’ and led the way back to his room.
‘Tremayne asked if I’d ever written a biography,’ I said, taking my former place on the visitors’ side of the desk.
Ronnie gave me a swift glance, settling himself into his own padded dark green leather chair and swivelling gently from side to side as if in indecision. Finally he came to a stop and asked, ‘Did he offer you the job?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘My advice to you would be not to think of it.’ He gave me no time to assure him that I wouldn’t, and went straight on, ‘It’s fair to say he’s a good racehorse trainer, well known in his own field. It’s fair to say he’s a better man than you would have guessed today. It’s even fair to agree he’s had an interesting life. But that isn’t enough. It all depends on the writing.’ He paused and sighed. ‘Tremayne doesn’t really believe that. He wants a big name because of the prestige, but you heard him, he thinks anyone can write. He doesn’t really know the difference.’
‘Will you find him someone?’ I asked.
‘Not on the terms he’s looking for.’ Ronnie considered things. ‘I suppose I can tell you,’ he said, ‘as he made an approach to you. He’s asking for a writer to stay in his house for at least a month, to go through all his cuttings and records and interview him in depth. None of the top names will do that, they’ve all got other lives to lead. Then he wants seventy per cent of royalty income which isn’t going to amount to much in any case. No top writer is going to work for thirty per cent.’
‘Thirty per cent... including the advance?’
‘Right. An advance no bigger than yours, if I could get one at all.’
‘That’s starvation.’
Ronnie smiled. ‘Comparatively few people live by writing alone. I thought you knew that. Anyway,’ he leaned forward, dismissing Tremayne and saying more briskly, ‘about these American rights...’
It seemed that a New York literary agent, an occasional associate of Ronnie’s, had asked my publishers routinely whether they had anything of interest in the pipeline. They had steered him back to Ronnie. Would I, Ronnie asked, care to have him send a copy of my manuscript to the American agent, who would then, if he thought the book saleable in the American market, try to find it an American publisher.
I managed to keep my mouth shut but was gaping and gasping inside.
‘Well?’ Ronnie said.
‘I... er... I’d be delighted,’ I said.
‘Thought you would. Not promising anything, you realise. He’s just taking a look.’
‘Yes.’
‘If you remember we gave your publisher here only British and Commonwealth rights. That leaves us elbowroom to manoeuvre.’ He went on for a while discussing technicalities and possibilities his pendulum way. I was left with a feeling that things might be going to happen but on the other hand probably not. The market was down, everything was difficult, but the publishing machine needed constant fodder and my book might be regarded as a bundle of hay. He would let me know, he said, as soon as he got an opinion back from the New York agent.
‘How’s the new book coming along?’ he asked.
‘Slowly.’
He nodded. ‘The second one’s always difficult. But just keep going.’
‘Yes.’
He rose to his feet, looking apologetically at his waiting paperwork, shaking my hand warmly in farewell. I thanked him for the lunch. Any time, he said automatically, his mind already on his next task, and I left him and walked along the passage, stopping at Daisy’s desk on the way out.
‘You’re sending my manuscript to America,’ I said, zipping up my jacket and bursting to tell someone, anyone, the good news.
‘Yes,’ she beamed. ‘I posted it last Friday.’
‘Did you indeed!’
I went on out to the lift not sure whether to laugh or be vaguely annoyed at Ronnie’s asking permission for something he had already done. I wouldn’t have minded at all if he’d simply told me he’d sent the book off. It was his job to do the best for me that he could; I would have thought it well within his rights.
I went down two floors and out into the bitter afternoon air thinking of the steps that had led to his door.
Finishing the book had been one thing, finding a publisher another. The six small books I’d previously written, though published and on sale to the public, had all been part of my work for the travel firm who had paid me pretty well for writing them besides sending me to far-flung places to gather the knowledge. The travel firm owned the guides and published them themselves, and they weren’t in the market for novels.