“I’ve drawn a horse, darlings!” announced Miss Meteyard, arriving without ceremony. “No luck for you, Mr. Bredon, I’m afraid.”
“I always was unlucky.”
“You’ll feel unluckier still after a day with Dairyfields’ Margarine,” said Mr. Ingleby, gloomily. “Nothing for me, I suppose?”
“Nothing, I’m afraid. Of course Miss Rawlings had drawn the favourite-she always does.”
“I hope it breaks its beastly leg,” said Mr. Ingleby. “Come in Tallboy, come in. Do you want me? Don’t mind butting in on Mr. Bredon. He will soon become used to the idea that his room is a public place within the meaning of the act. This is Mr. Tallboy, group-manager for Nutrax and a few other wearisome commodities. Mr. Bredon, our new copy-writer.”
“How do you do?” said Mr. Tallboy, briefly. “Look here, about this Nutrax 11-inch double. Can you possibly cut out about thirty words?”
“No, I can’t,” said Mr. Ingleby. “I’ve cut it to the bone already.”
“Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to. There isn’t room for all this guff with a two-line sub-head.”
“There’s plenty of room for it.”
“No, there isn’t. We’ve got to get in the panel about the Fifty-six Free Chiming Clocks.”
“Damn the clocks and the panel! How do they expect to display all that in a half-double?”
“Dunno, but they do. Look here, can’t we take out this bit about ‘When your nerves begin to play tricks on you,’ and start off with ‘Nerves need Nutrax’?”
“Armstrong liked that bit about playing tricks. Human appeal and all that. No, take out that rot about the patent spring-cap bottle.”
“They won’t stand for dropping that,” said Miss Meteyard. “That’s their pet invention.”
“Do they think people buy nerve-food for the sake of the bottle? Oh, well! I can’t do it straight away. Hand it over.”
“The printer wants it by two o’clock,” said Mr. Tallboy, dubiously.
Mr. Ingleby damned the printer, seized the proof and began cutting the copy, uttering offensive ejaculations between his teeth.
“Of all beastly days of the week,” he observed, “Tuesday is the foulest. There’s no peace till we get this damned 11-inch double off our chests. There! I’ve cut out twenty-two words, and you’ll have to make it do. You can take that ‘with’ up into the line above and save a whole line, and that gives you the other eight words.”
“All right, I’ll try,” agreed Mr. Tallboy. “Anything for a quiet life. It’ll look a bit tight, though.”
“Wish I was tight,” said Mr. Ingleby. “Take it away, for God’s sake, before I murder anybody.”
“I’m going, I’m going,” said Mr. Tallboy, and vanished hastily. Miss Rossiter had departed during the controversy, and Miss Meteyard now took herself out of the way, remarking, “If Pheidippides wins, you shall have a cake for tea.”
“Now we’d better start you off,” observed Mr. Ingleby. “Here’s the guard-book. You’d better have a look through it to see the kind of thing, and then think up some headlines. Your story is, of course, that Dairyfields’ ‘Green Pastures’ Margarine is everything that the best butter ought to be and only costs ninepence a pound. And they like a cow in the picture.”
“Why? Is it made of cow-fat?”
“Well, I daresay it is, but you mustn’t say so. People wouldn’t like the idea. The picture of the cow suggests the taste of butter, that’s all. And the name-Green Pastures-suggest cows, you see.”
“It suggests Negroes to me,” said Mr. Bredon. “The play you know.”
“You mustn’t put Negroes in the copy,” retorted Mr. Ingleby. “Nor, of course, religion. Keep Psalm 23 out of it. Blasphemous.”
“I see. Just something about ‘Better than Butter and half the price.’ Simple appeal to the pocket.”
“Yes, but you mustn’t knock butter. They sell butter as well.”
“Oh!”
“You can say it’s as good as butter.”
“But in that case,” objected Mr. Bredon, “what does one find to say in favour of butter? I mean, if the other stuff’s a good and doesn’t cost so much, what’s the argument for buying butter?”
“You don’t need an argument for buying butter. It’s natural, human instinct.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Anyway, don’t bother about butter. Just concentrate or Green Pastures Margarine. When you’ve got a bit done, you take it along and get it typed, and then you buzz off to Mr. Hankin with the result. See? Are you all right now?”
“Yes, thanks,” said Mr. Bredon, looking thoroughly bewildered.
“And I’ll push along about 1 o’clock and show you the decentest place for lunch.”
“Thanks frightfully.”
“Well, cheerio!” Mr. Ingleby returned to his own room.
“He won’t stay the course,” he said to himself. “Goes to a damned good tailor, though. I wonder-”
He shrugged his shoulders and sat down to concoct a small high-class folder about Slider’s Steel Office Tables.
Mr. Bredon, left alone, did not immediately attack the subject of margarine. Like a cat, which, in his soft-footed inquisitiveness, he rather resembled, he proceeded to make himself acquainted with his new home. There was not very much to see in it. He opened the drawer in his writing-table and found a notched and inky ruler, some bitten-looking pieces of india-rubber, a number of bright thoughts on tea and margarine scribbled on scraps of paper, and a broken fountain-pen. The book-case contained a dictionary, a repellent volume entitled Directory of Directors, a novel by Edgar Wallace, a pleasingly got-up booklet called All about Cocoa, Alice in Wonderland, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, the Globe edition of the Works of Wm. Shakespeare, and five odd numbers of the Children’s Encyclopaedia. The interior of the sloping desk offered more scope for inquiry; it was filled with ancient and dusty papers, including a Government Report on the Preservatives in Food (Restrictions) Act of 1926, a quantity of rather (in every sense) rude sketches by an amateur hand, a bundle of pulls of advertisements for Dairyfields commodities, some private correspondence and some old bills. Mr. Bredon, dusting fastidious fingers, turned from this receptacle, inventoried a hook and a coat-hanger on the wall and a battered paperfile in a corner, and sat down in the revolving-chair before the table. Here, after a brief glance at a paste-pot, a pair of scissors, a new pencil and a blotting-pad, two scribbling-blocks and a grubby cardboard box-lid full of oddments, he propped up the Dairyfields guard-book before him, and fell to studying his predecessor’s masterpieces on the subject of Green Pastures Margarine.
An hour later, Mr. Hankin pushed open the door and looked in upon him.
“How are you getting on?” he inquired kindly.
Mr. Bredon sprang to his feet.
“Not frightfully well, I’m afraid. I don’t seem to get the atmosphere altogether, if you follow me.”
“It will come,” said Mr. Hankin. He was a helpfully-minded man, who believed that new copy-writers throve on encouragement. “Let me see what you are doing. You are starting with the headlines? Quite right. The headline is more than half the battle. IF YOU WERE A COW-no, no, I’m afraid we mustn’t call the customer a cow. Besides, we had practically the same headline in-let me see-about 1923, I think. Mr. Wardle put it up, you’ll find it in the last guard-book but three. It went ‘IF YOU KEPT A COW IN THE KITCHEN you could get no better bread-spread than G. P. Margarine’-and so on. That was a good one. Caught the eye, made a good picture, and told the whole story in a sentence.”
Mr. Bredon bowed his head, as one who hears the Law and the Prophets. The copy-chief ran a thoughtful pencil over the scribbled list of headlines, and ticked one of them.