‘At the English bar there exists a practice called devilling, when a junior barrister undertakes paid written work on behalf of a more senior barrister. The instructing solicitor is not informed of the arrangement and the junior barrister is paid by the senior barrister out of his own fee, as a private arrangement between the two. It’s a way older barristers have of making themselves even richer than ought to be possible. So, why not something similar for you? In other words you could pay me a fee to write one of your books. You give me the plot in as much detail as you can manage and then I do the hard slog of knocking out one hundred thousand words; I give it back to you six months later and you edit the manuscript I’ve provided to your own satisfaction — putting in a few stylistic flourishes to make it truly yours. Or taking a few out, as the case may be. It’d be like what Adam Smith says regarding the division of labour in the manufacture of pins. It strikes me that you’ve always been the one with a powerful — not to say overactive — imagination and that you’re better at creating stories than you are at writing them. Which is where I might come in. In a sense you would just carry on being the creative director, so to speak, and no one need ever know. I can even sign some sort of non-disclosure agreement. Meanwhile, you write the other book; then you hand both books to your publisher in quick succession and claim the balance of the advance.’
‘Go on.’
I didn’t know that I could say very much more about this, but now that I’d mentioned it I rather liked the idea of quitting my job and using John’s publishing windfall — what was left of it — to stay at home and subsidize my own writing; so I was selling it now and selling it with more than a hint of flattery.
‘After all, you wouldn’t be the first to pull a stroke like this. Shakespeare may have had a similar arrangement with Thomas Nashe when he wrote Henry VI, Part One. Or with George Wilkins when he wrote Pericles. And with Thomas Middleton when he wrote — something else.’ I shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me what. But I rather think Elizabethan theatre was a bit like the modern film industry. With one writer replaced by another at a moment’s notice. Or writers stepping into the breach to help someone out with a first act, or a quick polish. That kind of thing.’
‘You know, that’s not a bad idea, old sport.’ John deliberated for a moment. ‘That’s not a bad idea at all. A bit like Andy Warhol’s factory, in New York.’
‘Precisely. I suppose you might even argue that the Apple Macintosh is the modern equivalent of the silkscreen printing process. A technology that makes for the rapid reproduction and alteration of the basic creative idea.’
Back in the 1980s — and following the famous Ridley Scott 1984 television commercial — every writer coveted a Macintosh computer. John actually owned one; whereas I was making do with a cheaper and certainly inferior Amstrad; but even that seemed a vast improvement on the IBM Selectric typewriter which is what they gave us to use at work.
‘How much would you want? To do what you’ve just described.’
‘Let’s see now.’ I shook my head. ‘Naturally, I’d have to give up work. I mean, to write a whole book in six months — I couldn’t do that and continue to be a copywriter. I mean, we’re talking nine to five here to produce that many words in that amount of time. So it would have to be enough money to allow that to happen.’
‘You were on twenty grand a year when I left.’
‘Twenty-five, now. They gave me an extra five to make up your workload after you left. I’d be taking a risk, of course. Giving up work like that. To do something as chancy as this. If it doesn’t work out then I’m out of a job without the means to pay the mortgage.’
‘You’d really give it up? Come on, Don. You love it. All those nice dolly birds to shag. I sometimes think that’s why you came into advertising, old sport. For the birds.’
I shook my head. ‘That’s bollocks and you know it. I’m fed up with it. Just like you were, John. If I have to write another telly commercial for Brooke Bond Red Mountain coffee I think I will scream. Besides I’ve already shagged all the birds I’m ever going to shag at Masius. They’re wise to my act. I need to move on. But no one at another agency is ever going to take on a copywriter from Masius. We’re like lepers. So, this might just be my ticket out of St James’s Square. I can subsidize my own novel with what I make from writing yours.’
‘I’d have to see a few specimen chapters.’
‘You mean my novel?’
‘I don’t mean your advertising copy. I know how crap you are writing that. David Abbott you’re not, old sport.’
I shrugged. ‘As if I ever gave a damn about writing copy. Look, you don’t need to see my novel. You know I can fucking write. I had that story in Granta, remember?’
‘Oh, yes. I’d forgotten about that.’
‘Unless that is you’re not serious. Because I am.’
‘Of course I’m serious. Writing all day and every day like Henry fucking James is a royal pain in the ass, Don. No wonder authors all look like swots. Did you see that picture of those Best of Young British Novelists? Christ, if that’s what the young ones look like ... No, it’s putting the plot together that I enjoy, not typing all day and night like some tragic bespectacled cunt.’
‘I really don’t mind it at all,’ I confessed. ‘I feel like my life has some meaning when I’m in front of the keyboard.’
‘I don’t know how you have the patience.’
‘That’s what Northern Ireland teaches you, John: patience and an appreciation for the quiet life. Whenever I sit down at the typewriter I tell myself, “Count yourself lucky; it’s not the Falls Road.”’
‘So, how much?’ he repeated. ‘That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Or not, since I’m not about to pay you anything like that.’
‘Twenty-five grand.’
‘Fuck off. Ten.’
‘I can’t do it for ten. I can’t take the risk. Twenty.’
‘Twelve and a half.’
I shook my head. ‘Fifteen. And with a bonus if the book is a bestseller.’
I could see John doing the maths in his head. ‘Agreed.’
We shook on it and then continued with the minutiae of further negotiations for a while — delivery dates, penalties for failing to meet John’s deadline, bonus payments; then John said, ‘You know if I can make this arrangement with you, Don, there’s no reason I couldn’t make it with someone else.’
‘I’m sure you could find someone cheaper than me, John. Perhaps if you were to put a small ad in the back of Books and Bookmen. Or The Literary Review. Writer in a Hurry Seeks Amanuensis. Must be able to spell “amanuensis” and write bestselling novel to order. Thomas Pynchon need not apply.’
‘No, I didn’t mean that. What I mean is that if I can make this deal with one writer then why not with two? That way I could have two novels being written while I research another story. That’s what I’m good at.’
I shrugged. ‘Why not? Like you said, it’s what Warhol does. I could be your Gerard Malanga.’
‘The question is, who? Who else is there who can write that’s as desperate as you, old sport?’
‘You mean at Masius?’
‘Why not? Everyone who’s any good wants out of St James’s Square one way or the other.’
‘What about Sally?’
‘One of the many pleasures I have enjoyed in leaving Masius is that I will never again have to see or hear Sally van Leeuwenhoek. Or try to spell her fucking name.’
‘Might be useful to have a woman on your team.’
‘No, I disagree. You see, I know my market, old sport, because I’ve researched it very carefully. And before you ask, yes, I paid for a proper research company to carry out some market research and make a report. I’m writing for men; men who want to read books about solidly heterosexual men who think the female eunuch is a fucking mare with a horn on its forehead; who think a problem shared is a fist-fight in a bar. Blokes who grew up thinking that Ian Fleming is a better writer than Christopher Isherwood. Anyway, I never met a woman yet who could write like a man. Did you read The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch? The narrator of that novel is supposed to be a man, but he’s a man who’s interested in curtain fabrics and hence not a real man at all but some daft old bat’s idea of what a man sounds like. Hence he sounds like a complete fucking poof. No, this is a good idea we’ve had here today but no fish, old sport. Besides, I have an idea that we’ll have a lot more fun if we keep this a purely stag do.’