‘Your what?’
‘My beads. Presents for the natives. I always bring a suitcase full of English books when I come over – they’re like gold-dust here.’
He felt under the clothes in his case again, and produced two stout plastic mugs. Inside a spare suède shoe he located a Woolworth’s apostle spoon, and beneath a pile of dirty socks the old familiar tin.
‘Do you mind Nescafé?’ he asked.
‘Delightful.’
‘I always bring it. Boiling water’s the only thing you can get without waiting in Russian hotels.’
Manning watched him lever open the lid with the apostle’s head, and perform all the rest of the soothing ritual. It took him back. It took him back to all the indistinguishable student lodgings in which he had sat, beneath mantelpieces lined with the annual programmes of university societies, and party invitations all written on identical At Home blanks as if they were impersonal communications from some university department responsible for party-giving. To evenings spent talking about women and grants to visit America, and consuming chocolate digestive biscuits and Nescafé, the body and blood of scholarship itself. Nostalgia touched him, and he felt pleased to be with another Englishman here amid the sad smells of Russia.
‘You’ll have to have it black, I’m afraid,’ said Proctor-Gould, though the liquid in the mug was more a kind of dark gravy brown. ‘There seems to be a milk shortage in the shops at the moment.’
‘Thanks,’ said Manning. ‘It’s nice to meet you at last. I hear we’re old friends.’
Proctor-Gould took his own mug and straddled comfortably with his back to the radiator, as if it were an open fire. He gazed benignly down at Manning.
‘We are, Paul,’ he said. ‘We are.’
‘Really?’
‘You don’t remember where we met?’
‘No.’
‘At John’s.’
‘John’s? John who’s?’
Proctor-Gould laughed. It was a snuffling laugh, the kind of noise one might have expected a bloodhound to make, if something about the scent had struck it as funny.
‘“John who’s?’” he repeated contentedly. ‘That’s good. I must remember that.’
‘I still don’t know.’
‘We were in college together, Paul.’
‘Oh, John’s.’
‘It’s not what he says,’ said Proctor-Gould, in great good humour. ‘It’s the way he says it. Anyway, I’ve been checking up. You were two years behind me. But I’m pretty sure I remember seeing you around in my last year.’
‘Now you mention it,’ lied Manning politely, ‘I rather think I remember seeing you.’
‘You had a room in Chapel Court, didn’t you?’
‘I didn’t, as a matter of fact.’
‘Ah. I probably just saw you walking through.’
‘That would explain it.’
‘But we must have seen one another in Hall, for example.’
‘Of course we must.’
It was presumably a John’s tie that Proctor-Gould was wearing. Now that Manning had a reference point against which to locate him, Proctor-Gould appeared even more curiously seedy. Double-breasted blazers and baggy grey flannels had gone out of fashion years before he and Proctor-Gould had arrived in Cambridge. Vaguely he visualized a Cambridge full of perambulating double-breasted blazers just after the war, with utility marks in their linings and ration books in their pockets.
‘Anyway,’ said Proctor-Gould, ‘I’m in business now. You see before you one of the bright young men you’re probably always hearing about who go out and develop trade with the Soviet Union.’
He smiled lugubriously, and pulled vigorously at his right ear – with his left hand this time, since he was holding the mug of Nescafé in his right. When he stopped, Manning noticed with a shock that his right lobe was visibly longer than his left.
‘What do you deal in?’ asked Manning.
‘Oh, pictures, fashions, musical instruments – all the little unconsidered trifles that no one else thinks of as coming from Russia. And people.’
‘People?’
‘Yes, quite a large proportion of my business is in people. I expect you’ll think that means I’m a theatrical agent?’
‘I can’t think what it means.’
‘It’s a conclusion a lot of people seem to leap to. But in fact I don’t touch the theatrical profession at all. I’m not a literary agent, either – that’s another common mistake people make. I don’t handle authors, in the normal sense of the word.’
Proctor-Gould gazed thoughtfully into the brown dregs of his Nescafé, as if brooding upon human error and delusion.
‘No, Paul,’ he said, ‘I deal exclusively in ordinary people – the more ordinary the better. And this is where I want you to help me.’
7
‘The point is,’ said Proctor-Gould, ‘there’s a tremendous demand for ordinary people. The Press and television in Britain and America are crying out for good human material. You might think it’s strange at first sight, but producers and editors find it very difficult to meet people outside the entertainment industry. They simply don’t come across them. It’s easy enough for them to get hold of professional personalities, of course – novelists, pop singers, beauty queens, politicians, that kind of person. But they want to get away from the professionals. They want to get at the real flesh-and-blood people who make up the other 99·9% of the world. There’s a market all right. And of course there’s a plentiful source of supply. All you need is a middleman to bring the two together.’
He put his mug down, warmed his hands at the radiator behind his back, raised himself on his toes, and let himself sink slowly back on to his heels again.
‘I hope I don’t sound mercenary,’ he said. ‘For me this isn’t just a way of making money, I assure you. It’s something I believe in very deeply. You see, Paul, I think professional personalities aren’t the only interesting people around. I believe that everyone is of interest to the public. I believe that everyone has a story to tell, a point of view that’s worth putting across, a personality that the public would be interested to explore.’
He hesitated, and smiled anxiously.
‘I don’t know whether that seems just a lot of absolute balls to you?’ he asked,
‘No,’ said Manning. ‘Oh, no.’
‘It seems a lot of absolute balls to some people.’
‘Really? Not to me.’
‘No, well, it doesn’t to me, of course. But I know from experience that it does to some people.’
He picked up his mug again, and ate a spoonful of the syrupy, half-dissolved sugar at the bottom.
‘I said that everyone is of interest. In theory that’s perfectly true. But time and human patience being limited, in practice one has to select only people who can put themselves across. That’s why a skilled agent is needed. That’s what I earn my modest margin for.’
‘How do you tell who can and who can’t?’
‘It’s a knack, Paul. It’s just one of those funny old knacks. I can tell within a few minutes of meeting someone whether they’re suitable or not. For instance, you’re not, if you don’t mind my saying so. You wouldn’t come over at all.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No need to apologize. It’s not something you can control. It’s like being pigeon-toed, or colour-blind.’
‘I see. So I can’t really help you after all?’
‘Oh, that’s not why I wanted you. Though I’ve always got my eyes open, of course.’
He opened his great mournful eyes very wide to demonstrate. Manning suddenly had a vision of Proctor-Gould as he must have been before he had gone up to John’s and bought his first double-breasted blazer in Bodger’s the outfitters. He saw him living in his parents’ semi-detached house in Anerley or Edgware, filling the box-room with pieces of radio transmitter, writing to pen-friends in Tanganyika and New Zealand, building a home-made sports car out of a motor-cycle engine and beaten biscuit tins.