Original Sin (14 page)

James de Witt said: “I thought we discussed it at the last meeting but didn’t reach a decision. I think if you consult the minutes …”

“I don’t need to. I’m not running this company on the basis of what Miss Blackett chooses to put in the minutes.”

“Which, incidentally, you haven’t yet signed.”

“Exactly. I suggest that in the future we run this monthly meeting with a less formal agenda. You’re always saying that this is a partnership of friends and colleagues and that I’m the one who insists on tedious procedures and unnecessary bureaucracy. So why all this formality, agenda, minutes, resolutions, when it comes to the monthly partners’ meeting?”

De Witt said: “It has been found useful. And I don’t think I, for one, have ever used the phrase ‘friends and colleagues.’ ”

Frances Peverell had been sitting bolt upright, her face very white. Now she said: “You can’t sell Innocent House.”

Etienne didn’t look at her but kept his eyes on his papers. “I can. We can. We have to sell if this business is to survive. You can’t run an efficient publishing house from a Venetian palace on the Thames.”

“My family has for a hundred and sixty years.”

“I said an efficient publishing business. Your family didn’t need to be efficient, they were cushioned with private incomes. Publishing in your grandfather’s day wasn’t even an occupation for gentlemen, it was a hobby for gentlemen. Today a publisher makes money, and makes it efficiently or goes under. Is that what you want? I don’t propose to go under. I intend to make the Peverell Press profitable and after that to make it large.”

Gabriel Dauntsey said quietly: “So that you can sell it? Make your millions and get out?”

Etienne ignored him.

“I’m getting rid of Sydney Bartrum to begin with. He’s a competent enough accountant, but what we want is someone a great deal more than that. I propose to appoint a financial director with the job of finding money for development and setting up a proper financial system.”

De Witt said: “We have a perfectly good financial system. The auditors have never complained. Sydney has been here for nineteen years. He’s an honest, conscientious, hard-working accountant.”

“Exactly. That’s what he is and it’s all he is. As I said, we need something more. For example, I need to know the margin of profit over gross expenditure of every book we publish. Other houses have that information. How can we cut out the unproductive authors if we don’t know who they are? We need someone who will make money for us, not just tell us each year how we spent it. I know how we spent it. If all we need is a competent accountant I can do that myself. I’d expect you to
support him, James. He’s pathetic, unprepossessing and not particularly efficient. Naturally that makes an immediate appeal. You needs must love the lowest when you see it. You should do something about your bleeding heart syndrome.”

James flushed, but said quietly enough: “I don’t particularly like the man. I cringe every time he calls me Mr. de Witt. I suggested that he should say de Witt or James, but he looked at me as if I were proposing an indecency. But he’s a perfectly competent accountant and he’s been here for nineteen years. He knows the firm, he knows us, he knows the way we work.”

“Used to work, James, used to work.”

Frances said: “And he only married a year ago. They’ve got a new baby.”

“What on earth has that to do with whether he’s the right man for the job?”

De Witt asked: “Do you have someone in mind?”

“I’ve asked Patterson Macintosh, the headhunters, to put forward some names.”

“That will cost us a few quid. Headhunters don’t come cheap. Odd that nowadays we can’t recruit staff without headhunters, can’t improve efficiency without time-and-motion-study experts and have to call in management consultants to tell us how to manage. Half the time these so-called experts are just frontmen called in to cut down staff when the management haven’t the guts to do it themselves. Have you ever known management consultants who didn’t recommend sacking people? It’s what they’re paid to say, and a cushy little number they’ve made out of it for themselves.”

Frances said: “We should have been consulted about all this.”

“You are being consulted.”

“In that case we can stop talking about it now. It isn’t going to happen. Innocent House isn’t going to be sold.”

“It is if just one of you agrees to sell. That’s all it takes. You’ve forgotten how many shares I own. And the house isn’t yours, Fran. Your family sold it to the firm in 1940, remember. All right, they got it too cheap, but they probably didn’t give much for its chance of survival given the East End bombing. It was underinsured and, anyway, it couldn’t have been replaced. Get this into your head, Fran, it isn’t a Peverell house anymore. Why are you so worried? You haven’t a child. There’s no Peverell to inherit.”

Frances flushed and half rose from her chair, but de Witt said quietly: “Don’t, Frances. Don’t leave. We all need to discuss this.”

“There’s nothing to discuss.”

There was a silence broken by Dauntsey’s quiet voice. “Is my poetry required to earn its 8.5 percent net or whatever?”

“We’ll keep your volumes in print, Gabriel, naturally. There will be a few books we’ll have to carry.”

“I must hope that the burden of mine won’t be too great.”

“And selling this place will mean turning you out of number twelve. Skolling wants the whole property, the two houses as well as the main building. I’m sorry about that.”

“But I have, after all, lived at number twelve at a ludicrously low rent for over ten years.”

“Well that’s the arrangement Henry Peverell agreed with you, and naturally you had a right to take what he gave.” He paused, then added, “And to go on taking. But you must see, things can’t be allowed to go on like this.”

“Oh yes, I do see. Things can’t be allowed to go on.”

Etienne went on as if he hadn’t heard.

“And it’s time to get rid of George. We should have retired him years ago. The switchboard operator is the first contact that people have with the firm. You need a young, vital, attractive
girl, not that sixty-eight-year-old man. He is sixty-eight, isn’t he? And don’t tell me he’s been here for twenty-two years. I know how long he’s been here, that’s just the trouble.”

Frances said: “He isn’t just the switchboard operator. He opens the place up, sees to the burglar alarm, and he’s a wonderful handyman.”

“And he needs to be. There’s always something going wrong with this house. It’s time we moved into a modern, purpose-built, efficiently run building. And we haven’t begun to take on board modern technology. You people thought you were being dangerously innovative when you replaced a few of the typewriters with word processors. And there’s one other piece of good news. There’s a chance that I may be able to entice Sebastian Beacher from his present publishers. He’s not at all happy.”

Frances cried out: “But he’s an appallingly bad writer, and he’s not much better as a human being.”

“The business of publishing is to give people what they want, not to make moral judgements.”

“You could argue that if you were manufacturing cigarettes.”

“I would argue it if I were manufacturing cigarettes. Or whisky for that matter.”

De Witt said: “It isn’t a true analogy. You could argue that drink is positively beneficial if used in moderation. You can never argue that a bad novel is other than a bad novel.”

“Bad for whom? And what do you mean by bad? Beacher tells a strong story, keeps the action moving, provides that mixture of sex and violence which people apparently want. Who are we to tell readers what is good for them? Anyway, haven’t you always argued that the important thing is to get people reading? Let them begin with cheap romantic fiction and they may go on to Jane Austen or George Eliot. I don’t see why they should—go on to the classics, I mean. That’s your
argument, not mine. What’s wrong with cheap romantic fiction if that’s what they happen to enjoy? It’s a pretty condescending attitude to argue that popular fiction is only justified if it leads on to higher things. Well, what you and Gabriel happen to think are higher things.”

Dauntsey said: “Are you saying that one shouldn’t make value judgements? We make them every day of our lives.”

“I’m saying you shouldn’t make them for other people. I’m saying that I shouldn’t make them as a publisher. Anyway, there’s one unanswerable argument: if I’m not allowed to make a profit on popular books, good or bad, I can’t afford to publish less popular books for what you see as the discerning minority.”

Frances Peverell turned on him. Her colour was high and she found difficulty in controlling her voice. “Why do you keep on saying ‘I’? It’s always ‘I’ll do this, I’ll publish that.’ You may be chairman but you aren’t the firm. We are. Collectively. The five of us. And we aren’t meeting now as the Book Committee. That’s next week. We’re supposed to be talking about the future of Innocent House.”

“We are. I propose that we accept the offer and put the negotiations in hand.”

“And where do you propose we move to?”

“Offices in Docklands on the river. Downstream possibly. We need to discuss whether we buy or take a long lease, but either’s possible. Prices have never been lower. Docklands has never been better value. And now that the Docklands Light Railway is working and the tube is to be extended, access will be easier. We shan’t need the launch.”

Frances said: “And sack Fred after all these years?”

“My dear Frances, Fred is a qualified waterman. Fred will have no problem in getting another job.”

Claudia said: “It’s too hurried, Gerard. I agree that the house will probably have to go, but we don’t have to decide this morning. Put something on paper, the figures for example. Let’s look at it when we’ve had time to consider.”

Gerard said: “And lose the offer?”

“Is that likely? Come off it, Gerard. If Hector Skolling wants the house he isn’t going to withdraw because he has to wait a week for an answer. Accept it if that makes you feel happier. We can always take it off the market if we have second thoughts.”

James de Witt said: “I wanted to talk about Esmé Carling’s new novel. At the last meeting you said something about turning it down.”

“Death on Paradise Island?
I have turned it down. I thought that was agreed.”

De Witt said quietly and slowly as if to a recalcitrant child: “No, it wasn’t agreed. It was briefly discussed and the matter deferred.”

“Like so many of our decisions. You four remind me of that definition of a meeting—a collection of people who prefer to substitute the pleasure of talk for the responsibility of action or the ardour of decision. Something like that. I spoke to Esmé’s agent yesterday and gave her the news. I confirmed it in writing with a copy to Carling. I take it that no one here is seriously arguing that Esmé Carling is a good novelist, or even a profitable one. Personally I prefer a writer to be one or the other, preferably both.”

De Witt said: “We have published worse.”

Etienne turned on him with a small explosion of derision. “God knows why you support her, James. You’re the one who’s keen to publish literary novels, Booker Prize candidates, sensitive little works to impress the literary mafia. Five minutes ago
you were criticizing me for trying to get Sebastian Beacher. You’re not suggesting that
Death on Paradise Island
is going to enhance the reputation of Peverell Press? I mean, I take it that you don’t see it as the Whitbread Book of the Year. Incidentally, I’d be a great deal more sympathetic to your so-called Booker books if they occasionally made the Booker shortlist.”

James said: “I agree it’s probably time that we parted from her. It’s the means, not the end I object to. I suggested at the last meeting, if you remember, that we should publish her latest and then tactfully say that we’re closing the popular mystery list.”

Claudia said: “Hardly convincing. She’s the only author on it.”

James went on, speaking directly to Gerard. “The book will need careful editing but she’ll take that if it’s done tactfully. The plot needs strengthening and the middle section is weak. But the description of the island is good. She’s excellent at evoking an atmosphere of menace. And the characterization is an improvement on her last. We won’t lose on it. We’ve published her for thirty years. It’s a long association. I’d like it to end with goodwill and generosity, that’s all.”

Gerard Etienne said: “It has ended. And we’re a publishing house not a charity. I’m sorry, James, she’s got to go.”

De Witt said: “You could have waited until the Book Committee met.”

“I probably would have waited if her agent hadn’t rung. Carling was pressing to know if we had fixed publication day and what was proposed by way of a publication party. A party! A wake would have been more appropriate. There was no point in prevaricating. I told her that the book wasn’t up to standard and that we didn’t propose to publish. I confirmed that in writing yesterday.”

“She’ll take it badly.”

“Of course she’ll take it badly. Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.”

“What about her backlist?”

“Now there we may be able to make a bit of money.”

Frances Peverell suddenly spoke. “James is right. We did agree that we’d discuss it again. You had absolutely no authority to speak to Esmé Carling or to Velma Pitt-Cowley. We could perfectly well publish her latest and tell her gently that it had to be the last. Gabriel, you agree, don’t you? You think we should have taken
Death on Paradise Island?”

The four partners looked at Dauntsey and waited as if he were a final court of appeal. The old man had been studying his paper but now he looked up and smiled gently at Frances.

“I don’t think that would have softened the blow, do you? You can’t reject an author. What you reject is the book. If we publish this latest she’ll present us with another and we’ll be faced with the same dilemma. Gerard acted prematurely and I imagine not particularly tactfully, but I think the decision was right. A novel is either worth publishing or it isn’t.”

“I’m glad we’ve settled something.” Etienne began shuffling his papers together.