Uncle Dynamite (35 page)

Actually,
of course, Hermione’s appearance was simply the normal appearance of a girl who
has just been ticking off a viper. After a dust-up with a viper the female lips
always become tightly set, and it is rarely that the bosom does not heave. But
Otis did not know this, and it was with a mind filled with the gloomiest
forebodings that he stepped from his hiding place. ‘Here comes the bad news,’
he was saying to himself.

‘Well?’
he said, uttering the monosyllable loudly and raspingly, as so often happens
when the nerves are over-strained.

The
briskness of her pace had taken Hermione past him, and it was from behind that
he had addressed her. At the sound of a voice suddenly splitting the welkin
where no voice should have been she left the ground in an upward direction and
came to earth annoyed and ruffled.

‘I wish
you wouldn’t pop out of bushes like that,’ she said with a good deal of
asperity.

Otis
was too agitated to go into the niceties of etiquette and procedure.

‘What
happened?’ he asked.

‘I bit
my tongue.’

‘I
mean,’ said Otis, clicking his, ‘when you saw your father.’

Hermione
mastered her emotion. Her tongue was still paining her, but she had remembered
that this man was a publisher who believed in column spreads in all the
literate Sunday papers.

‘Oh,
yes,’ she said.

The
reply dissatisfied Otis. It seemed to him to lack lucidity, and lucidity was
what he desired — or, as a literate Sunday paper would have put it,
desiderated.

‘What
do you mean, Oh, yes? What did he say?’

Hermione’s
composure was now restored. She still disapproved of her sponsor’s practice of
popping out of bushes and speaking like a foghorn down the back of her neck,
but was willing to let bygones be bygones.

‘It’s
quite all right, Mr Painter,’ she said, smiling kindly upon Otis. ‘Father has
withdrawn the suit.’

Otis
reeled.

‘He
has?’

‘Yes.’

‘Gee!’
said Otis, and it was at this point that he folded Hermione in his embrace and
started to kiss her.

The
last thing we desire being to cast aspersions on publishers, a most respectable
class of men, we hasten to say that behaviour of this kind is very unusual with
these fine fellows. Statistics show that the number of authoresses kissed
annually by publishers is so small that, if placed end to end, they would reach
scarcely any distance. Otis’s action was quite exceptional, and Hodder and
Stoughton
, had they observed it, would
have looked askance. So would
Jonathan
Cape
. And we think
we speak for Heinemann, Macmillan, Benn, Gollancz and Herbert Jenkins Ltd when
we say that they, too, would have been sickened by the spectacle.

In
defence of Otis there are several extenuating points to be urged. In the first
place, his relief was so intense and his happiness so profound that he had to
kiss something. In the second place, Hermione was a very beautiful girl (not that
that would have weighed with Faber and Faber) and she had smiled upon him very
kindly. And, finally, we cannot judge men who have lived on the left bank of
the
Seine
by the same standards
which we apply to those whose home is in
London
. If Eyre and Spottiswoode had taken a flat in the Rue Jacob, within
easy reach of the Boul’ Mich’, they would have been surprised how quickly they
would have forgotten the lessons they had learned at their mother’s knee.

It was
unfortunate that none of these arguments presented themselves to Bill Oakshott
as he turned the corner. In Otis Painter he saw just another libertine,
flitting from flower to flower and sipping, and we are already familiar with
his prejudice against libertines. His impulse on seeing one, we recall, was to
pull his head off at the roots and rip his insides out with his bare hands, and
it was with this procedure in mind that he now advanced on the entwined pair.
He gripped Otis by the coat collar and tore him from the clinch, and he would
almost certainly have started to detach his head, had not Hermione uttered a
piercing cry.

‘Don’t
kill him, Bill! He’s my publisher.’

And
then, as she saw him hesitate, she added:

‘He’s
doing my next three books and giving me twenty per cent rising to twenty-five
above three thousand.’

It was
enough. Practically berserk though Bill was, he could still reason, and reason
told him that publishers of this type must be nursed along rather than
disembowelled. Hermione’s literary career was as dear to him as to herself, and
he knew that he could never forgive himself if he jeopardized it by
eviscerating a man capable of planning contracts on these spacious lines. He
released Otis, who tottered back against a tree and stood there panting and
polishing his spectacles.

Bill,
too, was panting. His breath came in loud gasps as he strode up to Hermione and
grabbed her by the wrist. There was in his demeanour now no trace of that
craven diffidence which had marked it during their previous interview in the
hall. Since then William Oakshott, with a victory over a tyrant under his belt,
had become a changed man, and the man he had changed into was a sort of
composite of James Cagney and Attila the Hun. He felt strong and masterful and
in the best possible vein for trying out the Ickenham system. Otis Painter,
peering at him through his spectacles, which he had now resumed, was reminded
of a Parisian inspecteur who had once arrested him at the Quatz Arts Ball.

Nor was
Hermione unimpressed. She was now being waggled about, and she found the process,
though physically unpleasant, giving her a thrill of ecstasy.

Like
all very beautiful girls, Hermione Bostock had received in her time a great
deal of homage from the other sex. For years she had been moving in a world of
men who frisked obsequiously about her and curled up like carbon paper if she
spoke crossly to them, and she had become surfeited with male worship. Even
when accepting Pongo’s proposal she had yearned secretly for something rough
and tough with a nasty eye and the soul of a second mate of a tramp steamer.
And in the last quarter where she would have thought of looking she had found
him. She had always been fond of Bill, but in an indulgent, almost contemptuous
fashion, regarding him, as she had once mentioned to her father, as a sheep.
And now the sheep, casting off its clothing, had revealed itself as one of the
wolves and now the worst of them.

Little
wonder that Hermione Bostock, as Bill having waggled her about, clasped her to
his bosom and showered kisses on her upturned face, felt that here was the man
she had been looking for since she first read
The Way of an Eagle.

‘My
mate!’ said Bill. Then, speaking from between clenched teeth, ‘Hermione!’

‘Yes,
Bill?’

‘You’re
going to marry me. ‘‘Yes, Bill.’

‘That’s
clearly understood, is it?’

‘Yes,
Bill.’

‘No
more fooling about with these Pongos and what not. ‘‘No, Bill.’

‘Right,’
said the dominant male. He turned to Otis, who had been looking on at the scene
with a sort of nostalgia, for it had reminded him of the old, happy days on the
left bank of the
Seine
. ‘So
you’re going to publish her books, are you?’

‘Yes,’
said Otis eagerly. He wanted there to be no mistake about this. ‘All of them.’

‘Giving
her twenty per cent rising to twenty-five above three thousand?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why
not a straight twenty-five?’ said Bill, and Otis agreed that that would be much
better. He had been on the point, he said, of suggesting it himself.

‘Fine,’
said Bill. ‘Well, come along in, both of you, and have some tea.’

Hermione
regretfully shook her head.

‘I
can’t, darling. I must be getting back to
London
. Mother has been waiting for me at my flat since
one o’clock
, and she may be wondering what has
become of me. I shall have to drive like the wind. Can I give you a lift, Mr
Painter?’

Otis
shuddered.

‘I
guess I’ll go by train.’

‘You’ll
find it slow.’

‘I like
it slow.’

‘Very
well. Goodbye, darling.’

‘Goodbye,’
said Bill. ‘I’ll be up in
London
tomorrow.

‘Splendid.
Come and see me to the car. I left it outside the house.’

Otis
remained, leaning against his tree. He felt a little faint, but very happy. Presently
the two-seater, with Hermione bent over the wheel, whizzed round the corner and
passed him at a speed which made him close his eyes and say to himself ‘There
but for the grace of God goes Otis Painter.’ When he opened them again, he saw
Bill approaching.

‘Why
not thirty?’ said Bill. ‘Pardon?’

‘Per
cent. For her books. Not twenty-five.’

‘Oh,
ah, yes. Why, sure,’ said Otis. ‘Thirty might be nicer.’ ‘You don’t want to
skimp.’

‘That’s
right. You don’t.’

‘And
publicity. You believe in lots of that, I hope?’

‘Oh,
sure.’

‘Fine.
She was always complaining that her last publishers wouldn’t push her books.’

‘The
poor fish. I mean, fishes.’

‘Used
to stall her off with a lot of rot about all that counted being word-of-mouth advertising.’

‘Crazy
saps.’

‘You
intend to advertise largely?’

‘In all
the literate Sunday papers.’

‘How
about the literate weeklies?’

‘In
those, too. I also thought of sandwich men and posters on the walls.’

Bill
had not supposed that he would ever be able to regard this man with affection,
but he did so now. He still had him docketed as a libertine, but indulgence
must be accorded to libertines whose hearts are in the right place.

‘Fine,’
he said. ‘Posters on the walls? Yes, fine.’

‘Of
course,’ said Otis, ‘all that kind of thing costs money.’

‘Well
spent,’ Bill pointed out.

‘Sure,’
agreed Otis. ‘Don’t get the idea that I’m weakening. But it begins to look as
if I may have to dig up a little more capital from somewhere. There isn’t any
too much of it in the old sock. You wouldn’t feel like putting a thousand
pounds into my business, would you?’

‘That’s
an idea. Or two?’

‘Or
three? Or, say, look why not five? Nice round number.’

‘Would
you call five a round number?’

‘I
think so.’

‘All
right,’ said Bill. ‘Five, then.’

Otis’s
eyes closed again, this time in silent ecstasy. He had had his dreams, of
course. Somewhere in the world, he had told himself, there must be angels in
human shape willing to put money into a shaky publishing firm. But never had he
really supposed that he would meet one, and still less that, if he did, such an
angel would go as high as five thousand.

Opening
his eyes, he found that he was alone. His benefactor had either been snatched
back to heaven or had gone round the corner to the terrace. He took his bicycle
from behind the tree and flung himself on the saddle like a gay professional
rider. And when half-way down the drive he had another of those unfortunate
spills, he merely smiled amusedly, as one good-naturedly recognizing that the laugh
is on him.

Life
looked very good to Otis Painter. In the old left bank days he had been at some
pains to cultivate a rather impressive pessimism, but now he was pure optimism
from side-whiskers to shoe sole.

If
Pippa had happened to pass at that moment, singing of God being in His heaven
and all right with the world, he would have shaken her by the hand and told her
he knew just how she felt.

Bill had not been snatched
up to heaven. It was to the terrace that he had made his way on leaving Otis,
and he had not been there many minutes when Lord Ickenham appeared, walking
jauntily like a man whose forty winks in a field has refreshed him. At the
sight of Bill he hurried forward with outstretched hand.

‘My
dear chap, a thousand congratulations.’ Bill gaped. This seemed to him
clairvoyance. ‘How on earth did you know?’

Lord
Ickenham explained that his young friend’s ecstatic expression, rather like
that of a cherub or seraph on the point of singing Hosanna, would alone have
been enough to tell him.

‘But,
as a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I had the news from an acquaintance of mine
whom I met bicycling along the road just now. Well, when I say bicycling along
the road, he was lying in a ditch with his feet in the air, chuckling softly.
He told me everything. It seems that he was a witness of the proceedings, and
he speaks highly of your technique. You strode up and grabbed her by the wrist,
eh?’