Authors: Jonathan Gash
The following Sunday Shirley broke. Dr Feering was called at five in the morning, the rain beating down speckling his car lights. He was kind, Geoffrey told Bray when, roused by the disturbance, he came in. Dr Feering explained that no, it wasn’t “madness”. Tears, moans, repetitive rocking, loss of perception, a troubled mind’s defences were simply overrun.
In a way, Feering said quietly, it was her way of mimicking the trauma experienced by a missing loved one. Not too fanciful an explanation. Shirley had hung on until hope was gone. Geoff was brilliant, Bray saw, but at what cost? Everything seemed in ruins.
Christine Lumley went with Shirley to the Psychiatric Unit. The Lumleys were close friends, their Thomas being Davey’s schoolfriend, car-pooled for the morning run. Christine’s husband Hal stood palely by, holding Samantha the baby, saying was there anything, absolutely anything. It was turgid and distressing. House lights came on down the avenue as Geoff followed the ambulance in his motor. Bray was to stay by the phone. Nobody thought
in case
any longer. Buster lurked wanting reassurance.
Bray sat in his kitchen, stirred the teapot. Always sugar for the first cup of tea in any day, thereafter just skimmed milk. Coffee dilute and black, only one cup in
midmorning
, Bray’s frugality a joke at Gilson Mather. Had been a joke. Geoff had come to an understanding with Officer Stazio about phone calls. In future Bray would call once a week. Stazio was never to call back unless asked.
Under the staircase was his hellhole, where Bray kept small triumphs of the past. He left his mug of tea to cool and rummaged, Buster getting in the way testing for new scents. Five minutes, and Bray found the papers.
Bray had painted the folder purple, to please Davey. It was his colour.
The article was there, poor quality paper yellowing, the dotted photograph too vague to be any help:
“Reproduction Miniature Mock-Finial Regency Corner Cabinet of William Vile at the Treasurer’s House, York, England,”
Bray read aloud. “By Bray John Charleston.” Geoff had laughed at the pedantic title. “I’ll wait for the film, Dad!”
But laughs were for back then, not now.
Four enthusiasts had written letters to the Editor about his meticulously worded article. Bray had answered their queries, and received two letters of thanks.
“Not much of a plan,” he said, but it was a start, and better than unthinkable nothing. Buster came to, saw things didn’t concern him, and flopped back down.
He donned his spectacles and re-read the article. He could remember having hellish difficulty with his old Remington typewriter.
One correspondent lived Ipswich way. Bray found the address between rust-stained staples. Would he still be there, three years on? You could never tell these days,
mobility, spouses wandering off.
“George Corkhill, printer,” he told Buster. “That’s him.”
They had once conversed by phone, over a question of finishing Regency wood surfaces.
He hadn’t kept Mr Corkhill’s letters, so much discarded in clear-outs after Emma went.
Sunday. Would Mr Corkhill be home? Bray knew nothing about the man except he signed himself
Printer
. If he’d moved, might a printers’ guild have his address? Bray started a lie, in case.
“If ever,” he clearly remembered Mr Corkhill
half-joking
in their last conversation, “you want some private text on Regency mahogany furniture printed, Mr Charleston, come here first!” They’d had a chuckle.
Bray made his habitual porridge Lancashire style, only water and oats. He watched the clock, waiting for news of Shirley, but wanting Mr Corkhill, printer, to enter the day.
Half-past nine, Bray finished vacuuming, washed up his breakfast things and started his laundry. He would give Mr Corkhill, printer of Saxmundham, until ten. If the printer was having a lie-in, hard luck.
The difficulty with gardening, he thought as the doorbell rang, was being under the reproachful gaze of neighbours. It
was
reproach, no mistake. What family would go on holiday and lose a child?
Christine was minute, dark of hair and normally smiley. A library volunteer three mornings.
“Hello, Christine.” He stood aside.
She came in a pace, no further, and stood cupping her elbows.
“They’ve decided to keep Shirley in. Dr Feering told
Geoff a few minutes ago. He stayed with them. Isn’t he brilliant? You can visit Shirley this afternoon.”
“Thanks, Christine. Sure you won’t come in?” He was already moving the door, making it easy for her to decline.
“No, thanks. I’d better get back to…home.”
She did the pursed lips with which women escaped giving offence, avoiding mentioning the children she managed to protect, unlike some people.
“Say ta to Hal.” So many thanks.
“It’s no bother.” She hesitated. “If there’s anything.”
Gently Bray closed the door. He instantly went to the phone and dialled Mr Corkhill. It was picked up on the fourth ring. Somebody was arguing about football,
mid-sentence
.
“Could I please speak with Mr George Corkhill, printer?”
“Speaking.” Bray recognised the voice.
The hunt was beginning. Bray felt himself shaking slightly.
“I don’t know if you remember me, Mr Corkhill. Mr Charleston, joiner.” He halted, giving the other a moment. “We corresponded some years ago.”
“William Vile of York!” Corkhill interrupted enthusiastically. “Of course! I finished the piece, gave it to a small museum we have here. Nothing like what you’d turn out, I’m sure, but I was pleased.”
“Very complimentary, Mr Corkhill.”
Bray hesitated. He’d forgotten his written questions and lost direction.
“Have you entered for the competition, Mr Charleston?”
Competition? Something in a cabinet-making journal? The latest issue was still in its postal wrapper among other
mail on the hall table.
“Er, no. I hope this isn’t a terrible intrusion, Mr Corkhill. It’s personal. Perhaps you’ve read in the papers?”
A silence, then Corkhill asked him to hold on while he changed phones. Something clattered, Corkhill saying to freeze the video. Youthful voices pierced Bray. He stayed impassively looking at the hall’s frosted glass, going over the sentences ploddingly worked out.
“Hello? I read something in the paper, Mr Charleston. The surname…I almost rang. I hope not?”
“Afraid it was, Mr Corkhill.” Bray went straight on to forestall any questions, “No news yet.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Can I ask your advice?”
“Anything I can do?” The offer seemed a long time coming.
“Would you tell me about printing?”
“Printing?” The man sounded startled. “What, exactly?”
“A small book.”
“Have you a word count? What computer language have you?”
Bray cleared his throat for the hard part. “It depends on what you tell me.”
Corkhill went quiet with puzzlement. “How many copies? Illustrated or —?”
“It isn’t written. Not a word.”
Bray had the first twinges of doubt. He would have spoken more directly but for the agony of missing even the most fragile chance.
“Look,” the printer said at last. “I’m at a loose end. How far are you from Saxmundham?”
Bray almost sweated in relief. Now for the
hard
hard part.
“The job might not be altogether legal, Mr Corkhill.”
“I’ll tell you if it’s not, Mr Charleston,” Corkhill answered drily.
They arranged to meet at a coastal wharf. The printer would borrow his niece’s motor.
That morning Bray read his paperback on the hieroglyphics of the Internet. Could computers really do all these things, chat, explore, roam, “surf”? He lost the thread, took Buster to watch football on the park. Later he attacked the incomprehensible book for another hour.
He cooked Geoff egg and chips, and left his weary son sleeping in front of the TV sports. As Geoff dozed, Bray made an appointment at Dr Feering’s surgery for the morning Well Man Clinic. He then booked a finance session at some all-hours investment office in London.
It was then, dozing after that greasy lunch, that he saw the note on the matting by the front door. For a frightening moment he had a wild vision of a ransom demand. It was nothing so hair-raising. The note was typed.
mr charlston a m8 can get u a pc with the busniss but itl cost its clean av u wheels hav 2 b cash its a 1 of OK
I told him ur strite Kylee
Kylee, offering him a computer? It sounded decidedly rum. What if it was stolen?
Strite for straight, and m8 for mate, presumably? How to explain to Geoff why he was buying a computer from a loutish teenager? And what of her father?
He wondered whether to talk it over with Geoff, but his son would be horrified and want to know what Bray planned, thinking his father had lost his marbles.
No. He had to do it alone, get help from anywhere, anyhow.
Officer Jim Stazio talked most with Sam Tietze. His partner was still doing some crazy night school law and criminology, the course not worth a belch. And would never finish it, Jim knew. He suspected Sam had something going with the woman who ran the gas station over Benksayne. Sam argued strong points, pardons, kind of stuff Jim thought a waste of a good evening.
Nobody should get pardon.
“See, Sam,” he told him. “That crazo Menzoy had a partner. We never got the two, right?”
“Aldo, he talks, he gets his throat cut in Ablutions, Jim. He fed you a load of shit and shine.”
“I didn’t ask what he done, Sam. I asked about others.”
They’d made an arrest that morning, a lowlife receiving stolen goods looted after crowd disturbances, what Sam called a shout bout, women shrieking yelled about fascist hogs, what gave you bile hours later. They were in a diner on Coltra, five roads met there, giving town loafers a
pile-up
every time some drunk overshot the lights, be right there on the spot when the next happened.
“Jim,” Sam sighed. “We know about others. It’s them we ain’t got.”
“I milked him, Sam. Three names I got, two buyers and one mebbe.”
“Buyers?” Sam Tietze talked cagey, looking like lock and load, not really believing a word. “You got names of kid buyers?”
Jim said, “I should be so lucky. People he says adoptions gone wrong, past felonies stopping foster-parenting, Christ knows what.”
“How’d he know them?”
“Didn’t say. Been knifed once, didn’t want no more.”
Sam chuckled. “Not all bad news, right?”
“I’m going to call them. Want to come?”
“Jim, we done that shit. How long you got before your bus pass?”
Jim thumped his feet down and waved to the counter girl. They changed every week, Aquilina the Maltese paying them half the legal hourly.
“I’ll give it a miss, Jim. No hard feelings?”
“Just don’t call me as alibi for that night school you pretending.”
Sam beckoned more coffee and shook his head, like hadn’t an officer anything better to do with his time.
The house was as elegant as anything the burbs had to offer. Jim Stazio left his marked police car in the long drive, visible from the road as intimidation, what will the neighbours think? He regained his breath before ringing the doorbell. His water supplement wasn’t taking effect yet, dieting four days and still thirty pounds overweight.
A small neat woman in her fifties admitted him. Her husband was somewhere in transit, Hawaii to San Fran, home tomorrow. He said he was making enquiries.
“A few crosses on paper,” he told Mrs Baines. “Nothing important.”
Sam Tietze had a smoother line, which was why Jim had wanted him along. Sam had a habit of smiling at windows, sofas and maybe carpets like he knew them, hey, I got one in my apartment, that way. Homely, Jim would say if asked, Sam could look homely, things reassured a woman. Sam was a natural, Jim wasn’t.
“It’s about that adoption business again,” Jim said. “That old thing. I’m retiring soon. Loose ends, Mrs Baines.”
Her hand went to her throat. “Loose ends?”
“Nothing serious.” She seemed a mite paler. “Can you just go over how you went about it again? Then I can tick the box and that’ll be it.”
Haltingly, she said how she and her husband had tried for adoption. “All kinds of agencies, Officer Stazio,” she said earnestly. “You’ve simply no idea.” She coloured. “There’s a cut-off. My husband calls it stalling speed. A single day over age, you’ve no hope of adopting.”
They eventually heard of a lawyer in another state, an expert in adoption. There were medical centres specialising in orphans who, once they’d recovered from accident or mental trauma, were adoptable.
You had to go through registered doctors licensed to practice.
“All above board, Officer. My husband doesn’t do dishonest.”
“You met the lawyer?”
“No. We had a name. I gave it to your people.”
He already knew it but pressed her. It checked. “Did you take it further, Mrs Baines?”
“No. My husband worried they might be false. We tried other agencies. We got their names from state attorney people, but gave up. You can’t keep on for ever.”
He said there was nothing wrong with giving up, and left. Blank. The walk to the car was downhill. He felt better.
That afternoon he slogged through lists of medical centres, clinics, medical A and E units with different radii from where the kid had gone missing. Trouble was, the Charleston kid was one of many.
Long shot. Sam was right.
Still, ignore the enormous stack of pending reports and he’d nothing urgent on, so he compiled a grid map for kid
abductions. Like, he thought dejectedly, nobody thought of that before. He marked them with colours to indicate time lapses.
He had a few days left.
Bray asked Mr Winsarls for permission to go over some past Gilson Mather sales records. The owner’s jocularity covered his awkwardness.
“Mr Charleston, do exactly what you want in Gilson Mather! You’ve had your own keys for ten years.”
“Thank you, Mr Winsarls.”
He began only when Tracy and Karen had left. The last of the craftsmen called so-long, Harry Diggins shouting up that he was locking up, Mr Charleston. The place quietened. Bray started excavating sales ledgers. Three centuries of craftsmanship, after all, documents crammed in higgledy-piggledy, none computerised except for the last three years, and those uncertain. He finally found it, realised with a shock how fast time was passing. He’d guessed that a Thomas Sheraton was sold four years previously. It was nearer six.
Meticulously he copied down details. After Mr Winsarls called his goodnights, Bray picked up the phone. Mr Leonard Ireland answered fourth ring and immediately started an apology for not having read some tract but promised he’d do it soon, soon.
“No, Mr Ireland,” Bray put in when he could. “I’m from Gilson Mather, furniture makers.” Into the pause, a little desperate, he said, “I made your table. Turned stump feet, as Mr Sheraton’s.”
The long pause gave Bray a gripe. Was this a terrible mistake?
Then, “You made my table?”
“Yes.” Bray felt his palms go clammy. “I’m sorry to trouble you at home, Mr Ireland.” This was the hard bit. Go round the houses, a retired publisher like Ireland would probably hang up, think he was a nutter.
“I’m calling to ask advice. You,” he rushed on, “being a publisher.”
Ireland barked a gravelly laugh. “Don’t tell me, Mr Charleston. You’ve written a Jane Eyre lookalike and it’s brilliant?”
Bray was taken aback.
“No, Mr Ireland. I wouldn’t presume. You are the only person I’ve ever…” But Bray hadn’t ever known the man. The furniture order had come through some Charing Cross publishing house. Special delivery, and that was that. He ended lamely, “I can pay an interview fee.”
“A fee? Highly original, Mr Charleston! Tell you what. Eightish, I go for a pint. You’re in Spitalfields?”
They arranged to meet.
The White Hart in Drury Lane was crowded. Bray was greeted by the whiskered portly man standing among the mob by the saloon bar door.
“This is the pub where Ben Jonson and his mates met up when Shakespeare died,” Mr Ireland said without preamble. “They sat over there. One actor said that Shakespeare never crossed out a single line. And Ben
Jonson cracked:
I wish he’d crossed out a thousand!
” Ireland laughed. “Rivals, see?”
“Squire Aubrey,” Bray guessed. The retired publisher somehow got Bray a pint of cider. It would have taken Bray all evening to get served.
“They know me, Mr Charleston.” Len Ireland lit a cigarette and smiled. “I still have the furniture you made. Sheraton. My retirement prezzie. I’d longed for a table like that for years. Reproduction; well, you made it, so you know! Other firms said it was too difficult to make by hand, but Gilson Mather said easy-peasy because they had a genius joiner of the old school.”
Bray was embarrassed. “Mr Sheraton didn’t actually do much himself. Left it to his workmen.”
“It’s still dazzling. Conical tables in fashion now, are they?”
“No. Yours is the only one I’ve ever done, except some restoration work for the Hesketh family in the north.”
“You have the gift.” Ireland eyed Bray through his spectacles. “What’s this about? Checking I’m dusting it properly?”
They had to raise their voices to be heard. Bray had worked out a story on the bus. “What is a bestseller?”
“That serious? Your hour begins now, then.” The old publisher had a double whisky, kept giving nods of recognition to bar regulars. “Know that actor, Michael Caine?
Zulu, Alfie
? He wrote a book. Claimed he could have made it an instant bestseller by buying a few thousand copies. Time it right, his volume would soar.”
“Is it true?”
“That sales shoot you up the charts? Sure. It’s fiddled all the time. Not by mates buying in selected West End bookshops. Adverts can do it, or talk-show hostesses
giving you a plug. Or by sleeping around. A publishing joke, Mr Charleston, is
Lie down, you’ll soon be on your feet!
” The publisher laughed.
“Who decides?”
“Trade groups listed in the reference library. I only know one writer who doesn’t lose sleep the night before the
Bookseller
is published.”
“What are they for?” Bray asked.
“The charts?” Ireland chuckled. “You’re innocent, Mr Charleston! For track records to prove how good publishers are! Art craves attention, do anything to get mentioned by some DJ. They don’t see the horrible truth.”
“Which is?”
“They’re wrong. Publicists, film stars, everybody assumes that attention
is
fame. Wrong! Fame is Keats, Byron, Gainsborough. Attention is a column-inch of innuendo between haemorrhoid cream adverts.”
“Can it be faked?”
Ireland weighed his visitor.
“Define your question, Mr Charleston. Do you want to fake book sales? Simple! Invent a publishing category. Like, claim your book on Ancient Babylonian farming achieved most sales
in its class
! You can even invent your own literary prize! Bribery’s good; I bribed judges for twenty years.”
“How many?”
“Copies? As few as one thousand in a specialist category. Fifty thousand for some popular novel.”
It was difficult to ask, in view of what he’d learned. “What if you don’t want publicity, Mr Ireland?”
A small crowd pushed in, Ireland greeting them with the skilled repartee of the bar fly. He returned to Bray, his expression quizzical.
“You’re an odd bugger – sorry. More difficult. It’d need complete deception.” Bray nodded. This was more like it. “Is there a real book, or not?” Ireland kept his voice down.
“No. And maybe never.”
“Yet it’s got to top sales charts?”
“At least become a household name, in the United States.”
Ireland whistled his admiration.
“Well, Mr Charleston, I’m not saying it’s never been done. Remember the forger Thomas Walker? He nearly brought down the government, claimed Prime Minister MacDonald was a Soviet spy, 1934 I think it was. The Welsh revivalist movement came about by faked publications. Chatterton is famous, of course – it took a genius like Dr Johnson to spot him. I’m not
advising
you, but you need a text to base a falsehood on. Like the Hitler Diaries. Remember them?” He eyed Bray. “Goes to prove that you can exalt any trash.”
“Thank you, Mr Ireland.”
“Is that it? Look,” the publisher said, for the first time showing hesitancy. “Don’t let me pry, but give me a ring if you get stuck, eh?”
“I don’t want to bother you unduly.”
“Then bother me duly, Mr Charleston.” Smiling, Len Ireland reached to shake hands. “Will I see you on TV
late-nighters
?”
“I hope to go unnoticed.”
“Really?” Ireland was intrigued. “How soon?”
“That’s the next thing I need to find out.”
Bray felt the publisher’s gaze all the way to the pub door. He didn’t care. He was getting there, getting there.
That same night, he noticed the manuscript woman, even though it was a much later train. They almost
exchanged a greeting. That was once, now no longer. Not now. Bray turned away. Talk had to be useful, which meant for only one purpose. At Kelvedon he saw her eyes on the book he was reading,
Publishing for Beginners
. He simply read on, and she returned to her endless typescript.