Strange Music (5 page)

Felix laughed. ‘If I hadn't married “that woman,” you'd have no one to—'

Her eyes flashed alarms as she thought he might be about to give away her ambitions toward television.

‘. . . look after your horse when you and Fogel go across the channel to bamboozle Larousse and Hachette and Ullstein into parting with their shekels.'

‘Well, that's getting harder than ever now they've withdrawn the foreign travel allowance yet again. Did you read about that poor Englishman who had to sell his silk shirts in Zurich because none of the banks would touch his sterling? Anyway, I came in here to say Fogel wants to take you to lunch at the White Tower. Both of you.'

The White Tower menu was so mouth-watering they had a hard time ordering a meal totalling less than five shillings a head, above which price they would have been obliged to surrender ration coupons. Despite these limitations there was hardly an empty table in the room; here you could believe that Austerity was being challenged not just in sybaritic meals at less than five bob a head but in the plans being discussed, the intelligence being exchanged, the deals being hammered out while the food and wine went down.

‘The biggest gap in the market now,' Fogel said, ‘is in learning books for children. We have van Loon –
The Story of Man
. . . Arthur Mee . . . such things. But all pre-war. And they
look
pre-war, too. Black and white, cheap gravure. It's a big chance for Manutius – the way we can do things.'

‘What particular subjects?' Felix asked.

‘All the experiences we had in the war – making informations easy to grasp. Using colour logically, not just for prettiness. Integrating pictures and diagrams into the same page with the text. Dividing the total subject into smaller units and making each one into a self-contained two-page spread. All this we now can use in information books for young people.'

‘What sort of age range?' Felix tried to ask.

‘And Huxley and Fisher will see all the texts so we can put their names on the jacket –
Under the editorial supervision of Julian Huxley and James Fisher
. It's good, yes?'

‘I saw T. S. Eliot on the Tube this morning,' Felix said. ‘Nobody recognized him – or, if they did, they gave no sign of it. Like me. But I thought if you saw Sartre or Camus on the Métro, people would crowd round . . . talk to him . . . argue. So maybe you're just importing European attitudes to celebrity and assuming they work in England?'

Fogel stared at him, young eyes in an old face. ‘Ask Murdoch.'

‘It's excellent, Fogel,' Murdoch said. ‘We may not pester celebrities on the Tube but we'll buy the books they recommend. However, I presume they're just lending their names and making the odd comment?'

‘Certainly not supplying actual text,' Faith put in. ‘And text is our bottleneck right now.'

‘Is there nobody in-house?' Felix asked.

Fogel shook his head. ‘I want new ideas. Everybody is . . .' Lacking the precise words he put up his hands like a horse's blinkers. ‘Too focused on the “Modern Art” series. Wonderful. Wonderful work. But not for this. It will be simpler, not too subtle – you understand?'

‘You want me to design a grid? Make a few samples?' Felix asked.

Fogel glanced at Faith, who said, ‘What about Eric Brandon? D'you think he could organize an outline? First a general series outline and then a detailed breakdown, spread by spread, of each volume. Sixty-four pages each. Forty per cent pictorial, sixty per cent text. Ten volumes in all.'

‘Is this that guy who thinks all art is pastiche?' Murdoch asked.

‘It doesn't stop him painting,' Faith said.

‘Good-good,' Fogel cut in. ‘Copyright is our big problem. The British Museum wants us to pay for images. The Science Museum . . . ditto, even if we pay the photographer. So we can make a
painting
of a photo. The artist will cost three pounds compared with the Science Museum copyright fee of five pounds. A hundred illustrations . . . two hundred pounds saved!'

Faith turned to Felix. ‘It's an advantage that you, me, and Eric live so close. Together you and he could work out the whole series, right down to what goes in each individual spread. Eric understands how young people's minds work, and—'

‘Oh!' Murdoch interrupted. ‘Is he the same Eric Brandon who writes and illustrates children's books? He's good.'

‘You know him?' Fogel asked.

‘Not personally but Macdonald published a couple of his early books before Gollancz poached him. Did very well.'

‘His wife, Isabella, is a fashion dictator,' Faith added. ‘She was on
Good Housekeeping
. Now she's on
Vogue
.'

‘Eric,' Felix put in, ‘is trying to persuade the Oxford Dictionary people that
fashion
and
fascist
have the same root.'

‘To get back to the point,' Fogel said.

‘Yes.' Felix was brisk. ‘Why ask Eric to outline all ten books? Why not go to an expert in each?'

‘Because they give you an outline – each – for a thousand-page encyclopedia. Sixty-four pages? Impossible, they say. No. We give them an outline for sixty-four pages and say, “Comments please.”'

‘Have you a list of subjects?'

Fogel looked at Faith, who drew a single sheet of folded paper from her handbag. Felix read:

‘There's no thread,' Fogel said as Felix drew breath to comment. ‘These books will all sell very well as singletons. We have to make some money now for a very
big
project that comes next . . . nineteen fifty-one . . . fifty-two.'

‘And why should Julian Huxley and James Fisher want their names on the cover of a book on fashion?' Felix asked.

Fogel grinned. ‘Trust me,' he said. ‘Ve are all prostitoots now.'

Tuesday, 8 November 1949

‘We can easily boil them all down to just sixty-four pages each,' Eric told Felix and Faith. ‘Except for the volume on fashion. My consultant on that subject tells me it will need at least six hundred.'

They had gathered in Eric's studio after a few jars at The Plume of Feathers
,
from which they had returned, singing, across the fields.

‘Get a new consultant,' Faith retorted.

‘It's easy for you to say that – you don't have to live with the consequences. Much less sleep with them.'

‘When you say you can easily boil them down . . . does that mean you've already done it and it
was
easy or just that you've thought about it and it
looks
easy?'

Eric, assuming the air of a magician, rose to his feet to reveal that he had been sitting on a blue marbled folder whose cover was loosely held by diagonal elastics at the corners.

‘Impressively fat,' Faith commented.

‘All six hundred and forty pages outlined.'

Faith scanned the titles for the ‘Junior Knowledge' series:
Men and Machines, Men and Gods of the Nile, Man Discovers the World, Man Discovers the Universe
. . . each had a title that included the word
Man
or
Men
– except one, which was stamped
Top Secret
. She held it up and raised an eyebrow. ‘Fashion?'

He nodded. ‘For God's sake, don't let it fall into the hands of The Enemy. I don't know what to call it. The best I can come up with is
Man Hides the Fat
. All the top couturiers
are men and they all show their designs on slender mannequins for sale to women who simply aren't. Slender, that is. Nor are they mannequins, come to think of it.'

Faye speed-read the typescript, speaking as her eyes quartered the pages. ‘This must all come from Isabella. You can't possibly know all this. Why d'you do it, Eric?'

‘Do what?'

‘Talk and behave as if you and she are permanently teetering on the edge of divorce?'

‘Me? Do I do that? But she is the light of my life and captain of my soul. I am devoted to her. But don't quote me. I shall deny it.'

‘Ho hum.' She handed the folder to Felix and picked up
Man Conquers the Air
.
Very soon she was shaking her head the way people do when they see something impossible yet cannot deny the evidence of their eyes. ‘What was Willy Messerschmitt's greatest contribution to . . .' she began.

‘I haven't the foggiest,' he admitted.

‘But you've put it down here – as a heading.'

‘You should have asked me . . .' He rolled his eyes dramatically. ‘. . . a week ago last Wednesday. On that day I was the London Library's greatest expert on the history of aviation.'

‘Is that how it works?'

‘It's the
only
way it works, Faith. Can I invoice for the remainder of the fee?'

She flipped rapidly through a couple of other folders and then smiled at him. ‘I'm sure you can . . . pending—'

But before she could mention whatever was ‘pending,' he snatched up a paper dart from his desk and threw it at her. On top of one of the aerofoils was written the word
Invoice
and on the other some smudged ink from a rubber stamp, reading: ‘Brandon and Son – High Class Butchers since 1820 –
Prompt settlement would oblige
.

‘Family heirloom,' he explained. ‘What next?'

‘Next,' she replied, not looking at Felix, ‘we try to persuade our illustrious designer-consultant to give us his final layout grid. Then we do a few sample pages for each book and then Fogel and I set off for New York, Paris, Hamburg, Florence . . . and try and sign up Doubleday . . . Larousse . . . Springer . . . Sansoni . . . to join us in a co-edition. Money upfront. We call it positive cash flow. Aren't you glad you asked?'

‘Very! Especially the bit about “positive cash flow.” For instance – how much would you pay me to write a couple of these volumes myself? Positively upfront, of course.'

Monday, 5 December 1949

For the second time that evening Terence Lanyon had to call the community meeting to order. ‘We're getting absolutely nowhere with all this,' he said.

‘Don't be too hard on us,' Eric pleaded. ‘We're just so happy not to be arguing about electricity for once.'

‘Thank you, Eric,' Terence said wearily. ‘Helpful as always. Unless someone can tell us the actual words that Betty used, this whole discussion is pretty futile. So far we've had everything from “Nigger” to a pretty straightforward statement of the undeniable fact that Lena and Tommy are not leaseholders here at the Dower House.'

‘Betty is desperately lonely,' Nicole said. ‘The poor girl is heartbroken at having to leave The Tribe. She just lashed out at Tommy because he only half-belongs here. Because his mother works for us.'

‘All of which might very well excuse whatever she said,' Terence insisted. ‘But until we know
what
she said, we can't know what it is we're excusing –
if
, that is—'

‘Nothing can excuse the word Nigger,' Willard said.

‘That may be true in America,' Sally told him. ‘It's probably very insulting over there. But that's not so here. My parents have a dog called Nigger.'

‘And,' Isabella put in, ‘the top autumn colour next year is Nigger Brown. You'd better get used to the word, Willard, because it's going to be in every magazine and every shop window.'

‘What d'you call them in America, honey?' Marianne asked. ‘In Sweden we say
Neger
.'

‘In French it's
nègre
. . .
négresse
,' Nicole said.
‘
Accent grave
on one
,
accent
aigu
on the other. That was always a trap in our dictatings.'

‘Dictations.'

Willard grabbed up fistfuls of hair. ‘Can we just cut out the linguistics and get to the logistics?'

‘What are they?' several asked.

‘Let me put it this way. Maybe we have
no
right to be discussing whatever it was that Betty said to Tommy at the school gate. Maybe we have
every
right to discuss it. To me it's irrelevant because I think it's really up to The Tribe. We've all seen—'

Angela interrupted him: ‘But they're just children.'

Willard continued: ‘Another way of putting that is to say they are Betty's peers. And we've all seen – in fact, we've all remarked on – the amazing way they discipline one another. If any of us tells one of the kids off (wince away, Eric) it's just water off a duck's back. But if The Tribe censures one of them, boy-oh-boy does he fall back in line!'

‘You're suggesting we leave it to them?' Tony asked.

‘I'm suggesting we put it to them – ask them if they want to handle it . . . or will they leave it to us?'

‘Really it means asking our Sam and our Hannah,' Arthur Prentice pointed out. ‘They're the leaders since Betty and Charley moved to Dormer Green. The others are much too young to understand.'

‘How has Tommy taken it, incidentally?' Hilary Lanyon asked.

‘There's no way of knowing,' Tony said. ‘He just laughs, of course, but you'll never know what's going on inside. If he was sent to the guillotine, his head would still be laughing half an hour later.'

‘So!' Terence reasserted his authority. ‘Do we generally agree to give Willard's idea of a trial – leave it, in the first instance, to The Tribe?'

There were murmurs of guarded assent.

‘Will you put it to them, then?' He looked at Arthur and May.

‘They're asleep now,' May objected. ‘And breakfast time – in our place – is hardly the appropriate—'

‘Ask them on the walk to school,' Nicole put in. ‘It's your turn tomorrow.'