Not Another Happy Ending (4 page)

They turned a hundred and eighty on the spot.

‘And this is George. He's production.’

A pinched face looked up from a wizened baked potato overflowing with egg mayonnaise.

‘I'm on lunch.’

‘You blame George if the print falls off the page, or if the pages themselves fall out. So, you've met the rest of the team. Any questions?’

‘Well …’ Jane began.

‘Good.’ Duval clapped his hands. ‘Time to get to work.’

When he suggested heading out of the office for their first editorial meeting Jane pictured them moving to a quiet corner of Café Gandolfi sipping espressos and arguing about
leitmotifs
. He had different ideas. One thinks at walking pace, he pronounced, and took off along Candleriggs at a clip, brandishing her manuscript and a red pen.
Andante!

She scurried after him, his loping stride forcing her to trot to keep up. The man thought fast. He did not approve of the modern fashion of editing at a distance, he explained, with notes issued coldly via email; adding with a grin that he preferred to see the whites of his writers’ eyes.

‘Readers are only impressed by two things,’ he said. ‘Either that a novel took just three weeks to write, or that the author laboured three decades.’ He sucked his teeth in disgust. ‘And then dropped dead, preferably before it was published. No one cares about the ordinary writer. The grafter. Like you.’

Ouch. A grafter? Really? She'd been harbouring hopes that she was an undiscovered genius.

‘And publishers are no better.’ He turned onto Trongate, carving a swathe through commuters and desultory
schoolchildren, warming to his theme. ‘Do you recall that book about penguins?’

‘Which one?’ The previous year the book charts seemed to be awash with talking penguins, magically realistic penguins, melancholy penguins, there had even been an erotic penguin.

He slapped a hand against her manuscript. ‘My point exactly! One book about penguins sells half a million copies and suddenly you can't move for the waddling little bastards.’ He stopped, slumping against a doorway. His shoulders heaved like a longbow drawing and loosing. ‘The giants are gone,’ he said sadly.

Giants? Penguins? Was every day going to be like this? He set off again at a lick.

‘So many modern editors neglect the great legacy they have inherited. They are uninterested in language or, god forbid, art; and would prefer a mediocre novel they can compare to a hundred others than a great one that fits no easy category. They care only about publicity and book clubs and film tie-ins.’ He spat out the list as if it curdled his stomach. ‘Most editors are little more than cheerleaders, standing on the sidelines waving their pom-poms.’ He turned to her. ‘I have no pom-poms,’ he growled. Then thumped a palm against his chest. ‘I care. I care about the work. I care about your novel.’

He stopped again and she felt she ought to fill the silence that followed. ‘Thanks,’ she said brightly.

Duval cocked his head and looked thoughtful. ‘Of course, it is not a
good
novel.’

Sonofa—

‘But it could be.’ He pushed a hand through his hair. ‘So I say this to you now, without apology. From this moment, Jane, we will spend every waking hour together until I am satisfied. It will be hard. Lengthy. I will make you sweat.’

Uh, could he hear himself?

‘I will stretch you. Sometimes I will make you beg me to stop.’

Apparently not.

‘I do this not because I am a sadist—whatever you might have heard—I do this to give an ordinary writer a chance to be great.’

That was terrific, she was impressed—moved, even—but could he not give the ‘ordinary writer’ stuff a rest?

They came to a busy intersection. Pedestrians streamed past them. At the kerb the drivers of a bus and a black cab loudly swapped insults over a rear-ender; the aroma of frying bacon fat drifted from a van selling fast food. He ignored them all, shutting out the traffic and the smells and the noise, for her.

‘I promise that no one has ever looked at you the way I shall. Not even your lover.’

Jane swallowed. ‘I don't have a lover,’ she heard herself admit. ‘Right now I mean. I've had lovers, obviously.
Not loads. I'm not, y'know, “sex” mad. I don't know why I brought up sex. Or why I put air quotes round it. I'm totally relaxed about … y'know …
sex
. And yet I just whispered it. Very relaxed. I think it's because you're French. You're all so lalala let's have a bonk and a Gauloise. Oh god. I'm so sorry about … well, me, Mr Duval. Should I call you Mr Duval? It sounds so formal. Maybe I could call you Robert.’

‘You could,’ he said, ‘but my name is Thomas.’

‘Thomas! Yes. I knew that. I was thinking of the other one. From
The Godfather
? Played the accountant.’

‘Tom.’

‘No, it was definitely Rob—oh, I see. Tom. Short for Thomas. I had a friend called Thomas. Well, when I say “friend” I—’

‘Stop talking.’

‘Yes. Yes, I think that would be a good idea.’ She dropped her head, stuck out a foot and screwed a toe into the pavement.

‘OK,’ he declared. ‘Now our work begins.’

And with those words the months spent at her desk writing for no one but herself were at an end. Now they would embark on a journey of discovery, together, to prepare her novel for … Publication. Suddenly, the sacrifices seemed worth it: losing touch with friends, turning on the central heating only when the ice was
inside
the windows, baked beans almost every day for three months straight, all to reach this pinnacle of a moment.

‘Do you want a roll and sausage?’ asked Duval.

‘Do I want a—?’

He marched off in the direction of the fast-food van.

‘Morning, Tommy,’ the owner greeted him. ‘The usual?’

‘Aye, Calum, give me some of that good stuff.’ Duval took the sandwich, then showed it excitedly to Jane as if he were a botanist and it a new species of orchid. ‘And not just any sausage, oh no. A
square
sausage. See how it fits so perfectly inside the thickly buttered soft white bap? Genius! But then, what else would one expect from the nation who gave the world the steam engine, the telephone and the television? This is why I love the Scots. Now, a
soupçon
of brown sauce.’ He squeezed a drop from the encrusted spout of a plastic bottle, patted down the top of the roll and sank his teeth into it. Paroxysms of delight ensued. ‘And to think that France calls itself the centre of world cuisine.’

She wasn't entirely sure he was joking. And then she realised. He'd gone native.

‘You must try one. I insist.’ He clicked his fingers as if he were ordering another bottle of the ’61 Lafite.

Moments later she stood peering at the sweating sandwich in her hands, and beyond it, Tom's grinning face.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘
Now
we begin.’

Ten minutes later they sat beside one another in the window of a café next door to his office. Between them lay the ziggurat of her manuscript.

‘Jane,’ he said softly, ‘there is no need to be nervous.’

‘Nervous? Me? No-o-o. Not nervous.’ A coffee machine gurgled and hissed, only partially masking the spin cycle taking place in her stomach. ‘OK, a little bit nervous.’

He smiled. ‘It's OK.’

It was then she realised what was making her nervous. He was being nice to her. The heat had gone out of his fire and brimstone, his voice, typically tense with anger, now soothed like warm ocean waves.

‘Usually I need a run-up before I start editing,’ she said. ‘Y'know: tea, a walk, regrouting the shower.’

‘Or we could just begin?’

‘What, no foreplay?’ Even as she spoke them she was chasing after the words to stop them coming out of her mouth. But it was too late. He gave a small laugh, the sort of laugh your older brother's handsome friend might give his mate's little sister. Jane's embarrassment turned to disappointment. ‘So, where d'you want to start?’

‘Call me crazy, but we could start at the beginning.’

‘OK.’ She nodded rapidly, appearing to give his suggestion serious consideration, hiding her mortification at asking such a dumb question. ‘OK yes.’ She clouted him matily on the arm. ‘You crazy Frenchman.’

He turned the top page of the manuscript. And they began.

He gave great notes. They were acute, considered, wise. Intimate.

As he had promised, the process of editing her novel forced them into a curious form of co-habitation. She would arrive at his office each morning and, following his customary breakfast of roll and sausage and black coffee, they would commence work. At first on opposite sides of his desk, then on the third day he came out and sat on the edge, balancing there comfortably, at ease in his body; a move, Jane did not fail to notice, which put her at eye level with his crotch.

Often she felt like the submissive in a highly specific S&M relationship, one with no physical contact but plenty of verbal discipline. I edit you. I. Edit. You. Ordinarily, she wouldn't have put up with any man who bossed her about as much as Tom did, but theirs was a professional relationship, she reminded herself. So she gave herself permission to be spanked. On the page.

Mostly they worked in his office, or the café next door, and whenever they reached a sticky point they would take to the streets and walk it out like a pulled muscle. Occasionally they decamped to her place. The first time he asked her—no, informed her—of the change of venue came early one morning while she was still half asleep,
drowsy with last night's notes. He was on his way over, said the familiar accented voice on the other end of the phone.

When the doorbell rang she was in the shower. She stepped out, dripping, to shout down the corridor that there was a key on the lintel above the door and he should let himself in. It felt natural to give this man the run of her flat. After all, he was going to publish her. When she entered the sitting room she found him sprawled on the floor, propped on one elbow, pages scattered about him, red pen zipping through the manuscript. He looked right at home. And, watching him work steadily, intensely, she realised that he was the first man she'd properly trusted since her dad walked out.

They settled into their routine. Every day it was just the two of them, happily suspended in a bubble of literary discourse and fried egg sandwiches. One Wednesday morning, ten chapters into the edit, Jane breezed through the front door of Tristesse Books.

‘Morning, Roddy.’ She plunked a bulging paper bag on his desk. ‘I made brownies.’

There was an urgent rustle as Roddy tore open the bag. With an appreciative smile, she turned towards Tom's office. She liked Roddy; he was a good influence on Tom. If Tom had a fault—and he did—it was an impulsiveness that shaded into arrogance, and Roddy was the one who called him on it, every time. Although it was dubious how he balanced his job as a replacement English teacher
with secretarial duties for Tristesse Books, he exuded an air of moral rectitude along with an insatiable appetite for her home baking. He was Jiminy Cricket to Tom's Pinocchio, she'd informed both men one cool summer night, as they sat outside at Bar 91 amidst the buzz of revellers welcoming the weekend. Tom had almost choked on his pint. Roddy just looked disappointed: couldn't he at least be Yoda to a hot-headed young Skywalker, he'd asked.

‘Uh, Jane. You can't go in there.’

She stopped at the door, one hand poised over the handle.

‘He's got someone with him. They've been in there all night.’

She could hear Tom on the other side, his voice in its by now familiar trajectory, the point and counterpoint of argument, the steady inflection and unwavering logic of his contention. And it hit her. He was giving notes.

To someone else.

She experienced a sudden light-headedness, like an aeroplane cabin depressurising at altitude, and was still reeling when the door opened and a winsomely pretty blonde girl stepped out of the office and collided with her.

‘Ooh, sorry.’

‘Sorry.’

‘No, I should be the one who … sorry.’

They disentangled themselves and the girl introduced herself.

‘Nicola Ball.’

She was wearing a severe black pinafore dress on top of a white shirt buttoned to the neck. Pellucid blue eyes gazed unblinkingly from a perfectly oval face. There was a hint of redness around her eyelids, as if she'd been crying.

‘
The Last Stop
,’ said Jane delightedly. ‘I loved that book.’

‘Thank you,’ said Nicola, a tremulous smile appearing on pale lips. Then her expression hardened and she cast a dark look back through the doorway to Tom's office. ‘At least someone appreciates me,’ she snarled.

‘Why are you still here?’ Tom's voice boomed out. ‘Stop socialising and start rewriting. Go. Now!’

‘I hate that man,’ Nicola hissed.

As she said it Jane felt an unexpected sense of relief. Nicola hated Tom. Good.

‘Please tell me you're not one of his,’ said Nicola.

‘Uh, one of—? Oh, I see. Well yes, I am—as you say—one of his,’ said Jane, adding an apologetic shrug since Nicola's sombre expression seemed to demand one. ‘Tom's going to publish me.’

Nicola took her hand and patted it consolingly. ‘I'm so sorry.’ She pursed her lips in an expression of graveside condolence, bowed her head and departed.

Jane watched her slip out, the triangle of her pinafore
dress swinging like a tolling church bell, and felt herself smile inwardly; whatever Nicola's experience of working with Tom had been, it bore little resemblance to her own.

‘Jane?’ he called from the office. ‘Is that you?’

She never tired of hearing him say her name. She floated inside on a cloud of happiness ready to embark on the next leg of their voyage of collaboration and constructive criticism, of intellectual discussion and high-minded debate.

‘Your notes,’ Jane spluttered. ‘Your notes are burning cigarettes stubbed out on the bare arm of my creativity.’ She stepped away from his desk only to return immediately. ‘Oh, and there is no such thing as
constructive
criticism. The phrase reeks of foul-tasting medicine forced down gagging throats “for your own good”. Constructive criticism is a fallacy; weasel words designed to lure innocent writers like me into an ambush.
This chapter is too long. There's too much set-up. This plotline doesn't pay off
. Uh, perhaps that's because you cut the set-up?
This character is underwritten. Show, don't tell! This chapter is still too long. I like this scene, this is a great scene—it must be cut
.’ She stood before him, her face flushed, her breath shallow and rapid.