The Censor, page 3
Back in the apartment he tried to work, but the words were stilted and it was like carving prose onto a block of stone with a tooth pick.
Joe called around four-thirty to say he had made a booking on the Pan Am flight, Monday evening, and there was a reservation for him at the Carlton Tower.
‘Is it good?’ he asked.
‘Markova, Mel Ferrer and James Mason can’t all be wrong. Hunter Davies could be,’ croaked Joe. ‘It’s okay David. You’ll like it. Expensive, but you can afford it.’
‘I might be there weeks.’
‘Then get Freddy to rent you a place. I keep forgetting you’ve never been in London before.’
The phone rang again about an hour later.
‘Have you seen the News?’ snapped Peter Goldsberg.
‘Not yet. Should I?’
‘You should be more careful who you sound off to. In view of this morning’s conversation it makes great reading. I just hope to god nothing happens in England because your true confessions would make great reading in court. You’re going to have to avoid reporters like they all had yellow fever.’
‘What reporters? I haven’t talked to a reporter in weeks.’
‘Not even Celia Aston?’
‘Jesus.’ Flash. Not that Celia Aston. The Celia Aston Column. So busy shooting his mouth off ...
‘Christ Pete. I screwed her.’
‘Well she sure screwed you baby. Go read it. Joe’s going to love the piece where you tell her it’s only dirt that sells these days. He’s going to love it almost as much as I love it. The rest of the boys down here are crazy about it. Especially PR. You’ve really opened up a can of stinking fish.’
Askelon rang down to the porter for the tabloid and there it was on page three. The Celia Aston Column. His photograph across three and the headline. Top Best Selling Writer Dupes Readers.
He could not even argue with the quotes. They all sounded pretty much how he had felt last night.
As long as you write with a fair amount of literacy anything goes. It’s the weird stuff that really drags in the loot. You’ve got to make it classy mind you. Gift wrapped. But put a queer and a lesbian in the same room with a load of whips, or a couple indulging themselves in what are quaintly called unnatural practices and you’re made.
There was even a description of himself, rubbing his hands and looking like one of his own smiling characters who has just satisfied himself with a willing subject. Perhaps Mr Askelon even does his own research.
He hurled the paper across the room, then went over to the window. The view of Manhattan twinkled elegantly back and he wondered who Celia Aston was planning to molest tonight. His shoulders slumped as the onrush of exhaustion, the physical effort of the past twenty-four hours, hit in a wave of bleak aches and a high-pitched scream of fatigue.
III
‘OH, AND CAN you can be here to take a call from New York at four Mr Sutton?’
‘Four this afternoon?’
‘Yes.’ The secretary nodded in a tired way. He was being too obvious this morning.
‘Who is it?’
‘Mr Tireling I think.’
‘All right. Remind me at lunch time though would you.’
John Sutton knew he would not need reminding. Four o’clock. By then it would only be ten on a Monday morning in New York. If things were going to be easy Joe would simply have got on to Freddy Cadogan. A direct call was not good. Sutton creased his brows, then slid forefinger and thumb to pinch the sides of his nose, high by the screwed up eyes. It had been a rotten weekend and the drive up from Guildford this morning had not helped. More maniacs than ever seemed to be taking to the roads.
He opened his eyes, sighed and stretched out to the private phone, dialling the Guildford number. The call would be whispering through the sunshine above the Surrey woods, lush with the green of late spring.
Daphne, his wife, answered, her slightly nasal intonation magnified by the instrument.
‘Just to let you know I’m back in town. Safely.’
‘Oh. Thank you.’
A pause, uneasy, as though each was waiting for the other to speak. The ground between planted with delicate and dangerous traps and mines.
‘The kids get off all right?’
‘Fine. Martha almost forgot her chemistry book.’
The silence once more. A hidden sniper holding both of them in the crosswires of his sights.
‘Well, you’ll want to be getting on.’
‘No, I’ve got a few minutes.’
The depression and sense of vulnerability deepened inside him. What did she want him to say?
‘I did give you your cheque didn’t I?’
‘Yes, you gave me the cheque last night.’
He could see her, tight-lipped, grasping the telephone hard so that the knuckles on her long fingers showed white, the face thin and pinched with inconsolable daily unhappiness.
‘Okay then. I’ll probably ring you again later. After the kids get back from school. Otherwise, will you be in tomorrow afternoon?’
‘I’ll be in. There’s nowhere else for me to go is there?’ The criticism was not simply implied. It was obvious. A constant feature of their daily life.
Sutton ignored the opportunity to become involved in a long distance brawl. ‘I’ll call you later, then. Otherwise, tomorrow afternoon. Give my love to the kids.’
She replied with a sharp goodbye and the line went dead.
If it was not for the children. For Martha and Dominic? Christ, he thought, was it her? Or was it his fault? For John Sutton the eighteen years of marriage to Daphne had been a feat of survival. His father’s advice had dropped deaf in his ears. And yet, if he was honest with himself, he must have known quite quickly.
The whining voice on their wedding night. It hurts. John, O don’t. It hurts. And the truly terrible revelation six years later. I’m pregnant damn you. You’ve bloody tricked me. I’m pregnant. That was Martha. Bright, golden-haired Martha who had been given a brother in the following year. Twice you tricked me into having these blasted children. I’m tied down now aren’t I? But that suits you doesn’t it? You don’t care. You’ve got the business. You couldn’t care two fucks about me.
At first he had taken the guilt and laid it across his shoulders like a yoke. When his father, old William Sutton, died of a coronary (it was Dominic’s second birthday cake, candles and cracker hats. The joy suddenly cloaked in incomprehensible loneliness) he was able to sink further into the womb of work. Reshaping, modernising, planning, making William Sutton & Son, Publishers a bright new, active organisation in the publishing orbit.
Even with that he could not escape the toothache nag, the daily and nightly whine. At first he tried to pamper her. Buying luxuries they could ill afford, seeking solace in weekends spent entirely with the children, sharing the small radius of their world Watching them grow. The miracle of tiny people taking their first steps in life.
Yet slowly the drip of hysteria wore him down. Martha was ten years old before John Sutton fully realised that the scrawny, complaining, flat-chested, lack-lustre woman he had married was a person with no flair, little intelligence and less brain.
Her most consistent indictment of him was that they had no friends. He had long kept his business contacts away. Her instability and sheer lack of taste made her a permanent liability.
Gradually he withdrew. More and more business appointments kept him away. There were the odd nights spent with willing girls among the rumpled sheets of discreet hotels. Then, two years ago, June, half his age, walked into the office.
Sutton reached for the telephone again. June answered, brightly, everything in her voice that was missing from Daphne’s croak. ‘I’m back in London.’
‘Super. Lovely to hear you darling.’
It was a relatively new pact. At first, after he had taken the lease on the house in Essex Place and started weekly commuting, they had suffered weekends strung together with long maudlin telephone conversations. June’s doubts and fears showing each time she answered his call.
Now, when he left on Friday, they only used the telephone in emergencies.
The first two weeks of their self-imposed weekends of silence had been nerve dragging. A long ache of uncertainty from the last call on Friday until Monday morning when they both felt safe again. Yet, quite quickly, it had become their style. As though their private, personal life together had vaulted another hurdle. The tiny wounds they had previously made in each other were knitting together.
‘Good weekend?’ he asked.
‘Rotten. Chris and Anthony came round on Saturday night. I got stoned.’
‘You always get stoned when they come round. How’s Chris looking?’
‘Like the side of a house I’m very pleased to say. I felt quite smug.’
‘Anyone else call?’
‘Freddy Cadogan. Late Saturday. I said you were in the country and he commiserated. Even asked if I’d like to come out to dinner.’
‘And did you?’
‘With Freddy? You’re joking. I love you darling.’
‘Me too you. What did he want?’
‘Freddy?’
‘Yes.’
‘To talk with you. Will you call him this morning.’
‘I will. And I’ll thank him for being nice to you. I wouldn’t have minded you going out with him.’
‘Mmm. Well I would. How’s crow face?’
‘Horrific.’
‘Did you have nice cozy chatties?’
‘We talked.’
‘Well?’
‘I’ll tell you tonight.’
A hesitation.
‘I see,’ said June at last. ‘Same old story. Usual time tonight?’
‘Near to five as I can make it. You got much on today?’
‘Skirt, one of your jumpers, slip, bra ...’ She giggled. ‘No, I’ve got to finish the drawings for Mark Ripper this week.’ She was no great artist but did occasional drawings for children’s books. Sutton smiled to himself. June took her art seriously but in patches.
There had been the famous time, just after they had moved into the house. He had spent three hundred pounds on carpets and June suddenly decided she was going to use oils. They spent a whole Thursday afternoon buying equipment and then she did not even look at it for a week.
Late on the following Wednesday, piqued because he had to sit up late and read a manuscript, June spread newspapers all over the floor and began a great bright blue daub. After half-an-hour she stepped back to admire her work, caught a sleeve of her dress on the canvas and brought it face down onto the newspaper. She struggled and swore getting it up again, then headed for the bathroom to remove the paint from her hands, forgetting that she was in stocking feet and had trodden heavily into the paint. Little blue footprints right across the new orange carpet and up the stairs.
She cried for an hour and it cost nearly eighty pounds to have the deep pile cleaned.
‘I’d better get at it then,’ said Sutton into the telephone. ‘Call me if you’ve got time later, darling.’
‘I’ll see how it goes.’
‘Good. See you later. Love you.’
‘Bye darling.’
He exchanged the private telephone for the business one and asked Miss Masters (Those tits just are not real, June always said when they spoke of her) to get Freddy Cadogan.
Freddy came onto the line all sparkle and dash.
‘Wotcher John mate. Did you know Little Boy Blue’s a sexual contortionist.’
Sutton laughed. ‘You wanted me?’
‘Ah. A little bird told you.’
‘She also told me that you asked her out to dinner. Thank’s Freddy.’
‘I try, old love, I try. Yes I did want you. You heard anything from Askelon?’
‘I’ve got Joe Tireling calling me at tour.’
‘Oh. Enough said then.’
‘Enough said about what?’
‘I’ll let Joe lay it on you.’
‘Come on Freddy. A few hours and three thousand miles isn’t going to make much difference.’
‘The author doesn’t think much of your cuts.’
‘Neither do I. but what can we do?’
‘You’ll have to try that one on him. I had a cable on Saturday. He’s on his way over.’
‘Who? Askelon? Over here?’
‘The Golden Spin himself in person.’
‘Oh Christ.’
‘Why don’t you go and hide in the country.’
‘I’m hiding from the country up here Freddy. Okay. No doubt we’ll be in touch.’
‘No doubt at all. I pick him up at Heathrow in the morning. Tomorrow afternoon early enough?’
‘I suppose so. What time?’
‘Shall we say three?’
“Three o’clock tomorrow.’
‘Have the kettle on old love.’
Sutton busied himself with the day’s routine. Practically the whole of the Spring list was already out. Figures were up and the detailed work was gradually being centred on the Autumn list which was headed by David Askelon’s The Golden Spin.
One way and another the project haunted him all day. The firm’s advance of fifteen thousand pounds was the largest they had ever paid, and it had hit hard when counsel’s advice pointed towards cutting so much of the original.
It’s only advice. Only an opinion. D’Arcy Harrington told him. But the Director of Public Prosecutions will almost certainly be pressured over one of this year’s big books. They tell me Humphrey Carmichael’s on the look-out for something to hammer. He’d have plenty of ammunition with this one.
Sutton was surprised. I thought it was going to be almost impossible to get a private prosecution now.
True. But where Humphrey’s concerned no holds are barred as they say. He could whip up a pretty solid weight of steam. The DPP would almost certainly have to act if the private complaints were numerous enough.
Sir Humphrey Carmichael, Member of Parliament for North Oxley, was often held up by the Press as a figure of fun. But he always made good copy and was no laughing matter as far as publishers were concerned.
A ferocious, outspoken and fanatical moralist, Carmichael had, for years, condemned plays, films and books which were mild in their content compared with the kind of work that was now reaching the mass public market.
As with all dedicated moralists, Humphrey Carmichael always seemed to be able to draw the money and power needed to whip up public opinion into frightening proportions. Before the change in the obscenity laws he had constantly brought private prosecutions against a score of small publishers with worrying success. The mere mention of his name in connection with a book like The Golden Spin made Sutton nervous.
By early afternoon he found himself getting so obsessed by the situation that he rang D’Arcy Harrington.
‘I’ve been having second thoughts about your advice D’Arcy.’
‘Be my guest. Feel free. It’s your livelihood John,’ the QC boomed.
‘What are the odds?’
‘On being prosecuted? At the moment, fifty-fifty. Maybe a little less. But my advice still stands.’
‘Can I bring the author to see you?’
‘Is he being difficult?’
‘He’s coming over. I think he’s turning a shade edgy.’
‘I’ll pour some legal sweat in his ear then.’
‘Good. I’ll be in touch.’
Joe Tireling came through from New York bang on four o’clock. What he had to tell Sutton did not help.
June watched him that night after dinner. Stretched out in the armchair by the fire, his face tight with worry.
‘What’s the matter darling? You’ve been horrible all evening.’
Her eyes were the first thing about her that had ever caught his attention. He looked into them, trying to lose himself, before speaking. ‘I haven’t meant to be horrible. Not to you anyway. It’s work.’
‘You sure it’s not madam and the kids? It often is on Mondays. When you come back.’
He pulled her up onto his knee and kissed her cheek. She half turned away. ‘Well it isn’t tonight. If you want to know it’s The Golden Spin. The author refuses to agree to the cuts.’
‘I don’t blame him. It’s the sexiest thing I’ve read in years. You’re a prude taking out all the best bits.’ She saw he was not really smiling. ‘Seriously, it doesn’t really matter does it? Him not agreeing to the cuts?’
‘Under the contract he’s got to agree to any and all alterations. He arrives in high dudgeon tomorrow.’
‘David Askelon?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Hey. What about that? You’ll work something out.’
‘Will we?’
She traced a line down his cheek with her forefinger. ‘I love the way your face crinkles when you smile. Anyone ever tell you that you look like Paul Scofield?’
‘I’m almost as old as Paul Scofield.’
‘Good. He’s not old and neither are you.’
‘I’m ...’
‘Twice as old as you. So ...’
‘That’ll make me one hundred and twenty-three when you’re only one hundred and three. I know.’ He aimed a pat at her bottom and caught his own thigh.
The thriller serial chattered away on the TV screen, unseen, unheard.
‘I think it must be the texture of your skin,’ said June.
‘What about the texture of my skin?’
‘That makes you look like Scofield. Leathery.’
‘Actually I had a graft. It’s best calf. There’s this surgeon in South Africa does it quite reasonably. Well they have all the spades to practise on.’
He pulled her closer. For a second he imagined slight resistance. She turned to him. the same old question still eating away at the centre of her mind. ‘Darling, are you absolutely certain it isn’t madam and the children?’
