Bitter Herbs Read online

  ‘Isn’t that simply the recession?’ suggested Willow, unnecessarily irritated by the booktrade jargon. No book had actually been offered ‘on subscription’since the nineteenth century and it would have made more sense for Ann to refer to ‘pre-publication orders’.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘The market seems to have become saturated with what I might call romance-and-revenge novels like yours. They are good of their kind, but, as I said to Eve, the genre itself is becoming much less popular than it was when you started. There’s less interest in business success for romantic heroines these days, and the whole feeling of the big books coming out now is different. I think it’s important that you should change before the booksellers have decided that it’s your name that is a turn-off rather than the genre.’

  ‘And what do you think, Eve?’

  ‘That it may be more a question of poor marketing than a diminution of interest in the books themselves. After all your Public Lending Right is holding up well,’ said the agent, automatically defending her author as she lit herself another cigarette.

  Willow knew that Ann Slinter loathed smoking and that it was a tribute to Eve’s power that she was allowed to indulge her addiction anywhere in the building, let alone in Ann’s own office.

  ‘But I agree with Ann that a new direction would not come amiss,’ said Eve through a cloud of smoke. ‘You don’t want to get stuck in a rut. You said you’d had some ideas.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Willow, opening the slim, black-leather briefcase at her feet. The thought of Tom’s unspoken contempt, the Home Secretary’s specific mockery of her books, Ann’s criticism and now Eve’s implied disapproval was making her feel like a fox running only just ahead of a pack of hounds. Wishing that she could go to earth, Willow pulled out two sets of papers just as the telephone began to ring.

  ‘Damn them,’ said Ann, getting out of her chair. ‘I told them not to put any calls through. Excuse me a moment.’

  She strode over to her desk, seized the telephone and administered a sharp reprimand. Half-way through it, she stopped, gasped and said:

  ‘You’re joking! Really? What amazing news!’ She talked for a little longer before putting down the telephone and turning to her two visitors to explain. They were both trying to pretend that they were not at all interested in the one-sided conversation they had overheard. ‘Gloria Grainger’s dead.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ said Eve, her mouth twisting into something that could have been a grimace but looked to Willow surprisingly like a smile. ‘Apoplexy, I take it. Or did someone finally whack her on the head in desperation? I was often tempted to do that in the days when I represented her.’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Ann, laughing guiltily. ‘No, they say she had a heart attack.’

  ‘How dull!’ said Eve as Ann turned to Willow, who was staring at the pair of them with obvious disapproval on her thin face. In normal circumstances she would have felt little sympathy for an outmoded novelist she had never met, but, after the criticism she herself had endured, she was ready to feel solidarity with anyone who wrote almost anything at all.

  ‘I’m sorry, Willow. I shouldn’t have laughed. Eve always has that effect on me. Of course it’s sad that Gloria’s dead. We’ll have to do something to mark the occasion. Even though she was never quite a household name, her books really kept the entire firm afloat from the war to the early sixties.’

  ‘But you still publish them, don’t you?’ said Willow repressively. ‘I’m sure I saw one in the autumn list you sent me last year.’

  ‘Unfortunately yes, we do. We couldn’t really get out of it, although … Look: she’s a real case of what I’ve been trying to explain to you. Her books outsold the rest of the list for nearly twenty years, but the recent ones have done very poorly. Readers of romantic fiction are more sophisticated these days. Her hero – and there really was only one – is horribly passé in the nineties. Popular novelists have to move with the times.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Willow, half-amused and half-appalled to find herself feeling so sorry for Gloria Grainger, whose books she had always despised even though she had never read any of them.

  ‘Ouf, it will be a relief to … to be able to plan the next autumn list without having to cost in Gloria’s latest effusion,’ said Ann, pouring herself a second cup of coffee.

  Willow wondered what Ann had really meant to say. There was a smile on her lips that seemed to express supreme satisfaction. She looked up and, catching her author watching her, altered her expression to one of apparently synthetic sadness.

  ‘There are a lot of people who’ll find this news a relief,’ said Eve, both her honesty and her directness providing a welcome distraction from Ann’s theatricals.

  ‘You’re telling me!’ said Ann, once more losing her grip on the proper expression of regret at an author’s death.

  ‘I’ve had a thought,’ said Eve. Her eyes were half shut and seemed to be squinting out beyond the book-lined walls.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You said you’d have to make a gesture towards Gloria’s memory and I quite see that you should.’ Eve’s eyes resumed their normal shape and focused on Ann’s face. ‘Why not commission Willow to write a short memorial to her – a mixture of biography and critical analysis of Gloria’s success and its sequel – which you could rush out in a few months’time as your gesture?’

  ‘Well I suppose we could,’ said Ann, frowning. ‘Would you be interested in doing something like that, Willow?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ At the thought that she might be able to distract herself from all the difficulties of her own life by immersing herself in someone else’s, Willow began to smile. ‘I’ve never thought about biography before, but it could be interesting.’

  ‘It wouldn’t exactly be a biography,’ said Eve, stubbing out her cigarette, ‘more a memoir, or an appreciation. A sort of hugely extended obituary, really. About, what? Ninety-six pages, Ann?’

  ‘Probably. Sixty-four is just possible, if pretty slim, and it’s certainly never worth printing anything shorter than that. I do see what you mean, Eve,’ said Ann, ‘but I rather hate those rush jobs: instant books about an event that seemed dramatic at the time but six weeks later interests no one but the participants and their relatives.’

  ‘This is hardly like a siege or a political disaster,’ said Eve drily. ‘It would give Willow a breathing space in which to let her mind roam around finding her own new direction, and it would also help you to generate a little interest in the Grainger backlist and shift some of the stock out of the warehouse before everyone completely forgets who she was.’

  ‘And no doubt it will serve as a dire warning of what will happen if I don’t change,’ said Willow lightly enough to wring smiles of acknowledgment from both Eve and Ann. ‘Perhaps I should take it on. Yesterday’s popular novelist assessing the merits of the day-before-yesterday’s.’

  ‘You’re not yesterday’s yet,’ said Ann energetically. ‘I simply want to ensure that you don’t become it. Eve, it’s definitely a possibility, but I’d have to put it to the next editorial meeting.’

  ‘Nonsense. You’re the managing director now. Tell the meeting what you’ve decided.’

  ‘As you very well know, things are not that simple. We have systems. But it is an idea, although it’s unlikely to have a huge market and we couldn’t pay a big advance.’

  Willow realised that Ann was automatically protecting her own position, just as Eve had been a little earlier when she had put the blame for Willow’s falling sales on to the publishers’ marketing department.

  ‘We can discuss money later,’ said Eve firmly. ‘Why don’t we agree simply that Willow does a certain amount of research for a fixed fee in order to produce a synopsis. When we know how the memoir is likely to turn out, and how long it will be, we’ll have a better idea of its probable sale and be able to fix the advance more sensibly.’

  ‘All right. I can have a word with Bill then and we can settle it one way or
the other.’

  ‘Good,’ said Eve, tucking her photostat of Willow’s ideas into her handbag and thrusting the second copy back at her client. Willow raised her eyebrows, but Eve glared at her and so she replaced it in her briefcase.

  ‘Ann, we’d better leave you to deal with the Gloria repercussions. There are sure to be plenty. I’ll give you a ring later on to discuss the fee. Come along, Willow.’

  As soon as they were outside the building, Willow said:

  ‘Why on earth did you do that? We’d hardly got anywhere with the real purpose of the meeting.’

  ‘No, I know, but I looked at these while she was telephoning and they’re not right. They’re simply tinkering with the old formula. You’ve got to do something radically different before we talk to Ann again. This memoir of Gloria Grainger will give you time.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Willow, surprised by how troubled she felt at Eve’s businesslike rejection of her plans. Her sympathy for the dead – and clearly much disliked – Gloria Grainger grew.

  ‘Let’s have some lunch and talk about it.’ Eve was looking at her client with beady intensity. ‘It’s far too cold to hang about here.’ She stamped her tiny booted feet on the icy pavement and pulled on her fur-lined gloves.

  ‘All right. It’s still early so we’d get into any of those places in Covent Garden. There’s quite a nice winebar,’ said Willow.

  When they were sitting on either side of a table with a bottle of good burgundy between them, Willow made herself smile despite her feelings of angry rebellion.

  ‘All right, Eve, tell me: what kind of book is it that you think I should write? The fat sort to do with fearfully glamorous people earning fortunes and having extraordinary sex all over the world or the thinner kind full of vicars and entrancing children and wonderful dogs and interesting emotions in pretty English villages?’

  ‘Steak for me, rare, please and a green salad with no dressing.’

  Willow, who had not noticed the silent approach of a waitress, looked slightly self-conscious at the memory of her mockery of some of the current bestsellers. Without thinking she ordered herself a plate of cheese and some salad and then changed her order, as she considered the temperature outside, to Toulouse sausages and potato gratin.

  ‘No.’ said Eve, frowning at her author as the waitress left, ‘I don’t think either would suit your peculiar talents. I was thinking on the lines of something a bit more challenging. It seems absurd with your brains and experience that you should be writing stuff that could just as well be produced by a frustrated housewife in Purley.’

  ‘Aha,’ said Willow, who was fast regaining her usual critical confidence in spite of having had to make what felt like a series of abject surrenders that morning, ‘then do you mean jewelled prose describing the gross, the violent or the obscene? Or perhaps minute dissections of a troubled modern marriage descending into the bitter realms of unreason written in stark, minimalist language? I thought you always told me not to wallow in pretension.’

  ‘Not those either.’ Eve’s stern expression was beginning to break up into laughter at last. ‘I know precisely what you mean, just as you know perfectly well what I mean.’

  ‘I suppose I do, Eve, but the whole delight of the books so far is that they’ve been entirely fantastical … I haven’t had to put any effort into them.’

  ‘Yes, but you’ve been putting effort into the civil service – and all the lies you’ve had to tell to keep that life secret from us and your novels from them. That’s all ended now. You’ll have far more energy and imagination for the books and you should make good use of them and move up at least one step – possibly two.’

  ‘It’s not entirely ended,’ said Willow, feeling almost as guilty as Ann Slinter had looked when she realised how much pleasure she was displaying in her author’s death. ‘I’ve just agreed to stay on for another year or so as secretary to a committee looking into the possibilities of increasing education in prisons.’

  ‘Is that the influence of your wretched policeman?’ Eve lit yet another cigarette just before the waitress brought their food.

  Willow fanned away the puff of smoke and glared at her agent until she stubbed out the cigarette and picked up her knife and fork.

  ‘No,’ said Willow when the waitress had gone. ‘In fact he knows nothing about it yet and will probably disapprove.’ She was surprised to find that a part of herself found the idea of Tom’s disapproval quite welcome.

  Chapter Two

  ‘You’ve what?’ Tom sounded thoroughly disapproving, but Willow found that she did not enjoy it as much as she had expected.

  He was looking extraordinarily tired, she thought as she tried to be charitable, and even more full of suppressed fury than he had been before she went away. She was not certain whether his rage was caused by her week’s absence or his work or by whatever it was that had been making him so morose before Christmas. Irritated with herself for even thinking that he could be possessive enough to object to her absence, she tried to amuse him with a description of just how Elsie Trouville had managed to persuade her to stay in the civil service.

  Tom smiled a little as he listened and looked slightly better.

  ‘Is there any whisky?’ he asked when Willow had finished her self-mocking story.

  ‘Plenty. Help yourself.’

  He heaved himself out of the deep, down-filled chair and went to pour out a stiff drink from the tray on the pretty satinwood table to the right of the fireplace.

  ‘What for you?’ he asked over his shoulder, looking at Willow as she lay along one of the two matching sofas. Her short red hair was tousled against the copper silk cushion she had put behind her head. The light from the pale salmon-pink lamps gleamed over the clashing colours.

  ‘I shared a bottle with Eve at lunchtime to console myself for my surrender to Mrs Trouville,’ she said, straightening the skirt of her suit. ‘I think I’ll just have fizzy water if there is any there.’

  ‘You know perfectly well that the efficient Mrs Rusham would never leave your drinks tray short of anything,’ Tom laughed, but he sounded neither happy nor amused. ‘Oh, for a life that ran on wheels like yours. What other news have you got for me?’

  Willow tried to decide whether he was doing his best to show concern he did not actually feel about her life or whether he was seeking distraction from his own much harder job. Deciding that what he wanted was distraction, she described her meeting with Eve and the struggles they were both having as they tried to invent a wholly new kind of commercial book. Willow saw that Tom’s attention was slipping half-way through her description and so she changed tack.

  ‘Oh, and I heard that Gloria Grainger has just died.’

  ‘Who the hell’s she?’

  ‘Tom, what on earth is the matter?’ Willow asked before she could stop herself. She knew she sounded like an irritable school matron and detested it.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, staring down at his drink as Willow sighed.

  ‘All right,’ she said, deliberately making her voice pleasanter. ‘To take your question at face value: she was a romantic novelist of an old-fashioned type. She was published by Weston & Brown. Everyone there seems to have disliked her. I don’t know much about her yet, but I shall be finding out more because I’ve half promised to write a memoir of her for them.’

  ‘I can’t see that doing much for your falling sales.’

  Willow stared at him, astonished by the contempt in his irritable comment. She searched his face for clues to his unreasonable antagonism.

  Physically he seemed much the same as usual as he sat in her yellow chair, his dark hair a bit unruly, the broken nose and broad shoulders making him look a rugby player. He had changed out of his suit into a pair of baggy dark-green corduroy trousers and an old Guernsey he kept at her flat, but he had not relaxed at all. His restless dissatisfaction ruined the peace of her elegant drawing room and she resented it, longing to be back at the mill. There were no comfortable, silk-covered cushio
ns there, or lovely furniture or beautiful paintings, but it was miraculously lonely.

  ‘Tom, I don’t know what it is that is making you so aggressive, but I wish you’d tell me about it,’ Willow said seriously and with unusual directness. ‘We can’t start snapping at each other every time either of us says anything. That would be absurd.’

  He glared at her and then drank some whisky. After a while he shrugged.

  ‘There’s nothing the matter with me except that I’m having a tough time at work. I didn’t mean to snap.’

  Willow smiled with difficulty.

  ‘I always told myself that you and I were too intelligent to play games with each other. You’re obviously troubled about something more than work. I can feel it, for heaven’s sake. Why pretend?’

  He shook his head and blew, as though he had surfaced after a long swim underwater.

  ‘It’s probably just that I’ve a hellish and upsetting murder case – nothing to do with you and me,’ he said coldly, ‘but its nature makes one think about all sort of things. I really can’t discuss it. You know better than to expect me to.’

  Willow stood up and went into the bathroom to stare at her reflection in the large mirror over the basin. Apart from the shorter hairstyle, she was exactly the same as she had been when he had first wanted her. She had not changed and there was no reason she could find for him to have done so. It seemed unfair of him to have invaded her life and then started to behave as though she were causing him trouble.

  ‘Perhaps it is just the case,’ she said aloud. But she knew it could not have been. There had been other difficult cases before and they had not made him nearly so bad tempered. He had often discussed them with her, too. This time there was something different the matter with him, something more.

  In an effort to distract herself, she looked admiringly around at her cherished possessions. Of all the rooms in the large and elegant flat, the bathroom best expressed the comfort of her Belgravia life. Quite as big as an ordinary bedroom, it had been decorated as though the bath were incidental, with paintings and bookshelves, an open fire-place and bowls of flowers. There was yet another superbly comfortable, down-filled armchair beside the bath and a table carrying not only the latest novels she was still waiting to read but also a pyramid of black grapes, tangerines and brazil nuts arranged on an antique pewter plate.