Anna looks perfect in her dress, a dramatic, dark red thing, very Daphne du Maurier. She is wearing a shawl over her shoulders to protect against the November chill. We quickly finish the bottle of champagne and go outside to look for a taxi. Half an hour later, we arrive at the address Neville has given me.
‘Some mistake, surely,’ says Sean.
I check my piece of paper with the address on it. ‘This is right, I’m sure.’
We are standing in front of a dirty, modern pub, within gobbing distance of the concrete outposts of a vast, graffiti-strewn housing estate. A streak of neon flickers in the grimy window and tattered pennants hang limply over the door. A blackboard on the pavement announces ‘EXOTIC DANCEING LUNCHTIMES’.
‘What did Neville say the name of the place was?’ asks Anna.
‘Il Cavallo Bianco.’ I look around me. ‘It must be near here somewhere.’
Anna nudges me in the ribs. ‘This is it,’ she says. She points to the mock gold letters on the pub’s frontage. ‘The White Horse,’ she says. ‘Or Il Cavallo Bianco, if you happen to be Italian.’
‘Oh, bollocks,’ I mutter.
‘I think Neville’s been having a little joke with you,’ observes Anna.
There is a pause. ‘Well,’ I say, gesturing towards the front door. ‘Shall we?’
Inside the pub, Neville and his wife Patricia are standing by the bar, drinking half pints of lager. Together, they make a peculiar sight. Patricia is extremely tall. Neville, on the other hand, is very short.
Fed up with the crass commercialism of the British publishing industry, six years ago Neville Spencer established his own publishing house, Wellington Press – named in honour of the Iron Duke’s famous riposte to a blackmailer to publish and be damned. Coincidentally, Wellington’s exhortation is also a cogent description of Neville’s business practice. Everybody hates him. He is fractious, aggressive, and truculent. His antagonistic, curve ball approach to the business of selling books has publishing wallahs throughout London shuddering over their gins and tonics.
Neville, though, is unique in the publishing industry, because he’s actually interested in books. Sales figures and business plans, by contrast, are anathema to him. The suggestion that one should even try and make money out of selling books produces torrents of foul-mouthed invective. Over the years Neville has developed his own skewed criteria for measuring success. He is, basically, an incorrigible snob. He believes that there is an inverse correlation between a book’s popularity and its artistic significance. For him, obscurity is the thing. He relishes the esoteric, he celebrates the arcane. He wallows exultantly in the failure of his books to sell a single copy.
Of course, I relish the fact that I’m being published by a small, cutting-edge publishing house. It gives me instant cachet, immediate, ready-to-wear literary spurs. But there are times when I wish that Wellington Press wasn’t quite so cutting edge. It would be nice, for example, if Neville was at least on nodding terms with the concept of a marketing budget. As it is, his idiosyncratic approach doesn’t help me earn much of a living. There would be no chance of earning out my advance if it wasn’t so very, very small.
Neville and Patricia appear to be the only people in the pub. Quite how Neville has managed to find such an unprepossessing place for a party is beyond me. It has all the cosy warmth and charm of a vandalised Portakabin. The room is harshly lit by naked bulbs dangling from the puke-coloured ceiling. In one corner is a small raised platform with coloured lights dotted around its periphery, presumably the venue for the lunchtime strippers. Two battered speakers are bracketed high up on the wall; cobwebs dangle from them like discarded underwear. Immediately in front of the stage is a carpet of cigarette ends, a legacy from this afternoon’s crowd. It seems that the punters like to get up close for a good view.
We approach the bar. ‘Hi, Neville,’ I say. ‘Il Cavallo Bianco, eh? Very funny.’
Neville smiles thinly. ‘Yes, well. You have to let me have my little laugh.’
‘Indeed,’ I say, wondering why Neville’s little laughs always have to be at my expense. ‘So, what, have you booked this place out for the evening?’
‘You’re joking,’ he says. ‘No need. It’s always empty. Even on a Saturday.’
‘Ah.’ My spirits sink a little lower. I turn to survey the rest of the pub, and see that in fact we are not quite alone. In one corner, two skinheads are slumped over a table. A scrawny dog lies asleep on the floor next to them. ‘Clever old you,’ I say.
‘You know Patricia, don’t you?’ says Neville.
Indeed I do.
Patricia Spencer is the reason why Neville can afford to indulge in his financially suicidal publishing venture. She is one of the bestselling novelists in the country, and vastly rich. Under the sobriquet of Candida Divine, she churns out nineteenth-century sagas of deprived childhoods in Northern industrial towns. Her novels all have the same poor-girl-conquers-impossible-odds-to-fulfil-her-hitherto-mocked-childhood-ambition-and-then-finds-True-Love-only-to-have-it-cruelly-snatched-away-two-chapters-from-the-end plot. Her stories have an astronomically high mortality rate: the characters are ruthlessly killed off to boost the Kleenex count. It’s drivel. And what the millions of readers who avidly devour her books don’t know is that Candida Divine, whose ear for regional accents has been heralded as ‘ringingly authentic’ by the Daily Telegraph, arrived in Britain from Jamaica when she was five years old.
Patricia Spencer makes Grace Jones look like an under-nourished pussycat. She towers over most men, myself included. Her pneumatic body is all sleek muscles and well-toned limbs. She has a long, swan-like neck. Her head is shaven. She has big white teeth, which she flashes occasionally from within her large, luxurious brown lips. She possesses an untouchable, ineffable elegance, and moves with impossible grace.
She’s the most terrifying woman I’ve ever met.
Obviously, I fancy the pants off her.
‘Hi, Patricia,’ I say, standing on tiptoe to kiss her cheek. She has an exotic, feral scent. I inhale deeply while I’m up there.
‘Matt. And Anna. How nice.’ Patricia looks down at us and smiles. I stand there and grin stupidly.
Sean walks up to Neville and pumps his hand with gusto. Neville’s distaste is obvious to everyone, except Sean. In Neville’s opinion, agents are the equivalent of amoeba in the literary food chain. Parasitic amoeba, at that. Not that Sean is at the bottom of the food chain, though. No: that place is reserved for me. As an author, I’m little more than a necessary inconvenience to the whole process of publishing books, an unavoidable irritant, like the maiden aunt who must be invited to family get-togethers but who always drinks too much sherry and ends up complaining about her haemorrhoids. That’s me. I am that pissed, pile-plagued spinster.
‘I suppose you all want a drink,’ says Neville sourly.
‘That would be great,’ I say. Anna and Sean nod.
‘Well, there’s the bar,’ replies Neville, pointing.
‘Right,’ I laugh.
I wait.
‘I’ll have a pint, if you’re buying,’ says Neville.
With a disbelieving sigh, I extract my wallet. As I distribute the drinks a few minutes later, I ask, ‘So Neville, who else is coming to this bash, then? Journalists? Booksellers? Any celebs?’
Neville snorts. ‘Do me a fucking favour,’ he says. ‘That lot? Parasites.’
‘Who have you invited?’ asks Sean.
‘Well, all of you, obviously.’ Neville calmly takes a sip of his drink.
‘That’s