Thieving Fear Page 4

  'She has the idea, now she needs to make it work. As long as it's nearly the weekend, why don't I tell you more over a drink.'

  Perhaps she was too close to the book or its author, and her inability to see how to improve it was why she'd begun to feel shut in. 'I'm free,' she said.

  'I'll see you at the elevator in five. Here's a title for you in the meantime. Bad Old Things.'

  The long-suffering residents of the Pantaloon Rest Home could hardly be described as villainous, even if maltreatment eventually provoked them to wish their infirmities on their tormentors so passionately that their shared imagination did the rest. Charlotte boxed the stack of pages in the file on which Ellen had painstakingly inked the title and her name, and then she stuffed another typescript into her shoulder bag before tidying her laden desk.

  Glen was summoning a lift in the corridor narrowed by lockers. A threesome of their colleagues from the erotica imprint Ram followed him and Charlotte into the windowless grey cage and stood in a corner. 'Beats me,' Fiona was saying to Tasha and Niki, who appeared to share her position. As the doors lumbered shut Charlotte thought for an instant that someone else had slipped between them, but only a shadow could have been so thin. She could think a shadow had dimmed the indirect lighting, which was already meagre enough.

  On the ground floor various Cheetah personnel – editors from Koala and Antelope and Little Deers – were spilling out of the other lift. Beyond the lobby New Oxford Street was crowded too. The side street along which Glen turned beneath a curved blue strip of August sky was deserted, but she'd had little chance to relish any spaciousness when he stopped short of Charing Cross Road. 'Here's my favourite,' he said.

  Presumably he wasn't addressing the doorman outside Shelves, who inspected her bag and Glen's briefcase before Glen led the way to the cellar. The wine bar earned its name at once, constricting the steep staircase with bookshelves full of dilapidated volumes. At least the bar was relatively roomy, though it smelled of the musty volumes on the shelves that covered practically the whole of the walls up to the bare brick ceiling. Three businessmen with loosened ties were taking peanuts with their white wine at the bar. A balding man whose grey hair was as dishevelled as the rest of him was inspecting the books with such dissatisfaction that Charlotte guessed he was a bookseller. 'Shall we get a bottle of red?' Glen suggested.

  'If you'll be drinking more than half.'

  'However it works out,' he said and, once they were ensconced at a corner table, gently fended off the share of the price she tried to hand him.

  'That's fine, Glen. That's even finer. You have some.' When he moved the bottle of Argentinean Malbec to his own glass Charlotte said 'Why is here your favourite?'

  'I like dreaming how it used to be. You could publish anything that took your fancy and if it tanked, nobody would give you too much of a hard time. I think I'd do a better job than some of those guys, mind you. No wonder all their picks are buried down here, books you never heard of by writers nobody remembers, and I'll bet most of them weren't even known while they were alive.'

  This seemed to intensify the smell of stale books, and Charlotte couldn't help reflecting that their authors must be even dustier – indeed, little more than the substance. She felt stifled enough to admit 'I've a confession to make.'

  'Tell me anything you like.'

  'It's just that Ellen Lomax – we're related.'

  'I don't know any rule at Cheetah saying people can't be too close.' Glen waited for the unkempt bookseller to shuffle to a further bookshelf and said 'I'd say she's less exceptional than you, whatever she is to you.'

  'Cousin,' Charlotte said and made her smile quick.

  'It could work to our advantage,' Glen said, holding up his glass until she raised hers. 'You can say whatever she needs to hear.'

  'Anything in particular?'

  'Hey, no call to get protective. She wants to be published or she wouldn't have sent us the book.' He replenished the glasses, though Charlotte had by no means emptied hers, and said 'You won't be making her do anything we mightn't have to do ourselves.'

  'I don't think I follow.'

  'That's because officially you aren't hearing this till next week. Now we're part of the Frugo Corporation we need to look at books the way they do.'

  'Which is . . .'

  'Instead of buying books and then figuring out how to market them we have to turn it round. Unless you're sure how we can market it, don't make an offer.'

  'Is that how they buy products for their supermarkets?'

  'Same deal, or will be. They want Cheetah to produce books they can sell in every branch. They're going to be expanding into books there too.'

  The room felt darkened and shrunken, but perhaps that was her state of mind. She found his comments so dispiriting that the only positive response she could offer was 'My cousin Hugh works for Frugo in Yorkshire.'

  'Maybe soon the whole world will be working for them.' Glen added a laugh that seemed resigned to cynicism and said 'Your family for sure.'

  'Not my cousin Rory. He'd starve first.' She took a mouthful of wine before asking 'So how do you think we can market Ellen's novel?'

  'You tell me.'

  'Well, I think it reads as if she knows her subject and cares about it too.'

  'No, I mean sell the book to me. I'm a buyer. Thirty seconds or less.'

  Charlotte felt boxed in by the dull dim faded volumes and his insistence. She didn't know how many seconds it took her to think of saying 'It's about people getting their own back.'

  'That could sell. What kind of people?'

  'Old folk who've been treated badly because there's nobody to look out for them, and so they have to discover their own power.'

  'I'm just hearing old. I guess we're stuck with that, but why should I want to read about old guys in a home?'

  'Because there are a lot of people in that situation?'

  'No use going for my better nature. I'm shopping for product, not donating to charity. Don't hand me a collecting box.'

  'Because your parents might be like that one day? Yours and everyone's.' His relentlessly expectant look had begun to peeve her. 'You might too,' she said.

  'No point in giving me a hard time. We're talking fiction here. Guilt never sold that if it ever sold any kind of book.'

  'It's about how you'd like to be when you're old,' Charlotte said in some desperation. 'Not as helpless as you'd be afraid to be. Able to fight back.'

  'Me, I just want a quiet retirement on all the money I'll have made with books that sell. And by the way, your time ran out a while back.'

  'You're supposed to be enthusiastic about her book,' Charlotte said and downed some wine to douse her anger. 'Your turn.'

  'Hey, I'm only trying to show you how we'll have to think. I'm your friend, remember. Every book will need to have a concept we can package. Let's find one here.'

  Charlotte was distracted by the bookseller, who had lifted a large book of English landscapes off a shelf only for the yellowed photographs of vanished views to sprawl out of the binding. As the man thrust the handful of images between the dilapidated covers and dumped the infirm volume on the shelf she said 'You start.'

  'Try Sorcerous Seniors Strike Back. Magic's always going to sell, people need fantasy even if they know it's bullshit, and there's your revenge theme as well.'

  'Don't you think it sounds like a comedy?'

  'Sure. It should. That's what it needs to be.'

  Charlotte had found Ellen's attempts at humour painfully facetious, by no means an unusual reaction to manuscripts she had to read but in this case uncomfortably personal. 'You think she could bring that off,' she said.

  'I guess you'll do whatever it takes to show her how. Keep it black. Shock the readers, even the ones that think they can't be shocked. Get them arguing. Make it a book everyone will have heard of and won't want to say they haven't read.'

  Charlotte wasn't sure how much of his enthusiasm could be ascribed to the wine, especially when
he said 'Take the nurse who ends up incontinent. It's like your cousin doesn't want to admit she's writing about it. I'd want to see him suffer a lot worse. In public would be better too.'

  'You don't think that's too basic.'

  'The word is don't risk sales by aiming too high.' Glen laid a hand on her wrist while he said 'Listen, you're the editor. Tell me to shove my suggestions if you've got other ideas.'

  'I wouldn't be so rude.'

  'Hope you don't think I am,' he said before transferring his hand to his glass. 'The guy they turn blind, now. I figured they could do it to him when he's speeding in whatever snazzy car he owns.'

  'Won't that seem too vindictive?'

  'Depends how much they had to put up with. How about the woman who's in her second childhood gets raped by him? Or even a gang rape. Just so we've enough reason to wish the worst on the bad guys.'

  Charlotte felt as if someone were wishing claustrophobia on her. Even if the cramped inadequately lit place that Glen was stuffing with ideas was her mind, the low dim room shrunken by the mass of books had become far too similar. 'Your title makes it sound as if that's them,' she said.

  'Bad Old Things?' Having savoured it like another mouthful of wine, he said 'Nothing wrong with them being wicked if they were treated bad enough. The guy that ends up crippled like the woman he keeps tripping up, maybe they should make him get outrageous with his stick.'

  She wondered if he would ever propose a change that she might simply agree with. 'That's a bit incorrect, isn't it?'

  'Then maybe your cousin should target the public that's sick of correctness. If anyone objects, that's publicity too.'

  'I'll have to see what she thinks.'

  'Well, sure, and there's another point you need to put to her. I don't believe the story yet. It needs a better gimmick.' Glen emptied the bottle into his glass when Charlotte covered hers. 'Try this,' he said. 'Someone new moves in and sees how they're all being treated, and she turns out to be a witch.'

  'Perhaps she could be the thirteenth resident.'

  'I love it. Great idea. Now you're on the wavelength.'

  Charlotte had been joking if not hoping the proposal would strike him as a step too far. As she strove to hold her expression neutral she felt watched, not just by Glen. The bookseller was kneeling in front of a shelf, and everyone at the bar had their backs to her. Peering about only seemed to bring the book-laden shelves closer, and she could have imagined that the earth around them was pressing them inwards – that the dimness adumbrated a seepage of earth. She could almost have thought that its smell was overtaking the odour of books. She was fending off the impressions as Glen said 'We ought to be writing some of this down. I'll email it to you tomorrow, all I can remember.'

  He drained his glass and raised the empty bottle. 'Shall we celebrate?'

  'I think I've had enough, thanks, Glen.'

  'Better eat, then,' he said and recaptured her wrist. 'Let me buy dinner.'

  She felt as if he were shackling her under the earth. 'Can we make it another time?' she murmured. 'I wouldn't mind heading for home.'

  'Whatever's good for you. Let's make it soon, though, yes? How's next week?'

  'I should think it's fine.'

  'Look forward to it,' he said or advised, relinquishing her wrist. As she stood up he said 'Not finishing your drink?'

  'It's yours,' Charlotte said and hurried to the stairs, where a musty breath caught in her throat. The open air was less of a relief than she had anticipated; the length of blue sky looked clamped by the roofs, brought low by them. 'See you on Monday,' she said as soon as Glen appeared, 'and thanks for everything.' As he set out for the car park she turned towards Tottenham Court Road, only to remember that the train was underground. She didn't need to understand her yearning to be in the open and closer to the sky. The train was quicker than the bus, and once she was home she could go on the roof.

  FOUR

  Hugh had just managed to locate the nightwear section on the upper floor of Frugo when his supervisor beckoned him with a pudgy indolent finger towards the beds. 'Is it all right if I leave you now?' Hugh said.

  The older woman mopped her brow with a handkerchief, and her daughter gave her a sympathetic glance. 'Thanks for the tour.'

  As Justin folded his arms above his prominent stomach, his expensive pale-blue shirt from Frugo Dude puffed out a spicy scent of Conqueror deodorant. His even paler eyes peered at Hugh from beneath a black fringe combed low on his wide smooth forehead. Their earnestness seemed designed to contradict his other features – nose snub enough to be accused of cuteness, inadvertently pouting mouth, face rounded by at least one additional chin. 'What was that supposed to be about,' he said, 'the scenic route?'

  'The more they see the more they might buy,' Hugh thought and less distinctly said.

  'I don't remember that in our mission manual.'

  'Maybe I should put it in the suggestion box.'

  'It'll have to wait. You've done enough wandering all over the show when you're meant to be stacking your shelves.' As Hugh felt his face grow patchy with resentment Justin said 'If there's any problem I should know about, I'm here.'

  'It's you. It's how you take breaks whenever you think nobody's looking and suck up to management while other people are getting on with their work. And half the time you never finished a job so I had to finish it for you, and then you took all the credit and got the promotion I should have got.' Even if he found the nerve to say any of this, what would it achieve beyond losing him his job? 'I don't know my way around the new floor yet,' he said.

  'Then you should have paid attention when we all walked through.' Justin expelled a breath that twitched a spider's leg of hair in its nasal burrow and said 'Better skedaddle back to your wine.'

  For a moment Hugh forgot where the escalator was, and then he saw the restless rubber banister between two wardrobes at the far side of the maze of beds. As the lower floor spread into view, he was borne towards a customer leaning on a trolley and a stick in front of the poster for the month's wine promotion. The man wore a short-sleeved shirt, white except for the armpits, and trousers even more generously proportioned than himself. 'Where's this?' he greeted Hugh by asking.

  'Happy to show you,' Hugh said by the book.

  He could have imagined that excessively thin footsteps were accompanying the customer behind him, but of course the stick was. When he halted in front of the wine shelves at the far end of the widest aisle, the last rap sounded vigorous enough to be knocking on a trapdoor. 'What's your best deal?' the man said.

  'Frugo's Own Extra Special White and Red Peruvian Sauvignon is half price this month, and there's an extra five per cent off six or more.'

  'Give us a dozen. Make it red.'

  Hugh planted six in the trolley, only to expose the empty shelf behind them. There were none among the cases he'd loaded onto his float in the stockroom. 'Let me see if we've got more,' he said and slapped his forehead harder than he meant to, having turned the wrong way along the aisle of soft drinks.

  The door to the delivery lobby was beyond the bottled waters. The staff lift was empty except for a crumpled left-hand rubber glove resting on its wrist as if the shrivelled brown fingers were groping up through the stained floor. Nevertheless the windowless grey cage had scarcely begun its descent with a creak that sounded older than the building when someone muttered Hugh's name.

  He twisted around so fast that his feet nearly tripped him. Of course he was alone, and the nearest thing to a speaker – the emergency phone embedded in the metal wall – was beside the controls to the right of the door. The voice had sounded less muffled than buried, and oddly directionless. It must have been on the public address system, calling him in the basement as well as through the store. He was still trying to identify it when the doors crept open.

  The stockroom extended under the whole of the supermarket, but in every direction the view was obscured by boxes and cartons and cases piled higher than his head. Some of the gaps bet
ween the stacks of merchandise were so narrow that a single float blocked them. Cartons blinkered his vision as he stepped away from the lift, and he spent a few seconds trying to determine where liquid was dripping. It was the shrill blink of a faulty fluorescent tube across the room. 'Anyone in here?' he enquired as the lift shut with a surreptitious clunk. 'Was someone paging me?'

  Although nobody responded, he had the impression that he wasn't alone in the basement. Why would any of his workmates refuse to answer? Perhaps they were up to something they would rather keep quiet – perhaps a couple of them were together. Hugh blushed as he lifted the phone from the wall beside the lift and used the intercom. 'This is Hugh. If anyone wants me I'm fetching from the stockroom.'

  His own dislocated voice surrounded him. Although the speakers were up in the corners of the room, he could have thought he was hearing a stifled echo somewhere in the maze of merchandise. It distracted him enough that he forgot to end the call before replacing the receiver, and the amplified clatter filled the basement from four directions at once. The idea that Justin must have heard his incompetence made his face hotter, and for a moment he didn't know which way to turn.

  The wine was stored at the back, extending from the left corner. He dodged through the maze as fast as he could, because the room felt cold as stone that had never been touched by the sun. The concrete floor, which was grubby with shadows, appeared to be shivering on his behalf. It owed its eager instability to the twittering of the light, which also made the cartons that hid his section restless. Their hulking shadows kept up a primitive dance along the adjacent wall, in the refrigerator cabinets full of Frugo Fusion items for the delicatessen: Fruit Dim Sum, Chicken Tikka Masala Pizza, Thai Style Sushi, Tandoori Smoky Bacon, Black Pudding Pizza, Gnocchi Stroganoff, Gumbo Pizza . . . Sweet 'n' Sour Steak 'n' Kidney Pie had been withdrawn for lack of popularity, though it might be relaunched with a shorter title. Hugh had to clear his head of the clamour of names before he was able to locate a case of Peruvian Red in the middle of a stack.