David Solomons - Not Another Happy Ending

Tom threw the mail onto his desk and sat down heavily. Napoleon glowered up at him. It was a bust of the great Emperor, a gift from Roddy on the launch of Tristesse Books, which Tom was in no doubt also conveyed a pointed comment on his high-handed manner. He looked round his tiny office with its clutter of contracts, press releases and inescapable manuscripts; a battered velour sofa with the stuffing knocked out of it (appropriately) and a couple of low, uncomfortable chairs, perfect to intimidate writers. It wasn't exactly the Palace of Fontainebleau.

He turned his frustration to the morning mail, tearing open the top envelope and removing the bulging manuscript from within. He scanned the cover and blew out his cheeks in disbelief. Then held it out in front of him, squinting at the title to make sure he'd read it correctly. Which he had. There it was, in black and white, Cambria twenty-four point. Quelle horreur .

‘ The Endless Anguish of My Father ,’ he read aloud, allowing each word its full weight and bombast. ‘By Jane Lockhart.’

Worst title this year? Certainly it was the worst this month. Briefly he pondered summoning the author for a meeting, purely for the satisfaction of telling her just what a brainless title she had concocted and, he felt confident asserting this without condemning himself to the unpleasant task of reading one more word, that she was a hopeless case with no chance of making a career as a novelist. But he was busy. Taking the manuscript in the tips of his fingers, he gave a shudder of disgust.

‘Ms. Lockhart … au revoir .’ And with that he tossed it into the cavernous wastepaper basket by the side of his desk.

‘Tinseltown in the Rain’, The Blue Nile, 1984, Linn Records

THE BOWLER WAS a great idea. She rocked that hat. It was her lucky hat, always had been. Not that Jane could recall specific examples of its effect on her good fortune at this precise moment, but she was sure there must have been some in the past.

It was an awesome hat. It had been a last-second decision to take it to the meeting and she'd plucked it from its hook above the umbrella stand along with her favourite red umbrella. Not that the umbrella was lucky. Who has a lucky umbrella? In fact, weren't they notoriously unlucky objects? Yes, it was bad luck to walk under them. No, that couldn't be right. That was ladders, of course. Open them! You weren't supposed to open them indoors in case … what? Non-specific, umbrella-related doom, she supposed.

Oh god, she was losing it.

It was nerves. The email from Thomas Duval of Tristesse Books inviting her—correction, summoning her — to a Monday morning meeting had arrived last thing on Friday, leaving her all weekend to obsess. It had to be bad news; nothing good ever happened on a Monday morning. But if that were the case then why demand a meeting? If he wasn't interested in publishing her novel, surely he would have rejected her in the customary pro forma fashion, and he hadn't Dear Jane-d her, not yet.

She felt a spike of anticipation, which was instantly brought down by a hypodermic shot of self-doubt. Perhaps he was some sort of sadist who got his kicks torturing writers in person. But that seemed so unlikely. She'd been propping herself up with this line of thinking throughout most of the weekend, extracting every last drop of hope from it, until halfway through the longueur of her Sunday afternoon she decided to Google him and discovered that Thomas Duval was indeed just such a sadist. The Hannibal Lecter of publishing, blogged one aspirant author who'd evidently suffered at his hands. Attila the Hun with a red Biro, recorded another.

She dismissed the opinions of a few affronted authors—all right, fourteen—as a case of sour grapes and sought out a more cool-headed assessment of his reputation. There was scant information available on the Bookseller ’s site, the industry's go-to journal, but she dug up half a dozen snippets of news. The names changed, but on each occasion the substance remained the same: breaking news—Thomas Duval falls out acrimoniously with another of his writers, who storms out in high dudgeon, swearing never to write one more word for that arrogant, temperamental sonofabitch.

Well, at least he was consistent.

She jumped on the subway at Kelvinbridge and rode the train to Buchanan Street in the centre of town. By the time she reached the surface, the early rain had given way to patchy sunshine and she enjoyed a pleasant stroll through George Square to the Merchant City. European-style café culture had come late to Glasgow—until 1988 if you said barista to a Glaswegian you risked a punch on the nose. But when it did arrive it came in a tsunami of foaming milk. An area of the city once referred to as the ‘toun’ these days sported sleek cafés on every corner, where, at the first warming ray, outside tables sprouted like sunflowers, and were just as swiftly populated by chattering, sunglasses-wearing crowds who always seemed to be waiting just off screen for their cue.

Jane headed along cobbled Candleriggs past the old Fruit Market, before stopping outside a set of electric gates. One of the residents was leaving and as the gates whirred open she slipped inside, finding herself in a large, sunlit courtyard bordered by a Victorian terrace on one side and a glassy office block on the other.

She made her way over to the far corner and at the door, she inspected the nameplate. This was the place all right. She hadn't really paid attention to the Tristesse Books logo before, but a large version of it was stencilled on the wall: a white letter ‘T’ suspended in a fat blue drop of rain. As she pushed the buzzer it struck her that it wasn't rain at all, but a teardrop.

Jane had been kicking her heels for half an hour, waiting in the hot, cramped Reception room for her meeting with Thomas Duval. She could hear him through the wall, shouting in rapid-fire French. He may not have been ordering a saucisson , but it wasn't difficult to catch the gist—someone was getting it in le neck .

Though his fury wasn't directed at her, with each fresh salvo Jane shrank deeper into the waiting-room chair. After fifteen minutes of listening to him rant she'd contemplated making her excuses and slinking out, but the possibility that he had read and liked The Endless Anguish of My Father was enough to encourage her to stay put and suffer.