Джон Бойн - A Ladder to the Sky

‘All right,’ I said doubtfully. ‘But how on earth did you find yourself crossing paths with her?’

‘I contacted a few of the writers who had begun their careers by being published in your magazine. It wasn’t difficult; they’re all on social media. Most of them didn’t reply, but she did. She was very generous with her time, actually. She took me out for cocktails at the Russian Tea Rooms, which was pretty exciting. She even introduced me to her editor.’

‘Did she indeed?’ I asked, raising an eyebrow in surprise. ‘That was good of her.’

‘She was very encouraging.’

‘And I suppose she had nothing but bad things to say about me?’

‘Not at all. She was very complimentary. She did say that you’d had a small dispute about a story that the Atlantic had gone on to publish—’

‘She’d completely rewritten it by then,’ I protested. ‘It wasn’t even remotely the same story that she gave me.’

‘She wasn’t negative, Maurice,’ he insisted. ‘Settle down.’

‘Please don’t…’ I breathed in through my nose again, trying to control my temper. ‘Please don’t tell me to settle down, all right?’

‘Okay. But I promise she wasn’t rude about you in any way.’

‘Well, all right,’ I said, feeling disgruntled anyway.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.’

‘Oh, please,’ I said, waving away his concern. ‘I have about as much interest in Henrietta’s opinion of me as I do the Queen’s.’

‘Would you like another drink? You look like you could use one.’

‘But you’ve barely touched yours,’ I said, seeing how his glass was still three-quarters full while mine was almost empty. ‘Have I been drinking quickly or are you drinking slowly?’

‘Does it matter? Anyway, I’ll get you one if you like.’

‘Yes, please,’ I said, and he made his way to the bar. It was hard not to feel a little under siege but, when I analysed everything he’d said so far, there seemed no reason for me to feel so.

‘She got married last year,’ he said when he returned, placing a fresh pint on the table for me, and I took a long draught from it. It irritated me to see that he’d got himself a glass of water. I didn’t like drinking alone any more.

‘Who did?’ I asked.

‘Henrietta.’

‘Oh,’ I said, not caring very much. ‘Good for her.’

‘I think you know her husband.’

‘He’s not another writer, is he?’ I asked, rolling my eyes. ‘What is it with these New Yorkers and their—’

‘No, an editor, actually,’ said Theo. ‘Jarrod Swanson.’

I thought about it, but the name meant nothing to me. ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t ring a bell.’

‘He was an assistant at Storī for a time. He was your assistant.’

‘Jarrod Swanson,’ I repeated, racking my memory to recall him and, eventually, I remembered. Jarrod had been classmates with Henrietta at the New School but they’d broken up and, angry with her, he’d rejected one of her stories, the very story that I discovered and went on to publish as her first work. So they’d got back together in the end? And now they were married! Well, good for them, I supposed. It was no skin off my nose.

‘Jarrod is actually back working at Storī these days,’ said Theo. ‘He’s no longer interested in being a writer, though. He says he got to the point where he realized that he just wasn’t good enough and that his calling lay in working with other writers. He has your old job there. Editor. He’s making a go of it too. I’m surprised you didn’t know any of this.’

I shrugged. ‘I haven’t paid any attention to the magazine since I sold it,’ I said. ‘I knew it was still in existence, of course, but other than that…’ I turned away and checked my watch. The afternoon was turning into a cross-examination and I wasn’t enjoying it.

‘I’m going to make it a central chapter in my thesis,’ said Theo. ‘I’m calling it Storī time.’

‘How inventive.’

‘Yes, I thought so. And, if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you about something I discovered while I was over there.’

‘Fire away,’ I said. ‘I get the sense that our foreplay is over at last and, finally, you’re about to fuck me.’

‘I’m sorry?’ he said, sitting back but looking utterly nonplussed by my choice of words.

‘Just ask what you want to ask,’ I said with a sigh. ‘I can see you’re itching to do so.’

‘All right then,’ he said, flicking through his notes. ‘The thing is, when Jarrod heard that you were to be the subject of my thesis, he asked whether I’d like to have a look through the Storī archives.’

‘I sincerely hope that you found more interesting things to do in New York than read through all of them.’

‘Actually, I jumped at the opportunity. The magazine’s been going a long time now. I thought there was a chance that I might stumble across a lost story by someone who went on to be famous.’

‘Famous!’ I said, bursting out laughing. ‘These are writers we’re talking about, Daniel, not movie stars.’

‘Maurice, you keep—’

‘I keep what?’

He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Anyway, of course I couldn’t possibly have read everything there. There are thousands of stories in that room.’

‘I think you’d abandon reading for ever if you even tried.’

‘So instead I decided to focus my attention on two particular periods.’

‘Oh yes? Which ones?’

‘Spring 2009 and winter 2013.’

‘All right,’ I said, thinking back, trying to remember what was happening in my life then. ‘You were, what, about six years old in 2009 and ten years old in 2013?’

‘No, I would have been…’ He seemed surprised by what I had said. ‘I was born in 1996 so I would have been thirteen and then seventeen.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘My mistake. So what was so special about those particular periods? Are you going to tell me or do I have to guess?’

‘It was when you wrote the first drafts of The Breach and The Broken Ones .’

I lifted my drink, swallowed almost a third of a pint in one go, then set it back on the table.

‘You really are very diligent, aren’t you?’ I said. ‘I feel I may have underestimated you, Theo. And did you find anything good in there? Something that you think I should have published but didn’t?’

He took a second notepad from his satchel, a much larger one, and flicked through it, stopping at a particular page and reading it for a long time before speaking.

‘There was a story by a woman named Marianne Jilson,’ he said finally. ‘Called “When the Bough Broke”.’

‘Awful title,’ I said.

‘True,’ replied Theo. ‘And the story wasn’t much better, to be honest. Well, the writing wasn’t, anyway. Although the plot was sort of interesting.’

‘I don’t remember it.’

‘It was about five brothers living in America in the 1930s, working on their parents’ farm. Four join the army but one is left behind because he has flat feet and they won’t take him.’

‘Flat feet,’ I said, laughing. ‘I’ve never really understood what that means, have you?’

‘The story is built around how difficult he finds it, being the only young man in town when everyone else has gone away to fight. He feels emasculated, of course.’

‘I see,’ I said quietly.

‘And then there was another story, by Ho Kitson. A Chinese-American writer, if I remember correctly from the accompanying letter.’

‘And what did he or she write?’

‘He. A story called “A Statement of Intent”.’

‘Better title.’