William Boyd - Bamboo - Essays and Criticism

A year later the reckoning was made: Editions André Balland owed me a royalty payment of £57,400.

This was, in 1986, a significant sum of money (it still is, in 2001). Susan, my wife, and I had already taken this into account — in other words we had spent it: we knew exactly what role it was to play in securing the essential underpinnings of our lives. My third novel, Stars and Bars, had been published in 1984 and I was already underway with my fourth, The New Confessions, a long book that would take me over a year to write. The French money, the French windfall, would keep the ship afloat.

But no cheque appeared on the date when it was due. I rang my agent: can we chase up the French money, please (my agents were taking a 20 percent commission)? I remember vividly that afternoon when the return phone call came: I was in our house in Fulham, it was after lunch. I picked up the phone. “Hello, Will? Bad news, I’m afraid…”

Editions André Balland would not, could not, pay.

My journal, 12 May 1986: “Problems with Balland. They say they won’t pay. A scandal. I will sue them and leave them, I will write to French newspapers and expose them.” That’s all. My journal, I should say, is a resolutely pragmatic document, a simple record of my working life rather than anything more grandiose or self-conscious. Still, that note of intemperate bluster doesn’t truly reflect the feelings of massive frustration and anger I felt. There were moments — twenty-minute spasms — when I wanted to kill. I simply could not believe that this had happened to me — all this effort, all this work and then the tantalizing prospect of the just reward snatched away. Moments of rage as pure as I had ever felt alternated with periods of quietistic resignation: of course, you were never going to receive this money, you fool, you dreamer, I would say to myself — the world doesn’t work like that. But at base — au fond —it was the injustice of it all that was rammed home (and ate at my soul) that afternoon and subsequently. Over a year after the huge success of the book, with — it has to be said — everybody else taking their profits (booksellers and publisher) long before me, the reckoning day had finally arrived and the author — that hapless creature tethered forever at the end of the food chain — had to be paid his 10 percent royalty. And it was not forthcoming.

What was to be done? I turned to my agents. Now, it can be argued (I would argue) that a literary agency has to provide two fundamental services in order to justify the 10, 15 or 20 percent commission it charges: namely, one, sell the client’s work and then, two, collect all revenues owing. The initial obligation had been discharged — now they had to tackle the second.

My agent flew to Paris — she was easily frustrated by the publishers — she sat for two hours in the lobby but no one was available to see her. She returned empty handed to London and angry letters were exchanged. The publishers claimed she was harassing them and that their Canadian distributor had gone bust, leaving them short of cash.

My journal: 15 May 1986: “[my agent] flew to Paris today to see Bal-land. It seems they are not the slightest bit embarrassed. To the dermatologist: my psoriasis is running riot.”

I was afflicted at the time with a bizarre form of body-wide psoriasis (dozens of circular raw scaly patches the size of fifty pence pieces all over my arms and torso, like badges — which turned out to be eczema, in the end), which was definitely stress related. The Balland affair sent it raging out of control for a few weeks.

My publishing house in France, Editions André Balland, was a small, independent one, but of some renown (they numbered a Goncourt Prize winner among their authors). They had published my first novel, A Good Man in Africa (Un Anglais sous les Tropiques), with some critical success, but no one had foreseen the huge sales of the second. In the warm afterglow of bestsellerdom, I had sold them my third novel, Stars and Bars (La Croix et la Banniere), which had been published before the storm broke. Payments were outstanding on that book also. The eponymous head of the firm, André Balland lui-même, was a tall, lean, much-married, droll littérateur, hugely experienced and widely liked. I liked him too. He had one of those badger-grey, cropped, US marine-sergeant haircuts that many elderly Frenchmen favoured long before they became the mark of the fashionable young. A month or two before the nonpayment crisis, he had invited me to a grand literary lunch at the Brasserie Lipp in Paris where we had eaten and drunk well and, afterwards, we had strolled back down the Boulevard St Germain towards the firm’s offices, chatting about this and that writer who had been present, talking amiably about the novel I was writing and so on. The literary life à la française —real, not idealized. I didn’t know that would be the last time I would ever see him.

Back in London my agent could make no headway — phone calls went unanswered, letters were unreplied to. I was told that André Balland would be writing to me himself. My journal, 9 June 1986: “Pathetic letter from Balland saying he hadn’t read my contract properly and that he has a cash-flow problem. I’ve written to him demanding 250,000 Frs up front and the rest in monthly instalments. A good letter, it was, but a sad compromise.”

It was a good letter — it took me about two days to write, hunched over my French dictionary and grammar book. I have copies of our subsequent correspondence. Boyd: “Je me trouve au bord des embarras financiers vis à vis le fisc. Souvenez-vous, c’est mon argent — pas le vôtre — que vous gardez à ce moment.” And so on. Balland: “Cher William, Merci pour votre gentille lettre. Je suis extrêmement soulagé de voir que nos relations puissent reprendre leur cours normal.”

The lawyers met in Paris. Various documents that were copied to me attest to ways in which I was to be reimbursed. In August I received a cheque for 150,000 Frs—50,000 Frs less than had been agreed. In October I received another 50,000, the money seemed finally to be on its way. Boyd to Balland: “Cher André, Merci bien pour votre lettre. Vous savez que, moi aussi, j’ai eu les ennuis fiscaux cette année et, par conséquence, c’est crucial que les versements arrivent ponctuellement. Comme ça peux régler ma vie, vis à vis mon banquier et le fisc. Le nouveau roman marche bien et j’espère vivement que nous pouvons oublier nos difficultés de l’année dernière et continuer notre association dans le futur. Bien à vous, William.” Balland to Boyd: “Cher William … si des choses heureuses in-terviennent dans ma vie professionnelle, vous pouvez être assuré que j’augmenterai le montant de ces mensualités afin d’être en défaut le moins longtemps possible. A très bientôt, j’espère, André Balland.”

The monthly payments continued for a while and then stopped. I was still well short of what I was owed. My agent and I decided to sue and so we engaged a firm of English lawyers, Heald Nickinson, that had an office in Paris. There was some kind of judicial hearing (my agent and I shared the costs of the lawyers’ fees) and a form of repayment was set out. I was to receive a down payment of 200,000 Frs (say £20,000) and then monthly payments of £5,000 until the amount due was settled. Matters were further complicated when we discovered on analysing Balland’s accounts that other payments were also delayed, not just on An Ice-Cream War, but on my other two novels that Balland had published — it now appeared that I had actually been owed some £65,000.

It was by now mid 1987. By October 1987 another deal was sorted out between our lawyers and Balland’s to regularize repayments. Beyond all this, life was going on: my fourth novel, The New Confessions, was published in Britain and was sold to a different, and very eminent French publishing house, Le Seuil (who, significantly enough, had also published the paperbacks of the first three).