A Hovering of Vultures Read Free Page A

Joshua got a brief note from the Frolic Press rejecting his fourth book. He brooded over it all morning. Then he came into the kitchen with an axe and killed Susannah. He made himself a cup of tea, wrote a note that just said ‘I did it’, then went out into the little wood nearby and shot himself through the head. Like everything else hedid, his suicide was not a great success. He was still alive when they found him, though he died on the way to the hospital.”
    â€œMy God, what a story!” said Gregory Waite appreciatively. “It sounds like Wuthering Heights rewritten by Joe Orton. It must have knocked the tabloids for six at the time.”
    â€œThey didn’t have tabloids—or not many—at the time. Actually there wasn’t all that much publicity. Micklewike was pretty remote then—it wasn’t a touristy area, as it is now—and Susannah just wasn’t well-known enough for the newspapers to get hysterical. There was a very mild sensation, which probably led to one or two reprints of the early novels. That was about it.”
    â€œUntil when?”
    â€œUntil the Untamed Shrew Press came along, early in the ’eighties, and reprinted The Barren Fields and then all the others. Since then interest has grown and grown.”
    â€œAmong whom? Male, female? Old, young? Is it all middle-aged women looking for a successor to Mr Rochester?”
    Gregory’s tone, pre-feminist-revolution as it so often was, irritated Gillian. She flinched.
    â€œAll ages, both sexes. But she does seem to have a particular appeal to the young.”
    As if to illustrate her words, Gregory watched as a young black man, two rows down, reached up into his Adidas bag on the rack, took out a copy of The Black Byre, and settled down to read it.
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    At the far end of the carriage Mr Rupert Coggenhoe, author of Starveacre, made himself comfortable for the journey northto Leeds. He had glanced at the headlines of his Daily Telegraph (“Major is not his own man, says Thatcher”) before noting which newspapers and which books his fellow travellers in Standard Class were reading. This was normal practice for the professional author, and Rupert Coggenhoe was a very professional author indeed. He had written, as Jed Parker, novels about money, power and autopilot sex when Jeffrey Archer was in vogue. He had written, as Chantalle Derivaux, a steamy saga of sex, glitz and the fashion industry. He had written a chronicle of working-class Bootle, and, going further back, had even written books about a sexy secret agent and historical novels about various pathetic or fascinating royal ladies (Fair Rosamund, The Swan Neck ). He had, in fact, so many aliases that his real name was known only to his agent and to his immediate neighbours in Luton. He was a professional writer, and he sold very respectably.
    Respectably, however, was not how he wanted to sell. He yearned to sell in millions. He coveted special displays in W. H. Smiths, queues down Piccadilly when he signed in Hatchards, appearances on Wogan, special interviews in the colour supplements. The fact that these desiderata had never come his way he blamed on his agent, his editor, the distribution side at his publishers, and above all the publicity people. So hopeless were these last (“They couldn’t sell icecream in the Sahara desert” he used to say) that he was forced to arrange most of the publicity for his books himself. But even then his fluent tongue and rather distinguished profile didn’t secure anything but reluctant media interest.
    Now he settled himself down, feet projecting out into the gangway, and read a copy of Starveacre, the book held poised so as to be visible to people as they made their way to the buffet. Two carriages down, in a seat with her back to theengine, his wife did exactly the same, making sure that the title was visible to those on their way back from the buffet. That