Longshot Read Free Page A

sandwiches for lunch.
    “I hoped you’d be lunching me at your club,” Tremayne said grouchily, and Ronnie said vaguely “Work” with a flap of the hand to indicate the papers on his desk. “I mostly have lunch on the run these days.”
    He went over to the door and put the same section of himself through it as before.
    “Daisy?” He called to her along the passage. “Phone down to the shop for sandwiches, would you? Usual selection. Everyone welcome. Count heads, would you? Three of us here.”
    He brought himself in again without more discussion. Tremayne went on looking disgruntled and I drank my wine with gratitude.
    It was warm in Ronnie’s office. That, too, was a bonus. I took off the jacket of the ski suit, hung it over a chair back and sat down contentedly in the scarlet sweater I wore underneath. Ronnie winced as usual over the brightness of my clothes but in fact I felt warmer in red, and I never discounted the psychology of colors. Those of my travel-agency friends who dressed in army olive-browns were colonels at heart.
    Tremayne went on niggling away at his frustration, not seeming to mind if I learned his business.
    “I offered to have them to stay,” he complained. “Can’t do fairer than that. They all said the sales wouldn’t be worth the work, not at the rate I was offering. Arrogant lot of bastards.” He gloomily drank and made a face over the taste. “My name alone would sell the book, I told them, and they had the gall to disagree. Ronnie says it’s a small market.” He glowered at my agent. “Ronnie says that he can’t get the book commissioned by a publisher without a top-rank writer, and maybe not even then, and that no top-rank writer will touch it without a commission. See where that gets me?”
    He seemed to expect an answer, so I shook my head.
    “It gets me into what they call vanity publishing. Vanity! Bloody insult. Ronnie says there are companies that will print and bind any book you give them, but you have to pay them. Then I’d also have to pay someone to write the book. Then I’d also have to sell the book myself, as I would be my own publisher, and Ronnie says there’s no way I’d sell enough to cover the costs, let alone make a profit. He says that’s why no regular publisher will take the book. Not enough sales. And I ask you, why not? Why not, eh?”
    I shook my head again. He seemed to think I should know who he was, that everyone should. I hardly liked to say I’d never heard of him.
    He partially enlightened me. “After all,” he said, “I’ve trained getting on for a thousand winners. The Grand National, two Champion Hurdles, a Gold Cup, the Whitbread, you name it. I’ve seen half a century of racing. There’s stories in all of it. Childhood... growing up ... success... My life has been interesting, dammit.”
    Words temporarily failed him, and I thought that everyone’s life was interesting to themselves, tragedies and all. Everyone had a story to tell: the trouble lay in the few who wanted to read it, the fewer still who were ready to pay for the privilege.
    Ronnie soothingly refilled the glasses and gave us a regretful summary of the state of the book trade, which was in one of its periodical downswings on account of current high interest rates and their adverse effects on mortgage payments.
    “It’s the people with mortgages who usually buy books,” he said. “Don’t ask me why. For every mortgage there are five people saving into the building societies, and when interest rates are high their incomes go up. They’ve more money to spend, but they just don’t seem to buy books with it.”
    Tremayne and I looked blank over this piece of sociology, and Ronnie further told us, without noticeably cheering us up, that for a publisher in the modern world turnover was all very well but losses weren’t, and that it was getting more and more difficult to get a marginal book accepted.
    I felt more grateful than ever that he’d got one particular