A GRUB STREET TALE

by

Thomas Tessier

Thomas Tessier is the author of several novels of terror and suspense, including The Nightwalker, Phantom, Finishing Touches, and Rapture. His short fiction has been published in numerous anthologies, including Best New Horror and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. He lives in Connecticut and is working on a new novel.

‘A Grub Street Tale’ cuts rather close to the bone – it’s about the relationship between a writer and his editor. The editor is the ultimate critic – of necessity perhaps more critical and even more important to the witer than anyone else – because it is the editor who chooses to buy or not to buy that story/novel.

‘I still don’t think he was that good,’ Geoffrey Wilson said as he charred the tip of a pantella. ‘Obviously he had a talent, but the fact is he never knew quite what to do with it.’

‘He’s being compared to Hawthorne now.’

‘Ridiculous, isn’t it.’ Geoffrey smiled and shook his head. ‘The same people who say that wouldn’t deign to review his novels if he were still alive.’

Judith Stockmann nodded hesitantly, as if she almost agreed with him. Geoffrey rather liked her, this dark-haired dark-eyed young beauty. The perfect companion for a lovely summer evening. They were sitting on the terrace of a pub in Chiswick, discussing the short life and varying literary works of Patrick Hamm.

‘You think he’s overrated?’

‘Oh yes, of course.’ Geoffrey flicked his lighter again and puffed until the cigar was properly lit. ‘No question.’

‘What was he like as a person?’

‘He had a certain charm. We had some good times together in Soho, early on. He drank too much, needless to say.’

‘Especially in the last year?’

Geoffrey considered that. ‘All along the line, really. It did get worse towards the end, I suppose, but by that time Patrick and I saw very little of each other. Alas.’

A sore point, that falling-out, but one that could hardly be avoided. It was a part of the unfortunate history. Geoffrey was reluctant to discuss Patrick Hamm with anybody and at first he’d tried to fend off Judith Stockmann. But she had persisted, with notes or phone calls every week. Geoffrey eventually realised he couldn’t put her off for ever.

So he had agreed to this meeting on neutral ground. Dredge up a few moth-eaten tidbits for her critical biography of Patrick Hamm and try to cast things in a positive light. Geoffrey didn’t care about her project, but why not see what Judith Stockmann was like in the flesh? So far, she seemed fair and objective. Quite attractive, as well.

‘Were the two of you friends before –’

‘No, it was strictly business at first. Our friendship grew out of our work together, over the course of time. I had serious hopes for Patrick and I genuinely liked him as a person. When he wandered off-track I did my best to help him right himself. But it’s difficult for an editor and an author to hang together when there are serious disagreements.’

Judith nodded again. ‘Commerce and creativity?’

‘That was one part of it, yes,’ Geoffrey replied, ‘but there were other problems. Patrick could never bring himself to decide exactly what kind of writer he wanted to be.’

‘Don’t most writers work through that?’

‘It isn’t easy to market an author who jumps from one genre to another and mixes them together. Booksellers have a hard time dealing with that, and so do readers.’

‘But the consensus now seems to be that Hamm found his true voice towards the end, with The Lime-Kiln and The Varna Schooner.’ Judith sipped her wine. ‘He was only forty-one, you could say he was just hitting his stride when –’

‘I know, I know,’ Geoffrey cut in. ‘Everybody seems to love those two books, and of course it’s all very tragic, the way that it ended. But I thought at the time that those books were really very pretentious, and I honestly still do.’

‘You prefer his earlier work?’

‘Yes, I do. Our Lady of Heavenly Pain and Nightmare in Silk are my two favourites. I published them both, and I believed that Patrick was on to something new. It was brilliant erotica, it was elegant and stylish. It used elements of the thriller and horror fiction to good effect. I loved it, and I can remember thinking, he can’t miss.’ Geoffrey shrugged sadly. ‘But he did.’

‘Critics now tend to see those works as potboilers,’ Judith said. ‘Efficient, but limited. Finger exercises, part of Hamm’s mastering the craft of fiction.’

Wilson scowled. ‘They would, wouldn’t they.’

‘After the first two books –’

‘That’s when he started to drift,’ Geoffrey answered before he heard the rest of the question. ‘He wrote that ill-conceived family gothic, The Weybright Curse. God, I hated that. I’d just moved up to Pell House then and I was eager to bring Patrick with me. But I couldn’t accept that book. He stayed at Bingley, they published it, and it promptly sank like a rock.’

‘Were there hard feelings?’

‘Some, yes.’ Geoffrey reflected for a moment. ‘But I still wanted to publish Patrick, so I encouraged him to get on with the next novel. Ill-Met by Gaslight, which I did publish. It was an odd book, a modern murder mystery with time travel, but it worked in some bizarre way, and he was back with me.’

‘Was that about the time he turned to short fiction?’

She had an exquisite neck, Geoffrey noted. Honeyish tanned skin set off by a brilliant white blouse and tiny pearls.

‘Yes, and it was infuriating. Nasty little stories, full of disagreeable people doing disagreeable things. He put together a volume called Micronovels of the Dead, and that was soon followed by a second one, Tales of Extreme Panic. But nobody would touch them. Patrick eventually lost his agent over that short fiction. No one knew it at the time, sad to say, but he was well into his final phase by then.’

‘Now those stories are highly regarded.’

‘Patrick would appreciate the joke.’

‘Did he discuss the last two novels with you?’

‘Oh yes, and I advised him as best I could. But there were some serious problems to overcome.’ Geoffrey put his cigar down on the ashtray. ‘You see, by that time his name and sales record in the book business meant nothing. He’d frittered away whatever identity he had managed to create for himself. He was getting to be old goods, a maverick, and nobody cared. Career-wise, Patrick was in big trouble.’

She had gorgeous legs, long and slender. Geoffrey could see and enjoy them properly, now that Judith was leaning back on the sofa in his sitting room. They’d had a couple of polite drinks at the pub, and then she accepted his invitation to dinner. He took pride in his cooking ability and he intended to broil two superb Wiltshire steaks – assuming they got around to food.

He could dole out boring old Patrick Hamm anecdotes for days if that would keep her happy. Days, nights. First, he dug out a file of old letters from Patrick. Harmless stuff, often amusing, none of the final anger and anguish. Judith scanned them quickly and murmured with delight at certain passages. She gave Geoffrey a warm smile when he offered to make copies for her.

She knew the books quite well, but not the man’s life. Her knowledge of personal details was limited to the kind of material that had appeared often in the press. Geoffrey was the first of Hamm’s personal acquaintances that Judith had approached – so he had clear sailing and could set the tone. They had more wine as he talked and she listened.

The Soho clubs, Hamm’s assorted and equally hopeless lovers, a brief stint working in an East End soup kitchen, Hamm’s writing habits, his appalling taste in food, his uninformed love of music and art – Geoffrey told Judith all sorts of odd details as they came to mind. It might not be significantly illuminating of the man’s work, but it certainly had the authentic feel of first-hand experience. Geoffrey could see that Judith was loving every word of it, and that pleased him.

‘To get back to his books,’ she said. ‘He did stop writing the short stories and started a new novel, The Lime-Kiln. And he showed it to you as he was working on it, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Wilson replied. ‘I thought it started off in very promising fashion, but at about two-thirds of the way through it Patrick lost the thread. I don’t think he liked his own characters. He killed them all off, every one of them, which resulted in a book that ended as a damp misfire. What was it all supposed to be about, and who cared anyhow?’

‘What did he do then?’

‘He went back over it from scratch, just as I suggested. It wasn’t the plot so much as the characters, the heart of the book. And the ending, of course.’

‘But that first version is essentially the same one that has since been published and acclaimed everywhere.’

‘Oh yes, yes.’ Wilson still ground his teeth at the notion. ‘After his suicide, all that gloom and despair no doubt seemed more convincing. You could say it gave him literary credibility. I know that must sound awfully cynical, but that’s how the world works sometimes. If Patrick had remained here in the land of the living, the living would have continued to ignore him.’

It was sickening, really. Three years after Patrick’s death The Lime-Kiln was published to sudden acclaim. A year later, The Varna Schooner followed to an equally enthusiastic response. The collected stories. and the literary community embraced a corpse, made a fallen hero of him. To Geoffrey it was all so hypocritical and crass. Trading on the dead. Sickening.

Patrick’s suicide had occurred a decade ago, and the bubble had diminished somewhat in recent years. It was bound to subside even more in time, Geoffrey was convinced. Patrick’s writing was often interesting, striking and disturbing, but it was not great. Not truly classic. No matter what anyone said.

‘You didn’t publish the second version either,’ Judith said. ‘Can you tell me about that?’

‘It was no better,’ Geoffrey replied promptly. ‘And in some ways it was actually worse. Revision was never Patrick’s strong suit, and he was almost relieved when I suggested that he set The Lime-Kiln aside for a while and start something new.’

‘The Varna Schooner.’

‘Yes, and a great idea it was. The full-length treatment of an episode merely hinted at in Dracula. What went on aboard that ship carrying Dracula’s coffin to England? What if there were a few passengers, as well as the crew? I loved the idea. But once again, Patrick had problems. He had a very hard time getting the period atmosphere right. He wouldn’t do the research, he had no interest in the kind of details that would make a book like that convincing. Instead, there was more of that fancy philosopical talk, endless pretentious babble. The same thing that I believed was the cause of all the trouble in The Lime-Kiln. It got in the way of the story, just totally flattened it.’ Geoffrey continued quickly. ‘Now, I know what you’re thinking. That what I disliked is exactly what people now praise in those books, it’s what makes them so good. Right?’

Judith smiled. ‘Well, that is true.’

‘Yes, it is.’ Geoffrey turned his hands palms-up and gave a helpless shrug. ‘What can I say? Perhaps I was wrong. Mistakes do happen in the book business. Eighteen publishers rejected The Day of the Jackal. Everybody knows de Gaulle wasn’t assassinated, so who cares? Twenty publishers rejected Watership Down. Nobody wants to read about a bunch of bloody rabbits.’ Judith laughed. ‘So, those things do happen.’

‘And that was when the two of you had your final break?’ she asked cautiously.

Geoffrey nodded tightly. ‘It was an honest disagreement. I told Patrick that his characters weren’t real enough. He was too interested in using them as ideas, as symbols. That and the lack of attention to period atmosphere ruined both books.’

‘For you.’

‘For me, yes,’ he agreed reasonably. ‘If I could just give you my capsule view of Patrick’s last two novels, I honestly feel that they fall between two stools. They’re too sophisticated and good for the commercial market, category fiction, but they’re not quite brilliant enough for literary acceptance.’

‘Hmn.’ Judith appeared to consider that.

‘Patrick didn’t care whether he was a commercial success and made a lot of money, or achieved literary stature. But he wanted one or the other, and that’s the sad part. He never experienced either of them in his lifetime.’

‘That’s certainly true.’

They were in Geoffrey’s study. He had remembered a box of old photographs from his days at Bingley and he knew that several of them showed Patrick. The Thursday afternoons when some of the house authors would drop by and the booze flowed, the fierce talk about literature and the book trade. Great times. Unheard of in this new era, with the business driven by accountants.

Judith loved the snapshots and thought one of them might be reproduced satisfactorily in her eventual book. Geoffrey agreed, happy to please her. It might never happen, anyway. Most books died before they reached hardcovers, and he was far from certain that there was enough event in Patrick’s gloomy life to justify a proper critical biography. But why discourage her?

Geoffrey sat close to her on the sofa in his study, looking down her blouse while he explained who people were in each photo. Very minor writers, most of them, sorted out and silenced by the marketplace over the years. Decent folks, and they all had their two or three published volumes, now yellowing on a shelf at home, to comfort them in the genteel failure of their advancing years. Even one forgotten book – is still something.

‘Did he–’

‘Enough,’ Geoffrey interrupted softly. He took the box of photographs and set them on the coffee table. ‘I think I’ve done enough talking for one session. We can always return to Patrick Hamm another time. I’d like to hear more about you now.’

‘You would?’

‘Yes.’

Judith smiled. ‘But should I tell you?’

‘Yes, you should.’

Geoffrey caressed her cheek with the back of his fingers, and she liked it. She didn’t do anything but he could see it in her eyes, and he suddenly thought: she may be in love with a dead man but she will sleep with me tonight. Judith smiled at him, rested her head on his shoulder and then gazed absently at the wine glass that she still held on her lap.

‘Where to start?’

‘It’s your story. Anywhere you like.’

He felt her laugh silently and managed to use that moment to slip an arm around her shoulder. Geoffrey thought he noticed her body respond by settling closer against his.

‘We came from Russia. It was quite an adventure, actually,’ Judith said. ‘But at the time it was very frightening.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Oh, yes. Our family name was Bronstein but my father took the name Stockmann, from Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. He was opposed to the government, he wrote pamphlets and tracts, he went to prison twice, they beat him. We lived in constant fear, never knowing when the police might come. But father was a man of real integrity. He was an anarchist, in the truest sense of the term. An idealist, really.’

‘A Russian anarchist,’ Geoffrey mused. ‘Fantastic.’

‘Anyhow, the regime was very shaky,’ Judith continued. ‘My father believed that real change, revolution, was bound to happen soon. Perhaps my father went too far in his papers and speeches, or it was just another crackdown. The Tsar’s secret police had my father’s name on a list of people to be arrested, and everyone knew that this time the accused would never come back from prison alive. So we had to flee the country.’

‘Good Lord.’ Still, something was not right there.

‘There was no time to spare. We left everything behind, and had to sneak out of Moscow in the middle of the night.’

‘And you made it, thank God.’

Geoffrey stroked her neck lightly, tracing lines down towards the collar of her blouse. The Tsar? She meant the KGB, clearly, but this was not the time to play editor.

‘Only just,’ Judith said, ‘and not all of us. We managed to get across the border, into Romania, and then on to Bulgaria, but police agents stayed on our trail. We had a couple of very close escapes along the way.’

‘Of course the Romanians and Bulgarians would co-operate with the Russians, wouldn’t they?’

‘Or at least look the other way, yes. But we made it to the coast and my father had enough money to bribe an official and buy passage for us on a cargo ship to England.’

‘Aha. Very good.’

‘Can you guess where we sailed from?’

‘I have no idea.’ Geoffrey laughed at himself. ‘In fact, I didn’t even know Bulgaria had a coast.’

‘It’s on the Black Sea.’

‘Yes, yes, of course. The Black Sea, the Caspian. They’re all somewhere in that neck of the woods, aren’t they.’

‘We sailed from the port of Varna.’

‘Va – you’re joking.’ With his free hand he took Judith’s chin and turned her face so that she was looking at him. She was smiling, but not as if she’d made a joke. ‘You weren’t serious, were you? Varna? Really?’

‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘It really happened. I know it’s incredible, but it is the truth.’

‘Incredible? Not half. Ah, now I understand it,’ Geoffrey went on. ‘You grew up here in England. Later, you saw Patrick’s book, The Varna Schooner, and so you read it because you’d passed through Varna. That’s how you first came to know Patrick’s work, you fell in love with it, and – here we are.’

‘That’s not entirely wrong.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re right – here we are.’

God, sometimes he was bloody slow on the uptake. There she was, lips parted, eyes half shut, offering herself to him, and he was still trying to carry on a conversation. Nitwit! He quickly pulled Judith closer and kissed her. It was long, slow, deep and utterly wonderful. Geoffrey’s hand slipped inside her blouse and touched skin that felt like warm silk, like some rare gold liquid that seemed to welcome and embrace his own flesh. Her whole body seemed to melt into his and that somehow made him feel profoundly alive, vastly more aroused.

Her tongue – no, a tooth, surely – entered his tongue, and it was like smooth sex, a painless, exhilarating penetration. He was puzzled and startled by it, however. He opened his eyes as he tried to pull back a couple of inches – and he couldn’t move. It was as if Judith held him by the tongue, with some part of her mouth. Her eyes were locked on him, but she didn’t appear to see him. His tongue throbbed, but not unpleasantly. Geoffrey had an odd sense of his mind slipping out of focus, drifting hazily. It was difficult to form thoughts, they seemed to keep falling beyond his grasp. He didn’t mind. Much easier to drift, to float along in a delicious fog. It was so comforting.

He didn’t hurt, but he felt weak. He was still on the sofa in his study, but now he was lying flat on his back. Judith sat on the floor beside him. The golden glow of her cheeks was now suffused with a faint pink blush. He felt so tired. He smiled, glad she was still there with him, though he wasn’t exactly sure what had happened between them.

‘You never even read The Varna Schooner,’ she said almost in a tone of regret. ‘You thought The Lime-Kiln was a waste and you were sure The Varna Schooner would be just as bad.’

‘No, I read it.’ Now he knew something was wrong.

‘You didn’t even remember my name,’ Judith told him.

‘Years ago. Ten, at least. More.’

‘Patrick gave me life,’ she continued. ‘He created me, and at the end of the book he saved my life. I lost my entire family on the schooner Demeter, and the crew died as well. Patrick gave them all to Dracula, who came out of his coffin in the hold. But Patrick allowed one person to survive, a child, a little girl. I escaped ashore at Whitby.’

‘Mad.’

‘But there’s a price to pay for life,’ Judith went on. ‘Any form of life. Patrick made me one of those who live for ever. He was a good man, strong in many ways, but hopeless at dealing with the outside world. Hopeless at career-building. He trusted you, in spite of the times you let him down. And when you had no use for him or his last two books, he finally gave up. He knew he’d done his best work, but he had no hope left for it.’

‘He was a baby.’

Geoffrey felt good saying that. It took all his strength to get the words out. He could barely move.

‘I won’t take all of your blood. That would be too easy. I can keep you this way for days.’ Judith smiled at him. ‘Days on end. Until you eventually die of hunger. Like Patrick.’

‘Compound organ failure,’ Geoffrey corrected stubbornly.

‘Brought on by malnutrition. Starvation. When Patrick died in that awful flat in Hackney, he had no money, nothing.’

‘It was a Simone Weil stunt,’ Geoffrey railed angrily. ‘The ultimate career move. He had friends he could have gone to, he’d done so many times before. And he had money.’

The exertion nearly knocked him out.

‘Friends?’ Judith said. ‘You were the only one, and you let him down. Money? He had seventeen pounds, that’s all.’

‘Enough to eat. To work, to live another day.’ He tried to push himself up on one hand. He was shaky, but he thought he was beginning to regain some of his strength. ‘He didn’t have to die the way he did.’

‘No, he didn’t.’

‘He had friends. I told you. He had money.’

‘Yes, Geoffrey.’ Judith smiled again as she leaned forward, her mouth approaching his. ‘And I’m sure you do, too.’