THE SMOKING ROOM, WEYFIELD HALL, 10:00 A.M.
• • •
Andrew sat in the smoking room with a bowl of porridge, feeling banished. He had been eating in the kitchen until George came in and helped himself fulsomely to breakfast—even frying eggs. The boy had then sat down with a stack of toast (Andrew had resisted a comment on quarantine rations), and begun munching through it without speaking. Andrew had never known anyone to eat toast so loudly. It sounded like fireworks going off. When the noise became intolerable, he had claimed a work call and taken his porridge to the smoking room. Scraping the last mouthful, he did what he always did when he was frustrated—e-mailed his editor about the subs.
FROM: Andrew Birch <andrew.birch@the-worldmag.co.uk>
TO: Sarah Gibbs <sarah.gibbs@the-worldmag.co.uk>
DATE: Mon, Dec 26, 2016 at 10:05 a.m.
SUBJECT: RE: copy Dec 27th
Sarah,
I’ve just seen my proof for the 27th—too late, I might add, to have any input. May I ask why subs (I’m presuming it was Ian Croft) saw fit to remove the word “briny” from the phrase “flap of briny irrelevance”? I need hardly spell out that, without the adjective, the entire sentence falls flat. It pains me to have to explain that I paired “briny” and “flap” precisely because, as a couple, they convey a certain double entendre (pertaining to the female genitalia). “A flap of irrelevance” is meaningless—and, as such, entirely unfunny.
I work extremely hard to write prose that people will want to read, and then reread, and I don’t appreciate it being mucked about with. If you absolutely need to cut words, as a fit issue, then please e-mail me and I will gladly oblige. What maddens me, Sarah, is having my words butchered by illiterate subs. No doubt, in this instance, someone decreed that only the sea, or contact lens solution, may be accurately described as briny. Which is why their powers should be limited to hyphenation.
I know you will think me precious. But what you all seem to forget is that it is MY byline on the page. The buck stops with me, as dear old Barak might have said.
Happy Christmas,
Andrew
PS: Not wild about the schmaltzy headline, either. What about the quarantine angle?
He pressed send and waited to feel better. He’d been on edge all morning, after a clammy dream about Jesse Robinson shinning down the chimney, dressed as a sniper Santa Claus, and shooting Phoebe. Preposterous, but the fear it had triggered had been all too real. Looking at his desktop calendar, he remembered that today was Jesse’s birthdate, according to Leila Deeba’s letter. The letter—the attic! They were all up there, rifling through everything. Bugger. Andrew shot up the stairs. He needed to get to the briefcase before Emma or his daughters. Bounding up the final narrow flight, he heard everyone in the biggest room, and burst in to find his daughters convulsed with laughter. It was so unlike them that he was momentarily distracted. And then he saw Emma, holding his briefcase and adeptly flicking the locks.