OEDIPUS SNARK HAD not been the only difficult man in Barbara Ragg’s life. The other was Rupert Porter, her co-director of the Ragg Porter Literary Agency. Rupert was the son of Fatty Porter, who had founded the agency with Barbara’s father, Gregory Ragg. The business association between Fatty and Gregory had been a successful one, even if Gregory had always harboured a slight distrust of Fatty and had warned Barbara to be on her guard.
“Remember one thing,” he had said. “Like father, like son.”
She had pressed him to explain.
“Just remember in your dealings with Rupert: like father, like son. These old adages have an uncanny habit of proving to be true.”
She had smiled. “Like: ‘All cats are grey in the dark’?”
“Yes, and don’t be so superior. The cats are metaphorical; the saying is telling you that you can’t be too sure about something when you can’t see it properly. Good advice, if you ask me.”
She apologised. “I wasn’t laughing at you. Sorry.”
“No offence taken. Say no more. Least said, soonest mended.”
They both laughed at that.
“But going back to Fatty and the firm: you think I should be careful of Rupert?”
He hesitated, but eventually nodded. “Fatty was the sort of man to bear a grudge. He found it hard to forgive.”
“An example?”
“Plenty, but here’s one. Fatty represented a client, a rather well-known author who died and left a fairly substantial literary estate. The main beneficiary was a young man, the client’s nephew. This nephew held a wake for his uncle and didn’t invite Fatty. It wasn’t an oversight—it was an intentional slight. He had never liked Fatty and had referred to him as Billy Bunter, the Fat Owl of the Remove, and so on. This got back to Fatty and so the detestation came to be fully reciprocated. The non-invitation to the wake was the final straw.
“Anyway, Fatty nursed that particular grudge, and a few months later he had the opportunity to wreak his revenge. He had received an offer for the film options on some of the late client’s books. Remember that as literary executor Fatty had unfettered powers to do what he saw fit, and so he accepted this offer although it was derisory. The films were eventually made and took millions. The estate got virtually nothing.
“Of course, the nephew was furious. He wanted to sue Fatty for breach of fiduciary duty, but the lawyers told him that it would be difficult as there had been no other offers for the rights and Fatty would argue that a bird in the hand et cetera.
“I asked Fatty why he had done it and he looked about him melodramatically to see that nobody was listening. Then he gave me his reply. One word: ‘Punishment,’ he said.”
Barbara thought about this. She would not act like that—no reputable agent would: the nephew was quite within his rights, in her view.
“I’m not suggesting that Rupert will necessarily do anything like that,” Gregory said. “But just be aware. Watch him. I have a feeling, for instance, that he resents my passing on the flat to you. Bear that in mind.”
Gregory proved right, although he was not to live to see his prediction come true. Rupert bitterly resented the fact that his father had sold Gregory the flat currently owned by Barbara. “Pop would never have sold it,” he complained, “if he had known that Gregory was going to pass it on to her. He wanted to help Gregory out, not his daughter. Morally, that flat’s mine.”
Barbara ignored the snide remarks that Rupert regularly made about her ownership of her flat. She paid no attention when Rupert let drop the fact that he and his wife had expected to have a little bit more living room, and would have had it, had things worked out “as we expected.”
Then came the engagement to Hugh, and her offer to sell the flat to Rupert. The plan had been perfectly sensible: she could just as easily work at a distance if she had access to a broadband connection, and all she would need in London was a pied-à-terre to use when she came down for meetings.
Rupert had been overwhelmed by the offer and appeared to put all resentment behind him.
“That is astonishingly good of you,” he said. “I know that in the past I might have brought up certain issues, but …”
“Water under the bridge,” she said. “Don’t let’s even think about all that.”
“It’s really kind of you,” he said. “When shall we …?”
“Would you mind giving me a bit of time? I need to sort everything out.”
He had readily agreed. “Take as long as you like. This is a major life-change. You need to sort everything out, especially if you’re going to be working away from the office. We need to get the modalities of that all worked out.”
Rupert liked the word “modalities” and made frequent use of it. Barbara imagined that even his shopping list contained modalities. Soap powder. Milk. Bread. Kitchen modalities …
“You don’t see any difficulty with my working up there? These days, with broadband conferencing and pdfs and so on, one doesn’t really have to be in the office.”
“No problem,” said Rupert. “None at all. You get the authors to submit in electronic format. Press the print button. Have a glance at the dreary, introspective rubbish. Send the rejection letter back that day by email.”
“But on the nose. Have you noticed how many unpublishable memoirs of awful experiences we’re getting these days? Three a day. Four sometimes.”
Barbara thought he was being unsympathetic. Rupert was a man, and men, in her experience, did not like to read about the misfortunes of others. Women, by contrast, loved to do just that, drawing on the vast wells of feeling built up over the generations. “But lots of people have dreadful things happen to them,” she objected. “In their childhood, for instance. All sorts of cruelty and insecurity.”
“True. But lots don’t. How about some memoirs from them for a change?”
She wondered whether Rupert had ever suffered. He was so self-assured, so apparently pleased to be Rupert Porter …
“Nothing nasty ever happen to you, Rupert?” she asked. “When you were a boy?”
Rupert shook his head. “Not really.”
“Never bullied?”
“Not that I remember. The odd fight in the playground, of course, but who didn’t have that sort of thing? Part of growing up.”
He paused, and for a moment she thought that he was going to say more. He did not, but he was remembering something now: how his father, Fatty, had once punished him for some transgression. His father had sat on him, forcing the wind out of him under that great, crushing weight. “Do it one more time,” Fatty had warned, “and I’ll sit on you again!”
The moment passed, and the suppressed memory of darkness and a struggle for breath faded.