The Paper Cell Page 2

  That he was working at Hobbs at all was proof, he assured himself, that the move to London had been successful. Before he left Edinburgh, he had been working in the Post Office with his sister, sorting letters and selling stamps to a clientele comprising mostly of older women and smartly dressed secretaries who clacked in on stylish heels and stared at the ink stains on his fingers. Worst had been the days on which former classmates entered, or the true hell – Nathan Cochran’s infernal mother, forever coming in to boast about her son’s books, flashing clippings under everyone’s nose of even the most mildly positive reviews. Lewis had read his classmate’s novels: cheap, pulpy things with ridiculous femme fatales and a boring, by-the-numbers alcoholic detective. It disappointed him that Nathan represented the most successful of his peers. If it couldn’t be him, it should at least have been someone more daring, more elegant. Crime fiction. He sighed.

  Hobbs dropped the papers back on the desk and clasped his hands in his lap. ‘My father feels that we are wasting you, Lewis, downstairs in accounts. Thinks you belong on this floor, assisting myself and the editorial team.’

  Lewis felt his pulse quicken and his shoulders made an involuntary thrust towards Hobbs. ‘Sir, I would be delighted, you have no idea how much I’ve –’

  ‘Hold your horses, Carson. I didn’t say I agreed.’

  Lewis leant back, cursing his keenness as Hobbs smirked at him.

  ‘I’m happy to have you up here, certainly. We sorely need some administrative assistance – taking the minutes for our editorial meetings, filing submissions and whatnot. More importantly, we don’t have time to field all the drop-ins we’ve been receiving lately. Unless they come accompanied by a respected agent, we won’t see them, so it will be up to you to politely show them out the door and in the direction of a more appropriate publisher. You will be our editorial assistant, of sorts.’ Hobbs had dropped his gaze and was examining his fingernails. A pause, lengthy and deliberate, stretched between them. Finally, his eyes flitted briefly upwards. ‘Does this appeal to you, Mr Carson?’

  Lewis forced himself to pause before answering. His attempt to match Hobbs’ calculated silence lasted a fraction of the time. It was not strictly the commissioning editor’s role he had applied for last year. But…a promotion. His sister would tell Mrs Cochran over the post counter, relishing his victory for him even if she’d never understood the depths of his distaste for Nathan Cochran’s bloated, brilliant inspector.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said. ‘I appreciate the opportunity.’

  That evening, he telephoned Cathy from the pub across the road, and she burst into tears. ‘A commissioning editor, Lewis? Oh, that is so wonderful!’

  Edinburgh, 1998

  ‘He’s a compulsive liar.’

  Lewis fixed his daughter with a deadly stare, and the paramedic laughed. ‘Is that so, Mr Carson?’ she grinned up at him from her kneeling position on the floor.

  He had come round not moments after fainting, horrified by the gaggle of concerned onlookers in the busy café. Barbara had hovered at the edge of the proceedings, and he noted that her dictaphone continued to record from the table. When the barista came over to ask how he was, she overrode Sarah with a wave of her hand and announced in a carrying voice that he had suffered a mild panic attack. She wasn’t wrong, but he longed for her to leave, or at the very least shut up. Silly bitch.

  ‘He’s lying,’ Sarah insisted again, and his gaze returned to her. She stood behind the smiling paramedic, hands on hips and a harried air about her. Hair had sprung loose from her ponytail and she was flushed, agitated.

  ‘I’m not lying,’ he asserted.

  ‘You didn’t faint earlier this afternoon as well?’ The paramedic attached a blood pressure monitor to his arm and pumped it up with brisk thrusts as she waited for his response.

  Sarah arched an eyebrow at him.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  Sarah threw her hands up in the air and stalked to the counter. The manager handed her a glass of water and patted her arm sympathetically.

  ‘My daughter is being theatrical, as is her wont,’ he said to the paramedic, his voice lowered.

  The woman laughed again, and Sarah shot them a stern look over her shoulder. No matter.

  ‘I took a turn in the library earlier. But I didn’t faint.’

  The paramedic looked to Sarah for confirmation. She nodded curtly, defeated, her cheeks pink.

  ‘I’ve just been a bit warm today. It’s been humid,’ he added.

  ‘All I was saying, Dad, is that you’ve been out of sorts all day. Obviously something’s wrong,’ said Sarah, her voice cutting across the café.

  He huffed and looked at the heads swivelling between himself and his daughter.

  The paramedic released the armband and rose to her feet. She seemed incredibly tall, and he had to crane his neck to meet her eye.

  ‘Your blood pressure is a bit high,’ she said, sounding unconcerned. Sarah opened her mouth to speak, and the paramedic held up a hand to stop her. ‘But not so high as to cause alarm,’ she added.

  ‘I can go home then,’ he said, pushing himself up from the chair. The paramedic pushed him down gently. He resisted the urge to swat her hands away.

  ‘Not quite. A loss of consciousness twice in one afternoon – in a man of your age in particular – could suggest an underlying problem. I’d strongly advise you to accompany me to A&E for tests and observation,’ she said.

  ‘Once in an afternoon,’ he corrected, loathing her.

  ‘One loss of consciousness and a dizzy spell,’ she conceded, and he was infuriated to see her throw a wink over her shoulder to Sarah. ‘Either way, I’d ask you to come with me.’

  ‘No,’ he said, his tone final. The paramedic looked helplessly between Barbara and Sarah. He pushed himself to his feet, steady this time, and pulled his jacket around his shoulders.

  Sarah’s head drooped. She rubbed at her forehead. Barbara shrugged, an apologetic grimace on his behalf. Stupid, idiotic woman.

  ‘Sarah, I’m going home,’ he announced, pushing past the crowd of onlookers.

  ‘I think I know him from somewhere,’ a young man whispered to his girlfriend, and Lewis lengthened his gait.

  Sarah caught up with him some five hundred yards along Lothian Road. The air was as humid as it had been earlier, but away from the stuffy café, the relative coolness soothed his moist forehead and swelled his lungs. They kept a brisk pace, Sarah primly silent, for which he was glad.

  Now that he was outside, he felt hopelessly stupid.

  He had come across the review for his last novel some three days prior, a newspaper clipping tucked behind an old electricity bill in his desk drawer.

  ‘Carson’s sixth novel is as dazzling as his first, and I await his next with bated breath.’

  Thirteen years had passed since then. He hadn’t written a single word in the interim. His last interview – before today’s aborted effort – had taken place in the months after that publication, the last in a long series of repetitive sit-downs with eager journalists and one that had wearied him of the marketing cycle. He had stepped away, sold the townhouse in London and bought an end terrace in Meadowside, close to Sarah and Ann.

  But rediscovering that review – so obsequious, so thrilling – had sparked something in him he thought long dead. He wanted to be ‘Lewis Carson, novelist’, again. Not ‘Lewis Carson, retired divorcee who potters around his compact garden and does the crossword puzzle on the terrace when it’s warm enough.’ So he had trawled through his recently deleted emails and spotted one from Barbara at the Herald.

  Old fool, he thought. Such pathetic vanity.

  ‘Why do you always do that?’ Sarah asked, interrupting his mental self-flagellation.

  ‘Do what?’

  She sighed. ‘You panic whenever your early career is mentioned. Ever since I w
as a girl. I grew up around your books, played in your office while you wrote, and even I don’t know why you’ve so thoroughly distanced yourself from those years. Or from Victory Lap.’

  He maintained his pace, though he felt his pulse flutter slightly. She had never asked him this before. Ann had; it was a constant needle, prick-prick-pricking at him until eventually he left. Sarah looped her arm through his, but kept silent. He contemplated for a moment what it would be like to tell her the truth. How her beloved father had become a celebrated writer, an award winner, a bestseller.

  The silence stretched on.

  ‘Never mind,’ Sarah snapped eventually. She pulled her arm free and increased her pace, leaving him trailing behind her. He thrust his hands into his pockets and bowed his head, his thoughts locked on the past.

  London, 1953

  The editorial team were going for drinks, and Lewis had been invited.

  They had collectively filed out of the office into a clammy spatter of rain, running across the street to the King’s Head because it was the closest means of escape from such inclement weather. Lewis had ordered himself a pint and stood on the fringe of the group for the first half hour, too shy and too minor to be noticed. By the time he had drained the first glass he was feeling fairly superfluous and had considered leaving quietly before his presence became – god forbid – a silent nuisance. He’d have to get some chips on the walk home, maybe stretch as far as a fish supper. But then, why bother coming in the first place? Hadn’t he hoped a conversation fuelled by beer and camaraderie might open some sort of confidence between himself and his colleagues? A stupid thought, he knew. But he had been nursing thoughts of intellectual bonding all afternoon, pulling out various copies of classic and modern poetry collections to refresh himself on their various styles, content and themes. Just in case. This rushed study had only served to further unnerve him, and he was now suffering from a searing sense of inferiority.

  On top of this, Frederick Hobbs was pissing him off.

  Since promoting him to the editorial floor (to a role Lewis had increasingly come to view as a glorified secretary), Hobbs had scrupulously and pointedly ignored his presence there. In the three months since Lewis had moved his books and notes up to the third floor, he had encountered Hobbs daily in the corridors. The only interaction they had shared thus far was an appreciative grunt from Hobbs during the course of delivering some paperwork. Lewis had handed him a series of copyright waivers, and for a brief second their thumbs had grazed. Hobbs darted a gaze at him above low-slung gold frames and looked oddly startled. Lewis attempted a smile, and Hobbs…grunted.

  Tonight he had paid for and thrown back three whiskies in the time it had taken Lewis to drink a single pint. Hobbs was by no means behaving raucously, but was in fact standing at the end of the bar having an intense conversation with Simon More, the publishing house’s senior poetry editor. Lewis was by this point fighting an internal battle with himself, partly enraged by this enduring public dismissal and partly exasperated that he even cared: Hobbs was a fraud, his role on the editorial board a product of cheap and obvious nepotism. Or so he had tried, with increasing desperation in recent months, to convince himself. He had sat in on enough editorial meetings now to have discerned Hobbs’ surprising sense of taste and found himself struck by the innovative and exciting texts he brought to the table. It was an inconvenient reality with which he did daily battle.

  He had wrestled with these feelings for weeks, often rehearsing conversations aloud in his flat in which he alternated between an imagined colloquium of great intellectual fervour and of simply embarrassing the smug bastard with his superior knowledge of, well, something. Either way, he was acutely aware of his growing preoccupation with Hobbs…and was uncomfortable with it.

  Realising he wasn’t yet willing to abandon the evening’s cause, he deposited his empty pint glass on the bar and signalled to the landlord for a second serving. By the time the balding man had placed it in front of him and payment had been made, he was aware that a woman had stepped up beside him and intentionally jostled his elbow. He turned toward her.

  ‘What’s bothering you, Lewis? Not allowed to play with the big boys?’ She inclined her head towards Hobbs, who was laughing at something More had said.

  Lewis twisted rudely from her to face the bar again. Catching sight of her in the mirror, he saw she was far from perturbed.

  ‘What makes you think that?’ he finally offered.

  Julie smiled as she lit a cigarette and leaned deliberately across the bar. She exhaled a large plume of smoke as she asked the landlord for a ‘red wine – not merlot,’ and waited until it had been presented to her before she answered.

  ‘You’ve been burning holes into our dear leader all evening, sweetheart. Are you feeling left out? Well. He’s obviously doing something to bring out the gruff Scot in you.’ She paused to take an extravagantly long gulp of wine. ‘Or is it something else? Low pay? Won’t print your little story?’

  Despite the patronising tone, he knew she was trying to flirt with him. She had a way of tucking her chin into her neck that she clearly thought was sultry but in fact only made her look chubby and gormless. She had also manoeuvred her elbows tight into her rib cage in an attempt to emphasise her breasts, which was working just fine. Nevertheless, he found her cheap and vulgar.

  ‘I think you’re two conspiracies shy of a pulp thriller, Julie,’ he answered amiably enough, leaning back on the bar with his elbows so that he had to look at her from the side. ‘Hobbs and I barely know one another.’

  She shrugged her shoulders with emphasis and checked to see if he had appreciated the shift of her breasts as she did so. ‘Whatever you say, Scotty.’

  ‘Speaking of thrills –’ He could tell she was trying to sound aloof. She paused for effect, her suggestion plain enough.

  ‘We were? I thought we were speaking about your overactive imagination.’

  She faltered, flustered, and he felt momentarily guilty.

  ‘I only wondered if you were busy this evening,’ she muttered, her face darkening as she ducked her nose into her drink. ‘My flat…it’s not far from here.’

  She was clearly mortified. Lewis took a long drink from his glass. She had turned shy, gazing into her wine glass. She was an assistant in the fiction department, responsible primarily for proofing final copy. Though considered attractive by most of the publishing staff, she was by no means a great beauty. And no one important.

  ‘Julie, I would love to. The thing is, I’m –’

  ‘Seeing someone? Not interested?’ she interrupted him, her cheeks dark and blotchy, and grabbed her handbag from the bar stool. ‘No need to say any more, Lewis. I’ll consider you a pal if you just forget this ever happened.’

  With a final attempt at bravado, she sashayed to the door, wide hips swinging and head high. She got her consolation prize when Nicholas, a typesetter, abandoned a half-drunk pint and followed her onto the street.

  Lewis finished his second pint and ordered another, then turned his attention back to Hobbs. A man with impeccable social graces, he flitted from group to group with ease. People watched him from across the room, hoping he would deign to speak to them next. Lewis watched as a blushing girl approached and touched his elbow, an encounter from which he politely extricated himself. It was a curious spectacle, the way people seemed to unconsciously cluster around him, and while Lewis feared that he’d be caught watching, he was unable to stop himself.

  Hobbs’ eyes lifted briefly in his direction, and he turned back to the bar too quickly. Idiot. He caught sight of his own reflection in the mirror and wondered for a moment what he looked like to an onlooker. He did not have Hobbs’ elegance, that he knew. He wasn’t quite as tall, and though lean, he felt that his fingers lacked length, his shoulders were not sharp enough. Where Hobbs was fair, his hair smoothed carefully off his forehead and cut with precision by an expensive
barber, Lewis was dark. Strands of grey had begun to lighten the peak – surprisingly early, he felt – but he fancied it made him appear older and was actually quite fond of it. But he didn’t interest anyone at the bar. People didn’t watch him the way they did Hobbs. He was unremarkable. His expression in the mirror looked very serious.

  Frowning at himself, he made a decision. With a fresh drink in hand, he joined Dickson and Goldstein at the far end of the bar, deliberately turning his back on Hobbs.

  6

  Lewis was drunk. At some point in the evening, the eleven Hobbs staff had diminished to a mere four, including himself, and they had been buying rounds of whisky for some time. Lewis had run out of money at the last round and had rashly offered to have them back to the flat, where he had a decent bottle of the stuff anyway. Now they were walking along Peckham High Street towards his rented one bedroom studio apartment, and he was embarrassed already.

  Frederick Hobbs was beside him, smelling strongly of spirits yet walking in a remarkably straight line. Lewis wanted to sober up and match his purposeful gait, but he was definitely ranging across the wet pavement.

  ‘Julie not to your taste, then?’ Hobbs suddenly piped up, arms tucked into ribs and hands in his pockets in an attempt to retain heat within his slim frame. Lewis was startled and found himself stopping in the street.