Sweet and Low_An Emma Lathen Best Seller

by Emma Lathen

  Helen tried to keep things from getting out of hand. “We don’t want to waste John’s time, do we? John, we wondered if you’d like to come out to Princeton with us—”

  “I suppose it’s inevitable that their ideal store should be in Princeton,” he said, proving that he was just as bad as Fred.

  “—to see the big kickoff for the Old Glory campaign,” Helen finished firmly.

  But while Thatcher could camouflage dereliction from duty with the best of them, there was always Miss Corsa. Conscience can be assuaged, but not secretaries of her caliber. So, with true regret, he declined the tempting invitation.

  Miss Corsa did not relax, and wisely so. Before ringing off, Thatcher solicited and received the promise of a detailed report.

  When it came that evening, Fred Nagle had to admit that he could never do the day justice.

  “Mr. Nagle! And, Mrs. Nagle, of course!” Ted Kanelos throbbed with gratitude. “You really did find the ideal store for us.” Modish in boots that gave him two critical inches, he surveyed the Corner Newspaper Store with profound approbation. The Corner Newspaper Store, in the person of its proprietors, saw things differently.

  “Lordy!” said Ann Osler, unconsciously clinging to her husband. “Maybe we made a mistake, Mr. Nagle. Oh, it sounded fine when you called. But I never realized . . .”

  Words failed her as Kanelos’ staff began stripping candy boxes, racks of lighters, and displays of chewing gum from the space next to the cash register.

  “Hold it!” Jack Osler commanded, removing a protective arm from Ann’s shoulder. “I never said you could tear the place apart.”

  Kanelos intervened. “Don’t worry about a thing! We’ll put everything back. And just look at this . . .”

  A complex merry-go-round was being assembled by skilled craftsmen, while aides, like nurses in an operating room, obeyed orders.

  “Candy!”

  Eager hands passed forward Old Glory bars to be inserted into miniature saddlebags.

  “Flags!”

  Small banners were dotted around the Dreyer-blue roof.

  Then, at the flick of a switch, the merry-go-round magically came to life, twirling around and around to the cheery tinkle of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

  “The best goddam counter display in the whole goddam world. Hershey’s doesn’t have anything to touch it,” proclaimed Ted Kanelos. “If that doesn’t move Old Glory, nothing will.”

  Almost immediately, the test case materialized. A youthfully mature man cut his way through the crowd at the door with the skill born of his Sunday-morning forays in search of the Times. After deciding that none of the people inconveniencing him was part of a queue. they are not called lines in Princeton, he fetched up at the counter.

  “Hi, Jack,” he said, oblivious to Kanelos signaling for silence. “Let me have a pack of Luckies . . .”

  While Osler turned, he idly studied the Dreyer merry-go-round. Then:

  “Say, I nearly forgot! Take out for a quart of milk, too. I’ll pick it up on the way out.”

  With Luckies in pocket, he made his way down the length of the store to the glass-paneled refrigerator. Returning, he waved at Jack Osler and drifted out. In other places, ten people holding their breath might make a dent. But, as Fred Nagle was to tell Thatcher later, that’s Princeton for you.

  “He’s probably on a diet,” said Kanelos, savagely. “Either that, or he’s some kind of dummy!”

  At this inopportune moment, Howard Vandevanter arrived.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  While Kanelos reassembled a strong confident smile, Ann Osler nipped in ahead of him. “Space is what’s the matter,” she declared, while her husband folded his arms and nodded. “People may give you some display space for Old Glory, but you can’t expect them to put up anything as big as this!”

  “She’s right,” Fred Nagle weighed in, reminding everybody that he was not a middleman for nothing. “Nine out of ten outlets are cramped—”

  Kanelos was equipped with statistics on counterspace-advertising expenditure ratios. Before he could open fire, there was another interruption.

  A young mother, shepherding three small children and a beagle, elbowed Vandevanter out of her path. She planted herself at the counter while her offspring fanned down the aisles.

  “. . . Newsweek, Vogue, and New Hampshire Profiles,” said Jack Osler. “Two dollars and . . .”

  But first totals were only rough estimates in Mrs. Keating’s family. Tiny Ellen trotted up to her mother with an armload.

  “Now, let’s see . . .” said Mrs. Keating, in a show of enlightened parenthood. “How to Know the Wildflowers. Yes, Ellen, that’s fine. Now what’s this? Let’s Learn Decoupage. Oh, Ellen, I’m afraid that’s too grown-up . . .”

  Ellen opened her perfect little mouth. “Aargh-gh-gh!”

  “Maybe we’ll take it,” said Ellen’s mother brightly.

  David arrived with two bags of potato chips, three paperbacks about the New York Rangers, and Popular Mechanics. He was depositing them on the growing pile when Nicholas brought up the rear. Since he had located only a pictorial history of Scottish tartans, he was unsated. His predatory eye fell on the Dreyer merry-go-round.

  “Wanna candy bar!”

  “Oh, Nicholas!”

  “Wanna candy bar!” Ellen knew a good thing when she heard one.

  Only David remained quiet. He was marking time in sullen silence during the ten years between him and his driver’s license.

  $18.30 later, Ellen, David, Nicholas, Samantha the beagle, and Mrs. Keating departed. For the first time in their lives, their serene assurance that the world loved them was right on the button.

  “Five! Five Old Glory bars!” Ted Kanelos could have been announcing the Second Coming. “Folks, we’ve got a winner here. Old Glory is going to be an all-time blockbuster.”

  No one, from Howard Vandevanter to the Oslers, had any desire to shoot this down.

  “Now let’s get cracking,” said Kanelos, doing the trail boss to a T.

  “We’ve got a lot to do. Maurice . . .”

  The merry-go-round was just the beginning. As conceived by Bridges, Gray & Kanelos, the Old Glory campaign was going to be multipronged. Dreyer was going to outdo matched Clydesdales and pastel airplanes.

  His audience understood that, in this context, Kanelos meant one thing—TV. Vandevanter, after all, had okayed a budget approximately twice as large as BBC’s annual expenditures on all programming.

  Looking impressed by the amounts named, Jack Osler said: “Boy, that’s a lot of money. But I’ll tell you one thing. Every time they put a new commercial on one of those kids’ shows, we get troops of them in here asking for it.”

  “It certainly works for breakfast foods,” Vandevanter agreed. “But it wasn’t easy to convince the board. They’ve been selling Dreyer bars for years without any advertising . . .”

  Before Jack Osler, Vandevanter, and her own husband could stray into shop talk about what a good, steady seller the Dreyer bar was, Helen Nagle forged ahead to another facet of Kanelos’ grand strategy. Or, as he himself phrased it, the hearts-and-flowers bit.

  Put simply, it was an attempt to capture the best of the old as well as the best of the new. “Sure, TV is essential,” the Kanelos philosophy ran. “But let’s not knock Norman Rockwell.” Norman Rockwell was not available. A lesser artist was. Moreover, he was waiting in the wings.

  “His name is Maurice,” said Helen to a frightened Ann Osler. “He’s painted presidents and all sorts of people. Bridges, Gray & Kanelos commissioned him to do a series of scenes in a neighborhood store like yours, Ann. You know, people buying Old Glory bars.”

  Howard Vandevanter contributed his own endorsement. “We liked the idea at Dreyer because, after all, we’re not some Johnny-come-lately. Running these illustrations in magazines will underline what a fine old name Dreyer has.”

  As he spoke, Helen Nagle sent her husband a look worth volumes. All along s
he had claimed that Kanelos was a smart cookie. It remained to be seen if he could sell the great American public; he had certainly done a job on the Dreyer Chocolate Company.

  “So, that’s why we’ve had this long search for your store,” she continued, seeing that both Oslers were still lost. “They want something that’s real, authentic—”

  With a snort, Fred dismissed euphemism. “They want something ideal.”

  Arrow Jobbers was picking up a fraction of the tab for running local ads. This standard arrangement, plus an unrivaled knowledge of candy vendors from Maine to Maryland, explained why Fred Nagle was doing what he could for Kanelos. Nothing could make him like it.

  Kanelos brought his own brand of realism to the discussion. He began with a confession: “At first, I leaned toward an older couple”—he flashed an ingratiating smile—“just the way I was tempted by a New England village, with a white church. I have my little weaknesses—and besides, who wants to frame a portrait of the A&P?”

  “The trouble with advertisers,” said Maurice the artist morosely, “is that they want all the kids to have red hair and freckles.”

  Kanelos was touched on the raw. “Who said he wanted this to be real—not hokey? Who said to cut the Tom Sawyer kick? Who knows most little old ladies use Clairol? Hell, I’m the one who writes the copy—not the fathead who believes it! All I ask is that you skip the gaping holes and the missing teeth. We’re trying to peddle candy bars—and every goddam dentist in the country is against us!”

  On this spasm of temper, he stalked over to the merry-go-round.

  Ann Osler was still daunted by the prospect of becoming a Dreyer pinup. “Maybe it would be better if you showed cows.”

  “Try telling Ted that,” the artist advised glumly. “He’ll tell you that nobody identifies with a cow.”

  Both Oslers were overwhelmed by the considerations, large and small, that go into a professional advertising pitch. Jack also had a more personal concern.

  “Of course we like the place,” he said looking around the Corner Newspaper Store as if seeing it for the first time. “But I’m not so sure anybody would want paintings of it.”

  The magazines and paperbacks lining the wall and central divider were neat enough. But there were cartons piled in the corners, out-of-date newspapers stacked for return, and that large, circular scanner that chills the innocent, if not the shoplifter.

  “Trust me,” beseeched Kanelos, reappearing. “And trust Maurice. You’re ideal! The store’s ideal—”

  “And more important, Princeton customers are ideal too,” Fred Nagle threw in.

  Helen could see that Fred was cracking. Leaving Madison Avenue behind, she led him outdoors. Howard Vandevanter joined them.

  “I know that a big advertising blowout has got to help put Old Glory over,” Nagle told him. “But I never realized what a pain in the neck it would be.”

  Vandevanter nodded. “It was an eye-opener for me, too,” he said. “And while we’ve got confidence in Kanelos, we want to supervise the way things are going.”

  “And how are things going?” Helen asked. The strategy of flattering womanly interest is age-old and virtually foolproof. To Helen’s dismay, Vandevanter read too much into it.

  “You know about Dick Frohlich’s murder,” he said. “God knows, it’s been a nightmare. Everybody was shocked—up in Dreyer and here in New York. We’re still trying to get back to normal . . .”

  Helen, towed out of her depth, sent a silent SOS to her husband.

  “It’s one of those things that happen,” he said with gruff directness.

  “Considering the thousands of people working for Dreyer, you could say that it’s actually the law of averages. Accidents, crimes—they occur wherever you have more than two people.”

  Vandevanter could have been talking to himself. “You’re probably right. But, my God, the way things are piling up doesn’t look like the law of averages to me. First, there was Frohlich. That put all of us under a strain. God knows we’ve had front office squabbles before—but now they’re turning into battles for survival. Then, on top of everything else, the price of cocoa cracked this morning.”

  Fred seized on the only innocuous subject in Vandevanter’s discourse.

  “It’s got to be good for Dreyer, when the price of cocoa goes down, doesn’t it?”

  “Don’t you believe it!” Vandevanter shot back. “Every unexpected change in cocoa prices creates a lot of problems for us. Our man at the Cocoa Exchange has his hands so full today that he’s had to postpone a trip upstate.” Vandevanter sounded obscurely pleased. “And it’s made him mad as hell.”

  They had reached the Dreyer limousine. Here Vandevanter remembered to offer the Nagles a lift.

  “No thanks,” Fred lied without consulting Helen. “Our car’s around the corner.”

  Why didn’t you take him up, Fred?” she asked once Vandevanter had swept away. “Do you really prefer going back with Kanelos?”

  Fred had to think about his reply. “Kanelos may be a jerk, Helen. But right now, Vandevanter sounds like big trouble to me.”

  Chapter 10

  Market Waits for Amory Shaw

  Howard Vandevanter had a looming TV campaign and a collapsing cocoa market between Amory Shaw and himself. Gene Orcutt had no such protection. On the credit side of the ledger Shaw found his subordinate so distasteful that he rarely sought his company. But Orcutt would have had to be more than human to recognize this. Instead he was still pinning his faith on the deferential manner that had seen him through school, endeared him to his father-in-law, and caused the president of Dreyer to select him from a field of ten applicants.

  Accordingly, when three o’clock signaled the close of trading, he bustled out of his own cubicle to lie in wait. An outsider, entering from the hall, would have observed an industrious young man searching through a pile of reports on the receptionist’s desk. Although his jacket was off and his shirt sleeves rolled up, his collar was buttoned and his tie in place. Altogether he gave the impression of a tightly wrapped package with squared-off corners.

  Mrs. Macomber was not deceived. “He won’t be in a good mood,” she warned.

  Orcutt did not have to answer. The doorknob had already begun to turn. “The market’s still sliding, I see,” he sympathized as Shaw crossed the threshold.

  “It only knows how to do two things. It either goes up or it goes down.” Abruptly Shaw turned to the desk. “When Barnes calls, put him right through. Otherwise I don’t want to be disturbed.”

  Other men might have taken this as a hint, but not Gene Orcutt. He followed Shaw into the inner office.

  “Well?” barked his superior.

  “Mr. Vandevanter was in a couple of hours ago,” Orcutt began, before coming to a full stop.

  Shaw did nothing to help him. He lowered himself into the swivel chair and let the silence prolong itself. Finally it was more than Orcutt could bear.

  “He asked me a lot of questions about that last time Frohlich was here,” he blurted. “He wanted to know what Frohlich said and why he was mad.”

  Amory Shaw reserved his criticism of Howard Vandevanter for his equals. “It’s his company, he’s got a right to know what’s going on.”

  “But nothing’s going on.” Orcutt could hear his voice rising to a screech. He gulped and tried again. “I assured him that there wasn’t any quarrel. Dick Frohlich was simply in a hurry and a little irritable. But Mr. Vandevanter doesn’t pay attention to me. I thought if you told him . . .”

  “How can I tell him anything?” Shaw asked. “I wasn’t here.”

  “I didn’t mean you could tell him what happened,” Orcutt persisted, “but you could explain that we wouldn’t be talking to each other about our private accounts. Because somehow Mr. Vandevanter has gotten the idea that’s what it was all about.”

  Shaw had opened the humidor on his desk for the ritual cigar he allowed himself after the close of trading. Now he began to tap the cigar cutter against his fin
gernail, looking grimly amused.

  “I suppose I could tell him that. After all, you never discuss your account with anyone, do you?”

  Orcutt flushed. “I was given to understand that it was normal practice to have a private account.”

  “Oh, yes,” Shaw agreed. “So normal that it’s a common topic of conversation.”

  “I don’t approve of that kind of gossip.”

  Amory Shaw’s voice was like velvet. “Under certain circumstances, that is very understandable.”

  * * *

  “Honest to God,” Gene Orcutt said the moment he arrived home, “I don’t think I can stand much more of that old bastard.”

  Over the last six months his wife had learned to read between the lines.

  “What’s Mr. Shaw done now?” she asked, rushing forward with the cocktail shaker.

  Meticulously Gene poured equal amounts into two glasses. At the same time he decided to censor the remarks following his unguarded exclamation.

  “I think he’s using the murder of Dick Frohlich to get me in bad with the front office, Betty,” he said, when the moment for speech arrived.

  “Oh!” Betty’s dark eyes sparkled with indignation. “Just when everything was going so well.”

  Gene shook his head at the depravity of it all. “Of course, he’ll do anything to hang on.”

  “I suppose he hasn’t said anything about retiring?” Betty asked hopefully.

  “Ha!” Gene snorted derisively. “Catch him retiring! He wants to die with his boots on.”

  He had started a new train of thought in Betty’s mind. “My grandfather died at sixty-two,” she said reflectively.

  They both took a sip to celebrate this beautiful thought. But Gene Orcutt was not building castles in Spain.

  “He looks sound as a bell to me,” he said glumly.

  His wife sighed but then looked for the sunny side. “Well, you know, we always thought you’d have to spend two or three years as his assistant. I know it’s maddening the way he interferes with your work, but you’ll feel better after our vacation.”