by Ella Carey
“People with no imaginations don’t understand it,” she murmured.
“That’s a smart observation.” Edward twirled the stem of his half-full glass around in his fingers.
Rebecca seemed to be waiting for him to talk.
He took in a breath. “I’d hate to hear that your life is difficult and you need to escape, though,” he said.
She straightened, as if by instinct.
Edward didn’t want to appear as if he were coming on to her, although he had to admit that was exactly what he wanted to do. He sensed that the conversation would be over faster than she could flick her dark hair if he were not careful.
“You see,” he said, his voice still sounding intimate and he didn’t know why, “I’m railing against the world. I would hate to think of you in a similar state.”
“Why are you doing that?”
Edward gazed out over the room. And wondered if everybody in it felt as disconnected as he did. Were they all looking for some form of truth in what was becoming a more fragmented world than ever—families ripped apart by war, governments that thought they had the right to control people’s thoughts and minds? People who were terrified into following them? The Second World War had blown everything apart. And yet Edward’s family had not changed one bit. They clung to every tenet that they knew—the conformism of society, mixing with the right people, the tedious business of making connections—or his mother did. His father and his older brother had resorted to brandy in order to cope while everyone kept up a pretense that they were functional.
But how was an artist supposed to represent such a state of being? No wonder Albert Tucker and his circle were embracing the surreal. Was the imagination the only recourse for an artist, given all the confusion, all the tragic, appalling waste of the past six years?
“No, let’s talk about you,” he said to the girl in the red beret. “Tell me. When you draw, what happens?”
A frown passed across Rebecca’s features. “That’s easy. I feel like I’m no longer me. I can escape myself and everything around me. It’s as if I’m flying.”
“What’s wrong with your life?” he asked. And it was right then, at that moment, that it seemed he and Rebecca began talking in a private language that he had never spoken with anyone else.
She reached in her handbag and pulled out a cigarette. Edward lit it for her, and admired the sexy way in which she held it.
“My mother is very proper,” she said.
Edward nodded, willing her to go on.
“She is a dressmaker, in a boutique in the city. She’s terribly fashionable. Or thinks she is. But to me, it’s as if everything that she sees as important, just isn’t. If that makes sense.”
It made perfect sense to Edward. Why his family could not see what was important was a question whose answer had eluded him for years. The country’s most elite boarding school had been a foul regime of routine and bearing up from the age of seven to seventeen, and then there had been the war with its bogus fighting over what? Land, territory, power? None of it seemed to matter at all.
“I can relate to things not being . . . important,” he said.
Rebecca stood still for a moment, and he sensed that she was searching for something to say. But he didn’t want to push her. He wanted to make her feel comfortable.
A safer topic, then.
“Are you studying art?” he asked.
Rebecca drew on the cigarette, then sent smoke curling out. “Gallery school. I had to fight to go there . . .” She glanced up at him.
“Go on,” he said, his voice taking on another depth. Good. Perhaps she did want to talk.
“My mother was insisting I work in the shop.”
“Of course she was,” Edward said.
Rebecca looked up again, a razor-sharp expression cutting across her features for one split second.
Long enough.
“But in the end my uncle, my late father’s younger brother, insisted that I go to art school. I was told I had some sort of ‘talent’ when I was young. My uncle, admirably, stood up to my mother and provided the funds for me to go. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen her concede an argument in my life.”
“Well done to him,” Edward murmured. “And how is this art school?”
“The Gallery School?” Rebecca rolled her eyes. “Rows of students lined up under a tin roof. Meticulously copying sculptures. The idea of doing one’s own thing is anathema to the teachers. Honestly? It’s a waste of time and space.”
Edward had to stop the laugh that caught in his throat. The last thing he wanted was for Rebecca to feel he was treating her as a joke. But he couldn’t help himself. While he was more attracted to her than to anyone he had ever met in his entire life, he also found Rebecca’s insouciance amusing. He sensed that if she were free, everything would come together and she would lead an extraordinary life.
But for now, he chose his next sentence with care. “If your father was alive, do you think things might have been easier for you? I mean, in the way of getting on with your art?”
Something passed across Rebecca’s face, and he had to resist the urge to reach out and touch her cheek with his hand. It struck him again that secret depths belied the playfulness that she had shown when he first met her downstairs.
“Easier and harder in equal measures,” she said.
“When did he die?” Death had become so commonplace during the war. It had become normal to talk about the end of things during the last ghastly six years.
“Eight years ago,” she said. “He was an alcoholic.”
Edward took in a sharp breath. “Sorry.” He felt the muscles in his jaw hardening. “I’m intrigued as to what your own thing is in art . . .” And in life, he wanted to add.
Joy Hester appeared, bursting into their little circle with the handsome young poet Max Harris from earlier and Sunday and John Reed. Edward felt his senses wake up the moment he was introduced to them.
“Edward Russell,” Joy said, “we are not about rules here, but I do take exception to your monopolizing our darling Rebecca all night. And besides, I want you to meet Sunday and John Reed, and this is Max. Max Harris.”
“I do always say, ‘Let’s smash the rules and get away from them as fast as we can,’” Edward responded.
“My sort of person,” Max said. His dark eyes twinkled, and he handed Edward another glass of champagne.
“Max is a poet, and he edits our magazine, Angry Penguins, with John,” Joy said.
“We were just talking about the connection between rebellion and art,” Edward said. “Internal rebellion, against everything you have ever known, in a deep sense. Not always literal.”
“How serious you have become,” Rebecca murmured.
Edward caught her eye and smiled.
“Do you paint, Edward, like Rebecca?” Sunday asked.
It was extraordinary how conventional Sunday looked. Her hair was pulled back in a schoolgirl headband, and yet, clearly, she was anything but traditional. Her husband, John, stood next to her, a quiet presence.
“I attempt to write,” Edward said. “Poems.”
“Excellent,” Max said. “Even more encouraging.”
Max, like Joy, seemed good fun at a party, but Edward suspected that they were deadly serious about their approach to their respective art forms—not to mention life.
“It seems so obvious to us that art and poetry are intimately connected,” John Reed said. His tone was quiet and measured, but everyone in the group leaned in to hear what he had to say. “Along with music, theater, films . . . politics. Modernism can only find inspiration and expression where freedom is a way of life.”
Sunday Reed cleared her throat as if she were about to speak, but then she seemed to hesitate, almost as if she were digesting the conversation.
Edward had heard that she was a little hard of hearing.
Everyone waited.
“I am proud of Max and John’s work. Their focus is to uncover artistic
talent. Their endeavors have been courageous so far, and certainly not without controversy. What we are trying to do is establish a uniquely Australian expression in art. Max and John publish modern Australian poetry and writing in Angry Penguins alongside the work of modernist artists. We are about breaking down structure and getting to the heart of what is important in life and in art, and Angry Penguins is the vehicle for getting our ideas out into the world. But we all know how hard it is to have our efforts ridiculed; some remain convinced that the world has not been altered by two world wars and that people do not have the right to break free from the class into which they were born.” She seemed to hesitate, then looked Edward directly in the eye. After a while, she spoke clearly. “You see, I wanted to get away from my family and the strictures of my background. That was the main thing for me.”
Edward’s inward breath was sharp. Did Sunday know who he was? Did she know about his family? If so, he knew that she would relate to his struggles with them. Suddenly, he was overwhelmed with a sense of being at home with these people.
“The first time I met Sunday,” Joy said, speaking in a more intimate tone, “I asked her if she believed in equality of the classes. She told me, ‘I believe in love.’”
Yes, it was as simple as that. Why did his family have to make things so complicated? Edward stood there for a moment, quite overwhelmed by these people and their bravery.
Courage had revealed itself as one of the strongest of human qualities during the war. Now Edward sensed that had to continue in peace. His war hadn’t ended. The civil war that raged inside him was a result of his intense feelings of guilt about the fact that his family’s wealth and strict adherence to the rules of the upper classes repelled him. And yet, here were these two who had gotten away, who were living a life that was entirely suited to them. Regardless of their family. Was that courage, or selfishness, or being true to oneself? Edward stared across the crowded room. He didn’t know the answer yet, nor did he know exactly how he would choose to live his own life.
Joy kissed another guest goodbye, then turned back to John and Sunday. Apparently, they were urgently needed by someone else. Max shot off into the crowd, joining the antics of some other louder group, but Sunday leaned toward Edward and Rebecca and touched the girl on the arm for a brief second.
“I hope we meet again,” she said.
“Come on, Sun,” John said. And he led her off into the crowd.
“Well,” Rebecca said, “now you have met the famous Reeds. And after all that, I know absolutely nothing about you.”
Edward smiled, and he leaned in a little closer. The last thing he wanted to do was talk about himself.
CHAPTER FIVE
New York, 1987
Tess marched into the elegant reception area of Campbell and Black on Monday morning and greeted the staff as if she were the most confident thing since sliced bread. Alec Burgess’s interview in Floodlight Magazine should go ahead, and she, Tess, should be featured in that article right alongside him. Even if she was not of Caroline’s world, and she knew she was not, she, not James, would be the one to transition Floodlight Magazine readers and Alec’s fans to the literary world. Tess would be the bridge for Alec, not some new silver-spooned recruit.
Tess marched toward Leon’s office, remembering all those late-night phone calls from Alec, who was frantic that one of his characters wasn’t acting according to their game plan. She’d been beside him at every book launch and travelled with him on all of his book tours. The truth was, she’d done far more than any editor would normally do. And that had made Alec a success. Tess was his right-hand man. No one was dumping her.
“Leon is in the boardroom,” one of the receptionists chirped as Tess stalked toward her boss’s office.
“Fine,” Tess said, switching around and heading back toward the boardroom.
She stopped at the entrance to the room, its walls lined with English hunting prints that hung alongside plaques celebrating Campbell and Black’s many successes. If the room was meant to intimidate, it did an excellent job. She straightened her red pencil skirt. Leon looked up at her over his half-moon glasses.
“Morning, Tess.”
“Leon,” Tess said. The breath she took in was shuddery.
He indicated that she sit down.
“I have a proposal to make,” she said once she’d settled, reining in her old feelings of inferiority amid the sophisticated surroundings. The boardroom screamed “gentleman’s club,” and perhaps that was what this place was proving to be. She clasped her hands together.
“I should continue working with Alec, Leon,” she said.
Leon’s sigh was audible.
“There are three reasons why.”
“Tess . . .” Leon tented his hands on the table.
“Firstly, if Alec is going to change his style, then he could risk throwing his hard-won readers off. Having consistency with his editor is something that will ward off that risk—I know what his loyal readers respond to the best. We don’t want him to have a flop, something that will turn people away. Secondly, I am willing to get right behind this, to support this change in his career. I can nurture him just as I’ve always done. You know how committed I am to Alec’s success, and you also know that I know him.”
Leon was silent.
“My qualifications are the same as James’s. We both have master’s degrees in English lit. I can edit a literary novel. Thirdly, and I think this is important, I’ve secured an interview for James in Floodlight Magazine.” Tess went on, in spite of Leon’s snobbish sneer. “A whole spread—that’s national coverage in one of the biggest magazines in the country. But they want to include me in the interview. It’s a focus on our long-term creative partnership. I don’t think it’s in Alec’s best interests to change editorial direction. We need to be careful here, with all due respect to James.”
Tess shot a look up at her boss. He was looking straight at her. She did her best to hold his gaze.
“Tess, while you make a compelling argument, and while coverage in your sister’s magazine will no doubt be entertaining . . .” He adjusted his cuff links. “The decision is done. There’s nothing else to say.”
Tess clutched the sides of her chair.
“Leon,” she said, her voice dangerous and low. “This isn’t going to happen.”
She took in a breath. “I’ve put everything I have into that writer. What’s more, this has been done in the most underhand way. I wasn’t consulted. I was never given a voice. I’ve worked here five years. For three of those I’ve devoted my career to Alec Burgess. I’ve made this publishing house a lot of money. Now, I don’t want to talk about money,” she said, waving her hand around at the dark paneled walls. “I know we don’t do that here. But at the end of the day, you can’t afford to risk this. James might be literary, but I can make books sell. And I’m literary anyway,” she added. “As I said.” Then felt her cheeks redden.
Darn it. She glimpsed Leon’s lips twitch.
Tess leaned forward in her chair. A group of editors walked past the open door. Tess looked at them, colleagues who spent most of their time reading books. They were not confrontational people. She was the one here who had the business sense. Okay, some of them represented well-known authors. Some of them represented famous authors’ estates. But in general, stability was the key to success here. Campbell and Black was all about the established order. It wasn’t the sort of publishing house that rocked the boat. In some ways, Tess wished she could do so . . .
How was she supposed to appeal to Leon?
“James would hardly be a mistake,” Leon said. He sounded gentle now, fatherly.
Tess heaved out a breath. “Okay,” she said. “What about the personal angle? What if James and Alec don’t get along? You know that I can work with Alec. You know that I can bring out his best. We are built on rock-solid foundations as a publishing house, and you know Alec and I are solid. You know that I’ll deliver. I support him no matter what he writes. I�
�ll make sure that from a business perspective this works. I’ll ensure that he doesn’t mess up his career. And I’ll keep him focused. Alec and I are close.”
“Tess, I’m sorry, but it’s Alec who has requested an editor with more literary chops,” Leon said. He sounded exasperated now.
“Chops?” Tess said. “And a degree from Brown doesn’t give me ‘chops’?” She pushed back her seat. “It appears to me that we have a problem here. Two problems, in fact.”
“Listen . . .” Leon’s voice was a warning.
But something had kicked in. Tess knew instinctively that this was too important a fight not to have. She could not afford to have this sort of thing happen now. What if it were to become a pattern?
“Leon, first of all, James’s father is the literary critic of the New York Times.”
“I don’t think we should go down that path, Tess,” Leon warned.
“Secondly, he is male.” Her voice shook, but some force pushed her on. The more she thought about this, the more she knew what was happening was downright wrong. “Every last editor in this house is male, except for me.”
Leon took his glasses off and ran his hand over his immaculate blond hair.
“Oh, we have women out in the copy room, women answering the phone. Women making goddamn coffee and tea! I know we pride ourselves on the fact that we have equal numbers of women and men here, but look at who holds the power in this place. In fact, we have no men, not one, precisely, in the supporting roles that the women occupy. The only woman who has a senior role here . . . is me. We need to change that. Giving women better opportunities is crucial if this publishing house is to move toward the twenty-first century. What sort of message does dumping me as soon as an author becomes successful give to the public, or to other women who might be considering applying to work here?”
“Tess, it’s more a matter of giving our authors the right editors so that we can produce their best work.”
“Dumped like an old Kleenex,” Tess growled. “Just like that. What about loyalty, Leon?”
Leon merely raised a brow. “I think you should take some time out. Calm down. Think this through.”
