Publish and Be Murdered

by Ruth Dudley Edwards

  ‘You’ve found an idealistic politician? Come now, Rach, are you losing your marbles?’

  ‘They’re not all the same,’ she said stiffly, then looked at her watch. ‘God. It’s eight o’clock already. Is there anything to eat?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Amiss smugly. ‘One advantage of this job is that pretty well everyone buggers off early so I can do shopping. Come on into the kitchen, have a gin and tonic and I’ll put on the steak.’

  ***

  ‘It’s incredible,’ Rachel said later, as he poured out the last of the wine. ‘Lord whatshisname must be mad to have allowed it to go on like that. How could he?’

  ‘He’s no more reason than anyone else to realize how time has moved on. Now I am rather more in touch with the modern world than Lord Papworth, and I grasped these guys were throwbacks, but it wasn’t actually until I settled down and read and skimmed a few newspaper histories that I realized to what extent The Wrangler was out of its time.’

  ‘But I thought you’d already read its history.’

  ‘The Wrangler history was written by the sort of person who believes anyone to do with administration is below stairs and beneath contempt; it concentrated wholly on editorial. You wouldn’t have known that the paper couldn’t have come out without the assistance of printers, distributors, advertisers or anyone else. As Lambie Crump observed to me more than once: “The management people are a race apart.” And that editorial cast of mind explains why they’ve been left quietly to rot for decades, and to preserve—as if in aspic—most of the methods of the nineteen thirties.’

  He leaned back in his chair. ‘Take Scudmore, for instance. He learned his craft at the feet of one of the greatest advertising canvassers of the nineteen thirties, who picked up advertisements in the manner of the time by spending hours in City pubs buying drinks for those who bought space in which to publish their company results.

  ‘He later graduated to chatting up advertising agencies as they blossomed, and taking the odd mate to dinner. But these days there’s much more to this job than bonhomie. You have to be able to answer the questions that all these thrusting young advertising executives ask about the age profile and class breakdown of the readership. That requires scientific questionnaires and all sorts of balls-aching marketing techniques which—needless to say—have never been tried out on Wrangler subscribers. So Scudmore gets ads only for old times’ sake, or because some enterprising person actually beats on the door begging to be allowed to insert an ad—for port or cashmere scarves or handmade shoes—that might be expected to appeal to fogeys.

  ‘It was really sad on Monday with poor old Scudmore. He took me to a wine bar and explained proudly it was the haunt of the Perkins Telford and AJD Advertising Agency. But only one person spoke to him. The place was entirely full of people sitting around drinking designer water and stabbing at the odd leaf of arugula.

  ‘Such people look at Scudmore and they see a boozy old remnant of the bad old days when people tottered back to work slightly pissed, making decisions that were based on friendship and sentiment rather than greed. These guys don’t drink any more: cocaine is in, alcohol is out and with it people like Scudmore. My job—if you’ll forgive me sounding like one of those prats—is to ensure that The Wrangler doesn’t go the same way.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound as if it deserves to survive,’ she said. ‘If it wasn’t that you need the job and we need the income, I’d probably hope you fail.’

  Amiss felt suddenly depressed.

  Chapter Seven

  It was five o’clock on Thursday evening, The Wrangler had gone to press and Amiss was bored. He decided to investigate Henry Potbury, who welcomed him with a big smile.

  ‘Come in, my dear chap. Sit yourself down and let us have a tincture. Would you be so kind as to fetch the bottle from that cupboard beside you?’

  Amiss opened the doors and looked with respect at the array of bottles within. He reckoned there must have been a couple of dozen, including, at first glance, gin, sherry, vodka, port and several kinds of whisky. ‘Which bottle would you like?’

  ‘Would Scotch suit you?’

  ‘Admirably,’ said Amiss, as he passed the bottle across the desk. ‘But I’ll have just a small one, Mr Potbury.’

  ‘Henry, please. And forgive me, but I don’t know your name. Or even, come to think of it, who you are.’

  ‘Robert Amiss. I’ve been brought in as manager. You might have seen me at the Monday meeting.’

  ‘Of course, of course. I do apologize. I fear that age, drink and New Labour have taken their toll.’ Potbury bellowed with laughter, half filled two tumblers and handed one to Amiss, who poured water to the top of the glass and sipped the mixture gingerly.

  ‘Of course, I remember your face from the Monday meeting, but we weren’t introduced properly. So welcome to The Wrangler and all that.’ He waved his glass jovially. ‘What exactly are you here to do?’

  Amiss spared him the knowledge that he had been too pissed on the previous Friday to remember their first meeting and instead went patiently through his patter.

  ‘Can I be of any help? I fear I know little of the other side of things here. All I do is churn out words.’

  ‘You could tell me something of the ethos of the paper,’ said Amiss artlessly. ‘Like our relations with the government, for instance. Are we just implacably opposed because they’re Labour?’

  ‘No, no, dear boy. We always hated Labour—as, of course, we hated socialists in general—but we hate New Labour even more.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Because it’s like having Gladstone back.’ Potbury’s great eyebrows moved to meet each other, giving to his face a look of deep dejection. ‘Sanctimonious, high-minded bullshit, inimical to everything that makes life worth living. It’s going to be the most depressing government we’ve had for a hundred and ten years.’

  ‘Wasn’t the post-war Labour government a bit like that? And come on, Henry, surely Mrs Thatcher was as high-minded and censorious as they come.’

  ‘It’s different now, my boy. Of course Old Labour could be priggish; I admit that under Maggie there was precious little sense of joie de vivre; and when it came to sanctimoniousness the Liberals always used to win hands down. But New Labour combine all the worst of all of them. They sit there in their fastnesses in Hampstead and Islington drizzling their extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar over their radiccio, planning to meet up in Tuscany during the summer and instructing all the rest of us how to behave.’

  ‘Not too different from Thatcher when it comes to core values, though?’

  ‘Oh yes, I grant you that. She was big on duty and responsibility and industriousness too. But she had been brought up to these values and believed them. This crew have adopted them as election-winning rhetoric to cover the hollowness of their centre. And what’s more, the old girl was a lot more tolerant than this lot. Always forgave the womanizers, the drunks and didn’t grudge her husband his gin.’ He drained his glass. ‘For heaven’s sake, Maggie didn’t marry a puritan. All these New Labour buggers marry mirror images of themselves. And it’s almost required of them that they mix only with their own kind. We’ve got the narrowest ruling elite we’ve ever had.’

  ‘But they’re quite an efficient government in many ways, Henry.’

  ‘Efficient? I don’t care about efficiency. Hitler was efficient. What I want is a government that leaves us alone.’

  ‘Surely…’ interjected Amiss.

  Potbury raised a fat hand. ‘I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say that under Maggie the nanny state extended its grip, but I would say to you the difference between her and Tony Blair is that she didn’t want it to. She was trapped by forces like the EU which even she could not control, yet she truly wanted to roll back the frontiers of the state. God help us, if we hadn’t had her, things would h
ave been infinitely worse.’

  He gazed at Amiss indignantly. ‘Who are these buggers, anyway? And what have any of them ever done? They’re all career politicians. Except of course the countless lawyers that infest their ranks.’ He paused for effect and then said with deliberation. ‘There is no lower form of life.’

  ‘Henry, what have you ever done other than be a journalist?’

  ‘Ah ha, a fair point, my boy, a fair point. I have never been anything other than a hack. However, I will plead in mitigation that I’ve never claimed that my calling is a glorious one and I have never condemned the sins of others—only their lack of intellectual rigour.’

  ‘And sanctimoniousness,’ said Amiss mildly.

  ‘Oh, of course I have to condemn the puritan sins.’ Potbury began to get agitated. ‘Because puritan sins are by definition totalitarian. Puritans don’t understand the concept of “live and let live”. They’re meddlers, all of them. Whereas all we want is to be left alone to go to hell in our own way.’

  ***

  An hour later, after the conclusion of the tirade against liberalism that had followed the diatribe against puritanism, Amiss decided to tear himself away. As he stood up, Potbury, by now in high good humour, chuckled. ‘Whatever you do, don’t miss next Monday’s meeting.’

  Amiss sat down again.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Winterton’s back.’

  ‘The assistant editor? What’s so significant about that?’

  ‘He and Willie loathe each other.’

  ‘But why then did Willie give him the job?’

  ‘He was his protégé initially. Fetch another bottle, will you?’

  Amiss did so guiltily. ‘Here you are, Henry. But don’t pour me any until I’ve checked at home. Hang on one minute. Don’t lose your thread.’

  Having learned from his answering service to his mingled relief and regret that Rachel was working late, he accepted another whisky. ‘OK, Henry. Tell me all about it.’

  ‘It is not unamusing, really.’ Potbury snorted. ‘On Willie’s last trip to the States he came back raving about this brilliant young man whom he just had to have to liven up the political coverage. He would pay for himself as he’d be able to write so much on American as well as domestic politics that we could cut down on the freelancers.

  ‘Dwight Winterton was a paragon, and a really useful paragon at that. He was one of those hybrids, half English and half American, brought up in the States but with frequent visits to Europe, went to Harvard and was then a Rhodes scholar at Oxford. Hugely well informed about politics and history. Right little prodigy, in fact. And nice, with it. I think Willie saw him as someone who could succeed me when I fall down the stairs or get cirrhosis of the liver or come to some other discreditable end.’ He laughed.

  ‘So?’

  ‘It’s been a disaster.’

  ‘Why. Is he not as bright as Willie thought?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He’s hugely bright. Mad, of course, like most young right-wingers, wanting to stuff children back up chimneys, start a preemptive war against Germany, and take back India with ten battalions. All that sort of thing. But that’s all right. He’s young. He’ll settle.’

  ‘So are their differences political?’

  ‘No. It’s just that they hate each other.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They’re a bit like a couple who had a one-night stand, flew to Las Vegas the following day to get married and found two days later not only that they were incompatible in their habits but that they hated each other’s values, and what’s more, he just wanted her for sex and she just wanted him for money.’

  ‘That’s an arrangement that I understood quite often worked—for short periods anyway.’

  ‘Not as short as this one,’ said Henry with a snort. ‘Dwight Winterton arrived to a hero’s welcome and within a fortnight they were fighting like cat and dog at the Monday meeting.

  ‘Essentially, Dwight quickly discovered that Willie is a self-indulgent poseur and Willie discovered that Winterton despised him and would like his job. And if there is one kind of person Willie can’t stand, it’s someone bright who wants to be editor of The Wrangler.’

  He paused and contemplated what was left in his glass. ‘It’s compounded by the fact that Dwight has principles and Willie has none, and because Willie, though he’s lazy, is pernickety, and Dwight, though he’s industrious, is slapdash. So Willie has countless opportunities to niggle and patronize and worst of all rewrite, which Dwight absolutely hates.

  ‘And then Willie is driven mad by Dwight’s habit of going AWOL because he’s decided to go off and see what Yorkshire or Northern Ireland are like. Willie resents this because he rightly fears that Dwight is building up a network and is growing in authority, but he can’t stop him because Dwight doesn’t even claim expenses. He’s got private money. So since Dwight gets the work done, Willie has no ground on which to fight.’

  ‘Can’t Willie just fire him?’

  ‘Dwight might sue. He is American, after all. And I doubt if Willie would have the trustees on his side if it came to a showdown. To do my colleagues justice…’

  ‘Your colleagues?’

  ‘Yes. Didn’t you know? I’m a trustee. It’s one of the reasons Willie puts up with me. The other two are a couple of pompous old Establishment bores, but they do believe in fair play and though they’re often taken in by Willie, he knows he’d have a lot of explaining to do if he sacked a brilliant and prolific journalist. And of course, knowing this, Dwight goes ever more his own way and grins as Willie squirms. Willie is left with petulance as almost his only weapon.’

  Amiss began to feel rather gloomy. ‘Are you telling me that Willie’s no good?’

  ‘Willie could have been good, but he chose otherwise. Essentially, early on he gave up on intellectual rigour and integrity. He can write elegantly, I grant you, and his mind is at least half furnished. But when it comes to the crunch, duchesses and cabinet ministers will always take precedence over truth. Hence The Wrangler’s line on New Labour: it attacks because it has to, but as far as Willie can fix it, attacks in ways that do not wound.’

  ‘But I’ve seen some pretty ferocious criticism in recent months, Henry.’

  ‘Ah yes, but never by Willie. Willie can always flutter his hands at the Downing Street would-be press censors and tell them that I cannot be controlled, so it’s not his fault. But if you look at anything he writes you’ll find that more and more those he criticizes in New Labour are those our new rulers are happy to see thrown to the wolves. And as far as possible, depending what his colleagues will put up with, he tries to make the anonymous leaders as inoffensive as possible.

  ‘In his heart and in his soul Willie Lambie Crump is an apparatchik who would love to drag this journal towards total support of the government of Anthony Blair. However, I will continue to make this as difficult for him as I can.’

  ‘Is it just you against him?’

  ‘Phoebe follows the party line because she has little choice. She would not be listened to, even though she has one of the best brains we’ve had since the war. Amaryllis Vercoe is bright and thinks like us, but she’s rather shallow, and anyway, has little clout with Willie. Clement Webber shouts a lot and then goes back to Oxford. So apart from me, the challenge is coming from Dwight, who is everything Willie is not: intellectually curious, vigorous, original and energetic. Dwight will make imaginative and intellectual leaps into the unknown, yet he retains an instinctive understanding of the essence of the Burkean conservative. Willie skims along the surface: Dwight dives underneath it.’

  He poured another slug of whisky, and ignoring Amiss’s shake of the head, poured some into his glass too. ‘If things get worse, I’ll have to try and topple Willie: we’ve got to get back to the glory days when The Wrangler thrilled with iconoclasm and intellect
ual daring.’

  ‘You’re actually trying to bring about a change of editor?’

  ‘It’s too early yet, but I’m considering future steps.’

  Amiss cursed inwardly when the phone rang.

  ‘What? Now? Already?’ Potbury looked at his watch. ‘My dear, I do apologize. You’re absolutely right. I was caught in an agreeable conversation and quite forgot where I was. I shall see you as soon as I can get to you.’ Downing his whisky, he lumbered to his feet. ‘Forgive me…I’m sorry, but I’ve forgotten your name again.’

  ‘Robert.’

  ‘Forgive me, Robert. I’m delighted you’ve joined us and I look forward to many more conversations in this room and elsewhere. Drop in any time and if I’m asleep wake me up.’ He grinned, and stopping only to pick up the jacket that lay in the corner, left with more speed than Amiss would have given him credit for.

  ***

  Petulance was much in evidence at the meeting next Monday. Gone was the harmony of the previous week, when the emperor Lambie Crump had held forth when he wished and enjoyed the intellectual ping-pong played by the others when he wanted a rest. The offender was the weedy, bespectacled, impish Dwight Winterton, who gazed innocently at Lambie Crump as he artlessly explained that the sweeping statement he had just made about the French economy had no basis in reality and was totally contradicted by what he, Winterton, had picked up on his visit the previous week to his French stockbroking chum.

  Later, Winterton broke into an excited account of his visit to a Welsh eisteddfod, described how he had been made an honorary Druid, and produced an article he had written at the weekend. Lambie Crump clearly ached to tell him to stuff it, but decorum and self-protection had to prevail. Winterton’s account had been so amusing that no one in his right mind could think of denying it to Wrangler readers. To Amiss, who was getting sicker of Lambie Crump’s self-regarding posturings by the day, it was as much as he could do to keep a straight face.