Frensic greeted their decision without overt enthusiasm.
'We can't be sure of Hutchmeyer yet,' he told Geoffrey over lunch at Wheelers. 'There must be no leaks to the press. If this gets out Hutchmeyer won't bite. I suggest we simply refer to it as Pause.'
'It's appropriate,' said Geoffrey. 'It will take at least three months to get the proofs done.'
'That will give us time to work on Hutchmeyer.'
'And you really think there's a chance he will buy?'
'Every chance,' said Frensic. 'Miss Futtle exercises enormous charms for him.'
'Extraordinary,' said Geoffrey with a shudder. 'Still, having read Pause there's obviously no accounting for tastes.'
'Sonia is also an excellent saleswoman,' said Frensic. 'She makes a point of asking for very large advances and that always impresses Americans. It shows we have faith in the book.'
'And this fellow Piper agrees to our ten per cent cut?'
Frensic nodded. He had spoken to Mr Cadwalladine. 'The author has left all the terms of the negotiations and sale entirely in my hands,' he said truthfully. And there the matter rested until Hutchmeyer flew into London with his entourage in the first week of February.
Chapter 3
It was said of Hutchmeyer that he was the most illiterate publisher in the world and that having started life as a fight promoter he had brought his pugilistic gifts to the book trade and had once gone eight rounds with Mailer. It was also said that he never read the books he bought and that the only words he could read were those on cheques and dollar bills. It was said that he owned half the Amazon forest and that when he looked at a tree all he could see was a dustjacket. A great many things were said about Hutchmeyer, most of them unpleasant, and, while each contained an element of truth, added together they amounted to so many inconsistencies that behind them Hutchmeyer could guard the secret of his success. That at least no one doubted. Hutchmeyer was immensely successful. A legend in his own lifetime, he haunted the insomniac thoughts of publishers who had turned down Love Story when it was going for a song, had spurned Frederick Forsyth and ignored Ian Fleming and now lay awake cursing their own stupidity. Hutchmeyer himself slept soundly. For a sick man, remarkably soundly. And Hutchmeyer was always sick. If Frensic's success lay in outeating and outdrinking his competitors, Hutchmeyer's was due to his hypochondria. When he hadn't an ulcer or gallstones, he was subject to some intestinal complaint that necessitated a regime of abstinence. Publishers and agents coming to his table found themselves obliged to plough their way through six courses, each richer and more alarmingly indigestible than the last, while Hutchmeyer toyed with a piece of boiled fish, a biscuit and a glass of mineral water. From these culinary encounters Hutchmeyer rose a thinner and richer man while his guests staggered home wondering what the hell had hit them. Nor were they allowed time to recover. Hutchmeyer's peripatetic schedule London today, New York tomorrow, Los Angeles the day after had a dual purpose. It provided him with an excuse to insist on speed and avoided prolonged negotiations, and it kept his sales staff on their toes. More than one contract had been signed by an author in the throes of so awful a hangover that he could hardly put pen to paper, let alone read the small print. And the small print in Hutchmeyer's contracts was exceedingly small. Understandably so, since it contained clauses that invalidated almost everything set out in bold type. To add to the hazards of doing business with Hutchmeyer, most of them legal, there was his manner. Hutchmeyer was gross, partly by nature and partly as a reaction to the literary aestheticism he was exposed to. It was one of the qualities he appreciated about Sonia Futtle. No one had ever called her aesthetic.
'You're like a daughter to me,' he said hugging her when she arrived at his suite in the Hilton. 'What's my baby got for me this time?'
'One humdinger,' said Sonia disengaging herself and climbing on to the bicycle exerciser that
