"There's an orgy in your office: everyone has taken off their clothes and is engaging in wild sex. What, as their manager, are you going to do about it?"
Join in? was her first thought. Her second was that this was not the sort of question he should be asking her.
As she had travelled down to Southdon on the train that morning - an unusual experience in itself, and a contrast to her normal sweaty battles on the underground hell of London's Northern Line - she had wondered what form her interview would take. It was the first time she had been invited 'to come in for a chat' by a potential employer, rather than apply for an advertised job along with everyone else. Although some of the usual adrenaline was missing as a result, she felt pleasantly in control of the situation for a change - instead of offering herself as some kind of sacrificial victim to her interviewer and potential employer.
In a sense this made the whole process of being interviewed one of seduction. She presumed that potentially he wanted her to work for him, and so was engaging in this curious courtship ritual, trying to find out whether he did in fact want her, and if he did, whether he could persuade her she wanted him. Nonetheless, as in other courtship rituals, there was a certain sense of limits, things you just didn't do, and she felt that his last question had overstepped the mark.
Still, she was inclined to play along, if only because she could view the whole thing as much more of a game than usual.
"Well," she replied, "to answer your implicit question of to what extent I believe in letting people relax in the office, I'm a great believer in judging people by the work they do, not by how they do it. I also think that if people work hard they deserve to play hard."
She certainly worked hard on Employment Magazine, her current title, but she was not so sure about playing hard. She had so little time for that as editor of a title with limited staff and limitless ambitions for it. Which was why she had been attracted as well as flattered when Martin had phoned her up out of the blue and asked whether she would like to come in for this 'informal' chat. She knew Wright's, Martin's employers, as everyone did: one of the biggest international players in the publishing market. It had a good reputation, an impressive portfolio of titles, and a good track record of investing in magazines. If the 'right' job came along, so to speak, she could imagine herself moving there. And she needed a new challenge: Employment Magazine was running nicely now, thanks to her hard work, but it was never going to change the world. She wanted something bigger, and she wondered whether this might be it.
However, if the morning so far was anything to go by, she was not meant for this new job - even though it was Independence Day in the US. First her alarm clock had not gone off, so when she did wake up - luckily not so late - she found herself rushing to get washed, dressed and ready to leave, which she disliked. Then when she had taken the tube south, rather than north, down to a British Rail station, and caught her train by a narrower margin than she liked, she found herself sitting in the middle of nowhere while the train and its driver meditated on whether to proceed. She began to feel the minutes ticking by: she had a connection to make which meant passing from a station in the east of some anonymous suburban centre to one in the west. When the train finally moved, it was ten minutes late, and she would have to take a taxi across town to make her connection.
Inevitably she got caught in traffic, and so had to endure the taxi driver's chatter as her mind became increasingly focussed on the remaining minutes and seconds before the train was due to leave. The prospect of being late, even for an informal chat rather than a formal interview, was unthinkable for her. As a journalist, punctuality, whether of her words or herself, was central to her discipline. Fortunately her train was waiting for her at the second station when she arrived, but only because it too was mysteriously delayed. As a result, she finally arrived at Southdon some fifteen minutes after she had intended. Wright's was immediately next to the station, so her final sprint was relatively short, but the end result was that she had no time to carry out the usual preliminary research she liked to engage in - reading notice boards, company magazines in the foyer, and any background information there might be.
Instead she was ushered straight up to Martin's office on the tenth floor of one of the two tall buildings that made up Wright's. The entrance hall was an impressive if deeply inefficient glass pyramid - cold in winter and like a greenhouse in summer - that had been put there between the two gleaming towers to form a huge 'W' as you approached. A nice conceit, she thought, but typically one whose consequences the poor employees would have to live with. She made a mental note to write an article about this kind of vanity architecture sometime.
As she was led to Martin's office by his secretary, Cristina, a tiny bird-like thing with delicate bones and a gentle smile, she passed an office with its door open. She heard one of those odd snatches of conversation that offices give rise to:
"It's about the carpet, you see," a man was saying rather forcefully into a phone. Before she had to think any more about this, she found herself being greeted by a man in his late 30s, smartly dressed in an expensive suit, and a gaudy tie, his hair beginning to recede and paunch beginning to swell.
"Hello, you must be Bernice. Martin Davis. Pleased to meet you." And he really was. Not just because she represented an initiative he was taking, a small publisher's act such as he was paid to carry out; not just because he genuinely admired her journalist skills; but also because on meeting her now for the first time, putting a face to the name he had seen so many times in print, he was pleasantly surprised - rapturous - to discover that Ms Bernice Stuart, current Editor of Employment Magazine, turned out to be very tall, very slim, blonde and stunningly attractive in her dark-blue and form-hugging jacket and skirt. "Please, make yourself comfortable," he said as he ushered her in to his office. Please, please, please, a rather un-publisher-like part of him echoed internally. She had hoped to do precisely that before coming up to meet him, and now began to regret that second cup of coffee she had gulped down before leaving.
Martin's office was typical of publishing management. From countless journalistic assignments where she had met similar middle managers, she quickly took in the basic elements. As well as his own desk, covered with papers, and with a computer perched on one corner, she noted the separate circular table with comfortable armchairs - a sign of some prestige in a strictly hierarchical company as she imagined Wright's to be - and even a vase of fresh flowers on it, surely evidence of Cristina's touch. One wall was covered with a magazine rack that was full of various titles, including several copies of a magazine which seemed to be called Better Rape. She was so taken aback by this, that she barely took in what she later realised was the only really personal element in the room, a framed picture of a city built on a lake, rather like Venice, but looking nothing like it in detail. She would come to know this map and its significance well.
"Right then," began Martin, as they settled down round the table - plus points for not using confrontational desks, thought Bernice, using her professional knowledge of the dynamics of such situations. "Thanks a lot for coming along - oh, sorry, can I get you a coffee?" - by which he meant could Cristina get one, she thought - "No, thanks very much, I had one before coming out" - unfortunately, she added mentally, conscious of the growing pressure.
"Right," continued Martin, obviously a little unsure of how to deal with the situation. Job interviews have a simple structure, and a simple balance of power. This was more complicated. "Where to begin. Well, here at Wright's - I assume you know something about Wright's?" - yes, he could assume that, her nod and smile indicated - we're always on the lookout for new talent" - it made him sound like an A&R man trying to discover the next Madonna - "and so I've been following your work with interest."
She was genuinely flattered, believing him perhaps a little too readily. One of the journalist's worst fears is that nobody reads what he or she writes apart from the production department and his or her mother. To meet somebody who reads your articles is always a simple and real pleasure.
And there was more. "I've been really impressed: your pieces manage to make a difficult subject clear, interesting even - and God knows that's not always easy with employment matters which can be as dull as ditchwater," he said. A little strong, she thought, but thanks for the compliment anyway. "And there's a good balance to the book as a whole". The book was not some thick volume she had written, but Employment Magazine: one of the curiosities of the publishing world is that people tend to refer to magazines as 'books'.
"What I was wondering was whether you are fully engaged at the moment" - surely a rather some personal question? - "with the magazine that is. I mean, are you looking to move on at all? Forgive me being so blunt, but if you're not absolutely then perhaps we had better stop here..." A little brutal, she thought, but full marks for getting on with it - something she was increasingly concerned about at that moment.
"Well, I am quite happy where I am at the moment " - and God bless the English language for the wonderful ambiguity of the word 'quite', she thought - "but I won't disguise that fact that I am ambitious, that I would want to move on if the right job with the right company came along..." She was rather pleased with the reply, in that it was scrupulously fair to her current employers, implicitly flattering to her potential employers, and managed to convey neatly her own sense of drive - one of the vital elements that needs to be prominently displayed as a kind of mating plumage in all interviews.
"OK, then," said Martin, clearly encouraged by this reply, as he was meant to be, "Let's take that as read for the moment, and just put details aside" - let's not, thought Bernice, but recognised that he was driving things at the moment - "and let's talk about you for a bit." She could feel the mood shift slightly, as he started talking to her about her family background (born 29 years ago, mother and father still alive, younger sister and brother, etc.), university education (English at York), her career so far (editorial assistant and reporter jobs on various small professional magazines before moving on to Employment Magazine as Assistant, then Deputy, then Editor). But to a certain extent this was all a formality: simply by virtue of the fact that he had asked her to come in she knew that he was trying to confirm an opinion rather than judge her. Nonetheless she recognised that almost as a matter of habit he wanted to exercise the little power he had over her, and so would proceed to ask her a series of vaguely pointless questions that would supposedly help him gain a better understanding of her.
There were the usual ones about personal strengths and weaknesses - the standard trick question of "What is your greatest failing" to which the standard answer is "I must confess that I tend to get carried away by my enthusiasm at work", pressing the enthusiasm button again and again - or vaguer ones about desire: "What exactly do want from this job/this company/your career/your life?" that were harder to answer truthfully, especially nowadays when she was far less certain what she really wanted. But in some ways that made interviews like this all the more valuable, forcing her to articulate some kind of answer. The interview as therapy: another article there she thought, filing the insight for later use.
And then there were the downright naughty questions - like his about orgies in the office: the only kind of orgies she knew about were orgies of work, and they were only too common. Fortunately he didn't go further than this kind of abuse of his power, asking about her personal life, whether she had a 'steady' boyfriend (are you likely to get married and have babies? being the subtext, and therefore quite out of order). Martin too knew that such questions would have been quite unacceptable, though he was tempted to ask them - but for purely personal and unprofessional reasons. He stopped himself, but was vaguely worried by the thought that having met Bernice 'in the flesh', so to speak, he was now no longer judging things from a purely object viewpoint. This worried him.
"Right then," he said, "let's get back to specifics" - at last, thought Bernice, who was beginning to suffer seriously from her overindulgence in liquids earlier that morning. She was acutely aware that the discussion was building to a climax: the thought of having to break its rhythm and rush out to the Ladies was too embarrassing to contemplate.
"What we're talking about here is a launch - we're looking for an editor, and as I've indicated, yours is a name that has come up in this context." Aha, she thought, this is more like it. A launch is something that every editor dreams about, the chance to create something from scratch, to put your own mark on it; the thought struck her that perhaps it was just a kind of surrogate maternity, and added the thought to her already extensive list of worrying indications that she was becoming broody.
"Could you tell me a little more about it please?" she asked, since launches in the abstract were all very well, but if she were to be offered to the editorship of a successor launch to Better Rape - Best Rape? - she was going to be less interested.
"Right, well, it's something I've been working on for some time, actually," - 'here we go', she thought, 'his entire life history', but she was being unfair. It was true that this launch represented something important to Martin. After all, launches represent a kind of public demonstration of potency for publishers. The first one was an initiation rite into a priesthood, those that had 'done' it. Martin had not yet 'done' it, and felt the poorer for it. It certainly affected his standing within the company, and blocked his further rise in the hierarchy.
"It's something quite new - well for me, anyway. As you can see from my current portfolio..." - he gestured broadly towards the magazine racks - "I have a wide range of titles." He hoped that he might leave it at that, but feared that she was too good a journalist to let him off so easily. "Sorry, which ones exactly do you have?" she asked with a faint smile that was at once impertinent - she had guessed that he was unwilling to go into details - and yet also enchanting, as she vaguely knew, though would not have dreamt of trying to be 'winning' in this way had she suspected the effect it was indeed beginning to have on Martin.
"Well, there's Better Rape an agricultural title you understand," he said all in one breath as if keen to clear up any possible misunderstanding about this magazine, " there's Rubber International - very interesting that, I mean from the global chemical industry point of view - and there's Dog Lover's Weekly, more of a consumer title - if you see what I mean."
Yes, it was Martin's turn for what the other publishers at Wright's jocularly called the 'top shelf' portfolio: a series of titles, each of them quite serious in their own way, and yet which when put together became just seriously unmentionable. The company believed in rotating its magazines among its publishers every two years or so, and unfortunately it was Martin's slot currently. However, since the average number of titles for a publisher was four, this did at least mean that he had a little time free to plan his launch.
"And your new one?" asked Bernice, fearing the worst - Practical Sewage or something similar.
"The new one is - " but before he could continue, the phone rang. This disconcerted him, since he knew that one of the first rules about giving interviews (or even chats) was not to allow yourself to be interrupted. And in fact he had asked Cristina to block his calls. He was most disappointed.
"Sorry about this, not at all right," he said, and picked up the receiver rather angrily.
"Yes?"
"Hay-ley hee-yer."
Bernice was surprised to see him shrink visibly when he heard the voice at the other end, as if a snake were about to emerge from the earpiece. Filling the job of principal telephone operator, Hayley was the voice of Wright's, and was infamous for her undulcet tones.
"Look, Hayley, I said no calls this morning, didn't Cristina give you the message? What? Well, that's not my problem. No calls, right? Thank you." He put the phone down. "Sorry about that, breakdown in communications. Where were we? Are yes, the launch. - "
And before another word left his lips there was most tremendous wail that seemed to rend the whole building. Was this Hayley's revenge? Bernice wondered, or just the start of World War III?
"O God help us," muttered Martin. "Sorry about this, it must be some damn fire drill. Cristina -" he shouted through the connecting door to his secretary. Cristina appeared, all smiles and birdlike movement.
"Yes, Martin?"
"Remind me, is the fire alarm going off today?" This seemed a highly rhetorical question given that he could barely be heard above the din of the screeching.
"No, I don't think so. I think you had better evacuate, it might be dangerous." She looked genuinely concerned.
"Righty-ho," said Martin in his best Spitfire pilot manner. "Afraid that means a wander down the corridor to our scenic car park," he said to Bernice.
As they went out into the corridor they found themselves part of a stream of people moving towards the stairs. One or two figure with armbands stood directing people unnecessarily, their moment of glory come when they could order their erstwhile bosses around with impunity. It was strange to see this kind of coordinated movement; the normal pattern within an office is of groups of people stationary within rooms. Seeing them all walking briskly like this reminded you that business was made of living people, not just abstract headcounts. Bernice filed all this for further use.
The scene in the car park was in some ways even more striking. Overshadowed by the huge glass 'W' formed by the entrance hall and two tower blocks - the latter known familiarly to the publishers as 'Profit' and 'Loss', with the managers in the former and workers in the latter - literally thousands of people were now gathered in a huge amorphous group as they stood in the glorious early July sunshine. Although there was no smoke visible, a couple of fire engines had arrived clangorously, and there were now smartly-dressed firemen marching around, adding another layer of command to the situation as they took charge.
As Bernice and Martin were standing there, admiring all this buzz of activity, they heard a voice behind.
"Excuse, I'm a journalist with the Southdon Chronicle, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?" Bernice turned to see a skinny youth, thin and a sallow, brandishing a reporter's notebook at Martin. She half expected the lad to have a card saying 'Press' stuck in a hat. "Fire away," said Martin benevolently, glancing with a conspiratorial smile at Bernice.
"Can you tell me what caused this evacuation?" No, he could not.
"Would you like to speculate on the possible causes for this evacuation?" the youth continued. No, Martin would rather not.
"What about your feelings during the evacuation - would it be true to say that you are in a state of shock?" Yes, Martin said, I am pretty shocked at the moment - glancing again at Bernice.
"That's all, thank you very much" the boy said suddenly, as if he had found his scoop and had to hurry off to the printers before it got cold or he was beaten to it by a rival. Martin and Bernice looked at each other.
"How very curious," Martin said.
"I don't think you will be wanting him on you new launch," Bernice added. "Speaking of which..." Bernice was beginning to get tired of this game now.
"Right, yes. Well, it's going to be monthly, glossy, lots of colour, hot news, big features, plenty of opportunity for innovation, new area of market, not really been tapped before..."
"Yes, called..?
"Called Actuaries Update." He looked at her expectantly; her heart sank; her face fell. Actuaries Update: was this the title she was waiting for, the one that would change the world? It seemed unlikely.
She felt sorry for Martin when she saw his face fall in response to hers, and suddenly had a vision of him as a lonely child who has been told that nobody wants to play with him. Hell, he was human after all, she thought, let's try a bit harder so that at least his landing is softer.
"OK. Well, tell me a little more about it," she said with as much interest as he could muster. He talked her through the market, the figures, the readership, the potential. By now the all-clear had been given by the fire brigade to the fire marshals who now proceeded to herd everyone back into their glass-walled pens. A false alarm it seemed. Rather like the job she had been hoping for.
When they got back to Martin's office, she knew that she would say no, that she would have to disappoint him. It was a basic tenet of her journalistic faith that she would only ever work on magazines that interested her and that provided a genuine challenge. Employment Magazine had been valuable experience for her, and she could at least console herself with the thought that employment was at least central to most people's lives especially in these heady days of economic boom. As far the actuaries, well....
"I can see that you are not convinced, Bernice." Dammit, he thought to himself - don't go. "Can I ask what the problem is?" Although a journalist by training, as a publisher he had seen enough salespeople in action to have learnt a few of their techniques, like the objection handling he was trying now.
"It's, well, just not me. Sorry that I can't be more specific" - the perfect way to counter such techniques, though she did it unconsciously rather than otherwise - "I think it's important for journalists to be committed to their titles" - as a kind of mental asylum, perhaps? she thought flippantly.
Martin was disappointed, doubly so. He really wanted her to work for him, though he feared that it was for the wrong reasons in part. And yet in his heart of hearts he could not blame her. He had to recognise that writing about actuaries was not the most exciting of prospects. But he felt duty-bound to try once more.
"There a lot of hidden benefits to working at Wright's. For example - ." But just as he was about to launch into a heavy sell of the company, the phone range again. Annoyed that he had lost his momentum, and incensed that his repeated requests - no, commands - not to be interrupted were being taken so lightly, he grabbed the receiver and began shouting down it.
"Look, you waste of space, I bloody well told you I absolutely oh, sorry, hello Charles, how are you, no of course not, not inconvenient at all..." Charles was Martin's boss, the divisional Managing Director, and only a one level below God himself, the Chief Executive. Charles was a company man, a fact that seemed to have been predestined by his name, which was in fact Charles Company. Martin had a lot of respect for Charles, even though those lower down the chain of command mistakenly found him superficial and remote. In fact his incomprehensible corporate-speak masked a profound understanding of how big companies work, and made him extremely effective as a senior manager. As such, he was very concerned about the welfare of his staff, though admittedly from a slightly theoretical rather than personal level.
Since Bernice was quite relieved by this distraction, she could sit back and enjoy the strange performance that was taking place before her. From Martin's transformed attitude she guessed that he was speaking to a superior. But of the subject of their conversation she was able to gather only a little, other than that Martin was under pressure.
"Some figures, certainly anything I can do to help." Martin gestured vaguely towards the phone and then to the ceiling, shrugging his shoulders to suggest the vagaries of management. "Right, monthly, 200 pages, 60/40 ed/ad, £2000 page yield, circulation 100,000, ad and circ prom pro rata, teams standard - what, Charles, the bottom line first year launch costs? Well, if you could just give me a couple of hours or so I'll run that up on my model - " for Actuaries Update he had created an amazingly complex and comprehensive model of costs and income on his computer. As a publisher he knew that planning and organisation were of the essence, and was proud of this model and its potential. "You need it now, I see. If I ring you back in ten minutes? Ah, now, now." Martin had gone pale, and beads of sweat had started to appear on his forehead. Real pressure, Bernice noted. In fact so much pressure that she had ceased to exist.
He was now scribbling on the back of an envelope, muttering figures to himself, checking numbers with Charles, correcting himself, referring to pieces of paper on his desk, the phone cradled under his chin as if it were some kind of life support system. Which in some ways it was, and not just for him.
Finally he said: "So that's it then, about a million down. Is that what you were expecting. You wanted less? How much less? 500K? Looks tough to me. I'm sorry? I don't understand. Could I do it? Well, I have got this other project on - Actuaries Update - you remember we talked about it a few months ago, you said that approval of the proposal should be a formality? This is more important?" - Bernice was impressed at how Martin's conversation seemed to consist mostly of questions, rather as if he were talking to some oriental potentate who could only be addressed indirectly, and to whom direct questions would have been an insult.
"Well, Charles, if it's more important I'll do it, of course. The budget 500K down? Well, the figures do say a million...could we split the difference?" he suggested tentatively, "that's good of you Charles, 700 it is. Oh, timescales, we didn't say anything about timescales. I was working to six months for AU - sorry, Actuaries Update: given that this is rather bigger, and of course there's the rival to consider, a strong one, too: could we say nine months perhaps...? Nine weeks...."
Martin had gone white; his eyes were a blank, unfocussed, unseeing. In fact he was seeing his career in ruins when he failed to meet this impossible deadline. Bernice moved towards him instinctively as if he was about to faint. But now he was talking again.
"Charles, it can't be done, nobody's done a launch in - I mean I haven't even got an editor" - he looked up suddenly a stared at Bernice with a strange kind of fixed look. "You promised The Board that it would be done, I see. Yes, I quite understand, you don't want them sniggering, honour of the division, yes, yes. Well, is there anything else I need to know? If not I'll just get on with it, shall I? Right, thanks, Charles, good to speak. Thanks. Bye."
He put the receiver down without speaking. He leant back in his chair, breathed slowly in, then exhaled rapidly.
"Sorry about that."
"Not at all. Look, I'm sorry not to be more enthusiastic, but I really need to be, er, going now - " and she meant it, the pressure was becoming unbearable.
"Listen, Bernice, as you may have gathered, major developments are taking place, even as we speak." Martin was back in publisher mode, and publisher-speak. He felt as he had often felt when ski-ing very fast: out of control, just on the point of wiping out completely, but exhilarated all the same.
"What do you know about Business Monthly?" Martin asked suddenly.
Bernice's ears pricked up.
"Big, bullying, brash, boring. And very, very successful." Where was this leading? she wondered, desperately trying to see where Business Monthly fitted into things. It was one of flagships of the publishing world, hugely profitable, vastly powerful in the influence it wielded in the business community, and yet deeply dull, and magazine great in size but not in achievement. "Why? she asked, hardly daring to hope.
"We're going to launch against it." Martin let the words sink in. To launch against such an established leader was a brave if not foolhardy undertaking, a real David and Goliath job. She wanted it.
"'We' as in Wright's, or 'we' as in us?" she asked.
'We' as in Charles using the royal 'we', Martin thought ruefully to himself, but answered loyally "Well, certainly the former, and perhaps the latter. Would you be interested?" Martin could feel the power flowing back to him after losing it earlier in the interview. Of course she wanted it, any journalist would. He knew he would love to be the Editor of a launch against Business Monthly. Well, he would except on the schedule he had been given.
"It's certainly something I'd like to explore further." Despite that fact that she was dying get somewhere else. Luckily Martin was not interested in exploring it further.
"What is there to explore? Wright's is going to launch a glossy 200 page monthly title against Business Monthly. I've just been given the resources for this, and I'd like you to be editor."
This was too good to be true, she thought. The opportunity to take on one of the highest-profile books in the market, with the backing of one of the biggest names in publishing - there had to be a catch.
"What staff would I have?" she asked cautiously, expecting half a secretary and a dog.
"What would you need?" countered Martin.
"200 pages you say? 60% editorial, 40% advertising" - now the conversation she had heard began to make sense - "so 120 pages a month, let's say 50 pages bought in from freelancers, that leaves 70 pages in-house, so Editor, Deputy, Features, News, three reporters, art editor, Production Editor, chief sub and sub..."
A little excessive, thought Martin, but she's right to try it on. "I think we might have to trim that slightly.."
"To?" asked Bernice, not entirely surprised, but waiting to hear how much he had in mind.
"Let's say, two reporters plus production department of two?"
Hmm, thought Bernice, tight but possible. OK, next question:
"Salary?"
"What sort of figure are you looking for?" countered Martin in time-honoured fashion.
"For this kind of job, responsibility etc, I would have said £30,000," Bernice offered.
"Bit high that, I'm afraid," said Martin, thinking she was worth every penny, but knowing that he would never get it past Charles, who was pretty hot on comparative salaries. "The best I could do is £25,000 - plus a car" he threw the latter in, expecting it to be something of a trump card. In fact for companies it was a cheap way of boosting salaries. But Bernice had a surprise for him.
"Sorry, cars don't interest me. That is, I really don't approve of them," she said firmly.
Oh God, she's not going to get bolshie, is she? wondered Martin. He took a chance, trusting to his publisher's instinct.
"I'm sorry, 25 is the best we can do - " the full might of the corporate 'we' now " - though obviously there is scope for review later on..." he said, holding out the standard employment carrot.
Luckily for him, money was not the most important aspect for Bernice. The job itself, and the people that came with it were far more important. And here she had the opportunity to create the job and choose the people. Or did she?
"I presume that I would have a free hand in choosing the editorial staff?"
"Of course, of course," said Martin, his heart beating perceptibly faster as he scented victory. He wanted this beautiful woman and he nearly had her.
"Oh, yes, one thing of course: " - she suddenly recalled something worrying in that last phone call of his - "what's the schedule?"
Ah, he hoped she wasn't going to ask that.
"Well, you understand that time is of the essence, and that it is important to move fast so as to catch the opposition off guard," he improvised wildly.
"Yes," she said, guardedly, knowingly full well that something bad was coming. She tried pre-empting him: "but for a launch like this, which must be done properly if it stands any chance of succeeding, you'd need at least six months, nine preferably."
Yes, you are quite right, he thought. "Well, I can give you nine - weeks."
Now it was her turn to be silent. Nine weeks? Nine? Was he crazy? Or just making fun of her? Nobody launched a real magazine in nine weeks. Pamphlets perhaps, the odd newsletter, yes, but a full-design magazine to be sold on the newsstands in nine weeks. Completely not on.
"It's impossible, and you know it," she said finally.
Yes, he knew it. But he also knew that he had promised Charles that it would be done. And that, after all, was what a publisher was there for: to make things happen.
"For anyone else, yes, but not for you." It was a cliché, of course, and yet he meant it this time: he knew that she was special, rather more special than he had suspected when he had telephoned her, asking her to come in for a chat, and that she could indeed do it.
"Flattery is all very well, but doesn't change the impossible time-scale. It's simply impossible." Or is it? part of her brain was thinking. If I could get Dibbs we might be in with a chance... some insane rebel aspect of her was calculating.
"Could I make a phone call please?" she said suddenly. Martin was surprised, not quite sure what this meant, but said of course, and offered to leave her alone to make the call. Bernice said it wasn't necessary.
She rang the number, and mercifully got through straight away. "Hi, Kate, Bernice here. Yes, fine thanks. You? Good. Look, I know this is rather short notice, but any chance of meeting up for a drink tonight, there's something I want to talk to you about. You can? Great. Listen, how about meeting in Southdon - you're nearby I know, and I don't want to disturb your freelance more than I have to. Something near the station. Where? The 'Dog and Duck' - sounds great - what? It's dump, eh?, ah well, never mind. Eight o'clock, great, see you there."
She paused for a moment after replacing the receiver, and then turned to Martin. "Let us for the moment assume that you and Wright's are serious about this launch - about the staffing, even about the deadline. There is not a hope in hell of getting this book out without the best production editor in the business. I have just rung up an old friend of mine who is probably the best. Luckily she's freelance at the moment. Unluckily I cannot think of any reason on god's earth why she should take on this venture. However, " and here she paused theatrically to savour Martin's widened eyes and slight movement towards her, "however, just supposing - for the moment - that she says 'yes' to this venture, then you might just have yourself an editor, and - who knows? - you might even have a magazine..."
Martin beamed triumphantly. Even though there were huge obstacles still to be overcome - including persuading this production editor to join - he felt in his bones - that authentic publisher's sixth sense - that it was all going to happen. That this gorgeous, stunning blonde was going to come and work for him, and that it was all really going to happen. He could hardly contain himself.
"Well, even though it's a bit premature, how about breaking open some champagne - you know, just to smooth the way," he added weakly and not entirely logically. But by now Bernice's bladder was becoming imperative in its demands. She had to get out of there. And it all depended on her meeting with Kate that evening anyway.
"No, I'm sorry, I really must be going - back to work, that is. Are you around this evening, is there a number I can ring you on?"- Martin gladly gave her his home phone number, and foolishly hoped she might give him hers - "OK, I'll call you this evening and let you know one way or another. But I'm not promising anything, right?" she said with that blinding smile of hers.
O yes you are, he thought, you are promising a lot. And even though he tried once more to press some champagne on her, she managed to make her escape from his office. As she ran down the corridor in desperate pursuit of the Ladies, the man in the office next to Martin's barely looked up from his heated conversation about carpets.
Join in? was her first thought. Her second was that this was not the sort of question he should be asking her.
As she had travelled down to Southdon on the train that morning - an unusual experience in itself, and a contrast to her normal sweaty battles on the underground hell of London's Northern Line - she had wondered what form her interview would take. It was the first time she had been invited 'to come in for a chat' by a potential employer, rather than apply for an advertised job along with everyone else. Although some of the usual adrenaline was missing as a result, she felt pleasantly in control of the situation for a change - instead of offering herself as some kind of sacrificial victim to her interviewer and potential employer.
In a sense this made the whole process of being interviewed one of seduction. She presumed that potentially he wanted her to work for him, and so was engaging in this curious courtship ritual, trying to find out whether he did in fact want her, and if he did, whether he could persuade her she wanted him. Nonetheless, as in other courtship rituals, there was a certain sense of limits, things you just didn't do, and she felt that his last question had overstepped the mark.
Still, she was inclined to play along, if only because she could view the whole thing as much more of a game than usual.
"Well," she replied, "to answer your implicit question of to what extent I believe in letting people relax in the office, I'm a great believer in judging people by the work they do, not by how they do it. I also think that if people work hard they deserve to play hard."
She certainly worked hard on Employment Magazine, her current title, but she was not so sure about playing hard. She had so little time for that as editor of a title with limited staff and limitless ambitions for it. Which was why she had been attracted as well as flattered when Martin had phoned her up out of the blue and asked whether she would like to come in for this 'informal' chat. She knew Wright's, Martin's employers, as everyone did: one of the biggest international players in the publishing market. It had a good reputation, an impressive portfolio of titles, and a good track record of investing in magazines. If the 'right' job came along, so to speak, she could imagine herself moving there. And she needed a new challenge: Employment Magazine was running nicely now, thanks to her hard work, but it was never going to change the world. She wanted something bigger, and she wondered whether this might be it.
However, if the morning so far was anything to go by, she was not meant for this new job - even though it was Independence Day in the US. First her alarm clock had not gone off, so when she did wake up - luckily not so late - she found herself rushing to get washed, dressed and ready to leave, which she disliked. Then when she had taken the tube south, rather than north, down to a British Rail station, and caught her train by a narrower margin than she liked, she found herself sitting in the middle of nowhere while the train and its driver meditated on whether to proceed. She began to feel the minutes ticking by: she had a connection to make which meant passing from a station in the east of some anonymous suburban centre to one in the west. When the train finally moved, it was ten minutes late, and she would have to take a taxi across town to make her connection.
Inevitably she got caught in traffic, and so had to endure the taxi driver's chatter as her mind became increasingly focussed on the remaining minutes and seconds before the train was due to leave. The prospect of being late, even for an informal chat rather than a formal interview, was unthinkable for her. As a journalist, punctuality, whether of her words or herself, was central to her discipline. Fortunately her train was waiting for her at the second station when she arrived, but only because it too was mysteriously delayed. As a result, she finally arrived at Southdon some fifteen minutes after she had intended. Wright's was immediately next to the station, so her final sprint was relatively short, but the end result was that she had no time to carry out the usual preliminary research she liked to engage in - reading notice boards, company magazines in the foyer, and any background information there might be.
Instead she was ushered straight up to Martin's office on the tenth floor of one of the two tall buildings that made up Wright's. The entrance hall was an impressive if deeply inefficient glass pyramid - cold in winter and like a greenhouse in summer - that had been put there between the two gleaming towers to form a huge 'W' as you approached. A nice conceit, she thought, but typically one whose consequences the poor employees would have to live with. She made a mental note to write an article about this kind of vanity architecture sometime.
As she was led to Martin's office by his secretary, Cristina, a tiny bird-like thing with delicate bones and a gentle smile, she passed an office with its door open. She heard one of those odd snatches of conversation that offices give rise to:
"It's about the carpet, you see," a man was saying rather forcefully into a phone. Before she had to think any more about this, she found herself being greeted by a man in his late 30s, smartly dressed in an expensive suit, and a gaudy tie, his hair beginning to recede and paunch beginning to swell.
"Hello, you must be Bernice. Martin Davis. Pleased to meet you." And he really was. Not just because she represented an initiative he was taking, a small publisher's act such as he was paid to carry out; not just because he genuinely admired her journalist skills; but also because on meeting her now for the first time, putting a face to the name he had seen so many times in print, he was pleasantly surprised - rapturous - to discover that Ms Bernice Stuart, current Editor of Employment Magazine, turned out to be very tall, very slim, blonde and stunningly attractive in her dark-blue and form-hugging jacket and skirt. "Please, make yourself comfortable," he said as he ushered her in to his office. Please, please, please, a rather un-publisher-like part of him echoed internally. She had hoped to do precisely that before coming up to meet him, and now began to regret that second cup of coffee she had gulped down before leaving.
Martin's office was typical of publishing management. From countless journalistic assignments where she had met similar middle managers, she quickly took in the basic elements. As well as his own desk, covered with papers, and with a computer perched on one corner, she noted the separate circular table with comfortable armchairs - a sign of some prestige in a strictly hierarchical company as she imagined Wright's to be - and even a vase of fresh flowers on it, surely evidence of Cristina's touch. One wall was covered with a magazine rack that was full of various titles, including several copies of a magazine which seemed to be called Better Rape. She was so taken aback by this, that she barely took in what she later realised was the only really personal element in the room, a framed picture of a city built on a lake, rather like Venice, but looking nothing like it in detail. She would come to know this map and its significance well.
"Right then," began Martin, as they settled down round the table - plus points for not using confrontational desks, thought Bernice, using her professional knowledge of the dynamics of such situations. "Thanks a lot for coming along - oh, sorry, can I get you a coffee?" - by which he meant could Cristina get one, she thought - "No, thanks very much, I had one before coming out" - unfortunately, she added mentally, conscious of the growing pressure.
"Right," continued Martin, obviously a little unsure of how to deal with the situation. Job interviews have a simple structure, and a simple balance of power. This was more complicated. "Where to begin. Well, here at Wright's - I assume you know something about Wright's?" - yes, he could assume that, her nod and smile indicated - we're always on the lookout for new talent" - it made him sound like an A&R man trying to discover the next Madonna - "and so I've been following your work with interest."
She was genuinely flattered, believing him perhaps a little too readily. One of the journalist's worst fears is that nobody reads what he or she writes apart from the production department and his or her mother. To meet somebody who reads your articles is always a simple and real pleasure.
And there was more. "I've been really impressed: your pieces manage to make a difficult subject clear, interesting even - and God knows that's not always easy with employment matters which can be as dull as ditchwater," he said. A little strong, she thought, but thanks for the compliment anyway. "And there's a good balance to the book as a whole". The book was not some thick volume she had written, but Employment Magazine: one of the curiosities of the publishing world is that people tend to refer to magazines as 'books'.
"What I was wondering was whether you are fully engaged at the moment" - surely a rather some personal question? - "with the magazine that is. I mean, are you looking to move on at all? Forgive me being so blunt, but if you're not absolutely then perhaps we had better stop here..." A little brutal, she thought, but full marks for getting on with it - something she was increasingly concerned about at that moment.
"Well, I am quite happy where I am at the moment " - and God bless the English language for the wonderful ambiguity of the word 'quite', she thought - "but I won't disguise that fact that I am ambitious, that I would want to move on if the right job with the right company came along..." She was rather pleased with the reply, in that it was scrupulously fair to her current employers, implicitly flattering to her potential employers, and managed to convey neatly her own sense of drive - one of the vital elements that needs to be prominently displayed as a kind of mating plumage in all interviews.
"OK, then," said Martin, clearly encouraged by this reply, as he was meant to be, "Let's take that as read for the moment, and just put details aside" - let's not, thought Bernice, but recognised that he was driving things at the moment - "and let's talk about you for a bit." She could feel the mood shift slightly, as he started talking to her about her family background (born 29 years ago, mother and father still alive, younger sister and brother, etc.), university education (English at York), her career so far (editorial assistant and reporter jobs on various small professional magazines before moving on to Employment Magazine as Assistant, then Deputy, then Editor). But to a certain extent this was all a formality: simply by virtue of the fact that he had asked her to come in she knew that he was trying to confirm an opinion rather than judge her. Nonetheless she recognised that almost as a matter of habit he wanted to exercise the little power he had over her, and so would proceed to ask her a series of vaguely pointless questions that would supposedly help him gain a better understanding of her.
There were the usual ones about personal strengths and weaknesses - the standard trick question of "What is your greatest failing" to which the standard answer is "I must confess that I tend to get carried away by my enthusiasm at work", pressing the enthusiasm button again and again - or vaguer ones about desire: "What exactly do want from this job/this company/your career/your life?" that were harder to answer truthfully, especially nowadays when she was far less certain what she really wanted. But in some ways that made interviews like this all the more valuable, forcing her to articulate some kind of answer. The interview as therapy: another article there she thought, filing the insight for later use.
And then there were the downright naughty questions - like his about orgies in the office: the only kind of orgies she knew about were orgies of work, and they were only too common. Fortunately he didn't go further than this kind of abuse of his power, asking about her personal life, whether she had a 'steady' boyfriend (are you likely to get married and have babies? being the subtext, and therefore quite out of order). Martin too knew that such questions would have been quite unacceptable, though he was tempted to ask them - but for purely personal and unprofessional reasons. He stopped himself, but was vaguely worried by the thought that having met Bernice 'in the flesh', so to speak, he was now no longer judging things from a purely object viewpoint. This worried him.
"Right then," he said, "let's get back to specifics" - at last, thought Bernice, who was beginning to suffer seriously from her overindulgence in liquids earlier that morning. She was acutely aware that the discussion was building to a climax: the thought of having to break its rhythm and rush out to the Ladies was too embarrassing to contemplate.
"What we're talking about here is a launch - we're looking for an editor, and as I've indicated, yours is a name that has come up in this context." Aha, she thought, this is more like it. A launch is something that every editor dreams about, the chance to create something from scratch, to put your own mark on it; the thought struck her that perhaps it was just a kind of surrogate maternity, and added the thought to her already extensive list of worrying indications that she was becoming broody.
"Could you tell me a little more about it please?" she asked, since launches in the abstract were all very well, but if she were to be offered to the editorship of a successor launch to Better Rape - Best Rape? - she was going to be less interested.
"Right, well, it's something I've been working on for some time, actually," - 'here we go', she thought, 'his entire life history', but she was being unfair. It was true that this launch represented something important to Martin. After all, launches represent a kind of public demonstration of potency for publishers. The first one was an initiation rite into a priesthood, those that had 'done' it. Martin had not yet 'done' it, and felt the poorer for it. It certainly affected his standing within the company, and blocked his further rise in the hierarchy.
"It's something quite new - well for me, anyway. As you can see from my current portfolio..." - he gestured broadly towards the magazine racks - "I have a wide range of titles." He hoped that he might leave it at that, but feared that she was too good a journalist to let him off so easily. "Sorry, which ones exactly do you have?" she asked with a faint smile that was at once impertinent - she had guessed that he was unwilling to go into details - and yet also enchanting, as she vaguely knew, though would not have dreamt of trying to be 'winning' in this way had she suspected the effect it was indeed beginning to have on Martin.
"Well, there's Better Rape an agricultural title you understand," he said all in one breath as if keen to clear up any possible misunderstanding about this magazine, " there's Rubber International - very interesting that, I mean from the global chemical industry point of view - and there's Dog Lover's Weekly, more of a consumer title - if you see what I mean."
Yes, it was Martin's turn for what the other publishers at Wright's jocularly called the 'top shelf' portfolio: a series of titles, each of them quite serious in their own way, and yet which when put together became just seriously unmentionable. The company believed in rotating its magazines among its publishers every two years or so, and unfortunately it was Martin's slot currently. However, since the average number of titles for a publisher was four, this did at least mean that he had a little time free to plan his launch.
"And your new one?" asked Bernice, fearing the worst - Practical Sewage or something similar.
"The new one is - " but before he could continue, the phone rang. This disconcerted him, since he knew that one of the first rules about giving interviews (or even chats) was not to allow yourself to be interrupted. And in fact he had asked Cristina to block his calls. He was most disappointed.
"Sorry about this, not at all right," he said, and picked up the receiver rather angrily.
"Yes?"
"Hay-ley hee-yer."
Bernice was surprised to see him shrink visibly when he heard the voice at the other end, as if a snake were about to emerge from the earpiece. Filling the job of principal telephone operator, Hayley was the voice of Wright's, and was infamous for her undulcet tones.
"Look, Hayley, I said no calls this morning, didn't Cristina give you the message? What? Well, that's not my problem. No calls, right? Thank you." He put the phone down. "Sorry about that, breakdown in communications. Where were we? Are yes, the launch. - "
And before another word left his lips there was most tremendous wail that seemed to rend the whole building. Was this Hayley's revenge? Bernice wondered, or just the start of World War III?
"O God help us," muttered Martin. "Sorry about this, it must be some damn fire drill. Cristina -" he shouted through the connecting door to his secretary. Cristina appeared, all smiles and birdlike movement.
"Yes, Martin?"
"Remind me, is the fire alarm going off today?" This seemed a highly rhetorical question given that he could barely be heard above the din of the screeching.
"No, I don't think so. I think you had better evacuate, it might be dangerous." She looked genuinely concerned.
"Righty-ho," said Martin in his best Spitfire pilot manner. "Afraid that means a wander down the corridor to our scenic car park," he said to Bernice.
As they went out into the corridor they found themselves part of a stream of people moving towards the stairs. One or two figure with armbands stood directing people unnecessarily, their moment of glory come when they could order their erstwhile bosses around with impunity. It was strange to see this kind of coordinated movement; the normal pattern within an office is of groups of people stationary within rooms. Seeing them all walking briskly like this reminded you that business was made of living people, not just abstract headcounts. Bernice filed all this for further use.
The scene in the car park was in some ways even more striking. Overshadowed by the huge glass 'W' formed by the entrance hall and two tower blocks - the latter known familiarly to the publishers as 'Profit' and 'Loss', with the managers in the former and workers in the latter - literally thousands of people were now gathered in a huge amorphous group as they stood in the glorious early July sunshine. Although there was no smoke visible, a couple of fire engines had arrived clangorously, and there were now smartly-dressed firemen marching around, adding another layer of command to the situation as they took charge.
As Bernice and Martin were standing there, admiring all this buzz of activity, they heard a voice behind.
"Excuse, I'm a journalist with the Southdon Chronicle, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?" Bernice turned to see a skinny youth, thin and a sallow, brandishing a reporter's notebook at Martin. She half expected the lad to have a card saying 'Press' stuck in a hat. "Fire away," said Martin benevolently, glancing with a conspiratorial smile at Bernice.
"Can you tell me what caused this evacuation?" No, he could not.
"Would you like to speculate on the possible causes for this evacuation?" the youth continued. No, Martin would rather not.
"What about your feelings during the evacuation - would it be true to say that you are in a state of shock?" Yes, Martin said, I am pretty shocked at the moment - glancing again at Bernice.
"That's all, thank you very much" the boy said suddenly, as if he had found his scoop and had to hurry off to the printers before it got cold or he was beaten to it by a rival. Martin and Bernice looked at each other.
"How very curious," Martin said.
"I don't think you will be wanting him on you new launch," Bernice added. "Speaking of which..." Bernice was beginning to get tired of this game now.
"Right, yes. Well, it's going to be monthly, glossy, lots of colour, hot news, big features, plenty of opportunity for innovation, new area of market, not really been tapped before..."
"Yes, called..?
"Called Actuaries Update." He looked at her expectantly; her heart sank; her face fell. Actuaries Update: was this the title she was waiting for, the one that would change the world? It seemed unlikely.
She felt sorry for Martin when she saw his face fall in response to hers, and suddenly had a vision of him as a lonely child who has been told that nobody wants to play with him. Hell, he was human after all, she thought, let's try a bit harder so that at least his landing is softer.
"OK. Well, tell me a little more about it," she said with as much interest as he could muster. He talked her through the market, the figures, the readership, the potential. By now the all-clear had been given by the fire brigade to the fire marshals who now proceeded to herd everyone back into their glass-walled pens. A false alarm it seemed. Rather like the job she had been hoping for.
When they got back to Martin's office, she knew that she would say no, that she would have to disappoint him. It was a basic tenet of her journalistic faith that she would only ever work on magazines that interested her and that provided a genuine challenge. Employment Magazine had been valuable experience for her, and she could at least console herself with the thought that employment was at least central to most people's lives especially in these heady days of economic boom. As far the actuaries, well....
"I can see that you are not convinced, Bernice." Dammit, he thought to himself - don't go. "Can I ask what the problem is?" Although a journalist by training, as a publisher he had seen enough salespeople in action to have learnt a few of their techniques, like the objection handling he was trying now.
"It's, well, just not me. Sorry that I can't be more specific" - the perfect way to counter such techniques, though she did it unconsciously rather than otherwise - "I think it's important for journalists to be committed to their titles" - as a kind of mental asylum, perhaps? she thought flippantly.
Martin was disappointed, doubly so. He really wanted her to work for him, though he feared that it was for the wrong reasons in part. And yet in his heart of hearts he could not blame her. He had to recognise that writing about actuaries was not the most exciting of prospects. But he felt duty-bound to try once more.
"There a lot of hidden benefits to working at Wright's. For example - ." But just as he was about to launch into a heavy sell of the company, the phone range again. Annoyed that he had lost his momentum, and incensed that his repeated requests - no, commands - not to be interrupted were being taken so lightly, he grabbed the receiver and began shouting down it.
"Look, you waste of space, I bloody well told you I absolutely oh, sorry, hello Charles, how are you, no of course not, not inconvenient at all..." Charles was Martin's boss, the divisional Managing Director, and only a one level below God himself, the Chief Executive. Charles was a company man, a fact that seemed to have been predestined by his name, which was in fact Charles Company. Martin had a lot of respect for Charles, even though those lower down the chain of command mistakenly found him superficial and remote. In fact his incomprehensible corporate-speak masked a profound understanding of how big companies work, and made him extremely effective as a senior manager. As such, he was very concerned about the welfare of his staff, though admittedly from a slightly theoretical rather than personal level.
Since Bernice was quite relieved by this distraction, she could sit back and enjoy the strange performance that was taking place before her. From Martin's transformed attitude she guessed that he was speaking to a superior. But of the subject of their conversation she was able to gather only a little, other than that Martin was under pressure.
"Some figures, certainly anything I can do to help." Martin gestured vaguely towards the phone and then to the ceiling, shrugging his shoulders to suggest the vagaries of management. "Right, monthly, 200 pages, 60/40 ed/ad, £2000 page yield, circulation 100,000, ad and circ prom pro rata, teams standard - what, Charles, the bottom line first year launch costs? Well, if you could just give me a couple of hours or so I'll run that up on my model - " for Actuaries Update he had created an amazingly complex and comprehensive model of costs and income on his computer. As a publisher he knew that planning and organisation were of the essence, and was proud of this model and its potential. "You need it now, I see. If I ring you back in ten minutes? Ah, now, now." Martin had gone pale, and beads of sweat had started to appear on his forehead. Real pressure, Bernice noted. In fact so much pressure that she had ceased to exist.
He was now scribbling on the back of an envelope, muttering figures to himself, checking numbers with Charles, correcting himself, referring to pieces of paper on his desk, the phone cradled under his chin as if it were some kind of life support system. Which in some ways it was, and not just for him.
Finally he said: "So that's it then, about a million down. Is that what you were expecting. You wanted less? How much less? 500K? Looks tough to me. I'm sorry? I don't understand. Could I do it? Well, I have got this other project on - Actuaries Update - you remember we talked about it a few months ago, you said that approval of the proposal should be a formality? This is more important?" - Bernice was impressed at how Martin's conversation seemed to consist mostly of questions, rather as if he were talking to some oriental potentate who could only be addressed indirectly, and to whom direct questions would have been an insult.
"Well, Charles, if it's more important I'll do it, of course. The budget 500K down? Well, the figures do say a million...could we split the difference?" he suggested tentatively, "that's good of you Charles, 700 it is. Oh, timescales, we didn't say anything about timescales. I was working to six months for AU - sorry, Actuaries Update: given that this is rather bigger, and of course there's the rival to consider, a strong one, too: could we say nine months perhaps...? Nine weeks...."
Martin had gone white; his eyes were a blank, unfocussed, unseeing. In fact he was seeing his career in ruins when he failed to meet this impossible deadline. Bernice moved towards him instinctively as if he was about to faint. But now he was talking again.
"Charles, it can't be done, nobody's done a launch in - I mean I haven't even got an editor" - he looked up suddenly a stared at Bernice with a strange kind of fixed look. "You promised The Board that it would be done, I see. Yes, I quite understand, you don't want them sniggering, honour of the division, yes, yes. Well, is there anything else I need to know? If not I'll just get on with it, shall I? Right, thanks, Charles, good to speak. Thanks. Bye."
He put the receiver down without speaking. He leant back in his chair, breathed slowly in, then exhaled rapidly.
"Sorry about that."
"Not at all. Look, I'm sorry not to be more enthusiastic, but I really need to be, er, going now - " and she meant it, the pressure was becoming unbearable.
"Listen, Bernice, as you may have gathered, major developments are taking place, even as we speak." Martin was back in publisher mode, and publisher-speak. He felt as he had often felt when ski-ing very fast: out of control, just on the point of wiping out completely, but exhilarated all the same.
"What do you know about Business Monthly?" Martin asked suddenly.
Bernice's ears pricked up.
"Big, bullying, brash, boring. And very, very successful." Where was this leading? she wondered, desperately trying to see where Business Monthly fitted into things. It was one of flagships of the publishing world, hugely profitable, vastly powerful in the influence it wielded in the business community, and yet deeply dull, and magazine great in size but not in achievement. "Why? she asked, hardly daring to hope.
"We're going to launch against it." Martin let the words sink in. To launch against such an established leader was a brave if not foolhardy undertaking, a real David and Goliath job. She wanted it.
"'We' as in Wright's, or 'we' as in us?" she asked.
'We' as in Charles using the royal 'we', Martin thought ruefully to himself, but answered loyally "Well, certainly the former, and perhaps the latter. Would you be interested?" Martin could feel the power flowing back to him after losing it earlier in the interview. Of course she wanted it, any journalist would. He knew he would love to be the Editor of a launch against Business Monthly. Well, he would except on the schedule he had been given.
"It's certainly something I'd like to explore further." Despite that fact that she was dying get somewhere else. Luckily Martin was not interested in exploring it further.
"What is there to explore? Wright's is going to launch a glossy 200 page monthly title against Business Monthly. I've just been given the resources for this, and I'd like you to be editor."
This was too good to be true, she thought. The opportunity to take on one of the highest-profile books in the market, with the backing of one of the biggest names in publishing - there had to be a catch.
"What staff would I have?" she asked cautiously, expecting half a secretary and a dog.
"What would you need?" countered Martin.
"200 pages you say? 60% editorial, 40% advertising" - now the conversation she had heard began to make sense - "so 120 pages a month, let's say 50 pages bought in from freelancers, that leaves 70 pages in-house, so Editor, Deputy, Features, News, three reporters, art editor, Production Editor, chief sub and sub..."
A little excessive, thought Martin, but she's right to try it on. "I think we might have to trim that slightly.."
"To?" asked Bernice, not entirely surprised, but waiting to hear how much he had in mind.
"Let's say, two reporters plus production department of two?"
Hmm, thought Bernice, tight but possible. OK, next question:
"Salary?"
"What sort of figure are you looking for?" countered Martin in time-honoured fashion.
"For this kind of job, responsibility etc, I would have said £30,000," Bernice offered.
"Bit high that, I'm afraid," said Martin, thinking she was worth every penny, but knowing that he would never get it past Charles, who was pretty hot on comparative salaries. "The best I could do is £25,000 - plus a car" he threw the latter in, expecting it to be something of a trump card. In fact for companies it was a cheap way of boosting salaries. But Bernice had a surprise for him.
"Sorry, cars don't interest me. That is, I really don't approve of them," she said firmly.
Oh God, she's not going to get bolshie, is she? wondered Martin. He took a chance, trusting to his publisher's instinct.
"I'm sorry, 25 is the best we can do - " the full might of the corporate 'we' now " - though obviously there is scope for review later on..." he said, holding out the standard employment carrot.
Luckily for him, money was not the most important aspect for Bernice. The job itself, and the people that came with it were far more important. And here she had the opportunity to create the job and choose the people. Or did she?
"I presume that I would have a free hand in choosing the editorial staff?"
"Of course, of course," said Martin, his heart beating perceptibly faster as he scented victory. He wanted this beautiful woman and he nearly had her.
"Oh, yes, one thing of course: " - she suddenly recalled something worrying in that last phone call of his - "what's the schedule?"
Ah, he hoped she wasn't going to ask that.
"Well, you understand that time is of the essence, and that it is important to move fast so as to catch the opposition off guard," he improvised wildly.
"Yes," she said, guardedly, knowingly full well that something bad was coming. She tried pre-empting him: "but for a launch like this, which must be done properly if it stands any chance of succeeding, you'd need at least six months, nine preferably."
Yes, you are quite right, he thought. "Well, I can give you nine - weeks."
Now it was her turn to be silent. Nine weeks? Nine? Was he crazy? Or just making fun of her? Nobody launched a real magazine in nine weeks. Pamphlets perhaps, the odd newsletter, yes, but a full-design magazine to be sold on the newsstands in nine weeks. Completely not on.
"It's impossible, and you know it," she said finally.
Yes, he knew it. But he also knew that he had promised Charles that it would be done. And that, after all, was what a publisher was there for: to make things happen.
"For anyone else, yes, but not for you." It was a cliché, of course, and yet he meant it this time: he knew that she was special, rather more special than he had suspected when he had telephoned her, asking her to come in for a chat, and that she could indeed do it.
"Flattery is all very well, but doesn't change the impossible time-scale. It's simply impossible." Or is it? part of her brain was thinking. If I could get Dibbs we might be in with a chance... some insane rebel aspect of her was calculating.
"Could I make a phone call please?" she said suddenly. Martin was surprised, not quite sure what this meant, but said of course, and offered to leave her alone to make the call. Bernice said it wasn't necessary.
She rang the number, and mercifully got through straight away. "Hi, Kate, Bernice here. Yes, fine thanks. You? Good. Look, I know this is rather short notice, but any chance of meeting up for a drink tonight, there's something I want to talk to you about. You can? Great. Listen, how about meeting in Southdon - you're nearby I know, and I don't want to disturb your freelance more than I have to. Something near the station. Where? The 'Dog and Duck' - sounds great - what? It's dump, eh?, ah well, never mind. Eight o'clock, great, see you there."
She paused for a moment after replacing the receiver, and then turned to Martin. "Let us for the moment assume that you and Wright's are serious about this launch - about the staffing, even about the deadline. There is not a hope in hell of getting this book out without the best production editor in the business. I have just rung up an old friend of mine who is probably the best. Luckily she's freelance at the moment. Unluckily I cannot think of any reason on god's earth why she should take on this venture. However, " and here she paused theatrically to savour Martin's widened eyes and slight movement towards her, "however, just supposing - for the moment - that she says 'yes' to this venture, then you might just have yourself an editor, and - who knows? - you might even have a magazine..."
Martin beamed triumphantly. Even though there were huge obstacles still to be overcome - including persuading this production editor to join - he felt in his bones - that authentic publisher's sixth sense - that it was all going to happen. That this gorgeous, stunning blonde was going to come and work for him, and that it was all really going to happen. He could hardly contain himself.
"Well, even though it's a bit premature, how about breaking open some champagne - you know, just to smooth the way," he added weakly and not entirely logically. But by now Bernice's bladder was becoming imperative in its demands. She had to get out of there. And it all depended on her meeting with Kate that evening anyway.
"No, I'm sorry, I really must be going - back to work, that is. Are you around this evening, is there a number I can ring you on?"- Martin gladly gave her his home phone number, and foolishly hoped she might give him hers - "OK, I'll call you this evening and let you know one way or another. But I'm not promising anything, right?" she said with that blinding smile of hers.
O yes you are, he thought, you are promising a lot. And even though he tried once more to press some champagne on her, she managed to make her escape from his office. As she ran down the corridor in desperate pursuit of the Ladies, the man in the office next to Martin's barely looked up from his heated conversation about carpets.
