Unto the Breach
Taking a deep breath, Laurie turned the knob and pushed open the door. The stark business office was empty except for shelves packed with books and an unoccupied desk. He stepped inside. "Hello?"
A brusque voice, from another room, responded, "Yes, yes. Come on back."
Laurie followed the voice to a side door, standing half-open. "Mr. Poynter?" The thin-faced, gray-haired man wasn't quite what Laurie had expected from Collins' description of his importance in publishing although he was impeccably dressed in an obviously hand-tailored black suit. Stacks of manuscripts littered the mahogany desk, with one spread in front of him.
"You're--" He scowled at Laurie a bit blankly. "--O'Neill, is it?"
Laurie walked tentatively to the desk and held out his hand. "Ummm... Odell. Laurence Odell. No apostrophe if it matters. Good morning."
"Right." Poynter peered at Laurie's hand, stood, shook it, and sat back down. "Of course. Well, Collins asked me to look over that manuscript of yours. I don't usually for unpublished authors. But I owe him a favour so give it me."
"It's not mine really." Laurie opened his briefcase and took out the manuscript he had typed from Ralph's hand-written one. "It's by a friend. R. R. Lanyon. Commander. RNVR, actually."
Poynter took the clipped pages as though they were a shoddy second-hand shirt someone was forcing on him. He waved towards a leather armchair. "Have a seat while I look this thing over. It will only take a moment." He lit a cigarette and looked down his nose at the first page.
"It isn't very short so I thought I might leave it with you."
"I could tell in two pages if it were worth anything." The tone showed exactly how unlikely Poynter thought that.
He might get a surprise, Laurie thought, as he sat down. He took out his cigarette case and lighter, leaned back and tried to relax as the man read the first page, flipped to the second, read it, looked up at him, ground out his cigarette, then flipped to the third. Five pages later, Poynter's mouth twitched into a rather rueful smile. "This will take longer than I expected."
He lit another cigarette and studied Laurie for a moment. "You may as well help me out since this is taking up time I needed to work." He shuffled together the manuscript he had been reading and shoved it at Laurie. "Read that, and when you're through, tell me what you think of it."
"The whole thing?" Laurie looked down at at least three hundred typed pages.
"You can read that much, I assume."
Laurie blinked. "Yes."
"Good. Use the desk in the front office. I'll call you when I want you."
Laurie gathered his things, settled himself at the empty desk, and began to read. He was soon immersed in the story of a young woman spying on her siblings and causing an uproar when she saw what she shouldn't have. Three chapters in he stopped. Wait. There was something wrong. He flipped back a chapter. She couldn't have told her father what she had seen. The father had left for London the day before.
What was the author thinking? Laurie hunted through the desk for paper, took out his pen and made a note. He had two pages of notes by the time Poytner shouted, "O'Neill, I want you."
Laurie picked up his notes and the manuscript. "It's Odell, sir," he said as he went back into the man's office. "No apostrophe," he muttered under his breath.
"Right. So it is. Now about this novel. Your friend's, you say. And you took it upon yourself to sell it for him, it seems." His shrewd blue eyes gave Laurie an assessing stare.
"Well, I thought it was awfully good when Ralph let me read it." Laurie's face was hot and he was sure he sounded like the lowliest twirp. "So I showed it to Collins."
"So you think you're a literary agent, do you?" Poynter leaned back in his chair and took a deep pull on his cigarette. "Let me tell you, you aren't. But this is a decent novel. I'm willing to take it on. As a matter of fact, it may be what a certain editor I know is looking for. I can get him a good advance. But you, young man, have no idea about being an agent."
"About being an agent?" He hadn't even realized there were literary agents until Collins had told him. He'd never thought at all about how novels came to be published.
"You don't just find yourself a friend with a novel and then you're set. You have to have know editors, know what to look for, know how to negotiate a contract." Poynter blew out a snake of smoke and demanded to know what Laurie had thought of the manuscript in his hand. When Laurie handed over his notes, Poynter scanned them, sniffed and put them down. "My last assistant was conscripted, the bloody fool. Probably going to get himself killed in Africa or somewhere. So I'd be willing to take you on. You seem to have the sense to recognise a good novel when it falls in your lap. That's more than he could do; I'll give you that much."
"I--I'm still up at Oxford, you know."
"Hmmmph. You look a bit old for a student. Bad leg, right? So they won't want you in the army. That's convenient."
Laurie boggled a bit at the idea of his lame leg being convenient. "I caught a packet at Dunkirk, sir," he stammered. "Finishing my last year. Well, I'll be through at the end of Michaelmas term."
"Good. I'll give you £8.00 a week and generous it is in my mind. You won't be worth it for months, but I can't stand to see someone in my office looking like a pauper. Expect you to keep yourself looking like you're worth doing business with. That's part of the job." Poynter sharply rapped Ralph's manuscript into a neat stack. "Yes, I'll expect you to work here between terms. There's no reason to shilly-shally. You may as well get a start."
Open-mouthed, Laurie nodded. "Thank you, sir." He blinked. Well, it was a job. "About Ralph's novel, I can't...'"
"Tell him I'm selling it for him. Not terribly shabby for someone who's never published, I must admit. I'll mail him the contract when it's ready. I know the editor for it." He paused with an inward look. "Yes, this is just the thing."
"Mr. Poynter..." He stared at the manuscript firmly grasped in Poynter's hand. "Well, I'd better give him the contract. He-- he'll expect me to." Laurie began to imagine, with dawning horror, the look on Ralph's face when he found out that Laurie had shown other people what he had written.