living right in the heart of
everything, watching the rest of the world bustle around me.
My agent’s office was on the other side of London,
near Blackfriars. Getting there required taking two tubes and navigating the
warren of subterranean tunnels connecting Bank and Monument, the pen drive
containing my manuscript zipped safe in an inside pocket of my coat. We didn’t
trust email to keep it secure, and I even wrote on a laptop disconnected from
the internet, with nothing stored on the computer’s hard drive. Paranoia,
maybe, but there were plenty of people to whom a leaked copy would be worth a
considerable sum. The file lived on an external drive, a backup copy kept in a
safe hidden behind a dummy plug socket in my bedroom. It wasn’t getting stolen
on my watch.
I emerged from Blackfriars Station, an impressive
glass and steel construct built on a bridge spanning the Thames, onto Queen
Victoria Road. The station frontage always reminded me of a job half-done, a
wide semicircular glass wall lined with grey bars which looked too much like
scaffolding for my taste. Then again, looking around the busy street, I saw
enough cranes and real scaffolding that somehow Blackfriars’ edifice seemed
fitting, in a grim kind of modern sympathy with its surroundings.
The hideous ’70s tower blocks gave way to stately
white stone as I turned onto New Bridge Street, then shifted again, Union Jacks
strung on poles over doorways juxtaposed with plate glass-fronted coffee chains,
and everywhere the ubiquitous red and black of London buses and taxis. It had
rained in the night, and the pavement was still damp, grimy puddles collected
in the cracks. Everything was pigeon-grey, the colours washed out of the sky
and street, blurred and blending together like some drab French watercolour
from the turn of the last century.
Cardwell & Grosse Literary Agents did business
out of one of the statelier buildings on the street, finished in neoclassical
art deco design sometime in the mid-1930s. The entrance was through a small,
unassuming black door to the right of the glass-fronted cafe which leased the
ground floor. Inside, a narrow corridor led to a narrower set of stairs, up
which I traipsed. Cardwell & Grosse had the entire third floor, their
offices, hidden behind an old door thick with uncountable layers of paint,
surprisingly neat and formal.
High ceilings edged with ornate, white plaster
mouldings of scrolls and vines gave way to pale lemon walls and framed prints
of the covers of the agency’s bestselling titles. I’d like to say my little
bedroom montage was original, but here in the entrance to my agent’s office hung
the evidence to state otherwise. I noted the cover of my first book hanging
square in the centre and wondered who would get knocked out of place when my
second was released.
A tall, narrow desk stood in the corner, behind
which sat Jennifer, the agency’s receptionist. She looked a sweet, timid thing,
but never had looks been more deceptive. Jennifer was well-versed in keeping
the wannabes at bay, and her cool indifference could reduce a grown man to
tears. I well remembered the days when I, too, had been kept waiting, squirming
on the uncomfortable leather chair beneath the framed covers, the silence
broken only by the overloud tick of the clock hung on the opposite wall, and
the endless tap-tap-tap of her busy fingernails on a computer keyboard
hidden behind her desk, until she judged sufficient time had passed to impress
upon me the insignificance of my place in her world. Then and only then, by
some unspoken cue, would she press a buzzer opening the door into the office
proper and grant me admission.
Today she greeted me with a smile reserved only for
those who had earned their place in the inner sanctum and buzzed me through
immediately. Max’s office was behind the third door, down a long corridor lined
with doors on the right and lit from the left by tall windows which looked out
onto the street below. I
everything, watching the rest of the world bustle around me.
My agent’s office was on the other side of London,
near Blackfriars. Getting there required taking two tubes and navigating the
warren of subterranean tunnels connecting Bank and Monument, the pen drive
containing my manuscript zipped safe in an inside pocket of my coat. We didn’t
trust email to keep it secure, and I even wrote on a laptop disconnected from
the internet, with nothing stored on the computer’s hard drive. Paranoia,
maybe, but there were plenty of people to whom a leaked copy would be worth a
considerable sum. The file lived on an external drive, a backup copy kept in a
safe hidden behind a dummy plug socket in my bedroom. It wasn’t getting stolen
on my watch.
I emerged from Blackfriars Station, an impressive
glass and steel construct built on a bridge spanning the Thames, onto Queen
Victoria Road. The station frontage always reminded me of a job half-done, a
wide semicircular glass wall lined with grey bars which looked too much like
scaffolding for my taste. Then again, looking around the busy street, I saw
enough cranes and real scaffolding that somehow Blackfriars’ edifice seemed
fitting, in a grim kind of modern sympathy with its surroundings.
The hideous ’70s tower blocks gave way to stately
white stone as I turned onto New Bridge Street, then shifted again, Union Jacks
strung on poles over doorways juxtaposed with plate glass-fronted coffee chains,
and everywhere the ubiquitous red and black of London buses and taxis. It had
rained in the night, and the pavement was still damp, grimy puddles collected
in the cracks. Everything was pigeon-grey, the colours washed out of the sky
and street, blurred and blending together like some drab French watercolour
from the turn of the last century.
Cardwell & Grosse Literary Agents did business
out of one of the statelier buildings on the street, finished in neoclassical
art deco design sometime in the mid-1930s. The entrance was through a small,
unassuming black door to the right of the glass-fronted cafe which leased the
ground floor. Inside, a narrow corridor led to a narrower set of stairs, up
which I traipsed. Cardwell & Grosse had the entire third floor, their
offices, hidden behind an old door thick with uncountable layers of paint,
surprisingly neat and formal.
High ceilings edged with ornate, white plaster
mouldings of scrolls and vines gave way to pale lemon walls and framed prints
of the covers of the agency’s bestselling titles. I’d like to say my little
bedroom montage was original, but here in the entrance to my agent’s office hung
the evidence to state otherwise. I noted the cover of my first book hanging
square in the centre and wondered who would get knocked out of place when my
second was released.
A tall, narrow desk stood in the corner, behind
which sat Jennifer, the agency’s receptionist. She looked a sweet, timid thing,
but never had looks been more deceptive. Jennifer was well-versed in keeping
the wannabes at bay, and her cool indifference could reduce a grown man to
tears. I well remembered the days when I, too, had been kept waiting, squirming
on the uncomfortable leather chair beneath the framed covers, the silence
broken only by the overloud tick of the clock hung on the opposite wall, and
the endless tap-tap-tap of her busy fingernails on a computer keyboard
hidden behind her desk, until she judged sufficient time had passed to impress
upon me the insignificance of my place in her world. Then and only then, by
some unspoken cue, would she press a buzzer opening the door into the office
proper and grant me admission.
Today she greeted me with a smile reserved only for
those who had earned their place in the inner sanctum and buzzed me through
immediately. Max’s office was behind the third door, down a long corridor lined
with doors on the right and lit from the left by tall windows which looked out
onto the street below. I
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