The Banker's Niece 4: The interview

To Jane's surprise the train journey from London Paddington to Exeter St David’s is an exhilarating three hours, zooming through lush countryside, listening to announcements made in a broad West Country accent. It's so quaint, she feels as if she's travelling back in time.

    She exits St David’s Station in a mixture of sun and showers. Behind the station is a range of green hills. Seagulls screech. There’s a smell of wet grass.

    Cathedral Green has a holiday atmosphere. It’s thronged with people, strolling, sitting on a low wall eating sandwiches, perched at café tables around the edge. A group of homeless men and women and their dogs have set up camp with blankets and bottles under a spreading beech tree. No one seems to mind them.

    Jane's pleased about that. She buys at least one Big Issue every week and always stops to talk to the vendor. She's had her addictions and her psychological problems. It's a miracle she's not in the same position.

    A wave of darkness sweeps through her and she has to stop walking and close her eyes for a few moments. These waves have started to become more frequent. They take her breath away. She doesn't know what they mean.

    When she opens her eyes again she sees the cathedral, honey coloured and low: a gentle giant protecting the city.

    As instructed, the other side of the Green she crosses a cobbled street to a row of uneven red-stone cottages with wattle and daub gables. They look medieval. She’s done her research and learnt that Exeter was flattened by bombs in World War II, with only the cathedral and its immediate surroundings spared. Once the city had a beauty to rival Bath. She can well believe it.

‘It’s probably best if we meet at my club in Exeter,’ said Henry Courtney. ‘I don’t expect you to find your way to the wilds of Exmoor straight away. Haw, haw, haw.’

    For several reasons Henry’s utterance made Jane cringe. Firstly there was the speed with which he rang her after she emailed her application. Then there was his accent, the staccato consonants and strange vowels that only Jane’s parents (sorry, mother) and their (her) friends and the most hidebound of Jane’s generation used. Thirdly there was his manner. So far he had dominated the conversation, speaking fast and without breaks as if he wasn’t interested in what Jane had to say at all. A lot of men did that, especially those with power. Fourthly she didn’t like the sound of meeting this unknown man in a club, or the wilds of Exmoor, or the laugh that accompanied their mention. Finally, he spoke as if she already had the job, which didn’t bode well.

    ‘Then, later – if you get the job of course, haw, haw, haw – I can show you round Moreton Courtney, our village, and Courtney Manor, our hice, and the stables where Courtney Press chews the bit. Haw, haw, haw.’

    That was an awful lot of strange horsey noises and an awful lot of Courtneys. Was he nervous or did he always speak like that? Was this a foretaste of rural life? How did such a buffoon run a successful publishing company?

    If she had managed to get a word in she might have declined his invitation to an interview but as it was she found herself organised to meet him at 2pm in three days’ time. He told her what train to catch, what route to walk from the station and what to do when she found the building, a private library on Cathedral Green.

    Is this what it feels like when the universe is on your side, or rather when you're on the side of the universe? It's more like being run over by a bin lorry.

Inside the library it’s shadowy, the walls covered with rows of books old and new. On the lower rows are leather-bound tomes the size of broadsheets. A balustraded gallery leads to more rows of books, which fade into the darkness above. It’s like being in My Fair Lady but without Rex Harrison. Jane tingles. Books are magical. You never know what you’ll find in them.

    Around a fireplace in sagging armchairs sit grey people reading newspapers. They look up when Jane enters and frown. She's flattered. They obviously don’t see her as a kindred spirit even though her own hair is on the side of grey – albeit with blonde highlights and sleek, she hopes, rather than Ancient Mariner bushy.

    A tall blond man in a pink cashmere jumper leaps from a side door and waves to Jane, before pointing back at the door from which he’s appeared and putting his finger to his lips.

    Trying not to giggle, Jane follows him.

   

‘Sorry about the cloak and dagger stuff,’ says the blond man, closing the door behind them. ‘It’s such a convenient place. So central. So useful for research, or used to be, before the days of the internet. Haw, haw, haw. Jane I presume. I’m Henry.’

    He holds out his hand and as Jane meets his eye she realises that he’s a lot more intelligent than she imagined. The waffle is a disguise, designed to fool you into underestimating him. She finds herself backing away and knocking into a chair. Suddenly, she really wants this job.

    ‘Sit down,’ says Henry. ‘Good journey? Find the place all right? Now tell me why you’ve applied. Fill in the gaps in your application. Why Devon? Why Courtney Press? Why publishing? What sort of books do you like to read? Any questions you’d like to ask me?’

    She feels as if a parliament of crows is pecking at her brain. She needs to stand up to this man but she’s not sure how to do it. She should have come better prepared. She should have a sheaf of her own questions.

    ‘I, er, wondered why it’s a new post,’ she stammers, sliding on to the chair she knocked.

    They are in a small room furnished only with a square table and the upright wooden chairs that she remembers from her schooldays with seats shaped to accommodate bottoms. There’s no sign of any tea or coffee but perhaps that’s too complicated – involving a single gas ring in a cupboard or something.

    ‘Ah, good question,’ says Henry, slowing down slightly. ‘Used to do all the commissioning myself but have decided to step back a little – for the sake of the family. Plus volume of work of course. So I’m taking on two of you. You would be doing the non-fiction, and I’ve taken on Sam to do the fiction. You’ll like her.’

    Jane already hates her. It's jealousy, she knows. She's always wanted to do fiction herself.

    She remembers her first publishing interview back in the late 1970s. ‘All you girls want to work in fiction,’ said the fat man in the striped shirt. ‘Why not start in non-fiction and then transfer?’ But of course you couldn’t. It was a con just like the secretarial con: you started as a secretary and ‘worked your way up’. Except you didn’t – unless you were sleeping with the boss.

    ‘I see,’ she says. ‘So I would have free rein to bring in new authors?’

    It's the sort of question you're supposed to ask. It shows how dynamic and self-motivating you are and suggests you have a list of interesting people to bring into the business. She doesn't really and the question just popped into her mind. Why is she being such an amateur at this?

    ‘Indeed,' says Henry. 'Subject of course to my approval.'

    Jane doesn’t like the sound of that, especially as Henry looks a little uncomfortable. Something has shifted in the atmosphere however and she realises that for some reason Henry needs her. Is she the only applicant? Perhaps the ‘wilds of Exmoor’ aren’t to everyone’s taste.

    And why is he so keen to divest himself of some of the work? Is it really family pressure and/or success as he says? Or is the business expanding too fast and getting out of hand? Is he thinking of selling it?

    What a lot of questions, but does she really care?

    She’s done her research about Courtney Press too. She has all the facts she needs.

    The Press exists. It was started by Henry twenty years ago, It employs about twelve people. It has a reputation for quality commercial fiction and non-fiction with an edge (‘Controversial Knowledge’ as they categorise it at her current employers). It’s based, as Henry said, in the converted stables of his family seat, which looks gorgeous in the pictures. His wife runs the house as a posh B & B and wedding venue.

    They chat some more about the job and why Jane wants to move out of London - she invents some guff about wanting to retrace her student days - but it’s only a formality. Both of them, she thinks, have already made their decision.

    The one thing she did expect to be asked about - her age - Henry doesn't mention but then he would have to be in his fifties himself even if he doesn't look it.

   

Jane scuttles back to the station. She hates interviews almost as much as she hates 'cosy chats', and Henry didn’t make her at all comfortable. She doesn’t trust him a jot.

    He offered her the job as she left and she said she would ring him first thing in the morning. She has no doubt as to what she will say.

Click here for Chapter 5