Read A Bouquet of Barbed Wire for Free Online

that’s good.’
    ‘Do you love me?’
    ‘Now what do you think?’
    ‘Do you?’
    ‘Honey, you know I don’t like you asking me questions like that. Sure I love you. Just don’t keep on asking.’
    ‘What shall we do about the weekend?’
    ‘That’s another question.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Do nothing, is all. We’re going. I’ll just have to mind my manners and keep out of your Dad’s way.’
    Prue said confidently, ‘It’ll be better when the baby’s here.’
    ‘Yeah, so long as it looks like you.’
    ‘No, that won’t matter. Nothing will matter then. They’ll be so thrilled to be grandparents they’ll forget there was ever a time when they didn’t like you. You’ll see. The baby will make everything all right with them.’
    ‘Poor kid. That’s some job it’s got on.’

8
    T HE WEEK crawled by. He did not know whether he was dreading the weekend or longing for it to arrive. He read interminable manuscripts and readers’ reports, either ahead of Rupert or to supplement his judgment. He was perfectly aware that this was the job he resented giving up and he still made an effort to retain at least some part of it for himself. Rupert pretended not to notice the encroachment. Manson thought back to the days when he had been young and each manuscript, before he opened it, looked as if it might be the one. If you could not stay at Cambridge, not produce anything of your own, you might at least discover a rare talent and nurture it: that would be worth doing. And not sourly, with envy, as a writer-manqué, like so many publishers, but generously, with a sense of importance in the role of guardian.
    There had been relatively few worth nurturing, however, and the sympathetic sorrow he felt at composing letters of rejection had faded as fast as his eager anticipation on facing a new title. He had been truly amazed. If people played the piano like this, he said, they surely would not look for work in a night-club. If they danced like this, they would surely not even attempt to join the chorus in a provincial show. Nobody brick-laying at such a standard would ever dream of trying to get a job as a brick-layer. What was it about the written word that made it fair game? He began to have fresh respect for the masters, few as they were, and most of themdead, and though he looked in a sense harder, with more need and appreciation, for new live ones, he looked also with less actual hope of success.
    But the job at least was a real job. Of all the aspects of the business in which he had been forced to dabble with an appearance of humility, the boss’s son learning the trade, it was the most congenial and, he felt, the one for which he had the most genuine aptitude. His mind did not run much on advertising: he had never thought to display himself to the best advantage so could not do it for books either, though he could see the merits of a particular scheme when they were pointed out to him. The legal and accounting departments spoke a language of their own of which he learnt only the rudiments. Impossible to infiltrate there. The Art Department attracted him more, but everyone was so expert that he was no use to them except as an interested observer and independent voice. The public relations side was easy, publicity and so forth, because people tended to like him, or, at the very least, not to dislike him: he did not put their backs up, and this quality, he discovered, was highly prized. Among all the agents and authors and reviewers and publicists and columnists and other publishers that he saw, he never made an enemy. He himself did not think in terms of enemies, so this achievement had to be pointed out to him. It was only later, when he was older and had more experience of others’ failure in this direction, that he realised quite what an achievement it was. At first he merely took it for granted. He was young and had pleasant manners. He had not had any enemies at Cambridge; he did not expect to have any here. He