A Logo and Nothing More
After Queensman went out into the world, a copy found its way to the Grosvenor Estate: a magazine with the son's face set boldly upon it, and on the cover, no less. The Duke looked it over with a faintly puzzled air.
"What is all this?"
"Business and private feeling appear to have become mixed, Your Grace."
"Mixed?"
His eyes brightened at the tutor's words.
"If I may speak first to the business. Carl Bernstein's magazine has been raising a considerable storm, and so this may be a check against it."
While they labored under the belief that Queensman was Tennessee's own work, it was a reasonable enough thought. A small misunderstanding, though, is apt to breed a large mistake.
"And the private feeling?"
"There seems to be a grudge where Carl Bernstein is concerned."
An ugly custom: the summoning of the first-years. In the course of it Park Jihoon had been given up in Tennessee's place, the two had drawn rapidly close, and they had come away with a common enemy by the name of Carl. The conclusion was not far off. The working, however, had a virus in it, plain to see. The tutor, with no way of knowing, pressed on in earnest.
"Carl Bernstein is plainly conscious of the young master. He launched a clothing label of his own, and late in the day. Now he even scatters gifts to keep his magazine afloat..."
"All of it with Tennessee in view?"
"Yes. Which is why I suspect the young master has drawn a blade of his own. A Carl for Carl."
"Hm."
"The other side is flinging himself at us with all he has. The young master is not one to smile and let such a thing pass."
He meant, in short, to stamp the man flat and leave him there.
"It is the Grosvenor way."
The Duke rested his chin on his hand and was quiet. He had not the faintest wish to step into a quarrel among children. And yet, just as the tutor said, to indulge a dog that lunged meaning to bite its master was never the Grosvenor way. Perhaps that was why the deliberation did not last.
Was it the doing of Queensman, now set out in bookshops the length of the country? Rugby shirts had become conspicuous on every street. An interest in rugby fashion had certainly taken hold, but this still isn't enough. That interest had to catch, of itself, on the first-versus-second-year match, and for that the publicity would need real heat. Beyond the keen readers who actually bought Queensman, ordinary people — people with no particular interest in the doings of the young — had to be made to look at our contest.
In a word, we needed aggro!
So from the morning I made for the headquarters of International News, a great press house with any number of subsidiaries under its hand. Among them, my destination was the most famous paper of all: the London Times.
"Do you have an appointment?"
The moment I gave Jo Sudeok's name, a man in a suit came out to me.
"You're from JH Network, you said?"
"Yes."
"This way, please."
He showed me into an ordinary office, a working floor broken up by desks and partitions.
"Shall we begin?"
"Here?"
He shrugged, as if to ask what the trouble was.
"There are a great many ears."
"Have you come for a secret conversation?"
I looked at him straight. When an advertiser called, one was shown, at the least, into a room apart. It was not special treatment. Even to keep the terms of a contract quiet, that much effort was usual. And he meant to talk where the staff came and went?
Hm. If this was a declaration of war — the claim that no amount of money could turn a paper's line — I would take it with pleasure. But if he meant to flourish a pen mighty enough to knock the birds from the sky, then disappointment was the only honest answer. So which was it?
He did not look away. Fortunately his face was full of a journalist's pride, the pride of writing what was right and reporting only what was true, and of a dignity that held its head high even before capital. I grinned. So I did come to the right place. The talk of money could wait a moment. I eased the conversation onto another tack.
"Forgive me. I came to see the publisher."
His look asked whether I had arrived knowing what sort of man that was.
"Of course. A war correspondent who went out to make the misery of war known, and took a Pulitzer in the bargain. A self-made legend, isn't he?"
"Then you will also know that he meets no advertiser, officially or privately."
Not an easy gate, then. Well, if that was the way of it.
"Then say I have come as a private person, not as an advertiser."
"A private person?"
"Would you tell him this? That out of the free land Britain bled to defend — out of that Korean ground where Mr. Walter risked his life on the burst of a flash — a student of the Royal School has, at last, emerged."
A knock.
"Come in."
The door creaked. Who would have thought a newspaper publisher's room could be so narrow and so poor. Scarcely a hundred and eighty square feet, and the shelves along every wall made it seem smaller still: an old desk besieged by old books, and a single telephone set upon it. Walter rose from a groaning chair to welcome me.
"I haven't a sofa. Will you manage?"
"Of course."
John F. Walter. A great journalist in the full sense of the words, a man who had gone in and out of the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and conflict after conflict, carrying the truth with him. Perhaps because I had come from Korea, his expression was gentle. The spine inside it came through with astonishing clarity all the same.
"A great deal more must have changed in ten years."
"You think so?"
"The greatest proof is that I was admitted to the Royal School."
He smiled, pleased. Early sixties. Could lines that quietly confessed the years ever look so fine? Walter regarded me without a word.
"You want an advertisement."
"Yes."
"Then why come to me?"
I did not answer. I waited, and sure enough he went on.
"Our staff are particular, I'll grant you, but there is a process. You might have followed it. Was there a reason you had to see me?"
"There was."
This time he waited for me. Under a light dimmed at the end of its life, I spoke evenly.
"What I want is a rather particular advertisement. A format the London Times has never tried, which is why I needed the leave of the man who decides."
"You aren't thinking of putting a nude on the front page?"
"Something like that."
An absurd answer, come back to a question he had tossed off as a joke. While he drew his brows in, I went on.
"You've heard of Ultimate?"
"Ultimate? Ah. That noisy affair?"
"Yes. The advertisement I want to run is for Ultimate."
The London Times: the paper of record, called the most traditional, the most proper, the most gentlemanly of them all. On its front page, not a single article. Only the Ultimate logo, and, set huge beside it, the date of the first-versus-second-year match. Not some other paper. The London Times? An eighty-year-old gentleman walking in with a snapback on his head. That was the shock the public would feel. And inside the paper, the revulsion would be beyond all imagining. It was precisely for that reason I had meant to see the publisher myself.
Walter neither granted it nor refused. He looked into my eyes and spoke quietly.
"I have lived my whole life trying to deliver the truth."
"Let me ask one thing. In that copy, what truth is there?"
A simple advertisement would not have drawn the question. The front page, though, was governed by a principle: it carried news, and nothing else. If an advertisement was to be printed even so, at the cost of breaking that principle, there had to be a reason worthy of the break.
"I'll ask again. What value does this advertisement have as news?"
Instead of answering at once, I asked if I might borrow a sheet of paper. I wrote until a good-sized slip was full, and handed it to him.
"What is this?"
"Books I have had translated into Korean at my own expense. Precious material, the sort that can underpin a good many fields of study."
I had set down only what came to mind on the spot. In truth there would be far more.
"It would be very difficult to lay out the whole purpose of the advertisement here. Only this. I trust the road behind me will prove I have not lived merely to fill my own stomach."
Walter was quiet with the thought. Tick, tock. For a while the clock on the wall moved its second hand as if the seconds had weight.
"I am not doubting your motive. I mean only that there must be value as news. To check a great power, or to serve the public good. That is what matters to us."
Not an easy condition. Even so, this was no place to step back.
"In the end, I believe it will be both."
"Both?"
"Yes."
The answer had barely left me when something in him — a journalist's instinct — seemed to trip. He asked again, as distinctly as a shutter clicking.
"Does this concern the Harris Group?"
"You don't mean to see it end in rugby."
I neither confirmed it nor denied it. Sometimes silence is the surest answer there is.
A man who, for the truth, had walked into the gunfire itself. In that moment Walter's eyes were full of a hard, settled certainty.
At the hotel, James Paver checked the quality of every sample and then dropped onto the bed as if his strings had been cut. Is this really the end? He had gone over them again and again, and still, for a while, his face stayed blank, as if something might yet have been left undone. Did I actually finish?
Guccio. Of late the house had been staggering, and yet it was still a luxury name with history and tradition to boast of. He had prepared the collaboration alone, and as of today he had finally set the full stop. Only the launch remained. I can hardly believe it.
The glow of it lasted a moment. Then the anxiety swept in. They had to sell fifty thousand of every item. Is that even a possible number? Whenever the unease showed, he remembered what the chief had told him, over and over. You don't need to worry. He had only been able to stare. A designer has already done his duty, by bringing into the world a thing that was not in it. The words had gone straight through him. Promoting the work is my part. Even if it sells poorly, the whole of the responsibility is mine. What leader talked like that?
A small smile was just taking hold at the corner of Paver's mouth when the telephone beside the bed began to ring, as if the caller had known he was anxious. He lifted the receiver. A welcome voice came across.
"I didn't wake you, did I?"
"Of course not, sir. The coffee, maybe. I was wide awake."
He was glad enough to sit bolt upright. This was the man who had seen him first, while he was still drifting, and given him his chance without stinting. It was a telephone; the face could not be seen. Even so, Paver wanted to show every courtesy he had. He drew his back straight and settled the receiver more properly in his hand, and the voice came again.
"Mr. Paver, do you remember the promise I made?"
"The promise...?"
"I told you that in the end we'd be selling your lifestyle."
Ah. How could he forget? The chief had said that once the world came to yearn for the life Paver lived, a newspaper could run nothing but the Ultimate logo and still sell out to the last copy. Even now the thought of it sent a shiver over him, every hair standing on end. And then the voice came once more.
"I think I can keep that promise sooner than I expected."