Return to Peyton Place (14 page)

On the twenty-fifth of March, Allison received the six advance copies of her novel, and immediately burst into tears.

Now she knew what David had meant when he spoke of the thrill that came with holding one's first book. She stroked the paper jacket and studied the photograph of herself on the back. Then she removed the jacket and looked at the smooth, black binding.

Samuel's Castle
she read, and under the title on the spine,
MacKenzie.
She gazed at it with eyes that slowly filled with tears. Here was the end result of years of work, this compact thing she could hold in her hands.

“It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen,” said Constance, and she, too, began to cry.

“Here we go again,” said Mike. “This is costing me a fortune in handkerchiefs.”

“But it is,” wept Constance. “I never saw a more beautiful book in my life.”

“Neither have I,” agreed Mike, putting his arm around her.

“And it's mine,” cried Allison. “
Mine.
There's no one between these two covers but me. Nobody did it for me, nobody told me what to say. I did it myself.”

“If this keeps up,” said Mike, “we're going to go broke buying champagne.”

Allison did not pay much attention to the note Lewis Jackman had sent her along with the books.

“I have taken the liberty,” he wrote, “of sending individual copies of
Samuel's Castle
to various people in Peyton Place. I think their reactions to the novel may be of some publicity value to us in our advertising.”

Who cares about advertising? thought Allison. Let Lewis Jackman sell books. All I ever want to do is write them.

She began to inscribe the six copies she had received. For David, with all my love, Allison. For my Mother and Mike, with love and gratitude. For Selena Cross, with love, Allison. For Dr. Matthew Swain, who remembers poems about Eternity, with love from Allison. For Seth Buswell, who paid me the first money I ever earned for writing, with best wishes, Allison MacKenzie. And the sixth copy she kept for herself. She propped it up on her dresser so that she could see it when she first awoke in the morning.

At eleven o'clock that night, Seth Buswell called Matthew Swain.

“Have you read it?” he demanded, his voice harsh with excitement.

“Read what, for God's sake?” asked Matt.

“Allison's book!”

“No, I haven't,” said Matt patiently. “I work for a living, remember? I've got more to do than sit around reading books all day.”

“Matt, all hell is going to break loose.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She's got everybody in town in it!”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“I mean thinly disguised portraits of every single person in Peyton Place,” said Seth.

“Oh, stop it,” said Matt. “Allison wouldn't do a thing like that.”

“I don't say it was intentional,” said Seth, “but by God, Matt, people are going to take it that way. She's got rape, incest, murder, suicide, and a dozen different kinds of screwing around in that book!”

“So? Sin isn't at home only in Peyton Place, you know. It dwells in other places, too.”

“Matt, don't argue. Sit down and read it. That's all I can tell you. Oh, yes. Marion Partridge got a copy from the publishers. They want her to sit down and list her reactions to the book and let them know. She called me an hour ago, sore as a boil, and she wants Allison MacKenzie run out of town on a rail.”

“Marion's always been a troublemaker,” said Matthew Swain. “Born that way, Marion was. Well, I'll get busy and start reading right now.”

“Matt?”

“What?”

“Call me back when you finish. No matter what time it is. I want to hear what you have to say.”

Matthew Swain built a fire in the fireplace of his living room. He made himself a tall drink, and when he had changed to his robe and slippers, he sat down and began to read.

“There is a little town in northern New England,” he read, “and all year long the hills that roll gently away from it are green, for they are topped with pine. On the highest hill of all, like a jewel in the center of a crown, sits Samuel's castle.”

Matthew Swain read until three-fifteen in the morning, and when he had finished Allison's novel, he picked up the telephone and called Seth Buswell.

“I still say it could have happened anywhere,” he said. “It doesn't have to be here.”

“Matt, you've lived in this part of the country all your life. Do you know of any other New England town with a castle right in its own back yard?”

“Well, no,” said Matt. “But it could happen. There's no law says that castles are limited to Peyton Place.”

“Tell that to Marion Partridge and every other woman in town like her,” said Seth. “Wait and see, Matt. Just wait and see.”

“I know,” said Matthew Swain. “I know. I guess I was just trying to convince myself that nothing is going to come of this.”

“Stargazer,” said Seth.

“I'm afraid so, Seth,” said the doctor. “I'm afraid so. There's no doubt of it, Seth. All hell's going to break loose here when that book is published.”

A
LLISON WAITED
. Now that her novel was scheduled for publication, there was nothing to do but wait. She could not work. She had planned on beginning her second novel, but soon gave up all thought of it. She found it impossible to plunge into something new before knowing how the critics and public would accept her first effort. She did not worry, but waited with a quiet resignation that only occasionally broke down. At those times, impatience and a terrible sense of urgency assailed her and she wanted to strike the walls of her room with her fists, as if the walls themselves were a barrier to immediate publication.

While she was writing her novel, it had seemed an endless task; she could not imagine that a day would come when the pile of manuscript on her desk would be gone. She felt like a convalescent, at ease with herself, quietly grateful that she had come through. She sat at the window and gazed out at Peyton Place, the part of the world she knew best. She felt that for two years she had, in a sense, been cut off from life; she had not participated in it actively, with her whole being, but only as an observer, clinically detached. Sometimes she was afraid that this had become too much a way of life for her, and she wondered if her rejection of David had not been motivated by a fear of entering passionately into life again.

Every day she picked up her copy of
Samuel's Castle
and wondered what its fate was to be. Obscurity, she thought. That was the fate of most first novels. She did not know that in New York certain wheels had been set in motion and that the novel was no longer altogether hers, or that its fate was not to be left to chance. Fate had an accomplice, a man she had never heard of, named Paul Morris.

Paul Morris was a small, compact man with a crew haircut, soft brown eyes and a smile which, people said, would charm the pants off a nun. He was thirty years old and for the last ten of those years had worked in New York at the nebulous trade known as public relations.

At the age of eighteen, Paul had managed to get himself hired by a small advertising agency by tacking five years on his age and claiming that he was a graduate of Columbia University. As he said later, the closest he had ever come to Columbia was riding down Morningside Drive on a bus, for his formal education had ended after two years at a high school in the Bronx.

By the time he was twenty, Paul felt that he had learned everything about the advertising business that could be useful to him later and he went, with excellent references, to a job in the publicity department of one of the largest radio stations in New York. It was there, he said later, that he really found himself. He rose quickly in his chosen field. Within three years he was head of his department, married a girl singer who gave up her budding career for him and moved into an apartment at a good address in the East Sixties.

Two years later he opened an office of his own, and many of the big names with whom he had worked in radio and who were to become the pioneer stars of television followed him. The printing on his door read, “Paul Morris, Publicity and Public Relations,” and, as Paul said, he could always tell a square the minute he spoke to one, because the square always asked, “Just what is it that you do, Mr. Morris?”

For his clients, Paul Morris did everything, and he did it better than anyone else. One of the most important clients was a man named Jerry Baldwin who had a coast-to-coast television program called “Fun with Uncle Jerry.” Baldwin was an alcoholic who could enjoy sex only with girls under fifteen. It was Paul Morris' job to see to it that none of Baldwin's escapades became open scandal. Paul had often arrived on the scene of a barroom brawl, minutes ahead of the police, to drag Baldwin, fighting and screaming obscenities, into a waiting automobile, and he had been called upon frequently to soothe, with cash, the outraged parents of teen-age girls.

“You'd better knock it off, Jer,” he told Baldwin. “You're going broke. Pay-offs aren't deductible, you know.”

Another of Paul's prize customers was an ex-gangster named Manny Kubelsky, who had turned respectable in his old age and wanted the whole world to know it. Paul saw to it that Manny made the gossip columns every time the ex-hood gave to charity or opened another store in his chain of sporting goods shops. Paul found a teacher who erased the lower East Side from Manny's speech, and a good tailor who succeeded in making the little mobster look like a Madison Avenue executive. Paul traded Manny's long, black Cadillac for a medium-sized, gray Buick and he had Manny's apartment redecorated to look like the home of a moderately successful businessman.

“You can't afford ostentation, Manny,” said Paul.

“Ostentation, my ass!” cried Manny, sulking over the loss of his velvet drapes and white fur rugs. “I don't want to live like no bum, neither.”

“
Any
bum,” corrected Paul patiently.

Very often, a man grows to hate a person who knows his innermost secrets and hidden vices, but this was not the case with Paul Morris and his clients. He was everything to them from nurse to father confessor and they worshiped him. He procured jobs for them, got their names and photographs into newspapers and magazines, bought them front-row seats for opening nights and patched up lovers' quarrels.

“Just what do I do?” Paul Morris often said. “Why, everything or nothing, depending on your point of view. But if you want me to do it for you, it'll cost you, and cost you plenty.”

When Lewis Jackman began to realize that in Allison MacKenzie's novel he had a book which, with good advertising and clever publicity, could be turned into a runaway best seller, he sent at once for Paul Morris. The realization of what he had had not been long in coming to Jackman. As soon as the comment cards which he had sent out with each advance copy of the book began coming back to him, Jackman knew.

“Makes Caldwell sound like a choirboy,” read one card.

“Tobacco Road with a Yankee accent.”

“Earthy. Real. Truthful.”

“Wowie!”

These were the remarks of the booksellers. From the people to whom Jackman had sent books in Peyton Place, there was an ominous silence.

Paul Morris read all the comments and studied a photograph of Allison MacKenzie.

“She's just a kid,” he said to Lewis Jackman.

“Exactly,” replied Jackman.

“But I've read the book. No kid ever wrote that!”

“She did, though. Makes rather a nice gimmick, doesn't it?”

“I'll say,” said Paul. “The face of a schoolgirl and the mind and vocabulary of a longshoreman. We just might have something here.”

“That's what I think, Paul. Do you think you can do anything with what we have?”

Paul Morris sat quietly and tapped a pencil against his front teeth.

“Can you get her to come down here?” he asked at last.

“Yes, I'm sure of it. The thing that may make it easier all around is that she wants this book to be a big seller almost as badly as I do.”

“Call her up right now,” said Paul. “I'll wait. Tell her you need her the day after tomorrow for four or five days.”

Jackman picked up the telephone and called Allison MacKenzie. After a few minutes of conversation, he winked at Paul Morris and formed the words “She'll come” silently with his lips. He spoke into the telephone a moment longer, and when he hung up he was grinning.

“Not only is she coming,” he said, “but she's very excited about the whole thing.”

“Good,” said Paul. “I'll start setting up appointments as soon as I get back to my office.”

“Just a hint for what it's worth, Paul,” said Jackman. “Allison is sweet, tractable and co-operative, for the most part, but when she turns stubborn she's pure, shell-backed Yankee and next to impossible to deal with.”

Paul laughed. “You're paying me to cope with little problems like that,” he said. “Don't worry about a thing.”

“I won't worry,” said Jackman, and although he smiled there was a little edge of warning to his voice. “I know you won't botch this one, Paul.”

You're damned right, I won't, thought Paul as he left Jackman's office, for although he had plenty of clients as it was, the job he was going to do for Jackman now was the first one he had attempted for a book publisher. Jackman had opened a whole new untapped field for him, and he was determined to do the best job of his career on Allison MacKenzie and
Samuel's Castle.

“Hundreds of books are published every year,” Paul told his wife. “If I do a spectacular job this time, there'll be other jobs. It's a potential gold mine.”

Allison had taken Lewis Jackman's telephone call in the kitchen, where she, Mike and Constance had been drinking coffee. Watching her on the phone, Constance realized how lacking in animation Allison had been these past weeks. Just talking to someone in New York, Constance thought, brings her back to life again. With a pang, she wondered whether Allison would ever be content with Peyton Place again.

“Mr. Jackman wants me to go down to New York,” Allison said, when she had hung up the phone. “I'm going to be interviewed by some newspaper and television people. He says that they are all very interested in the book and want to talk to me.”

“Why, that's wonderful!” said Constance. “When do you have to go?”

“The day after tomorrow.”

“Good Heavens!” Constance exclaimed. “What are we doing just standing here! We've got to find you something to wear.”

Michael Rossi did not say anything, but his eyes narrowed a little as Allison and Constance left the room. He could hear them upstairs, laughing and chattering, as they looked over Allison's wardrobe.

I don't like this, he thought. I don't like it at all.

He felt there was a reckless fervor in Allison's manner, an eagerness to throw herself into life. He did not want her to be hurt. He had read her novel and, unlike Constance, he had not been blinded by a mother's love; he knew its publication would not pass quietly in a town like Peyton Place, that those who were offended by it would strike back. Sometimes he found himself hoping that the book would not be a success; he was afraid that Allison was all too ignorant of what success can do, how destructive it can be.

But he said nothing to Allison and Constance, for he would have had no answers for the questions they would have asked. He didn't know precisely why he felt as he did, he only knew that he had a feeling of apprehension and that he wished that Allison were not going to New York. Later, he was to wish desperately that he had voiced an opinion, no matter how vague, for his anxiety had been more well founded than he knew.

W
HEN SHE GOT OFF
the train at Grand Central, Allison spotted Lewis Jackman immediately. His height would have made him recognizable even if she had forgotten his face. She had seen him only once before, but he had a darkly handsome face that was hard to forget. Jackman was so touched by her youth that he held her hand a moment longer than was necessary. Allison saw revealed in his eyes a naked longing that caused her heart to lurch.

“I've reserved a room for you at the Algonquin,” he said. “At our expense, of course. It's close to everything and still has a certain literary flair about it that I think you'll enjoy.” His voice was warm, resonant, but his words impersonal; he acted like a man determined to let nothing interfere with business.

“I've read about the Algonquin,” said Allison. “Do famous people still gather there to insult the world and each other?”

“Not any more,” laughed Jackman. “But their ghosts survive. The place is full of them. I asked the manager to be sure to give you one of the haunted rooms.”

They were sitting on one of the sofas in the hotel lobby having a cocktail when Paul Morris joined them.

“Hello, Allison,” said Paul and smiled his famous smile. “I read your book and I think it's terrific. I enjoyed it tremendously.”

“Thank you very much,” said Allison, thrilling to the words of praise she knew she would never tire of hearing.

How nice he is, she thought. Not at all what I expected. Well, what
did
I expect? she asked herself, and smiled inwardly at her own answer.

She had only just heard of him from Jackman and had expected a caricature of a motion picture publicity man. Someone with dark-rimmed glasses and hair that was a shade too long and who smelled of constant hurry and tension.

Paul Morris began to talk about New England, the towns he had visited and the summer camps he had attended as a child, and within fifteen minutes Allison felt as if he were an old friend she had known all her life. This was the measure of one of Paul's greatest talents because, in reality, the only time he had ever set foot in New England had been to cart one of his clients, an actress with a penchant for the bottle, to a theater in Boston. He had been forced to spend the weekend there, stuck in a small hotel room near the North Station, and when he had finally been able to leave he had sworn to God that it would be a long, cold day in hell before he ever left New York again.

“We're having lunch with Jim Brody tomorrow,” said Paul. “Ever hear of him?”

“I think so,” said Allison. “Doesn't he write some sort of newspaper column?”

“I'll say he does,” said Paul. “A column that's syndicated in over six hundred papers all over the country. He wants to interview you.”

Allison's hands began to tremble. “I'll never be able to think of anything to say.”

“Yes, you will,” said Paul. “All you have to do is be yourself. Now, listen. This is going to be a very important interview. Not only because Brody is big, but because it's your first time out. What are you going to wear?”

“I have some new dresses,” she said, “and my mother let me borrow her mink stole.”

“No,” said Paul, “I don't want you to look dressed up. I want you to look very young, innocent and little girlish. Come on. Let's go upstairs and take a look.”