about their marriage.’
‘Perhaps nothing, but according to Monsieur Munns, you know all there is to know about Houston himself,’ said Amalric. ‘So why don’t you tell us the whole story? From the very beginning. How you two met. The way things worked and then the way things changed. Recently, wasn’t it? When he made the decision to wind up the
atelier
?’
‘
Il était une fois
, as it were,’ I said.
‘Exactly. This is your métier, after all. And there’s nothing policemen like more than to listen to a story. It strikes methat this might be quite a good one, too. One minute Houston is the most successful writer in the world, making millions of dollars every year, and the next he decides to throw it all up. Why?’ Amalric sniffed the wine as it was poured by the waiter and nodded his approval. ‘I have the strong feeling that this is the key to everything. Yes, indeed, I have the distinct sense that once one understands this then much else will become clear. And perhaps we will have a good idea of where to find the elusive Monsieur Houston.’
CHAPTER 4
My father died while I was still studying law at Cambridge. He left my mother very little and joining the army on an undergraduate bursary was the only way of finishing my degree; for this I had to give the army three years, but I ended up giving them six. I went to Sandhurst in September 1976, and stayed in the army until 1982 when I met a rather marvellous man called Perry Slater, who had known my father during national service in the Royal Scots Greys. Perry was the kind of chap who knew everyone and who everyone seemed to like. He’d been a keen motorcyclist, as was I – we’d both ridden bikes at the Isle of Man TT – and was famously a sports commentator for the BBC; he was also an advertising executive with an agency called D’Arcy MacManus Masius and he kindly managed to find me a job as an account executive in the summer of 1982.
In the late Seventies and early Eighties British advertising was undergoing something of a revolution; thanks to entrepreneurs like the Saatchi Brothers and commercials directors like Alan Parker and Ridley Scott, London’s agencies were making much more creative work than their Madison Avenue counterparts and suddenly it was cool to be an advertising man.
At least it was unless you worked for Masius, which wasknown in the business as the civil service of advertising agencies; Masius looked after clients such as Pedigree Petfoods, Peugeot, Mars, Beechams, Kimberly-Clark and Allied Breweries whose brands were long-established and distinguished by their dullness and conservatism. It might have been the after-effects of my military service – back then we hadn’t a clue about PTSD – but the tedium and monotony of my new career left me rather depressed and, after a year as an account executive, I persuaded someone to let me become a copywriter. That was how I first met John Houston. He was my creative director, which is to say he was the person to whom I reported and to whom I was supposed to present the press advertisements, TV and radio commercials that I had written for various clients. I liked working for John, but only in so far as he let me do what I liked, and I quickly learned that John himself was interested in advertising in so far as it enabled him to pay his bills; his real interest was writing not advertising copy but a novel to which he had devoted every weekend and evening for almost two years. I’d been writing something myself, and jealously I was spurred to greater effort by the thought that John might beat me into print. From time to time after that we would each politely enquire how the other’s novel was coming along; but John always played his cards close to his chest and I had no idea that his book was as advanced as it turned out to be. Because one day, to everyone’s surprise but mine, he announced that this novel –
The Tyranny of Heaven
– was going to be published and
‘Perhaps nothing, but according to Monsieur Munns, you know all there is to know about Houston himself,’ said Amalric. ‘So why don’t you tell us the whole story? From the very beginning. How you two met. The way things worked and then the way things changed. Recently, wasn’t it? When he made the decision to wind up the
atelier
?’
‘
Il était une fois
, as it were,’ I said.
‘Exactly. This is your métier, after all. And there’s nothing policemen like more than to listen to a story. It strikes methat this might be quite a good one, too. One minute Houston is the most successful writer in the world, making millions of dollars every year, and the next he decides to throw it all up. Why?’ Amalric sniffed the wine as it was poured by the waiter and nodded his approval. ‘I have the strong feeling that this is the key to everything. Yes, indeed, I have the distinct sense that once one understands this then much else will become clear. And perhaps we will have a good idea of where to find the elusive Monsieur Houston.’
CHAPTER 4
My father died while I was still studying law at Cambridge. He left my mother very little and joining the army on an undergraduate bursary was the only way of finishing my degree; for this I had to give the army three years, but I ended up giving them six. I went to Sandhurst in September 1976, and stayed in the army until 1982 when I met a rather marvellous man called Perry Slater, who had known my father during national service in the Royal Scots Greys. Perry was the kind of chap who knew everyone and who everyone seemed to like. He’d been a keen motorcyclist, as was I – we’d both ridden bikes at the Isle of Man TT – and was famously a sports commentator for the BBC; he was also an advertising executive with an agency called D’Arcy MacManus Masius and he kindly managed to find me a job as an account executive in the summer of 1982.
In the late Seventies and early Eighties British advertising was undergoing something of a revolution; thanks to entrepreneurs like the Saatchi Brothers and commercials directors like Alan Parker and Ridley Scott, London’s agencies were making much more creative work than their Madison Avenue counterparts and suddenly it was cool to be an advertising man.
At least it was unless you worked for Masius, which wasknown in the business as the civil service of advertising agencies; Masius looked after clients such as Pedigree Petfoods, Peugeot, Mars, Beechams, Kimberly-Clark and Allied Breweries whose brands were long-established and distinguished by their dullness and conservatism. It might have been the after-effects of my military service – back then we hadn’t a clue about PTSD – but the tedium and monotony of my new career left me rather depressed and, after a year as an account executive, I persuaded someone to let me become a copywriter. That was how I first met John Houston. He was my creative director, which is to say he was the person to whom I reported and to whom I was supposed to present the press advertisements, TV and radio commercials that I had written for various clients. I liked working for John, but only in so far as he let me do what I liked, and I quickly learned that John himself was interested in advertising in so far as it enabled him to pay his bills; his real interest was writing not advertising copy but a novel to which he had devoted every weekend and evening for almost two years. I’d been writing something myself, and jealously I was spurred to greater effort by the thought that John might beat me into print. From time to time after that we would each politely enquire how the other’s novel was coming along; but John always played his cards close to his chest and I had no idea that his book was as advanced as it turned out to be. Because one day, to everyone’s surprise but mine, he announced that this novel –
The Tyranny of Heaven
– was going to be published and
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