The Dingoes' Lament. John Bois
and soul-destroying stay in limbo — that is, unless we could make a quick exit.
A thick pall of smoke dissolved slowly into the air as Seymour tapped out the slag plug from the bottom of his Meerschaum’s bowl. He took a velvet-green pipe-cleaner from a stand next to his ashtray and expelled a thick globule of black tar from the stem. Putting down the pipe, he picked up the folder with the contracts and gave them a cursory look.
He lobbed the folder onto the desk. ‘You can sign these if you want …’
They landed with a thwack that blew ash onto my thighs. Then he pushed himself deeply into his plush office chair and fondly stroked his upper lip: ‘… but you’re fools if you do. Seven-and-a-half percent is bull. We’re going to ask for fifteen. I bet that’s closer. And let’s up the advance money while we’re at it. It’s The Rolling Stones and A&M records, for God’s sake. They can afford ten times that,’ he said, pointing his nose at the contracts.
As we passed the contracts around, Seymour picked up his pipe and began to scrape it out. Black shards of carbon, bearing the residue of a week of Seymour’s smoking, cascaded into the ashtray and onto the desk. He used his matchbox as a blade to gather the errant carbon into a pile near the edge of his desk. He pulled up his wastepaper basket and scraped the carbon into it. The contracts forgotten, we watched, spellbound by Seymour’s excavations.
‘Let me make a counter-proposal. All they can do is say no.’
Outside the barber shop, J.L. was adamant: ‘I think we ought to sign and get out, now.’
I said, ‘But we can’t. We have to let Seymour try and get the best deal he can.’
‘Does he know what he’s doing?’ said J.L.
‘Good question. We haven’t got much choice, mate — still,’ said Stockley.
‘I wish we knew how good seven-and-a-half percent is,’ said Brod. ‘It doesn’t seem like much.’
‘Seymour’s position is that it’s just an opening offer,’ I said. ‘Let’s wait and see what reply he gets from them. Then we’ll know where we stand.’
J.L. rolled his eyes.
Seymour had insisted that all negotiations be done by mail. Verbal agreements, he said, were useless. And furthermore, you knew where you stood if everything was down on paper. Seymour took two weeks to frame his reply. The laggard international post took another two weeks to get it to the lawyers in America. They took another two weeks to get to our contracts and advise Peter Rudge how to respond. Six weeks after our meeting their response came and we were summoned to Seymour’s office.
As we walked up the stairs, the aromatic stench of his Private Bin #72 tobacco flooded our senses and evoked Seymour in a way his actual presence never could. As he opened the door, eddies of smoke whorled about our bodies. It was worse than usual today. The thick, overcast ceiling had been disturbed by the suction of the open door and was now seething with Gothic potential. Seymour had no pipe, but telltale wisps of smoke vivified his beard. He asked us to sit and, walking behind his desk, pulled an airmail letter from a drawer. He was still standing and, while he leaned on his desk with one hand, he slapped the letter against his trouser leg with an action that fanned up a few flakes of ash.
‘They’re just not playing the game — they’ve thrown this right back in our faces. We were looking for some good faith and they gave us nothing!’ He shook with passion. ‘Nothing!’
He threw the letter down onto the desk and fell back into his chair. One by one we read the letter. Stockley passed it to me like it was a hot potato.
Seymour had said, ‘Seven-and-a-half? They can do better than that. Let’s ask for fifteen; maybe we’ll get ten.’
‘We feel,’ the letter said, ‘our initial offer was more than fair. We made this offer in order that you would sign quickly. Please reconsider and get back to us as soon as possible.’
‘Maybe the offer is fair, Seymour,’ I said. ‘Do you know what is standard?’
Seymour had lit another pipe and smoke was streaming from his nostrils. Everyone looked at the smoke-enshrouded lawyer for a reply to this reasonable question. He tapped the mouthpiece of his pipe against his cheek:
‘Don’t be tricked by their letter,’ he said. ‘I deal with contracts all the time. All this means is that we were a little high on our fifteen. You know they can’t say, ‘Well, we thought that fifteen was a little high. Why don’t you ask us for ten and we might go for eight or even nine. This is a standard tactic. We’ll just hit them a little lower next time, that’s all.’ Seymour thumped his pipe down in his ashtray like a gavel as if to say, Case closed.
But Kerryn contemptuously said: ‘But you just said they weren’t playing the game.’
‘Oh, they’re playing a game alright! They call it hardball. These are top-flight people. Savvy … and ruthless.’
‘I’m worried,’ said Brod. ‘I’m worried we’re gonna blow ’em off.’
‘You have to trust me,’ said Seymour. ‘This is the way it’s played. You can’t let them roll over you now — if you do they’ll have you for breakfast later on.’
But Brod came back, ‘Do you mind if we step outside for a couple of minutes? I think we ought to talk between ourselves.’
Seymour couldn’t stop us from doing that and we walked a block away from his office, to a pub. We sat in a semicircle around the bar. When we got our beer we began.
‘Ring Billy — all we have to do is find out what’s fair. It’s obvious Seymour doesn’t know.’
‘He should have gone lower to begin with.’
‘Yeah. They might have given us nine.’
‘It’s too late now.’
‘This being in limbo is killing us — we’ve got to get out soon or it will be too late, no matter what percentage Seymour can get.’
‘Yeah. Let’s take the seven-and-a-half and run.’
‘Seven-and-a-half of something is better than fifteen percent of nothing.’
‘God! You’re wise, Stockley,’ I said.
Kerryn brought the meeting to conclusion, ‘Let’s up and down these beers and give the good news to Seymour.’
‘Man, he’s gonna love this.’
Brod knocked on Seymour’s door. The room was clear of smoke. I think he knew what we were about to say. Brod spoke, ‘We’ve decided to sign now. We’ve got to get over there soon or we won’t have anything left for America.’
‘Very well.’ Seymour was disgruntled. ‘That’s fair enough, I suppose.’
He picked up his pipe and started to fill it.
‘But there is something else.’
He put the filled pipe on top of a box of matches and handed out five xeroxed copies of page five of the contracts. As we read them he lit up, and spoke between draughts of air:
‘The second … sentence in para … graph three.’
The flames from the pipe, dimly visible through the smoke, shot six inches above the bowl when Seymour released his sucking pressure. When he was sucking, I thought, those flames must be blasting right on his tongue. As he spoke I tried to get a glimpse of it, but the light streaming in from behind, and the smoke, made it difficult to see anything. I imagined that he had a kind of asbestos sheath that he slid over his tongue, and this gave me a mild case of the giggles as I was apparently reading the contract.
‘This wouldn’t be so funny, John,’ said Seymour, ‘if you understood what it was that was being said. That line means you have to pay back any advances they give you — whether or not you make it. Do