Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [81]
But all this seemed to belong in the future. Bolowski had hinted he might take them if... And Hugh did not wish to offend him by trying to sell them elsewhere. Not that there were many other publishers left to try! But perhaps, perhaps, if these two songs did make a great hit, sold enormously, made Bolowski's fortune, perhaps if some great publicity--
Some great publicity! This was it, this was always it, something sensational was needed, it was the cry of the times, and when that day he had presented himself at the Marine Superintendent's office in Garston-Garston because Hugh's aunt moved from London north to Oswaldtwistle in the spring--to sign on board the S.S. Philoctetes he was at least certain something sensational had been found. Oh, Hugh saw, it was a grotesque and pathetic picture enough, that of the youth who imagined himself a cross between Bix Beiderbecke, whose first records had just appeared in England, the infant Mozart, and the childhood of Raleigh, signing on the dotted line in the office; and perhaps it was true too he had been reading too much Jack London even then, The Sea Wolf , and now in 1938 he had advanced to the virile Valley of the Moon (his favourite was The Jacket ), and perhaps after all he did genuinely love the sea, and the nauseous overrated expanse was his only love, the only woman of whom his future wife need be jealous, perhaps all these things were true of that youth, glimpsing probably, too, from afar, beyond the clause Seamen and Firemen mutually to assist each other, the promise of unlimited delight in the brothels of the Orient--an illusion, to say the least: but what unfortunately almost robbed it all of any vestige of the heroic was that in order to gain his ends without, so to say, "conscience or consideration," Hugh had previously visited every newspaper office within a radius of thirty miles, and most of the big London dailies had branch offices in that part of the north, and informed them precisely of his intention to sail on the Philoctetes , counting on the prominence of his family, remotely "news" even in England since the mystery of his father's disappearance, together with his tale of his songs' acceptance--he announced boldly that all were to be published by Bolowski--to make the story, and hence supply the needed publicity, and upon the fear engendered by this that yet more publicity and possibly downright ridicule must result for the family should they prevent his sailing, now a public matter, to force their hand. There were other factors too; Hugh had forgotten them. Even at that the newspapers could scarcely have felt his story of much interest had he not faithfully lugged along his bloody little guitar to each newspaper office. Hugh shuddered at the thought. This probably made the reporters, most, in fact, fatherly and decent men who may have seen a private dream being realized, humour the lad so bent on making an ass of himself. Not that anything of the sort occurred to him at the time. Quite the contrary. Hugh was convinced he'd been amazingly clever, and the extraordinary letters of "congratulation" he received from shipless buccaneers everywhere, who found their lives under a sad curse of futility because they had not sailed with their elder brothers the seas of the last war, whose curious thoughts were merrily brewing the next one, and of whom Hugh himself was perhaps the archtype, served