Finally, poor old Jack gave up on trying to get Hugo to lighten up. When Jack asked him if he wanted to get some rest before getting to work, Hugo waved him off.
“Rather get started now,” Hugo had said. Fourteen years later, he wanted to reach back in time and shake some sense into his younger self, tell him to stop pretending to be a serious artist—all black clothes and black looks and bad attitude. It had taken a few years until he’d figured it out—there was no such thing as a serious artist. It was an oxymoron, and it was Jack who’d tried to teach him that the day they met.
During the quick tour of Jack’s house, Hugo pretended he wasn’t gobsmacked by every room. The priceless first editions in the library. The dining table for twelve. The kitchen as massive as his mum’s whole flat. The paintings of dead people Jack wasn’t related to. The bat skeletons in shadow box frames. The secret panel that led to a secret hallway that led to a secret exit into the not-so-secret garden. And everywhere clocks and hourglasses and sundials. Even a pendulum. The whole place was like a mad Victorian scientist’s summer home. And Hugo loved it. Not that he told Jack that.
“Welcome to my writing factory,” Jack said as they entered the last room. More bookshelves. A desk as big as a boat, and—according to Jack—made from a boat.
“Writing factory?” Hugo said.
“Willy Wonka had his chocolate factory where he tortured and rewarded children. I have my writing factory where I torture and reward children. Only on paper, of course.”
He gestured toward a collection of typewriters—a half dozen or more manual and electric typewriters. A red Olivetti. A black Smith Corona. A pale blue Royal. A neon pink Olympia. All of them looked older than Hugo by at least a decade or two.
“Typewriters?” Hugo asked as Jack sat behind his desk, an orange typewriter in front of him with “Hermes Rocket” stamped on the top in metal. “Bit old school there, yeah? Don’t use a computer?”
“Too quiet,” Jack said. “I need something loud enough to cover the sound of my characters screaming for help.”
Hugo was starting to think Jack might be a little touched in the head.
“More fun too,” Jack said. “Even Thurl likes to help me write. Come here, Thurl.”
If Hugo had noticed Jack’s pet raven, he’d have thought it was a statue or something and ignored it. Couldn’t ignore him now, flying from a perch by the south window to land on Jack’s desk by the east window. A raven. A real live black raven with a wingspan the length of Hugo’s leg.
“That’s a raven.” Hugo pointed at the bird. “Where’d that come from?”
“The sky,” Jack said, stroking Thurl’s glossy wings.
“A big beast, innit?” The shock must have shown in Hugo’s face.
“Oh, he’s just a baby. Well, a big baby. Thought you had ravens in London?”
“Got the Tower Ravens, but they don’t let us take ’em home. Always wanted to,” he admitted. “Couldn’t figure out how to hide a raven under my coat.”
“You can pet him. He’ll let you.”
Hugo had to pet the raven if only to tell Davey he’d done it.
Slowly he approached the bird, who seemed more than content to sit on Jack’s typewriter and peck at the keys. It looked up when Hugo approached, ebony eyes gleaming.
“All right, mate,” Hugo said as he slowly stroked the back of the bird’s sleek head once, then twice, and after that Hugo’s courage ran out. That beak looked sinister. But once he stopped, he wanted to do it again. He gave the wing a stroke and Thurl allowed it, didn’t even seem to mind. Maybe old Jack was mad, but he had good taste in strange pets.
“Found him half-dead in the woods after a windstorm. No mother in sight. Hand-reared him, so now he’s too tame to go back out into the big blue yonder.”
“He’s brilliant,” Hugo said, daring to stroke the bird’s glossy head again.
“Glad you like him. You two can be friends.”
Hugo was smiling and Jack had caught him. He didn’t like anyone to catch him smiling. Serious artists didn’t smile. They scowled.
He snatched his hand back, shoved it in his pocket.
“So how do we do this?” Hugo asked, getting down to business.
“You’ve read my books, yes?” Jack asked as he slid a fresh sheet of paper into his typewriter and started hammering away at the keys.
“Yeah. To my brother, Davey.” He had to raise his voice over the typewriter.
“And my editor or someone at Lion House explained the process yesterday?”
“The brass told me what to do and how to do it.” The art department at Lion House had given him a long lecture on the cover-making process. The Clock Island books were special, he was told, in that the covers were still painted as opposed to being computer designed. Jack’s preference (though the way they said “preference” made Hugo think it was more like a “demand”). The paintings would be displayed at book events and school visits, donated to children’s hospitals and family shelters. Then they gave him a list of requirements—medium, paint, dimensions. He might have walked out except they also told him how much he’d be paid per cover, which got him to sit down and pay attention. Peanuts compared to what Jack made per book, but it was more money than he or his mum had seen in a lifetime. So now here he was, in Maine talking to a madman with a raven for a co-writer.
“Then go on. Paint. Have fun.”
“I need a bit more help than ‘Have fun.’”
Jack kept typing and as he typed, he recited:
We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;—
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
Jack paused long enough to say, “First stanza. Ode by Arthur O’Shaughnessy. Always cite your sources.”
Then he returned to madly typing.
“Poetry doesn’t solve my problems,” Hugo said, almost shouting over the clacking of the keys.
Finally, Jack dropped his hands from the keys. The silence was heaven.
“Why would anyone have problems poetry couldn’t solve?” Jack demanded.
Did this man not understand the pressure Hugo was under? Jack’s publisher had said that each Clock Island book sold ten million or more copies, and there were forty of them so far. Ten million forty times over was a calculation even an artist could do in his head.
“You’re rich,” Hugo said. “I’m not about to say you should say you’re sorry about it,” though Hugo thought he probably should. “But that bag over there”—he pointed at his black duffel—“is about everything I own in this world. I can’t mess this up. You have to give me more to go on than ‘Have fun.’”
“Kid, this”—Jack pointed at the page in his typewriter—“is my art. That”—he pointed at a painting of Clock Island, tempera on paper, the one Hugo had entered into the contest—“is your art. You don’t tell me how to do my art. I don’t tell you how to do your art.”
“Jack?”
“Yes, Hugo?”
“Tell me how to do my art.”