No Comebacks

He realized as he started into the paper that Carpenter had not given him a page number, so he began with the general news section. By his second cup of coffee he had finished that, thrown down the arts-and-culture section and similarly discarded the sports section. That left the colour magazine and the business review. Being a self-employed businessman in a small way on the outskirts of London, he tried the business review.

On the third page, a name caught his eye; not his own, but that of a company which had recently collapsed and with which he had had a brief and, as it turned out, costly association. The article was in a column that prided itself on its investigative intent.

As he read the piece, he put his coffee down and his mouth fell open.

'He can't say this sort of thing about me,' he whispered. 'It's just not true.'

'What's the matter, dear?' asked his wife. She was evidently concerned at the stricken expression on her husband's face. Without a word he passed her the paper, folded so she could not miss the article. She read it carefully, emitting a single short gasp when she reached the middle of it.

'That's terrible,' she said when she had finished. 'This man's implying that you were in some way a part of a fraud.'

Bill Chadwick had risen and was pacing the kitchen.

'He's not implying it,' he said, his anger taking over from his shock, 'he's bloody well saying it. The conclusion is inescapable. Damn it, I was a victim of those people, not a knowing partner. I sold their products in good faith. Their collapse cost me as much as anyone else.'

'Could this do you harm, darling?' asked his wife, her face creased with worry.

'Harm? It could bloody ruin me. And it's just not true. I 've never even met the man who wrote this. What's his name?'

'Gaylord Brent,' said his wife, reading the byline from the article.

'But I've never even met him. He never bothered to contact me to check. He just can't say those things about me.'

He used the same expression when closeted with his solicitor on Monday afternoon. The lawyer had expressed the inevitable distaste for what he had read and listened with sympathy to Chadwick's explanation of what had really happened in the matter of his association with the now-liquidated merchandising company.

'On the basis of what you say there seems no doubt that a prima facie libel of you has been uttered in this article,' he said.

'Then they'll damn well have to retract it and apologize,' said Chadwick hotly.

'In principle, yes,' said the lawyer. 'I think as a first step it would be advisable for me to write to the editor on your behalf, explaining that it is our view you have been libelled by the editor's employee and seeking redress in the form of a retraction and an apology, in a suitably prominent position, of course.'

This was what was eventually done. For two weeks there was no reply from the editor of the Sunday Courier. For two weeks Chadwick had to endure the stares of his small staff and avoid other business associates where he could. Two contracts he had hoped to obtain slid away from him.

The letter from the Sunday Courier eventually came to the solicitor. It was signed by a secretary on behalf of the editor and its tone was politely dismissive.

The editor, so it said, had considered the solicitor's letter on behalf of Mr Chadwick carefully, and was prepared to consider publication of a letter from Mr Chadwick in the correspondence column, subject of course to the editor's overriding right to edit the letter.

'In other words, cu

t it to ribbons,' said Chadwick as he sat facing his solicitor again. 'It's a brush-off, isn't it?'

The solicitor thought this over. He decided to be frank. He had known his client for a number of years.

'Yes,' he said, 'it is. I have only had dealings with a national newspaper once before on this kind of matter, but that sort of letter is a pretty standard response. They hate to publish a retraction, let alone an apology.'

'So what can I do?' asked Chadwick.

The lawyer made a move. 'There is the Press Council, of course,' he said. 'You could complain to them.'

'What would they do?'

'Not much. They tend to entertain allegations against newspapers only where it can be shown that distress was caused unnecessarily due to carelessness by the paper in its publication or by blatant inaccuracy on the part of the paper's reporter. They also tend to avoid claims of a clear libel, leaving that to the courts. In any case, they can only issue a rebuke, nothing more.'

'The Council cannot insist on a retraction and an apology?'

'No.'

'What does that leave?'