Written in Blood (2 page)

‘Of course if you’d like to fund a visit from this person yourself?’

Honoria regarded Brian coldly. He really was an absolute mess of a man. Straggly hair, straggly beard, straggly clothes and, in her opinion, an extremely straggly political viewpoint.

Sue watched apprehensively as her husband retreated into a sulk, then started to play with her hair. Beginning at the scalp she lifted a narrow strand and ran her nails down it, pulling the hair taut before letting it go and starting on the next piece. She did this for the rest of the evening. It was only half an hour but all present felt by then that they had, at the very least, entered the next millennium.

And so, eventually, through many digressions and much argument, the conversation described a full circle and Max Jennings’ name came up again.

‘I really feel we might have a chance with him,’ said Amy, ‘living nearby. Also he’s not a hundred-percent famous.’

‘What on earth’s that supposed to mean?’ said Honoria.

‘I think,’ said Sue, ‘Amy means just quite well known.’

‘I’ve never heard of him,’ said Brian, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. Whilst having no time for the rich and famous he also had no time for the not really all that rich and only very slightly famous. Truth to tell, if you were not at the very bottom of society’s dung heap and being ground further into the primeval sludge by every passing jackboot, Brian would almost certainly be giving you the complete kiss off.

‘I heard an interview with him on the radio,’ said Amy. ‘He sounded really nice.’ Too late she remembered it should have been ‘wireless’ and waited for Honoria to click her tongue. ‘I’m sure it’s worth a try.’

‘I can’t stand these poncy nom de plumes. No doubt for Max we are meant to read Maximilian. Probably born Bert Bloggs.’

‘I read his first novel,
Far Away Hills
. He was brought up in absolute poverty in the Outer Hebrides. His father was a terribly cruel man and drove his mother to her death. She killed herself when he was still quite young.’

‘Really.’ Brian sounded more cheerful. ‘We could give it a try, I suppose. Not as if we have anyone else in mind.’

‘There’s Alan Bennett.’

Brian sniffed. He was rather off Alan Bennett. At the beginning Brian had been very much under the writer’s influence. He had hung around outside the village shop and the Old Dun Cow with a tape recorder, talking to the villagers, hoping to unravel the rich and poignant complexities of their inner lives as he understood was the great man’s way. It had been a dead loss. All they talked about was
Neighbours
and football and what was in the
Sun
. Eventually a drunk had called him a nosy piss pot and knocked him down.

Laura said, ‘I thought we were keeping him for an emergency.’

‘Let’s take a vote shall we?’ said Rex. ‘Asking Jennings?’ He put his hand up as did the others, Honoria last of all. ‘Gerald?’

Gerald had turned his still damp trousers back to the fire. He looked over his shoulder at the six raised hands then back to the artificial blue and yellow flames. However he voted it could hardly affect the outcome. Yet he could not let this terrible suggestion pass without some form of protest.

He said, ‘I think it’ll be a waste of time,’ and marvelled at the neutrality of his voice. At the even tone. The regular and unhurried spacing between the words. The words themselves so mild in contrast to the torment raging in his breast.

‘Sorry, Gerald. You’re outnumbered.’ Brian was already pulling on his knitted hat.

‘Even so,’ (he couldn’t just give up) ‘I don’t think there’s a lot of point—’

‘If you won’t write I will,’ said Brian. ‘Care of his publisher, I suppose. In fact I might ring them up—’

‘No, no. I’m secretary. I’ll do it.’ At least that way matters would stay in his own hands. ‘No problem.’ Gerald stood up, wishing only to be rid of them. He saw Laura covertly watching him and managed to stretch his lips in the semblance of a smile.

He did not sleep that night. He sat at his desk for the first hour quite motionless, drowned in recollection. His head felt as if it were being squeezed in a vice. To see the man again. Max.
Max
. Who had stolen his most priceless possession. To have to speak words of welcome and no doubt be forced to listen to hours of self-aggrandisement in return. Gerald knew he would not be able to bear it.

At three o’clock he started writing. He wrote and wrote and wrote again. By six he was exhausted and the waste basket was overflowing, but he had the letter. One side of one sheet of paper. He was as sure as he could be that the balance was right. It was out of the question that he should beg Max not to come. Even at the time - even at the very moment of that terrible betrayal - Gerald had not begged. Victorious Max might have been but that was one satisfaction he would forever seek in vain.

Now Gerald, gripping his pen hard in his right hand and holding the paper down firmly with his left, started to address the envelope. Necessarily he began with the name. M.a.x. J.e.n.n.i.n.g.s. The pen slipped and twirled in his sweating fingers. It was as if the very letters had the power of conjuration. He could hear the man breathing, smell the fragrance of his cigar smoke, look into the brilliant blue eyes in that bony, sunburnt face. Feel the old spell being cast.

He read the letter again. Surely no one comprehending the emotional turmoil from which such an invitation must inevitably have sprung would accept.

Gerald affixed a first-class stamp, put on his muffler and overcoat and left the house. As he set off for the post box the milkman’s float materialised out of the dark.

‘You’re up early, Mr Hadleigh.’ The man nodded at the white square in Gerald’s hand. ‘Making sure you get your pools off.’

‘That’s right.’

Gerald strode off, his spirits curiously lightened by this mundane encounter. The real world rushed in, familiar and banal. It was the night now that seemed unreal. A hot-house of unhealthy imaginings.

He quickened his pace, filling his lungs with fresh winter air. By the time he was starting back towards the cottage the bitter reflections that had so tormented him just a short while before now began to seem no more than over-heated fantasies. He was projecting his own wretched memories on to someone else. For all he knew Max had practically forgotten about him. And in any case, even if he hadn’t, Gerald could not somehow see him driving nearly thirty miles just to talk to a bunch of amateur scribblers. He was successful now. Each new epic in the
Sunday Times
Top Ten without fail. No, the more Gerald thought about it, the more insubstantial and unfounded his previous fears now seemed.

There were streaks of rose pink, lemon and silver on the horizon as he let himself back into the house and put on the coffee pot. And by the time the sun’s scarlet rim had appeared he had persuaded himself that writing such a careful and painstaking letter had been a waste of time and effort. Because there was no chance in the world that Max would come.

Almost a month to the day after the group meeting Laura stood by her kitchen door, knowing what she was about to do even as she entertained the delusion that she might yet change her mind. In her hand she held an empty sealed envelope. Laura did not own a dog and had more sense than to walk around an English village in the dark for no apparent reason.

On her last excursion (just under a week ago) she had met the Reverend Clewes coming out of the vicarage with Henry, his basset hound. They had all walked along together and Laura had been compelled to post her envelope before being accompanied all the way back home and seen safely inside. She had not dared to venture out again and had gone to bed fretting miserably with deprivation. But tonight Henry had gone trotting by with his master, and trotting back, a good half hour ago.

Laura buttoned her dark reefer jacket up to the neck. She wore jeans, strong leather gloves, black boots and a sombre head scarf concealing distinctive coils of hair that glittered like copper wire. She stepped out into the still, silent night, locked the door, turned the key very gently and stood for a moment listening.

There was no sound from either of the houses flanking her own. No cats being put out or let in. No chink of milk bottles or rattle of dustbin lids. Or friends being seen off the premises. She set off, hushed on rubber soles, turning left without even having to think.

She walked quickly, keeping close to tall hedges - the Englishman’s modest horticultural version of the medieval stockade. Suddenly a crumpled-silver-paper moon occupied the sky and Laura stepped into a negative. Pumice-stone houses, black trees painted with pale light. Previously lost in the anticipation of journey’s end, she was shocked into self-consciousness. Exposed, like a solitary actor on a brilliantly lit stage.

It was still several yards to the post office, which was, in fact, nothing grander than the properly fortified sitting room of Wiworry, Mr and Mrs ‘Midge’ Sandell’s bungalow. The pillar box was by the gate and as Laura drew level with it the moon became obscured by clouds again. She put the envelope into her pocket and walked on. This was the tricky bit, for if she ran into an acquaintance now she could hardly say she was on her way to post a letter. But luck was with her and she saw no one.

Plover’s Rest was the last house to face the Green proper. From then on the divided road joined up again and the property on either side consequently became less valuable. There was a gap of around thirty yards before these houses began and this area had been left wild. It was filled with a tangle of hawthorns; sloes and wild crab apples and was a godsend to Laura for, like most of the houses on the Green, Plover’s Rest had a halogen lamp which any direct approach set off immediately.

She made her way through the tangle, holding vicious briars away from her face, staring into the blackness unafraid, desire outweighing apprehension a hundredfold. Then, heart pounding, she crept out of the tiny copse, made a left turn and squeezed through a second gap, this time in a waist-high wattle fence. She was now in Gerald Hadleigh’s back garden.

Laura stood for a moment, keenly aware of her surroundings - a massive beech tree, empty ornamental urns, the barely visible outline of patio slabs sparkling with frost. Over her head the sky was crammed with stars. Avoiding the gravel, she tiptoed softly forward, preceded by puffs of her own breath immediately visible on the icy air.

There was a light on in the kitchen but, as Laura approached, it was plain that the room was empty. Boldly she stared in. There were some dirty dishes in the sink. A half bottle of claret and a glass on a tray. Changing her position slightly she could see the long shelf of boxed spices and narrow glass jars with dried shavings of fungi and ginger and some brackish curly stuff the colour of dried blood.

Gerald had mentioned once that he liked to cook Japanese food. Laura had at once said she adored it too and asked if he would give her a lesson. He had smiled and said he wouldn’t dare but next time he cooked teriyaki she was welcome to try some. She had waited, in a daze of happiness, for that invitation, which had never materialised.

Eventually, driven by longing, by a vision of the two of them sitting at a candlelit table drinking glasses of warm sake she reminded him of his promise. He assured her he had not forgotten and how would next Thursday at seven be?

Laura had danced away to steam her skin and brush her glorious hair and massage scented lotion over immaculate, slender legs. On Thursday at six forty-five she had put on her Jasper Conran maize jacket and ivory silk shirt and narrow damson crêpe skirt and hung glowing cornelians in her ears. She looked lovely. Everyone said so - the Clewses, Rex, the couple from Windy Hollow who were in computers. A first invitation, she discovered later, for all of them.

Anyone else would have learned from that. Laura, crying herself to sleep, awoke to the conviction that Gerald was simply nervous. Socially not at all gauche where romance was concerned, Laura told herself, he was simply out of practice. He wanted to entertain her in his home but, the first time, needed other people present. That had been nearly a year ago. The invitation had never been repeated.

Wretchedly unhappy, needing to protect herself, Laura struggled to create in her mind an alternative situation, charting the progress of an imaginary affair to Gerald’s disadvantage. He was a rotten lover, a boring conversationalist, faddy and finicky and set in his ways. Completely self-absorbed. After no time at all, light-hearted and free as a bird, she left him. With a huge expenditure of imaginative energy Laura could hold on to this comforting fiction, sometimes for days. But then, of course, she would see him again.

Sound and light! Bathed in panic she dodged from the window and pressed herself flat against the cottage, feeling the flints jab into her back. But it was only Brian, Gerald’s nearest neighbour, putting his permanently red-nosed Volkswagen away. The headlamp’s beams were gradually eaten up. The garage doors banged shut. She heard him walk down the side of the house and go in. A bolt was shot. No doubt Sue would, even now, be making bedtime drinks. Laura felt a fleeting pang of envy. Not, God knew, that she, or surely anyone in their right senses, would want to be married to Brian. But there was undoubtedly a brand of cosiness obtainable à deux that was simply not on the menu when you lived alone.