Singled Out (25 page)

‘And found her?’ I prompted, since he seemed to have gone silent on me.

‘Yes, I found her, and she was pleased about the book. She was also desperate to talk about Paul, and I’d made her wait for nearly a year before I went there, thinking she’d blame me for surviving. How selfish is that?’

‘I don’t think you came out of the hostage thing entirely sane and sensible, Dante,’ I pointed out. ‘There’s no point in flagellating yourself for not being Superman.’

I was turning over the photographs on the table, some of a slight, fair man, his pretty wife and two small daughters.

‘Paul?’

‘Yes, Paul and his family,’ Dante said. ‘There are more there of him as a boy, and some of his better known photographs … all sorts of stuff Kathy’s loaned me.’

‘And is all this the rough draft of the book?’ I asked, pointing to the heap of American Five Star notebooks on the trestle table.

‘Yes, but I just started to put everything I remembered down as it came back to mind, so it’s all out of sequence, and sometimes something I saw while I was travelling would spark off a recollection … I put the date and where I was every time I started writing, so at the moment it’s more a series of travel diaries with memories, than a biography.’

He looked at the table and shrugged despairingly: ‘See what I mean about not knowing where to start? How do I even begin to get the story out in chronological order?’

‘Can I look at one or two of the notebooks to get an idea of how it’s written?’ I asked cautiously. ‘Perhaps just the first?’

‘I suppose so,’ he agreed in his usual gracious way. ‘I’ll make coffee – I’ve got a coffee-maker and stuff set up through there,’ he nodded to a door. ‘How do you like it?’

‘Hot, strong, no milk,’ I said, perching on the edge of the table and starting to read the jagged black script that told of a journey to hell … and, hopefully, back.

Eventually I looked up and noticed that he’d returned, and was sitting in one of the armchairs with the coffee before him and a patient expression. My leg had gone dead when I got down off the table, so I must have been reading for quite some time.

Putting the notebook carefully back in its place on the table I hobbled over and fetched the plate of sandwiches Rosetta had made.

‘Eat!’ I said, putting them down in front of him, and feeling a need to feed one kind of hunger at least.

‘Don’t
you
start trying to mother me too!’ he snapped.

‘I’m not. I’m hungry, but I’m not going to tell Rosetta I wolfed all the sandwiches down while you sat there starving,’ I said, and picked one up. They were good. So was the coffee, although it could have been hotter.

After a couple of minutes Dante picked a sandwich up too, though he seems to eat like he’s lost the habit.

‘So,’ he said, after some silent chewing, ‘can I turn all that into a book? Or should I start again?’

‘You don’t need to turn it into a book,’ I told him. ‘It already is one. Each notebook is dated, and headed with the place you wrote it from, and these will be your chapters. It’s sort of a framework, and you can rove back and forwards in time and memories within that structure. I think it’ll work, because it’s different. The journal-cum-memoir of a trip across America, slowly heading for Alaska. In fact,’ I added enthusiastically, ‘I think you ought to call it
Travelling To Alaska
!’

‘You do? I thought you were going to say it was useless, and I’d have to get someone to write it for me!’

‘No, all you need to do is type it up in the date order of the journals, finishing with Alaska. Then it will just need tidying and checking through. You can type, can’t you?’

‘Of course – and pretty fast, too.’ He sat back. ‘But do you really think the publishers will go for it? Won’t they think it’s a bit rambling and out of sequence?’

‘From the bits I’ve read it seems to be fairly straightforwardly told, only relating to places you were at on your journey, and with occasional flashback memories to happier times. I think they’ll love it because it’s just that bit different. You have a way with words.’

‘I should hope so – I
was
a foreign corespondent, don’t forget.’

‘OK, then double space, indent your paragraphs, and get on with it,’ I said helpfully.

We’d finished the sandwiches, I noticed, and I only hoped I hadn’t eaten most of them myself.

Dante’s sombre expression seemed to have lightened a bit, so perhaps hunger makes him bad-tempered? Low blood sugar or something. Why doesn’t he eat more? Does he have to carry on starving, just because he made it out and Paul didn’t?

‘You’re going to feel so much better when you’ve written the book,’ I assured him. ‘I certainly did when I started exorcising
my
demons through my novels, and you’re doing the same, only in a different genre.’

His aquamarine eyes lifted to my face and he asked abruptly, ‘So what’s
your
demon?’

‘Me? Oh, I
am
the demon – Satan’s Spawn, according to my father,’ I said lightly. ‘My parents, my four brothers and even Jane are all blond, medium-sized and blue-eyed like a lot of Dutch dolls. I take after a gypsy great-grandmother, hence the mind-reading stuff though I’ve never worked out quite why that should make me inherently evil.’

‘It doesn’t,’ he said. ‘Are you serious?’

I didn’t see why he should think he had a total monopoly on suffering just because he’d taken it to extremes, so I told him about my strange childhood, and being Seed of the Devil, and my time-out with the ghosts in the cupboard. ‘Which is why I have the recurring nightmare about trying to get away from a cupboard, I suppose,’ I added.

He looked slightly stunned. ‘It’s not surprising … I had no idea! But you’re free now, aren’t you? You’ve got away from them?’

‘I don’t see Ma and Pa any more, not since I took up with Max, which was the final, unforgivable offence. Jane’s done worse, but they never found out about that. And the boys, too – but somehow their sins are forgivable and mine aren’t. But Pa often phones me to remind me I’ll burn in hell, and stuff like that. Which I probably will, because Max’s poor wife was an invalid and our affair put her through torments of jealousy, although I didn’t really understand that until recently, when I got a letter she left to be sent on to me after she died. I let myself believe it was all OK, because I wanted it to be: so you see, I’m guilty about that, too. Ma never speaks to me, but she never liked me as much as any of the others anyway. I couldn’t understand it, but Charles says sometimes that just happens in families, and it isn’t my fault.’

‘Your parents sound delightful!’

‘Well, Ma just mostly ignored me, and even Pa wasn’t too bad until he started drinking more and more on the quiet. He let his brother adopt one of the boys – George – in return for a lot of money, and he started a sort of self-sufficient commune-cum-church up in Scotland. He’s a Charismatic Preacher,’ I added.

‘And I thought my mother-in-law was bad enough, hounding and blaming me for Emma’s death!’

‘Does she still do that? But that’s so unfair!’

He shrugged. ‘Life’s unfair – and death’s even more so.’

‘Yes … do you have nightmares, too, Dante?’ I asked him. ‘Mine get worse and worse. I was nearly in the cupboard the other night when you woke me up and—’

Then I remembered the consequences and did the fluctuating hot and cold thing again. I don’t think my thermostat is up to dealing with Dante in near proximity.

‘Out of the frying pan into the fire?’ he said with that quirk of the lips. ‘I’m sorry – you were vulnerable, and I didn’t realise it.’

Sudden tears came to my eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter: it was just the brandy really – I’m not used to it. We can forget it, can’t we?’

‘No, I don’t think we can do that, but we could start again? Get to know each other? Especially if you can remove your idiotic brother from my house and my sister’s life!’ he added acidly, sounding suddenly much more like himself.

‘He isn’t idiotic, and he’s probably being a lot of help. If you mean to take in the first visitors at Easter, you hardly have more than a few days left.’

‘No, and we’ve already got four bookings … maybe five. I’ve left it to Rosetta. It’s her affair, and she doesn’t seem to need my help now she’s got your brother.’

‘He’s very practical really. And you needn’t worry about him, because he never stays in one place long before he gets restless.’

‘So Rosetta’s going to have a broken heart as well?’

‘You can’t have it both ways,’ I pointed out. ‘Do you want him to go or stay? Not that it matters, because he’ll do exactly what he wants.’

‘I’ve noticed.’

‘Did Jason have your miniatures?’ I asked inconsequentially.

‘Yes, I’m going to put them up in here.’ He looked thoughtfully at me. ‘And now that I’ve bared my soul in writing to you, are you at all likely to reciprocate and let me read the manuscript of your next epic, the one featuring the family pile?’

‘That fair play thing again,’ I said resignedly. ‘It’s nearly finished … I suppose I could run you off a copy before I send it in.’

‘Is it like your others?’

‘I don’t know – tell me when you’ve read it.’ Preferably when I’m out of the country.

The door opened and Eddie wandered in. ‘Hi, Cass. It’s dark in here, isn’t it?’

Funny I hadn’t noticed that while we were talking, but it was now pretty gloomy.

‘I’m going down to the cottage to get that screwdriver I left behind. Rosetta said you might want a lift home?’

‘There is a sign on the door to the west wing, saying “Private, Keep Out”,’ Dante observed.

‘Yes, I put it there,’ Eddie said, beaming at Dante like he was his dearest friend. ‘Coming, Cass?’

‘OK,’ I agreed, because I was feeling a bit limp. ‘If you don’t mind stopping off at Emlyn’s on the way? And I’ll let you have a copy of the manuscript when it’s finished, Dante.’

‘I can hardly wait.’

I checked his face for sarcasm, but it was back to inscrutable Prince Of Darkness mode again.

But then, he had just rather bared his soul to me (and mine to him, to some extent) and so we’d probably never want to see each other again, as is the usual case with full and frank confessions.

He immediately proved me wrong.

‘If I go down to the pub tonight, will you be there?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Oh?’ he frowned. ‘I thought you went there most nights? What about Jason – will he be there?’

‘I have no idea,’ I said grandly. ‘And I will be at home, working. I am not a creature of totally predictable habits.’

‘Jason says you’re blowing hot and cold and driving him completely mad,’ Eddie intoned helpfully, as though the phrase was a mantra he’d been practising.

‘When? When did he say that?’ I demanded.

‘This morning?’ Eddie said vaguely. ‘I’ve been busy – think it was this morning.’

‘Just leave it at cold,’ Dante suggested.

‘I told you,’ I said with as much dignity as possible under the circumstances. ‘I’m getting a dog.’

‘Much safer,’ he agreed, and a sudden shadow seemed to cross his face.

‘Lurchers are good,’ Eddie suggested, leading the way out. The tattoo of Bob Marley on his shoulder blade peeped out at me over the straps of his overalls as he walked.

‘No woman, no cry,’ I admonished myself, severely.

Chapter 17: A Slave To Love

Dante – known … as an eccentric man in the nature of an Old File, who used to put leaves round his head, and sit upon a stool for some unaccountable purpose …

Charles Dickens.
Little Dorrit

By ‘File’, read ‘cunning man’ in Dickens-speak: Dante the Devious. He’s laid himself open to me by showing me his notebooks, and I’ve told him things about Pa that it took me years to get round to telling Orla (and
never
told Max.) Why? How did that come about?

And how can we be so intimate with each other’s nightmares, yet still seem to be circling in some ritual fight? And do I have time to puzzle over these and other mysteries when I’ve got another world, other characters, waiting for me?

*   *   *

Went incommunicado for three days, not answering the door, the phone, or checking the answering machine, while I galloped up the home straight with
Lover, Come Back To Me.

It was much easier to face the characters in my novel than deal with the complications that seem to be piling up in my life like spillikins: pull one out of the heap and they all fall down.

Some time around midnight on day three I wrote the very last line, then climbed wearily into bed to the accompaniment of Birdsong’s raucous cries and fell into a deep and mercifully dreamless sleep.

What seemed like only five minutes later I was jarred awake by the sound of bellowing, and since it went on and on like a lost Minotaur I eventually staggered downstairs to the front door.

‘Ahoy there, Sis!’ Jamie foghorned through the letterbox. ‘Rise and shine! Yo, dude, the sun’s hot and the surf’s high!’

When I opened the door he toppled forward on to a nice soft mountain of mail, probably because his rather fleshy lips were jammed in the letterbox: a stocky man with rumpled sandy hair, guileless baby-blue eyes like Jane’s, and a pink and healthy complexion.

Just as well you can’t see his liver.

He hauled himself to his feet as I closed the door, looking at my Chinese slippers in a slightly puzzled way as he did so. ‘Could have sworn those were pink, Sis.’

‘No, you must have changed your mind, Jamie,’ I said kindly. ‘Perhaps you remembered that green was my favourite colour?’

‘Must have done!’ He gave me a bear hug and a smacking kiss on the cheek: Jamie is affectionate but quite exhausting, due to all that terrible heartiness.

‘Jane’s not here, is she?’ he asked anxiously now, swivelling his blue eyes about like a nervous horse. ‘Only if she is, I’m off. I can tell the parents I didn’t have time to call in.’

‘Relax, Jane’s not here. She’s in London – I think.’

‘Oh? Suppose she’s with old George and Phily? Good, good – they can’t expect me to take her up to Scotland with me if she’s not here!’