Writer's Life (6 page)

My guide noticed me staring at the far wall, where a great crack in the brickwork, running from floor to ceiling, had been inexpertly plastered. I recalled the damage to the façade which I had noticed with Mina on our first visit, and the fissures in the grounds of the Hall.

"That's not the only one," he said. "I'll show you."

He led me from the study and into the east wing of the house. There, in an empty room, he indicated yet another fissure that had been rendered over with discoloured plaster.

He opened a back door, which gave onto a spacious kitchen garden. He stepped out into the twilight and pointed to the rear wall of the building.

Along the length of the Hall, a series of great timber buttresses supported the bulging wall. The building seemed to bow outwards with the marked curvature of a galleon's hull; but for the sturdy props, the impression was that the Hall would have split open like an over-ripe fruit.

An ancient conservatory, with several panes of glass cracked or missing entirely, occupied the far end of the east wing.

"No doubt you'll have second thoughts about the place, now," he said.

"Well, it does seem a bit tumbledown," I ventured.

"Oh, it's surprisingly sturdy. These repairs were made a hundred years ago, and the place hasn't fallen down yet."

The rain had abated, and in the light of the moon that appeared suddenly through the cloudrace I made out a series of crazed cracks in the garden—fissures that had been filled in over the years, but which still showed as slightly lower impressions radiating from the Hall itself.

"Mineshafts?" I asked at last. "An underground stream?"

He looked at me and shook his head. "An explosion."

I stared at him. "Explosion?"

"Well, that's what the locals said, those who were around at the time, and the story's passed into village folk lore."

I turned and stared at the bulk of the house. Edgecoombe Hall was a dark shape against the moon-silvered clouds.

"What happened?" I asked.

"It's all a bit of a mystery. One night in December—this was in 1899—a massive explosion was heard in the village. It came from up the hill—from Edgecoombe Hall. When a posse of locals arrived here, they saw a faint blue light hovering over the roof. The walls of the Hall were split open, and the ground all about was cracked." He shrugged. "The local bobby was called out and took a statement from the owner. That was the last of the affair, and there was no satisfactory explanation about what had happened."

"Was the owner some kind of scientist? An experiment backfired?"

He laughed. "He wasn't no scientist. He was a gentleman landowner who wrote the odd novel."

Quite involuntarily, the hair on the nape of my neck prickled, and a shiver ran down my spine. "A writer?" I said.

"Gentleman by the name of Cunningham-Price," my informant went on. "Seems the Hall is popular with men of letters."

"Cunningham-Price...?"

I was not aware that I had uttered the name, and he stared at me. "You've heard of him?"

"As a matter of fact I've read one of his books," I managed. "Quite a coincidence."

My mind was racing. The coincidence that was uppermost in my thoughts, of course, was that Vaughan Edwards should have lived in the very same Hall, albeit many years later, as his literary hero. Then again, if he was so taken by Cunningham-Price's novels, what would be more natural than that he should seek out and purchase Edgecoombe Hall?

"Cunningham-Price was a bit of a recluse," he was saying. "Lived here alone, never married. Of course, after the explosion there was all manner of wild speculation and rumour. Locals swore he was deep into witchcraft, that the explosion was his attempt to summon the devil!"

"Has no one ever tried to work out scientifically what happened?" I asked.

"Not to my knowledge. That is, there's never been scientists in to investigate. Cunningham-Price hired some workmen to shore up the building—apparently he had them brick up the cellars." He paused, looking at me. "For what it's worth, I have a theory."

I smiled. "You do?"

"The area's riddled with underground streams and natural springs. It's a known fact that running water can accumulate static electricity. Perhaps a charge of electricity filled the cellar, reacted with something stored down there, and blew up."

"And the blue glow that hung over the Hall?"

He shrugged. "A result of the discharge—if a blue glow was present at all. We've only the word of the locals for that."

He gestured inside, and we entered the Hall and made our way back to the scullery.

"What happened to Cunningham-Price?" I asked.

"He left the area around 1910. There was talk that he died in the First World War. The Hall was unoccupied for years, until Vaughan Edwards bought it in the mid-fifties. Two writers, one after the other-" he laughed "-don't suppose you're another pen-pusher?"

"Computers," I lied, my thoughts miles away.

He was writing his name and telephone number on a scrap of old wallpaper. He handed in to me. "Like I said, I'll know how things stand in a year or so, if you'd like to get in touch."

I hesitated before taking my leave. "The landlord said the place is haunted," I began.

He pulled his chin, nodding to himself. "He's not wrong, either. Ghost of a young girl haunts the place—or should I say
haunted
?"

"But not any more?"

He shook his head. "It left six years ago, around the time Mr Vaughan disappeared."

I stared at Giles, wondering what Mina might have said to this. "You believe in such things?"

He nodded, his expression stern, as if put out at my scepticism. "You see, I saw the ghost—just the once. It was following Mr Vaughan up the main staircase, a blonde-haired girl as plain as daylight. And I'd often hear her laughter around the place. But, like I said, never since Mr Vaughan vanished..."

~

I know there is more to this reality than we perceive with our strictly limited senses; we are like new-born babies who have yet to acquire polychromatic vision, and see the world only in black and white. Beyond our conditioned purview of the world are wonders of which we cannot even dream...

From the novel
Seasons of Wonder
by Vaughan Edwards.

~

The return journey seemed to pass in no time at all, my thoughts full of the Hall's strange history, the two reclusive writers separated by years and yet so obviously connected by a similarity of the soul.

It was almost eight by the time I arrived home. Mina was not due back until ten, so I fixed myself a quick meal and settled beside the fire with the books I had brought from the White Lion.

I scanned the first of the Cunningham-Prices,
The White Lodge
, a story of a country house and its inhabitants over the course of thirty years. It had the unmistakable
feel
of something that Vaughan Edwards might have written, a haunting, elegiac quality, a sympathy for the characters, that was familiar from the modern writer's work... I had another seven of Edwards' books yet to read—it was quite possible that among the books I had taken from Highdale there would be one that borrowed, as I thought of it, from
The White Lodge
.

I was still reading when Mina arrived home. She made herself a cup of tea and collapsed with a sigh on the sofa next to me. She frowned at the pile of novels on the coffee table. "So the day was a success?"

"And that's not all," I said. I told her about my visit to the Hall and the conversation with Giles.

"Strange, or what?" I said.

She cupped her mug in both hands and sipped, eyeing me over the horizon of the rim. I could almost hear her mind working, practical as ever. "What's so strange about it?"

I enumerated the strange points on my fingers. "Cunningham-Price, a reclusive writer. The mysterious explosion. Cunningham-Price's unconfirmed death in the Great

War. The ghost-"

Mina snorted at this. "You've only the word of some cowboy builder about that!"

I shrugged. "Nevertheless." I held up my fingers. "Vaughan Edwards, reclusive writer. He buys the place where his literary mentor lived and wrote. He uses the Victorian writer's novels as a starting point of his own-"

"So you admit he was a plagiarist?"

"Not in so many words."

"But you're still going to buy me that Thai meal?"

"Very well. Will you stop interrupting?" I pulled back my thumb. "Then Vaughan Edwards goes and disappears in mysterious circumstances."

Mina sighed. "Sometimes I wonder about you, Daniel. What's so strange? So Cunningham was a reclusive writer—so were you before you met me!"

"That's not fair."

"The explosion—your builder chap explained that. And then Cunningham died in the war, along with millions of others. Vaughan Edwards comes along, buys the house of his hero, copies his novels, goes out for a walk one day and falls down the hillside, his body buried in undergrowth or snagged at the bottom of the river." She smiled at me. "And the ghost—show me an old English building that isn't rumoured to be haunted. Why look for bizarre explanations, Daniel, when the obvious answer is so straightforward?"

I shrugged. "Sometimes the bizarre is more appealing than the everyday."

"But wholly impossible," she said. She ruffled my hair. "Come on, let's go to bed."

I followed her upstairs, trying to refute her cold water douche of rationalism—convinced, of course, that there was much more to the affair than met the eye.

~

It is all very well to drag the occult into his novels, but what this writer signally fails to realise is that the modern reader demands that the novelist provides also an interesting story
...

From Gerald Percival's review of
The White Lodge
by E.V. Cunningham-Price.

~

I read the Cunningham-Price books and the remaining Edwards novels over the course of the next fortnight. It came as no surprise to find that the Edwards borrowed heavily from the Cunningham-Prices. Minor characters in the Victorian novels cropped up in the modern novels as fully-fleshed protagonists. Themes hinted at in the early books were developed by Edwards and given full flight. Settings recurred, scenes, and even lines of dialogue.

I thought long and hard about what Edwards had done—a gifted novelist in his own right, he had no literary need to go about plundering someone else's work to use as the grist for his own books and stories. Except, of course, he obviously felt some kind of debt to the earlier writer—a duty to complete in his modern novels what the Victorian had left unsaid.

Weeks passed. I considered making my discovery public in the form of an article, but if I approached a newspaper with my findings they would only request a sensationalist story of literary plagiarism spanning the years. I mulled over the idea of writing an essay for a small-press literary magazine, citing the examples of Edwards' borrowings and attempting to make a positive case for what he had done. At length I set the idea aside; it seemed to me that I had insufficient facts, that something was missing, information that might allow me to understand fully Edwards' objectives and motivations.

Life resumed its normal course, and I received the subtle impression that Mina was gratified that I had stepped down my search for the facts behind the story.

Not a day passed when I did not give thanks for having met her; I was beset less and less by the gnawing fear of her leaving me, a fear that in the early days of our relationship had often soured my peace of mind. We entered a period of mutual affection which I had never before known with anyone else, and I wanted to do nothing to undermine our happiness. I did not so much as mention Edwards, or Edgecoombe Hall. When I suggested that we dine at the Thai restaurant in Settle, I did so without reference to her having won our wager over Edwards' so-called plagiarism.

I received a commission to novelise a computer game, which I did over the next week or so and submitted under a pseudonym. Still I felt disinclined to embark upon an original novel, despite a phone call from my agent asking how it was coming along. I knew from experience that the creative drought would end in time, of its own mysterious accord, and in the meantime I would get by on hackwork. At the back of my mind, however, was the thought that apathy and laziness might win out, that I might never again want to write seriously enough to begin a project that meant something to me, a project I would have to invest with integrity and effort. The spectre of filling the years with hackwork in order to scrape a living hung over my waking days.

I forgot about Vaughan Edwards and the mystery of Edgecoombe Hall for long periods. On occasion, seeing the books that I would some day have to return to the White Lion, I did dwell on the events at Highdale and the strange case of his plagiarism—but I knew that the passage of years had all but quashed any chance of ever discovering the truth.

That might have been the case, but for the arrival through the post, a week later, of two novels which the editor of a small literary magazine wanted me to review.

~

I have never demanded from Mina the affection she obviously finds so hard to give to me. More than anything I want to ask her to show some sign that she... not that she loves me... but that she
cares
. But I'm terrified of asking that for fear of frightening her away
.

From the personal journals of Daniel Ellis.

~

I was still in bed at nine-fifteen the following morning when Mina returned from taking the girls to school. She shouted up that she was preparing breakfast—and that the postman had just delivered a parcel of what looked suspiciously like books. The promise of breakfast might not have propelled me downstairs, but the arrival of post was assured to get me up.

Over fried eggs on Marmite toast, I opened the package and read the enclosed letter.

"Anything interesting?" Mina asked.

I indicated the two hardback books on the table, and lifted the note. "The editor of
The Coastal Quarterly
wants me to review these. He read my piece on the last Boyd in the Yorkshire Post. Says he was impressed."