A Good Heart is Hard to Find

by Trisha Ashley

  The musk rat was welcome to it, because I never wore perfume. Why didn’t he know these things by then?

  … from the unstoppered bottle rose a strange, evil, dark miasma that took form and shape and a greasy solidity before her eyes …

  He was still calling me when the fancy took him, though his conversation was more and more about golf, the excellence of Californian wine, and their new personal fitness trainer, Kyra, than about how much he missed me.

  Still, with no other man in the offing he remained in pole position.

  Meanwhile in a fit of pique I bought my own late Christmas present of a Predictova fertility kit, although it took me a week or two to break open its pristine Cellophane wrappings, especially after reading that book Orla gave me for Christmas: Everything You Need to Know About Last-Minute Pregnancy.

  Actually, I didn’t need to know most of that.

  I was not sure how good an idea Predictova was either, because if I wasn’t ovulating at all I would be devastated, and if I was, I would be perfectly frantic in case each egg was the last one.

  And it was all very well for Orla to tell me to get a young lover, but you couldn’t just pick one up in the supermarket with the weekly shopping. Buy one, get one free? I didn’t think so.

  It was a pity my handbag couldn’t turn into a dark, handsome and comfortably worn lover. I contemplated kissing it, but I think that only works with frogs, besides seeming a little weird.

  Orla was quite right about all available men having major defects, though, because when I actually came to look around, there were no possible baby-fatherers in the offing except Jason, whose progeny spoke for itself, mostly using the F-word.

  We didn’t know how Jason could carry on being so nice to Tom, unless he’d got the drop on him. After all, there was only one witness who saw Tanya driving off in the middle of the night after that row she had with Jason (who had a fearsome temper), and it had been two years since then with no word.

  Still, he did report her disappearance to the police and they looked into it, so they must have been satisfied.

  Wonder where she went.

  Had now paid several nocturnal visits to the church, especially on rainy nights. Dim lights burned all night, making it look pleasantly eerie, and I could settle in a little nest of tapestry cushions in my favourite pew next to the Templar’s Tomb.

  The knight was wearing a pair of those knitted-looking chainmail tights with pointed wrinkly toes, which made him look rather endearing. His wife lay next to him, looking serene: she was probably glad of the rest, going by the number of named offspring on the sides of the tomb.

  I found the atmosphere conducive to thinking about the current novel, and contemplating Max and motherhood, but not, so far, to repentance.

  When I told Charles this he said God was always happy to welcome me to his house whatever I thought about. He had such a cosy view of God, so unlike Pa’s that I only wished I could share his comforting vision; but even if I should undergo some miraculous conversion, I feared I would never be the type to cover myself with little fish brooches and dance about singing ‘Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam’.

  The evening being stormy, I settled down (in the night, by the Knight) to do another of the pros and cons lists, although the first one hadn’t really helped: it showed me what I should and shouldn’t do, but then I ignored the information. Like horoscopes, really: you only take any notice of the bits you like the look of.

  Having a baby in your forties:

  For: Against:

  1) I want one.

  2) I’m fit and healthy.

  3) I’m financially solvent. (Just.)

  4) I work from home. (Except for the singing telegrams.)

  5) I want one.

  6) I want one.

  7) Max has gone to America for a year, making me question my conscience (and my fidelity).

  8) I don’t have time to wait.

  9) I’m no longer one hundred per cent sure I want Max back anyway. Out of sight, out of thrall.

  10) I want one.

  1) Max doesn’t, and he always takes precautions.

  2) Even if he agreed, according to that book Orla gave me I probably wouldn’t get pregnant now anyway, but, if I did, would have a high risk of miscarriage, or something wrong with the baby, or medical risk to myself.

  3) Max adamant unless we can marry, and Rosemary seems to be going from strength to strength.

  4) If I had a baby by someone else, I’d lose Max and be completely on my own.

  5) Don’t know any other possible man except Jason, and his offspring is no advert.

  Conclusion:

  I still want one.

  Biologically it was now (if I was very lucky) or never. I was still in working order, but for how much longer?

  I ought to give Max an ultimatum, but this was not easy when we weren’t currently sharing the same continent, and not only might it be too late when he got back, but I had always been putty in his hands.

  I was sure he was too stubborn to change his mind, and I couldn’t wish for Rosemary to die (not that she showed any sign of doing so) because it would make me feel even guiltier than I already did.

  So if I wanted to try for a baby I would have to find another father for it and forfeit Max for ever, only after so many years with Max I was unversed in the art of finding another man.

  Even Orla was finding it difficult, and she was not only terribly attractive but by no means picky.

  At my age I was sure it would take considerably more than a couple of one-night stands to achieve the desired result even if I fancied that idea, which I didn’t; but equally I didn’t want the biological father hanging about interfering with my life.

  And speaking of fathers, if I had an illegitimate child Pa would not just ring me to tell me I will burn in hell, but consign me to being eternal spit-roast on Hell’s Rotisserie, basted at frequent intervals by Satan and all his little minions.

  Clearly the cons outweighed the pros: but hell, logic had nothing to do with the issue of my Issue!

  At this point the battery in my Maglite went out, which might or might not have been a sign from God. If so, it was unclear just what the message was.

  Don’t think about it any more?

  It then being too dim to write, and the sound of rain having ceased, I went out into the newly washed churchyard.

  To celebrate the publication in February of my new novel Nocturnally Yours, I treated Orla and Jason to dinner at the village pub.

  Not that it was a novelty to go to the King’s Arms, since we ate dinner there together most nights like some sad singles club, but one had to mark these twice-yearly occasions in some manner other than the obligatory bouquet of rather pleasantly funereal lilies from my publisher.

  Orla and I got there first, giving us an opportunity to air our more personal preoccupations before Jason arrived.

  ‘I’ve got an American antique collector staying,’ she confided. ‘He’s a bit old, but he’s not bad-looking. He’s gone out to dinner with local friends, or I’d have offered to cook him a little something.’

  This was desperation indeed, for Orla absolutely hated cooking.

  One of her phones jangled, and she snatched it up. ‘Hello, Song Language? Can I help you?’

  ‘Wrong phone,’ I hissed, because the leopard-print one is the B&B.

  ‘No, no, I didn’t say strong language,’ Orla was saying soothingly. ‘You must have misheard me. This is Haunted Well B&B speaking. Can I help you?’

  The phone quacked.

  ‘Certainly. From Friday? Yes, Bed and Continental Breakfast. No, only Continental. Yes, do let me know by tomorrow – I only have one vacancy for that weekend. Yes, goodbye.’

  She put the phone down on the table next to the pink Barbie Glitter one and sighed. ‘Honestly, do they think I’ve nothing better to do than run around cooking cholesterol in the mornings?’

  The Barbie phone rang before I could answer that, as far as I was aware, nothing
better had been offered lately.

  ‘Song Language. Tonight? Tarzanogram? I’m afraid all my operatives are fully booked this evening. Yes, it is late notice. So sorry. Bye.’

  ‘You could have gone,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Not to a hen party. Same applies to you. And anyway, we’re celebrating!’

  She raised her glass: ‘Here’s to Nocturnally Yours, and to finding someone nocturnally mine!’

  ‘You will,’ I assured her. ‘There must be interesting unattached men out there somewhere.’

  ‘Well hidden,’ she said gloomily. ‘How about you? It’s nearly six months since Max left, and you must be missing the sex, if nothing else.’

  ‘Well, not really,’ I confessed. ‘It hasn’t been terribly memorable for a while, and sometimes I think Max goes through the motions out of habit now, and only gets excited thinking about a particularly good round of golf.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can live like that, or like a nun now that he’s away.’

  ‘To tell the truth I don’t mind most of the time … but every so often I get the urge so badly I feel like jumping on the postman. Do you ever feel like that?’

  She looked at me, astonished: ‘All the time! Why don’t you do something about it? Not the postman, because poor old George isn’t up to it, and anyway, Agnes wouldn’t like it. But you could look for another man.’

  ‘I have looked at other men, and I’ve discovered that I don’t find many of them attractive. Hardly any, in fact, even when I was younger and lots showed some interest in me. I must be too choosy.’

  ‘Pity they didn’t catch you in one of your brief mad-for-sex times then.’

  ‘But until recently I was only mad for sex with Max, and if I’d gone with anyone else I would have felt horrible, and unfaithful, and all the rest of it.’

  ‘You’re such a Puritan! Why don’t you lighten up a bit? I certainly don’t feel like that.’

  ‘But you were faithful to Mike while you were married, weren’t you?’ I said, because it had always seemed to me that she had only gone off the sexual rails since the divorce. She and Jason used to flirt quite a lot before Tanya vanished but it was just harmless fun.

  Orla went faintly pink. ‘Sort of. Now I don’t have to be faithful to anyone.’

  ‘I’m conditioned by my upbringing and it’s too late to change now, even if I found a man I fancied, I think,’ I pondered doubtfully, for who knows where desperation will lead us? ‘And after charting my ovulation cycle I’ve come to the conclusion that my sex drive switches on only around the time I might get pregnant – assuming my eggs aren’t cracked, addled, or blown – so presumably when I stop getting the urge at all it’ll mean I’ve run out for ever.’

  ‘Jump on Jason at the right time then, Cass. You like Jason.’

  ‘Of course I like Jason: he’s big, cuddly, attractive – and a friend.’

  ‘He’s not cuddly when he’s in a rage,’ she pointed out. ‘Though that’s when I find him sexiest.’

  ‘You have him, then. He always seemed to fancy you more than me, until he saw me dressed as a vampire. Worryingly kinky.’

  ‘Interestingly kinky,’ she amended. ‘And it’s me he only sees as a friend these days. Marilyn Monroe obviously doesn’t do it for him …’

  She sighed and I looked at her sharply, because there had been a certain tension between them just after Tanya disappeared that I’d never quite understood, and although they were the best of friends again now there was no more flirting.

  ‘Wonder where Tanya went?’ she said, obviously pursuing a similar train of thought.

  ‘You know, I was just thinking that a few days ago, and how odd it was that she’s never contacted Tom, at least. And although we know Jason argued with her the night she disappeared, before he came down to the pub, he’s never said what about. You don’t think he did anything to her in one of his rages, do you?’

  ‘There was that witness who saw her car on the Kedge Hall road out of Westery in the early hours of the morning,’ she reminded me.

  ‘They might have seen the car, but maybe it was Jason driving it with the body in the back,’ I suggested.

  He drove fast along the road, conscious of the limp, bloody thing in the back that had lived and laughed and loved – once too often.

  Then he heard a soft scuffling noise, the scratching of long fingernails on fabric, as some travesty of Lara began to drag itself between the rear seats …

  Orla gave me a sharp nudge with her elbow. ‘Come on, Cass! If Jason had hurt her, it would have been accidentally in the heat of an argument, and he’d have been ringing the police and ambulance two seconds later!’

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ I said. ‘And he did report her missing to the police.’

  ‘There you are, then. And he walked me home from the pub that night because Mike was away, and when we passed his house Tanya’s car was still there,’ she reminded me. ‘And he stayed for coffee and a chat, so that by the time he got home not only had she vanished but her car had been seen. She took a load of her things, too.’

  ‘Jason could have done that, though,’ I pointed out stubbornly. Not that I wanted poor old Jason to be guilty, it just made for a more interesting story. ‘He might have—’

  ‘Shhh!’ she warned. ‘There he is!’ She waved, and Jason, looking very bear-like in a hairy brown jumper, ambled over.

  ‘There might have been an argument and an accident,’ she whispered hastily before he reached us, ‘but you don’t think he’d ever hurt someone on purpose, even in a temper?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ I assured her.

  ‘What are you two looking so furtive about?’ Jason asked, sitting down in the chair opposite.

  ‘Cass wants a baby,’ Orla said quickly. ‘Before it’s too late.’

  ‘Orla!’ I protested, going pink.

  ‘Anything I can do to help, you can count on me,’ Jason said, eyeing me speculatively from his deep-set brown eyes, and my heart sank.

  Thanks to Orla, I was going to find him even harder to handle than before. It was easier when we were all just friends: Mike and Orla, Jason and Tanya, and odd-girl-out me. (Max never mingled on his visits.)

  Though come to think of it, there always were undercurrents, like Tanya and Jason’s arguing over her flirting with other men, especially Jack Craig, the lodgekeeper at the Hall. And as I said, Jason and Orla had this long-running, seemingly lighthearted flirtation going, that hit a blip after Tanya vanished. Orla’s ex, Mike, tried flirting with me soon after I moved to Westery, I think, but I didn’t seem to pick up the signals very well: perhaps they were on the wrong frequency. Or perhaps I was permanently on the wrong frequency?

  I’d always been the odd one out: I didn’t date, I didn’t flirt, and I didn’t have a social life.

  And maybe I didn’t even have a lover any more?

  Proudly read my Times review out to Max when he next called, only to find he was quite shocked by it.

  ‘My God – how dare they! Darling, are you terribly upset?’

  ‘Upset? Are you mad? I’m absolutely delighted! A Times review could boost my sales no end.’

  ‘Yes, a good review, but this is so—’

  ‘Max, it’s The Times. And they do say that bad publicity is better than no publicity.’

  ‘Not this bad, surely?’

  ‘Oh, it’s not much worse than I’ve had before, and I think it will make lots of people go and look for the book from sheer curiosity, don’t you? My agent says they ought to quote it on the next cover.’

  ‘He was joking.’

  ‘No, he wasn’t. And my publishers were pleased, too, even though I might become a sort of minority cult, so they’d have to give me bigger advances. Then I could stop doing Crypt-ograms whenever some unexpected bill comes in. The Batmobile is making clunky sounds on corners again, and I think the alternator’s getting dodgy.’

  ‘Aren’t cult writers usually literary?’

  ‘No, of course not, you
highbrow snob. And there’s nothing wrong with my writing anyway.’

  ‘It’s not your style, it’s the content, Cassy. If you didn’t write about things ordinary people don’t even admit to thinking about, you’d probably be a respected author by now.’

  ‘What, like Jane? And starve to death? No thanks.’

  ‘Her work is certainly respected and she doesn’t seem to have starved.’

  ‘No, but only because she’s been supported by Gerald since she left university. Besides, I wouldn’t call someone who’s had two slim volumes of pared-down poetry published a real writer, even if she has got every literary grant going on the strength of them.’

  ‘Her haiku are generally considered to be brilliant.’

  ‘Yeah, she must have sold dozens of copies of Red Sun, Falling Leaves.’

  ‘Is that a bit of sour grapes?’

  ‘Come on, Max – if there’s any jealousy it’s the other way round. I’ve always known my gift lay in curdling the blood and making the hair stand on end, not writing twisty little sushi gobbets.’

  ‘How are you, anyway?’ he asked, abruptly abandoning the subject as a lost cause. ‘Missing me? Still got that no-hoper from the antique shop sniffing after you?’

  ‘Jason isn’t sniffing after me, he’s a friend,’ I said shortly and quite untruthfully. He wasn’t quite a no-hoper either, considering he was the only man currently on the horizon who actually fancied me, and who knew where desperation would lead me?

  ‘How is Rosemary?’ I enquired politely on that thought: I mean, just pretend I cared.

  ‘Fine. California suits her. I haven’t seen her this lively and cheerful for years, and Kyra’s been working with her to build her upper body strength. It’s really lovely here – you’d like it, Cassy.’

  … the power of his voice poured over her like warm honey, and she felt herself grow weak with desire …

  ‘I expect I would,’ I agreed. California, sunny California, sounded very enticing, with everything warm, and green and fertile. Even me, perhaps, were I to go there?

  ‘Max,’ I said persuasively, ‘if I did a couple more Crypt-ograms and ignored the Batmobile repairs, I could afford to fly out for a holiday somewhere near you and we could—’