A Good Heart is Hard to Find

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘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 correspondent, 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 had made him bad-tempered? Low blood sugar or something. Why didn’t he eat more? Did 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 was 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 realize 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 s
hadow 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.

  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’d laid himself open to me by showing me his notebooks, and I’d told him things about Pa that it had taken me years to get round to telling Orla (and never told Max). Why? How did that come about?

  And how could we be so intimate with each other’s nightmares, yet still seem to be circling in some ritual fight? And did I have time to puzzle over these and other mysteries when I’d 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 seemed to be piling up in my life like spillikins: pull one out of the heap and they all fell 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!’

  I left him in the kitchen with a pile of toast and a pot of tea while I went to shower, dress, and get into my right mind: such as it was. I was beyond exhausted, and into dream-like trance, but it was a happy and satisfied weariness.

  Meanwhile, Jamie had been amusing himself by listening to my accumulation of phone messages, but had now got to Pa’s latest rant. Judging by the tail end I caught it seemed to be even more demented than the last.

  After that, Jamie said he was in two minds whether to continue his journey home. ‘What exactly has Jane done, Cass? And why is it your fault?’

  ‘Everything’s my fault,’ I reminded him, rewinding the tape and listening to a couple of loving messages from Max, who was perversely bombarding me with them now that it was too late.

  He didn’t once mention Kyra the Confessor or even golf.

  I deleted him, and then Jane’s voice said breathily: ‘I’m here at last. I felt a total dog arriving all muddy and in such a mess, but Phily’s been an angel and loaned me all her things.’

  ‘Let’s hope she paid for them, then,’ I muttered, and Jamie looked baffled.

  ‘Are you there, Cass my dear? Saturday, 10 a.m. on the dot at the King’s Arms,’ said a new voice. ‘All slaves to be there an hour earlier.’

  ‘Crank?’ asked Jamie.

  ‘Charles – the vicar. Don’t ask.’

  Jamie looked like he’d caught me out in something very dubious indeed (maybe a kinky nuns’ and vicars’ party?) that maybe his little sister shouldn’t really be doing, but obediently said nothing.

  There was one call where the tape ran for a few minutes and then Jason, sounding furious, said: ‘If you won’t answer your door, at least answer the bloody phone!’ and slammed his receiver down.

  This was followed by a couple of plaintive messages from Orla asking if I was all right.

  ‘Though if you’re not all right – I mean, if we were wrong about Jason and you’re lying in a bloody puddle in the kitchen, you’re not going to get up and tell me so, are you?’

  The last message, if you could describe it as one, was just my name, spoken questioningly in an instantly familiar voice. Shivers ran up and down my spine, but don’t ask me to try and define whether they were pleasurable or not because I listened to him speak my name five times and I still couldn’t decide.

  ‘That one must have been a crank,’ Jamie said. ‘You’ve forgotten to wipe it. I’ll do it for you, shall I?’

  ‘No! No – I’ll leave it for now, just in case I recognize it.’

  ‘OK. You get a lot of messages, don’t you?’

  ‘Only because I’ve been working so hard for three days trying to finish this book, so I’ve just let everything accumulate. But it’s done now. Let’s see what the post has brought.’

  The top envelope was inscribed with the word Urgent! in big straggly capitals.

  Dear Sis,

  Just to warn you – have been shanghaied by Ma and Pa to drive them down to Westery in search of the ewe lamb that was lost, or something. Pa’s off his head, and these days I don’t think it’s just the booze. They seem to mean Jane by the ewe lamb, but she’s more like mutton dressed as, if you ask me.

  Booked us all into some B&B in the village – Haunted Well? – for a couple of nights. Do you know it?

  They don’t want to see you, only Jane, Pa says. Thought I’d better tell you. Hide the vampire teeth and the upside-down crosses. I’ll slip out when I can and come and see you.

  Love, Francis

  I was still looking at this aghast (and I don’t mean by the weak black magic humour and terrible handwriting), when Jamie, who’d been riffling through the pile, said: ‘Here’s a hand-delivered note from that dishy blonde friend of yours, Orla.’

  ‘Couldn’t get you on the phone,’ he read. ‘Have got three Easter B&B bookings by people all called Leigh. Any relation? Are you all right in there? Love, Orla.’

  ‘Wonder who these Leighs are?’ he pondered, his brow furrowed.

  ‘Ma, Pa and Francis – this letter’s from Francis telling me they’re coming to rescue Jane from my evil influence: but she’s not here.’

  ‘Better tell them, then,’ he advised, which is easier said than done when you haven’t phoned them for over twenty years.

  He cravenly refused to do it for me, but there was no reply anyway, and Robbie answered when I rang Francis’s shop, and said he’d gone away for a few days.

  ‘They must have set out already,’ I said despairingly. ‘Jamie, you’ll have to stay here too, so you can tell them what’s happening. They don’t want to see me.’

  ‘No fear, not after listening to Pa on that tape! I’m off back down to Portsmouth again. I’ll have to fake an illness, or something.’

  ‘Coward,’ I said bitterly, but he just grinned and took himself off. Perhaps it was his survival instinct that had kept him out of serious trouble so far, because it certainly wasn’t due to i
ntelligence.

  When he’d gone I drove furtively round to Orla’s and informed her just who she was about to entertain in her guesthouse, but cowardly declined to meet her and Jason at the pub that night, even when she said Jason had now simmered down to mild volcanic bubbling.

  ‘I can’t – I’ve finished the book, but there are a few bits of tidying-up on it to do. I’ll see you at the auction tomorrow.’

  ‘You certainly will! Dante and Jason are shaping up to have a bidding war over you, and the vicar just told me his housekeeper’s going to be bidding for your services on behalf of someone who’s abroad. I wonder who that could be?’

  My heart sank. ‘Oh no, he wouldn’t – would he? He was asking all sorts of questions about it though, and – oh, shit!’

  ‘Max, of course,’ she agreed.

  ‘Honestly, talk about too much, too late!’ I fumed. ‘And what do you mean, Jason and Dante are going to have a bidding war over me?’

  ‘Dante’s been haunting the pub the last couple of days looking even more morose, as has Jason – waiting for you to turn up, I think – and whatever they say to each other seems to have some sort of unspoken subplot.’

  ‘Subplot?’ I stared at her.

  ‘Yes. What could that be, I wonder?’ she asked innocently. ‘Maybe something like: whoever buys you can father your offspring?’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said primly. ‘I hope neither of them will waste their money when they’ve read the list of things I’m offering, because sex is definitely not on it.’

  ‘Oh, I think they’re both expecting considerably more than a little light dusting,’ she said dryly. ‘Especially since Dante’s under the impression that you’ve ended your affair with Max.’

  ‘I was going to – I just haven’t quite got round to it yet. And I’m sure you’re wrong about Jason and Dante,’ I added doubtfully. ‘Are they friendly?’