Written From the Heart

by Trisha Ashley

  But after much application of the twin balms of writing and common sense to my wounded heart (and cold water to my swollen eyelids), I visited Sergei as usual early on the following Monday morning. (The common sense was Jackie’s – she said Sergei was so gorgeous she wouldn’t mind sharing him with a harem, and anyway, did I have anything better lined up? And of course I didn’t have anything lined up at all outside the pages of my novels.)

  He opened the door wearing something over the top in brocade and fake fur like a Tartar prince, plus a welcoming smile, which vanished when he saw my face. Maybe the cold water and make-up hadn’t been as effective as I’d thought.

  ‘My darling! What is the matter?’ he exclaimed, but I evaded his embrace and walked past him into the room where I turned to face him.

  I managed to keep my cool and said straight out that I’d seen him at it (nearly) on Valentine’s Day and was deeply hurt, but understood if he’d found someone else (or even several someone elses?) and hoped we could part amicably. ‘And I just wish you’d told me, Sergei, because I always thought we were friends as well as lovers,’ I added.

  My voice, which had been remarkably steady throughout the dignified little speech I’d prepared, suddenly wobbled all over the place and my chin probably did, too.

  Despite being both startled and miffed at being found out, he made a good recovery. ‘But how could you accuse me of such a thing, my Tina? You mistook what was happening. It was my therapist – my back was so bad and—’

  ‘Oh, pull the other one, it’s got bells on it,’ I snapped, which puzzled him rather, though he definitely took on board the total disbelief bit.

  He changed tack and became terribly passionate in his flamboyant way, throwing himself at my feet and crying: ‘It was nothing but a regrettable impulse of the moment, my lovely Tsarina, not the beautiful thing we have between us!’ and much, much more of the same kind of stuff, though he refused to say who the butterfly was except that she was nothing compared with me, his beautiful Tina.

  He should have thought of that at the time.

  ‘It was not important … I barely remember what happened. I had perhaps one glass of good Russian vodka when I got back from the Royal Ballet and—’

  That explained a lot. ‘There’s no such thing as good Russian vodka where you are concerned, Sergei,’ I said shortly. ‘You promised me you wouldn’t drink it any more after what happened last time a friend gave you some. And it still doesn’t excuse the fact that you betrayed me.’

  ‘Never in my heart!’ he protested. ‘See, I kiss your feet in abject apology, I grovel, I plead for your forgiveness and understanding, my Tina …’

  I let him go on like this for a bit, since he seemed to be enjoying it, even if I wasn’t, then when he started to run out of steam, I said, ‘Let’s simply carry on as friends for the moment, Sergei, until I can learn to trust you again,’ which I thought was a pretty good line. I wrote it down as soon as he went to stoke up the samovar, and it certainly hedged my bets nicely.

  So there we were, just being friends (which we were anyway) while he tried to get back in my good graces, and it was all rather restful without the sex thing, which, although down to once a week at most, had increased in vigour to compensate, so I probably needed a break, though I decided that if I missed it I would simply let him win me round later when I’d forgiven him.

  But don’t think I wasn’t still feeling betrayed and deeply wounded, because I was. Things would never be quite the same again.

  Nobody mentioned the bleeding roses.

  Once her aunt had gone home I finally told Linny all about it. I’d put it off because I thought she might be sort of pleased since she’d always fancied Sergei herself. But she was actually terribly sympathetic and insisted I repeat every single bit of the conversation with Sergei, which is what I really wanted to do anyway.

  And then she said she personally was totally disillusioned with men, but did think that Sergei actually cared for me in his own way, and I must have known what sort of man he was but had just shut my eyes to that side of things, and I said I supposed so, but what I wanted to know was whether I was special or merely part of ‘that side of things’.

  ‘Special,’ she said. ‘I’m sure anyone else is just, well, just sex, and they don’t mean anything to him, and I think men like that are the pits.’

  ‘But I thought you had the hots for Sergei?’ I said, surprised.

  ‘Only from a distance. I found him rather scary that time I took the note round for you.’

  Then she blushed, so I thought she still fancied him really, despite everything. And unfortunately so did I …

  She also said speculation on the identity of the figure I’d glimpsed was pointless – it was probably another dancer, which sort of kept it in the family and didn’t really count, and I said so long as it hadn’t been Grigor, though strictly speaking he was more a leading light by then. He looked much more impressive on the stage – you didn’t notice the lack of chin at all when he was actually dancing.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Linny said firmly. ‘I’ve never seen anything more heterosexual than Sergei in my life, make-up or no make-up.’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ I agreed. But anyway, thank God for my strong sense of self-preservation, which had led me to take a belt-and-braces approach to contraception all my life. (Or maybe it was more a dislike of babies?)

  ‘Once I knew about the vodka, it did explain things a bit, because the real Russian stuff his friends sometimes bring him back is so strong it removes the veneer of civilization like paint stripper and he turns into something a bit too primeval for my taste – and that’s another promise he broke, because he swore he would never touch it again after last time. You remember? He—’

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ Linny broke in hastily. Then she suggested I just lay back and enjoy being wooed again, because she had found from her disagreements with Tertius that this was always the fun part of a relationship, especially the little trinkets he bought her to make up.

  And there may be something in that, because soon after I received a very expensive diamond-studded heart pendant with the message: ‘Forgive me, Tsarina – truly you have all my heart.’ And, it seemed, most of his bank balance.

  The gesture had quite a softening effect on me, though I had no intention of weakening yet.

  NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

  Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

  Dear Mrs Vauxhall,

  Thank you for your manuscript, Frodo’s Incredible Adventure, which I have read with great interest, and also the cheque for ten pounds which, as you so rightly point out, is probably more than my asking rate if you worked it out word for word.

  Although I do take your point that novelists seem to be getting younger and younger, and agree that your granddaughter, Kylie, shows huge promise as a writer, yet I do feel that at seven it is a little early to think of her work being published in book form. There is also the minor difficulty of length, for I’m afraid publishers do expect slightly more than five hundred words in a novel. Also, which you may not have noticed unless you are conversant with The Lord of the Rings, there is just a tiny element of plagiarism here, which is only natural, since beginning novelists are very often derivative.

  Yes, Kylie is very precocious, isn’t she? Even so, just how much experience of life can you have had at seven, living in a quiet country hamlet? As you so rightly point out, so did Jane Austen, though I believe she was slightly older than seven when she wrote Pride and Prejudice.

  I hope you find my comments helpful, and that Kylie will carry on writing, and perhaps enter some of the many children’s writing competitions where her very original style may well bring her success.

  Yours sincerely,

  Tina Devino

  Twelve

  Playing With My Heart

  Dear Tony,

  Would you please refrain from sending letters to Sergei insinuating that if he doesn’t make an honest woman of
your sister you will send ‘the boys’ round to make him an offer he can’t refuse. Not only do these menacing messages profoundly puzzle him, but also even if I wanted to marry Sergei (which I don’t), it certainly wouldn’t be at shotgun point, especially sawn-off!

  So butt out of my affairs.

  Tina

  PS: Love to Mary and the children.

  The following week I went to an ordinary meeting of the Society For Women Writing Romance, although usually I only go to their parties and awards ceremonies – and, my God, they know how to party! – but they’d invited me to be part of a panel speaking for ten minutes on ‘My Writing Technique’.

  The meeting was at the Arts Club, and Linny came too, to see if she could get any tips. I was quite nervous so we fortified ourselves with coffee at the Ritz first. I seemed rather to have lost my bottle for this kind of thing since the Whimpergreen incident.

  Anyway, there were five of us on the panel and I was first, so I began my little piece by describing the rituals I have to perform before I start a new book.

  ‘For example, before I began my current novel, The Orchid Huntress, I first had to take a brand-new A4 lined pad and rip the front cover off and get a new black rollerball pen from the drawer. Then I lined up the little stone bear and the brass monkey (see no evil) on either side of the pad at exact right angles – though sometimes my friend Jackie sneaks in and covers my desk in good-luck objects, booby-trapped to fall off every time I walk across the floor, so I have to clear them off first, and the heart attack brought on by the sound of a huge crystal hitting the deck can’t be said to be lucky, and anyway that sort of thing is much better on the window refracting little rainbows about the place, isn’t it?’

  I stopped for breath and the chairwoman said quickly, ‘Er, thank you very much, Tina, that was very interesting.’

  I hadn’t actually finished but I must have overrun my time, so I sat back and listened to all the others. They seemed to be talking more about words per page, and how much they wrote every day and stuff, though I noticed at the end that I got most of the questions and everyone wanted to tell me what they had on their desks for good luck.

  Linny said she’d learned something, and why hadn’t she been to one of the meetings before? Why, in fact, hadn’t she joined, as one of their Nouveau Novelists?

  ‘Because you’ve never shown any interest in meeting other writers before, and usually you’re going to some much grander function whenever I ask you,’ I pointed out.

  She said she couldn’t compromise her social position because of Tershie, but she’d try and ‘network’ a bit more in future whenever she could, and as she had a copy of the SFWWR membership application form in her handbag, who knew?

  Linny was very jealous of my diamond heart, though she had enough precious trinkets of her own to start a shop. I had to wear it everywhere, including to bed, since anyone could break into my cottage with a bent nail file and I simply couldn’t afford to burglar-proof it, so I just hoped for the best and the attention of my terribly nosy neighbour, the Rottweiler of Shrimphaven.

  I did once have engagement and wedding rings, but flogged them long ago to buy a really nice winter coat in a sale. It stood me in good stead for years, and I just don’t think it’s possible to wear cashmere out, do you?

  So now I was not so much wearing my heart on my sleeve as round my neck, and it was much admired at the SFWWR meeting.

  A journalist phoned me up at the crack of dawn about some tabloid photos of which I knew nothing until then, so I dashed out to buy the rag. The newsagent gave me a very slimy look – and, oh my God! There was this series of mercifully fuzzy snaps of Sergei’s back garden taken last year with the caption: ‘Sexy Sergei in Rites of Spring’, which I thought was pretty clever for a guess, and fortunately you couldn’t make the woman out at all clearly because of the well-draped dancer.

  It’s just a pity the foliage wasn’t that thick the previous year because normally Sergei’s garden is like a green cave by May.

  I managed to get Sergei on the phone just before he left for his classes and he’d already been hassled too, but said he had declined to comment except to say that he hoped his neighbours had better things to do than spy on him, let alone photograph him about his private pursuits, and one of the reporters had made a crack about pursuits that had really got his back up.

  ‘You will deny everything, Tsarina,’ he said grandly, which of course I was going to do anyway.

  Then next day’s spread was headlined: ‘Was Sergei’s Nymph Write In There?’ with that photo of me and Sergei coming out of Lemonia (you know, the one with the drunken daisies?) and the article was all innuendo and speculation, though it did give ‘saucy Tina’s sex-romp novels’ a good plug, even if not in terms I would have preferred.

  So the next time someone asked me for a comment (on the doorstep this time), I said with a Mona Lisa smile that Sergei and I shared a love of nature that drew us together, and had been dear friends for years, but I was not at liberty to divulge details of his private affairs.

  It was all in the paper next day, plus the immortal cliché, which I don’t remember saying: ‘When asked if she knew the identity of the woman in the photo, Ms Devino smiled and shook her head, then said her lips were sealed …’

  Later Miracle phoned me up – the first time she’d actually spoken to me since she gave me my marching orders – and said I should carry on with the enigmatic smile stuff and plugging my books, and that not only had the Spring Breezes promotion in the Sun done my sales some good, all this new scandal-raking wouldn’t do me any harm either if handled the right way.

  I wondered if she was having second thoughts about getting rid of me and would it soon be ‘come back, all is forgiven’?

  I didn’t think I’d better give up my manuscript assessment service just yet, though!

  NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

  Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

  Dear Neville Strudwick,

  I have now assessed your novel, which you will find enclosed together with my critique.

  You said in your introductory letter that it was based on your own life, and actually I didn’t think things were that exciting growing up in the country in the fifties, especially all the rather Zane Grey bits, riding about with guns, but clearly I was wrong. The incident at nineteen when you shot and killed your twin brother, Barnaby, in a freak accident must have been a terrible experience, and clearly one you could never entirely forget, although when his girlfriend, Glenda, turned to you for comfort and eventually you married, it must have been some solace to you both.

  The trouble is, apart from this one incident the book doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere, being as it is the episodic exploits of a group of young boys growing up in the country linked by a series of rather dry lectures on farming methods, and although the boys have lots of adventures, the book seems to entirely lack any kind of premise whatsoever – and, indeed, a plot – and I am afraid is not publishable as it stands.

  However, I think I have discovered your true métier! Yes, I believe that if you visit your local library and take out lots of cowboy books and study them closely, you can then turn Sons of the Soil into a super Western! Take that incident with your unfortunate brother and fictionalize it into the central event of the book, making it a stirring tale of unrequited passion and love of the ranch and that kind of thing: maybe the young Glenda figure could be the only daughter of a rich rancher? Or a widow trying to run her place herself but sorely in need of a Shane-like figure to ride into her life and rescue her? You can then retitle it along the lines of Sons of the Arroyo Canyon and submit it to publishers specializing in this type of novel.

  That adult computer class for beginners you attended certainly taught you a lot, and perhaps you could ask your teacher to show you the spellcheck facility, which is invaluable. Also, when you do finally submit your novel to a publisher, I am sure you will not economize by printing it off on to the back of old
National Farmers Union letters and the like, but use fresh, decent-quality printer paper.

  Well, Neville, I hope you are not too disheartened by my critique but instead excited by the thought of embracing a whole new genre!

  I wish you all the best with it,

  Tina Devino

  I was guest speaker at the Shrimphaven Gardening Club’s annual lunch, and not only did they pay me, but they also gave me food and drink.

  But unfortunately I couldn’t really do justice to either before giving my speech because I was too nervous, so all I got out of it was a thimble of coffee and a weird mint that tasted as if it had been stored in a damp box for ten years, at the end of the meal once it was all over.

  Afterwards, when I was earning my fee by mingling, a woman asked me where I got my inspiration from and I said off the Internet.

  She said, ‘Really?’

  ‘No, I’m joking,’ I confessed. ‘I really get all my inspiration from nature.’

  And then she nodded darkly and said there was certainly a lot of that about, especially in Shrimphaven, and when I saw her leaving later she appeared to be married to a very strange and exotic specimen of it.

  Exciting news! I am to be one of the Brown’s Bookshops’ Bright New Flowers of Fiction in Spring! I realized they only bloomed briefly before being replaced, but I still couldn’t figure out why now, after all these books, though the tabloid stuff might have swung it.

  Linny said it should be Dull Old Bloom of Fiction, which I thought was a bit snippy, but then, she’d just sent another of her manuscripts off and had it back again practically by return. I wish she’d let me read one sometime so I could see if she’s any good, but she won’t.

  The proofs of Dark, Passionate Earth had arrived, and not only did Salubrious seem to be rushing the book towards publication at unseemly speed (probably to get rid of me quicker), but they were also economizing on production, because it appeared to have been typeset by someone whose native language was something other than English.