Still, you could never say that I wasn’t a professional and so I had corrected and turned the thing around to Jinni at Salubrious within three days. She emailed me instantly to say it had arrived, and to thank me for sending it back so promptly. She seemed to be scared of me for some reason, and scared of Tiger Tim for good reason, so she was between a rock and a hard place, and if I was the rock I choose to be Blue John fluorspar because it’s so pretty.
Sometimes I think getting a computer has not so much opened up a whole new world as a can of worms.
I mean, aren’t emails quick? Just as you reach the end of all the answers to messages you’ve had piled up for days, you get the replies back, with more questions, and the whole thing is like some infernal cycle that never stops.
Plus I’d started getting rude emails from companies who pretended to be my friends, so I opened them, but after the first couple – and my God, were they pornographic! – I was much more cautious and deleted anything that looked the least bit dodgy. Only then they started sending me blatantly obvious messages, and why target someone called Tina with men’s porno? Enlarge your penis by three inches in one week? I don’t think so, thank you very much.
I needed to ask Mel if there was a way of getting rid of them. At least now I knew what people meant by spam because I’d seen it only too clearly on my screen.
I was having lots of what Mel calls ‘hits’ on my new website, also more emails, though, and I could see why that nice man who set the site up said I should have a separate email address on it instead of my own personal one, because some of the messages were very odd indeed; but then, I suppose the links were too, so I couldn’t complain, so long as they bought the books after visiting the site.
I met Ramona Gullet for coffee at the Jolly Fisherman and she signed my copy of Blood on the Table and I signed Spring Breezes for her. We were forming a mutual admiration society, and decided to meet like that once a month.
I told her all about my attempts to find another agent, and how Miracle seemed to be changing her mind a bit now I was having all this press coverage and Spring Breezes was doing well, but I had absolutely lost faith in her and if only I could find another agent who would take me on I would go anyway.
Ramona had a wonderful agent, but he specialized in crime and thrillers, not my kind of thing at all, though she said she would ask him if he knew any other agents who might be interested, which was kind of her.
Then we settled down for a good novelists’ gossip, which was a lot of fun, and though I loved Linny to bits and she was writing novels, until she was published and understood the whole business more we couldn’t really have this type of conversation, which refreshed the parts non-writers couldn’t reach and sent me back to my keyboard and mouse(es) rejuvenated.
By the time I got home, the remains of the day were an offal-coloured heap of tangled clouds on the horizon and until I managed to throw off the dark but interesting influence of Ramona’s conversation, The Orchid Huntress took a very odd turn indeed.
Thirteen
I Should Be So Lucky
3 Underpass View,
Ringroad Way,
Birmingham
Dear Ms Devino,
I enclose my novel Shooting Up, Shooting Down, plus a cheque for three hundred pounds, although I wondered, since this is a very short novel, whether I would receive a refund for part of that.
As you can see from my work, I am very much influenced by the Trainspotting school of fiction, and being a social worker in Birmingham I have certainly experienced life’s rough underbelly first hand. This is a very black, futuristic vision: a cry of doom.
Since I am a poet, already published in many magazines, including Strimp!, Angry Young Poets Bulletin, and the prestigious Cracked Voices Journal with my elegy, ‘Meditations of the Beetle’, it seemed a logical progression to me to write the whole of my novel in free-verse form, an idea that I am sure will strike you as innovative and original.
My novel has been rejected by two mainstream publishers with no comments whatsoever, except that one remarked that Wilfred was a very old-fashioned name considering that I am only twenty-nine. Actually I was named after the Great War poet Wilfred Owen and certainly do not wish to change my name!
Perhaps you could advise me on who would be most likely to appreciate a work of this kind.
I look forward to your reply.
Yours sincerely,
Wilfred Quinn
I was invited to attend a photo shoot with the other five Brown’s Bright New Flowers of Fiction in Spring, and there was going to be coverage in Sunday newspapers and a glossy mag! Then we were to tour Brown’s London branches signing books, where we’d be displayed face-out at the front of the store in a special stand, as would the books.
At least it meant that I had to tell Sergei that I couldn’t make it on the following Monday, because it had been getting a bit tricky holding him off, especially since he’d sent me the diamond heart, and clearly he felt he’d done the sackcloth-and-ashes role to death. But just because he was famous and gorgeous, did that really mean that he could sleep with anyone he wanted and I’d have to accept it because I was the only one he loved?
I just put that question to Jackie, who looked at me as if I was a halfwit and said, ‘Well, duh, Tina! Yes, it certainly does!’
But that was not my idea of love, actually.
When I phoned him, Sergei said rather nasally that it was perhaps as well I wasn’t coming over on Monday because he felt as though he was coming down with flu and he wouldn’t want me to get it. I expected it would just be a little cold, at the most, and very likely he was being a malade imaginaire as usual.
‘What’s that hammering noise in the background?’
‘It is nothing – some repairs I am having done. The noise is making my head go throb-throb-throb!’ he intoned sepulchrally. ‘I think it will soon explode!’
‘Well, that would certainly make for an interesting obituary,’ I said callously, and he said that his health was not a joking matter and he was a pitiful wreck of his former self.
I wore a linen-mix suit in a deep but subtle shade of dark red for the photo session, and redid my eyeliner three times as my hands were shaking so much from nerves. If I was going to be famous one day I really ought to get used to this sort of thing.
Just as I was ready, Jackie rushed in and insisted on pinning this rather tacky crystal angel brooch (with wire halo) on to my jacket, and I don’t mean one of those discreet and cute little pin ones either. She was now heavily into angels and imagined they were hovering about protecting her all the time, though I’d have thought they’d got better things to do than watch Jackie make mountains of paper flowers or hand-bind books.
The brooch was huge and I hoped the pin wouldn’t leave a hole in my lapel afterwards. It certainly didn’t go with the diamond heart, which sparkled beautifully, but it was a kind thought from Jackie in a cruel world, so I had to wait until I was in the taxi and we’d driven round the corner of the harbour before I could remove it and pop it into my handbag, since she stood waving me away on the doorstep like a proud mother. (And although she is much older than me, she is not quite that old.) If I did have angels watching my every move, goodness knew what they thought of the ones involving Sergei, though come to think of it, goodness didn’t really come into it: he was brilliant … So perhaps I ought to think seriously about forgiving him?
Jackie’s last major craze was feng shui. She never discarded the previous one, just added a new layer of wackiness on top, and she drove me totally crackers with all that rearranging of furniture and ornaments and sneaking into my study when she came round for coffee, hanging wooden flutes from the ceiling, not to mention the incident with the big crystal.
She was also responsible for the hideous three-legged frog with a coin in its mouth that sat on a shelf in the hall right next to the meter, as though it had just hopped in. And though I expect it had a lot of spring, what puzzled me was – if it was a real one
– how on earth did it excrete? But then, I have always been prone to these earthy thoughts and often wish that Jane Austen and the Brontës had been more forthcoming about the nitty-gritty of their daily lives.
The said frog sat there, supposedly attracting money into my house, which it hadn’t, and luck; so when I sent off an entry to a competition in one of those idle moments between books one year and won a year’s supply of chocolate, Jackie said, ‘There, that’s your lucky frog’s doing!’
And I said I didn’t call winning a year’s supply of chocolate lucky because if I ate a bar a day I would be hugely obese, spotty and possibly diabetic by the end of it, and what was fortunate about that? So I embarked on a giveaway spree, and I can tell you, I was the most popular house in town on Hallowe’en for the trick-or-treaters once they realized they got three bars of chocolate each, and I’m sure some of them came back several times, only I couldn’t tell in those masks. Some of them were big enough to be parents, which I call plain greedy, but not as greedy as I would have been had I kept all the chocolate and pigged out on a year-long basis.
Then I got rid of temptation by handing out boxes of the stuff to the local children’s ward at the hospital, which seemed a bit Lady Bountiful but went down well, and to all my friends’ teenage children, especially Mel, who had just started at the local uni and therefore knew lots of hungry students.
Anyway, to get back to Brown’s Blooms, the photo shoot was great fun. Two of the other Flowers were considerably more overblown than me, and the only man among them looked like something that might sidle up the plughole and scuttle around your feet while you were in the shower. I simply can’t imagine how he gave the impression that he had a lot more than two legs, so perhaps he was related to my good-luck frog.
Miracle phoned again to ask how the next book was going, though since she was supposed to be ditching me after Dark, Passionate Earth I don’t know why. I said it was doing very well, and told her all about the Brown’s photo shoot, and then she invited me to meet her at the Ritz for coffee in the expansive sort of way she used to do occasionally, before it finally dawned on her that I was not so much a blonde bombshell as a brunette banger.
The waiter said, ‘Nice to see you again, madam,’ so either he says that to everyone or he’s got a good memory, because I only went there when someone else was paying. However, clearly Miracle thought I was now living a secret, lush lifestyle and was impressed. I had two tall lattes while describing my day with Brown’s Bookshops and all the other publicity I’d had, and she said she thought my sales would go up even more after the articles came out about being a Brown’s Flower. She was waxing lyrical in the old Miracle mode when suddenly she clammed up and stared at me in a horribly critical and embarrassed way hissing: ‘Tina!’
Then I realized I’d inadvertently stuck the two plastic coffee stirrers through my hair like chopsticks (though I dare say I’d licked them clean first), went pink with embarrassment and quickly pulled them out. Luckily the only person who seemed to notice was this rather nice businessman sitting at the next table wearing an absolutely wonderful suit that made me want to stroke it, and he winked at me.
Sergei would not have been in the least surprised or embarrassed by my behaviour – though he might have adjusted the stirrers so that the round ends did not project quite like Minnie Mouse ears – because he always does exactly what he feels like doing, but Miracle sighed deeply and said what with having Sergei Popov as my lover and my eccentric ways, she only hoped any publicity was good publicity.
If she’d been regretting letting me go up to that point, I think the impulse to try to chivvy me back into the fold waned rapidly. Then she made small distressed moaning sounds when she paid the bill, though actually she always did that when obliged to part with money, and I’m sure it’s much more cringe-making than anything I do.
Fourteen
Frozen Assets
Ruddles End Farm,
Briskett
Dear Tina,
If I may make so bold with your Christian name! Thank you so much for your assessment of my novel and all your good advice, which you will be pleased to hear I am following to the letter.
I am grateful that you got back to me so quickly because you seem (if the papers are to be believed) to live quite an exciting social life! I don’t know much about ballet, but Glenda says that Sergei Popov is famous, although he is getting on a bit so she doesn’t think he dances much now, but clearly you find fit older men attractive and she said she will have to watch me! (Ha! Ha!)
I have read a few Westerns now and enjoyed them, and the only thing puzzling me is what to call myself, because Neville Strudwick doesn’t sound right. Anyway, I just wanted to run a few ideas past you and see what you thought: Tex Neville, Cody Zane, or my favourite, Tex Bullwhip? Or Larry Bullwhip? Or even Bullwhip O’Sullivan?
I have now taken out all the pieces about farming that you listed, which makes the book much shorter, but the Westerns all seem to be shorter anyway. It is quite an undertaking, though, and it suddenly occurred to me that my old friend George is now living only about fifty miles away from Shrimphaven, so that I could very easily come over and discuss the matter with you in person next time I visit him. Perhaps you would have dinner with me?
Since I know what you look like from the wonderful picture on the back of your books, I thought you might be curious about me, so have enclosed a recent snapshot. Everyone says I look much younger in the flesh, and nowhere near my age!
Looking forward to your reply,
Neville
(Bullwhip O’Sullivan!)
I hadn’t seen Sergei for two weeks – three from the last Monday I was there – because of the Brown’s promotion. He insisted he was suffering from terrible flu and didn’t want me to get it, so even though he was a total hypochondriac, clearly he’d caught something. He was definitely at home suffering because I called him several times to enquire as to his germ status.
He was quite emotional on the phone and said I was the love of his life and he didn’t deserve my forgiveness, and if anything happened to him he hoped I would always remember him with affection, and stuff like that. It was unexpectedly thoughtful of him to insist I didn’t visit him in case I caught the flu too.
My heart was so softened by bathos and absence that I left a care-parcel of caviar, chocolates, flowers and champagne (which I could ill afford) on the upmarket plague victim’s doorstep one day, and popped a cheery card through the letterbox before tiptoeing quietly away.
The wooden shutters were pulled across the windows, imprisoning the muslin curtains, and faint strains of music could be heard – not The Rite of Spring but something rather melancholy and indefinably Russian, as is Sergei, though you’d think he’d at least have lost all trace of his Russian accent after all these years. Grigor sounds totally British and he hasn’t been here for half as long.
Linny was fatter, if anything, and gloomier too, so I stayed over on Thursday night to try to cheer her up and we had dinner at the literati- and glitterati-rich Lemonia. I was hoping as usual that some of the magic fairy dust of fame would rub off on my wings.
We settled down to spotting the minor celebs but there was no one really exciting in that night, not even anyone exciting’s children. Then, as we were looking at the wine list, Linny said suddenly that she didn’t seem to fancy alcohol somehow, wasn’t it funny? And she had gone totally off tea and coffee too.
‘Maybe you’re pregnant?’ I said jokingly. It wasn’t funny to Tertius, who would have loved children, though Linny had been hot and cold about having a baby for years, which was just as well since she’d never managed to start one.
Well, she looked at me like someone had tent-pegged the idea into her head with a mallet, and I stared back at her and said, ‘Linny, you’re not, are you?’
‘I simply never thought of that, after all this time,’ she said in a peculiar voice, and just at this interesting – if faintly appalling – moment, who should walk into Lemonia b
ut Sergei with Tube Man on his arm. If I hadn’t been sitting down, I would have fallen over.
Linny continued to stare pallidly at me, her lips silently moving, while I looked beyond her, wondering if I was hallucinating. Sergei still stood near the door gesticulating vehemently – but then, he always thought he was so famous he didn’t need to book a table, one would magically appear (and actually, he was quite right, one very often did). Then he caught my eye, smiled brilliantly, and began to make his way towards me with Tube Man following behind along with a protesting waiter, though Sergei’s smile vanished when he saw Linny with me. He’d only really met her to talk to a few times and so hadn’t had a chance to dislike her, so I didn’t know why – unless he took against her when she popped round with that message for me that time.
‘Oh God, he’s not joining us, is he?’ Linny said just then, emerging from her stunned state long enough to follow the direction of my eyes and register what was happening. I was a bit surprised since she’d always fancied him, until she added distractedly: ‘I can’t think straight!’ and went totally scarlet. Obviously it was nothing personal. She was just stunned by the preggie idea and only wanted to bolt to the nearest all-night chemist, not make conversation with my sometime lover and a stranger.
‘That’s Tube Man with Sergei!’ I hissed.
‘Tube Man?’ Linny repeated, then she looked up, her eyes widening. ‘Not the Tube Man, Heathcliff of your novels? I thought you’d invented him!’
‘No, he’s real, and he’s here now and heading this way with my lover!’ I snapped. ‘Pull yourself together, Linny – I need you!’
‘Ah, Tsarina – Linny – you don’t mind if we join you?’ Sergei stated rather than asked, leaning over the table to kiss me enthusiastically and Linny rather gingerly – but that might be because Linny’s facial hair was looking particularly rampant that night, though probably that was just the lighting.
Written From the Heart Page 9