Written From the Heart

by Trisha Ashley

  I was just assuring her he was twice as gorgeous in the flesh when we had to hush up and listen to the speeches, followed by some media celebrity smugly twittering on for twenty minutes, blithely informing a room mostly full of published novelists (many of whom had been earning their living writing for years before Ms Media had decided to cash in on her name and write her debut novel) that if we all worked terribly hard, and were as talented and lucky as she was, one day we might just manage to attain a similar glittering seat in the firmament, and become professional writers like wonderful her – I mean, patronize us, why don’t you?

  She was blonde, too: they were all blonde, but I vowed not to let myself get a fixation about it, for I am an accredited Brunette Bloom.

  After all that, and when the award had been given (and I’ve never been sure what the significance of something that looks like a silver pomegranate on a stick is), Miracle suddenly surged up beside me shedding wonders faster than a dog sheds water, and said gushingly that I looked wonderful, and sales of Spring Breezes were even better, and perhaps we ought to get together again to discuss the future …

  Smiling, I agreed. ‘That’s such a good idea, Miracle, because now I’ve found a new agent to take over for my next book, we do have a few details to sort out.’

  ‘Oh, I hope you haven’t done anything hasty, Tina!’ she said sincerely. ‘It’s so hard to get a good agent, and actually I realized almost immediately that we’d been friends so long, and I have so much faith in you as a writer, that it had all been a mistake and I didn’t want to lose you at all.’

  So I said it was a pity she didn’t tell me immediately if that was how she felt – or even later when we met at the Ritz, come to that – but actually she was quite right about a change of agent being a positive move for me, especially to someone younger and more go-ahead, like Nathan Cedar.

  ‘Nathan Cedar of Bigg and Blew?’ she said, eyes widening.

  ‘He was, but he’s set up on his own now, and taken a few of his best writers with him – and he’s also just negotiated the sale and serial rights to Sergei’s autobiography and it’s going to be huge.’

  She looked totally stunned, but recovered quickly and said Nathan didn’t have her contacts, to which I replied that clearly he could have any contacts he wanted, and I thought he’d do very well for me.

  And that was that: I had publicly declared myself to be Nathan’s property.

  Then I excused myself because I could see my old editor from Salubrious waving at me over the throng, and it turned out that Ruperta is now chief fiction editor at Crimp & Letchworth! We adjourned to the American Bar for a good gossip, and I told her about changing agents, and she said now I was becoming so successful it served Miracle right for ditching me at precisely the wrong moment and why didn’t we meet for lunch one day soon and talk about what I was writing now.

  And so we agreed to that. How wonderful it would be if Nathan could sell my next book to Crimp & Letchworth and I’d be able to tell Tim (politely) that I’d had a better offer!

  Eighteen

  In Demand

  NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

  Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

  Dear Wilfred Quinn,

  Thank you for your letter, cheque and most interesting manuscript.

  I haven’t before received a novel entirely written in poetry. As you say, it is quite innovative – although there is nothing entirely new under the sun as far as writing goes, and didn’t Vikram Seth do something like that a few years ago? Not to mention Elizabeth Barrett Browning with her Aurora Leigh.

  Yes, it was romantic that you were named after Wilfred Owen, and you are quite right not to want to change it, although I can see that editor’s point: if you are writing cutting-edge, angry-young-man stuff, Wilfred doesn’t somehow go, does it? However, by simply shortening it to Will Quinn you will have something that sounds just right. (And for all I know Will Self’s real name is Wilfred, so you won’t be alone!)

  I have enclosed my full critique on your interesting work, but I do feel that I must warn you that I think a novel of this nature would be difficult to sell to mainstream publishers, despite your brilliant record in having poetry accepted. However, the route I would suggest is that you first try to have a collection or two of poetry published in book form by a specialist poetry publisher, and then follow on this success by interesting them in your poetic novel.

  I hope my advice has been of some help to you.

  With best wishes for your success in your chosen field,

  Tina Devino

  On the Monday after the SFWWR Awards Lunch I went to see Sergei with a heart somewhat softened by an article about him in the previous day’s Sunday glossy, illustrated by a selection of wonderful photos of him leaping about in tights, which reminded me of how fond I was of him and the love we’d shared over the years.

  I was pleased to see that from a Frankenstein point of view his face looked almost back to normal, only smoothed out, as was his neck, so that the heavy make-up was absent except for a smudge of eyeliner as usual. I had been wondering where that last ‘Gunsmoke Grey’ I bought went; I was forever finding Sergei in my make-up bag.

  I supposed I could have got used to the lack of character lines – which were bound to come back eventually, weren’t they? – but the rather mask-like rigidity of his face made him seem sort of alien and cold, especially with his slanting, liquid dark eyes glistening through, so that I was less than responsive to anything other than a welcoming kiss; and in the end I had to tell him right out that it put me off, and also reminded him that I still hadn’t quite forgiven him for catching him with the Blue Butterfly that time, a blow that even diamonds couldn’t heal instantly, and so he would just have to resign himself to our being friends until I could come to terms with everything. Then he went profoundly sulky and accused me of wanting to ditch him for Nathan.

  ‘You like him,’ he said, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at me. ‘I could tell.’

  ‘And you like Grigor,’ I said coldly and unreasonably, as presumably once upon a time he’d liked Grigor’s mother, which is more to the point, though of course Sergei didn’t know that I knew about that yet.

  And then Sergei said, ‘But I do not like Grigor that way, as I shall show you!’

  Which of course I already knew. Although normally I adored the way Sergei’s English rapidly deteriorated when he was agitated, this time I fended him off because I’d never felt any desire to make love to the Man in the Iron Mask, let alone the Botox one, and until the effect wore off I didn’t think things would ever be the same between us, and maybe not even then.

  However, I was still deeply fond of Sergei, despite his vanity and deviousness (or possibly because of them?). We understood each other better than anyone else ever could, so although Nathan was attractive, temptation was not going to be allowed to come to anything, even if he showed willing. Anyway, the complications if I ran both of them simultaneously would be hideous. Besides, Nathan was probably married to that skinny girl in the photo – and I was positive I’d seen her modelling underwear in catalogues.

  No, bearing in mind my habits, not to mention Sergei’s, Nathan was better kept as an inspirational dream – and just how bright was he if he hadn’t recognized himself in my books yet?

  In the end, I suggested to Sergei that I would love to see some videos of his earlier starring roles, which cheered him up no end. Normally you would have to fill me so full of wine I couldn’t move before I’d sit through more than half an hour of that kind of thing, but we curled up on the sofa together while he pointed out his brilliance and I worked out the plot complications for The Orchid Huntress.

  Watching ballet is more exhausting than sex.

  Staggering round to Linny’s later I found her ankle-deep in babywear catalogues, swatches of nursery wallpaper and snippets of soft furnishings. It beats me why so many baby things have got clowns printed on them, which I always find horrendously scary a
nd very strange, all those weird men with red noses and white faces and stuff.

  There were paint charts full of cloud pinks and bunny-tail beiges, and a scattering of books with ominous-sounding titles like Get and Keep the Perfect Nanny!, which she said were all Tershie’s doing. He was already sorting out the nursery arrangements and has registered with the best nanny agencies. Linny felt like a dubious starter in the motherhood stakes, especially the idea of actually giving birth, which was so gross it didn’t bear thinking of and it wasn’t like you could pay someone else to do it for you. So she said she’s not going to think of it, she’s going to have an elective Caesarean under total anaesthesia and perhaps tell them to wake her up when it goes to school.

  But there were compensations, because her complexion, which was normally a bit oily and sallow, was glowing and so was she. She had a sort of sparkle about the eyes, and in fact the general effect was like she’d fallen in love. She said much the same about me, only of course I had neither fallen pregnant nor fallen in love, only into sheer, crazy, inconvenient lust with a perfectly ordinary man … Well, ordinary except for being extraordinarily attractive, that is.

  ‘You’re not going to ditch Sergei, are you?’ Linny asked. ‘I mean, you’ve been just like a married couple for years … well, except for having great sex, living apart and only seeing each other one day a week. But I thought it suited you both perfectly – you seemed to have it all!’

  ‘No, no, I couldn’t imagine life without Sergei,’ I agreed, for what would I do without him? Better a Botoxed ballet dancer in the bush than an agent by the hand, as the saying goes.

  ‘Nathan dropped my manuscript off personally,’ she said, ‘which was kind, though he was passing anyway, and guess what? He says it is pure Mills & Boon! He suggested I make a couple of changes and then send it straight off to them, because I wouldn’t need an agent.’

  ‘No, they have standard contracts,’ I agreed. ‘Gosh, well done, Linny! Are you going to do what he says?’

  ‘Oh, yes, because I simply hadn’t realized I was writing Mills & Boon, and I can see what he means now he’s pointed it out, so I’m going to do exactly what he advises and then maybe I’ll be published before too long!’

  Well, I never took her seriously, but obviously I got it completely wrong! ‘Did he mention me?’ I asked curiously.

  ‘No, except that he was going to be your new agent and – oh, I invited him round to dinner next Tuesday, when Tershie is home, because I’ve got to have lots of people back, most of them boring, so I thought he’d liven things up a bit! And I asked him if he had a partner he’d like to bring and he said no, so if you’d like to come and even the numbers up, you can.’

  ‘Oh, thanks, that makes me feel really wanted,’ I said, but actually it was a kind bit of manoeuvring on her part – or perhaps just a malicious urge to throw us together and see what happened, whichever one you wanted to think. Or maybe a bit of both?

  ‘So he hasn’t got a significant other …’ I mused. ‘I wonder who that girl in the photograph on his desk is then.’

  Linny shrugged. ‘A relative? Sister?’ Then she hauled out yet another catalogue and said, ‘What do you think of these hand-painted Noah’s Ark storage chests? You can have the baby’s name on the lid too, up to eleven letters.’

  I tried to think of any name that was eleven letters long and failed dismally. ‘Yes, but you couldn’t have it done until after the baby was born, unless they tell you whether it is a boy or girl when you have a scan.’

  ‘I don’t want to know. I want it to be a surprise.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to choose a name that could be either sex, like … like Hilary, Lesley or Ashley.’

  ‘Oh, Ashley, Ashley,’ she murmured, as though half-heartedly auditioning for Scarlett in Gone With the Wind, but I could see her mind had gone back to Bunny-Tail Beige Land again.

  Suddenly I felt quite left out: Linny and I had done everything together since we were eight, and now here she was setting out on one of life’s major journeys without me.

  When I got home I called Nathan, more for the pleasure of hearing his velvety voice than anything, and told him about Ruperta’s interest in The Orchid Huntress, and that I was lunching with her to discuss it. He said he knew Ruperta, which caused me a twinge of jealousy, though she is married to a perfectly nice man already.

  I didn’t tell him I would be seeing him at Linny’s next week. I thought I’d like to surprise him and see if I could tell if he was pleased or not, though actually he has very good manners so he would not be likely to look anything other than delighted, unlike Sergei, whose every passing emotion is instantly reflected on his face – or at least it was when he could still move it, and his rich and ever-changing landscape of expressions was one of the first things that drew me to him … and I rushed off to write that down.

  NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

  Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

  Dear Bob Woodelf,

  Thank you for the beautiful beaded top, which I intend wearing with the matching skirt to the next Society For Women Writing Romance party at the Café Royal, always an over-the-top occasion, where I am sure it will be much admired. The wings would have been altogether too much of a good thing, so thank you for your kind offer to throw them in gratis, but I’ll pass on that one.

  I enclose the critique of your delightful children’s tale of one boy and his elf, which had interestingly dark Tolkien and C. S. Lewis undertones to it. If you can increase the length by about twenty thousand words and omit the illustrations, I believe you might well sell this to a publisher, due to the sudden resurgence of that kind of thing, although I am not altogether convinced that killing the main character off at the very end (even though he is reborn as an elf) quite works for this age group.

  Let me know if you want me to look at the rewritten version and recommend publishers and/or agents who might be interested. Please also tell Angie Heartsease, should she happen to flit by, that her critique will also shortly be winging its way back to her.

  May Elven voices extol your virtues too, Bob.

  Best wishes,

  Tina Devino

  I took the beautiful top down to an elderly dressmaker in the village who was used to altering things to fit me. I am a size eight everywhere except the obvious, and so always need the shoulders and waists adjusted. I was sure it would look lovely with the skirt and I was pretty confident that no one else would be wearing the same outfit.

  Once I had dropped that off I carried on up to Het’s bijou mansion, all geared up to gracefully accept the invitation to open the Shrimphaven Annual Festival of Culture, but it was all a great big swizz! I’d even borrowed Jackie’s old stripy Puffa jacket and Hunter wellies especially. But then not only did the coffee have dog hairs floating in it from all the smelly little Wiener Schnitzels, but the Nice biscuits had been left somewhere damp for so long that they weren’t.

  Then Het went and pricked my smug, swollen-headed bubble (ugh, makes me sound like a big zit!) by confessing that she’d asked me round to sound me out about inviting Sergei to open the festival and be the guest of honour!

  I carefully erased the disappointment out of my face while picking hairs out of my coffee, and then said I thought he might do it, but he didn’t often visit the seaside because he thought the ozone got into his delicate sinuses and made him ill, and all that fresh salty air sapped his entire system, and she said that was funny, as it was the complete opposite of what most people thought.

  So I explained that he usually did think and feel the opposite way to most people, and far from finding the seaside air bracing, he always became positively lethargic in Shrimphaven.

  She said, ‘Oh, that doesn’t sound very exciting for the festival, does it?’ But I pointed out that even a lethargic Sergei was twice as exciting as last year’s speaker, and if she was careful to give him enough champagne he’d sparkle all right.

  Then she looked even more worried and said tha
t the festival fund wouldn’t run to champagne and asked whether I thought a nice fizzy perry would do instead. And I said, not if they wanted him to stay longer than thirty seconds it wouldn’t, though the sight of Sergei throwing a prima donna of a wobbler was always good entertainment.

  Anyway, the upshot was that I offered to prepare the ground and then, unless he was absolutely against it, Het would formally invite him.

  And that seemed to be that, except that as I was putting the Puffa back on, she said kindly: ‘And you will do your usual little reading and chat in the library on the Saturday, won’t you, Tina?’

  I said rather tersely that I’d have to check my engagements first because I was getting booked up pretty quickly this year, and I’d get back to her, but her hide was pure rhinoceros and my pathetic little dart of importance just bounced off.

  When I got home there was a mysterious message asking me to ring back, so I did. What a surprise – I was asked to do an event at the most prestigious three-day literary festival at Wryhove in June! Admittedly it was only because someone else had dropped out literally at the last minute, for clearly anyone who was anyone in the writing world was either already booked to appear or otherwise engaged, and they were definitely scraping round the bottom of the rainwater butt with me.

  I was asked to sit on a writers’ panel, and also do some kind of session – I didn’t know what, or when; they obviously hadn’t thought that far ahead yet … and in fact, they seemed curiously relieved that I could string a sentence together on the phone. But I planned to prepare a reading and a short talk (perhaps about flower imagery in literature) which would be unforgettable and then they’d probably invite me every year!

  This was so exciting – at last I’d be mingling on an equal footing (sort of) with the greats of the literary world.