The excitement – and nervousness – was intense … which reminded me: I gathered most of the events did take place in tents. What on earth would I wear?
Nineteen
Advances
NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY
Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven
Dear Glenda Strudwick,
Thank you for your letter. I welcome the opportunity to assure you I have not encouraged your husband’s interest in me at all, and indeed once I began to see which way the wind was blowing did my best to put him off.
Yes, it is distressing for you that he has turned his study into a shrine to Tina Devino – it’s pretty distressing to me, too, actually – but hopefully it is just a passing phase. Yes, you are quite right – a woman in a relationship with Sergei Popov is not at all likely to be interested in your husband, and I’m not saying Neville isn’t young-looking and attractive for his age, but he is all yours and you are quite welcome to him.
Now that I have refused to meet him and also declined reading his rewritten novel, I’m hoping that will be the end of the matter and his interest in me will quickly wane. If I were you, next time he goes off to visit his friend George I would make over his study as your own, with lots of frilly flowery materials and photos of fit older men on the walls. (I include one of Sergei Popov in his role as Romeo to start you off.)
With all best wishes for a resumption of your happy marriage.
Yours sincerely,
Tina Devino
Lunch with Ruperta at Garibaldi’s, just like old times, and she said frankly she’d always thought I would be a mega success one day, due to my deeply Lawrentian symbolism and the way I managed to permeate my entire novels with a heady scent of sexuality without any blow-by-blow descriptions; not to mention roping in the readers who thought the books were about flowers, and it was about to happen for me, and she wanted my new book for her list at Crimp & Letchworth.
‘That’s fine by me, Ruperta,’ I said, ‘because I no longer feel a sense of loyalty to Salubrious since they were only too willing to dump me. Besides, I would love to have you as my editor again.’
Then I told her all about The Orchid Huntress, and said Nathan Cedar, my new agent, would send the manuscript to her as soon as he had it.
It turned out that she knew Nathan and said wasn’t he gorgeous. Then she told me he’d nearly been married three times, but something always seemed to go wrong at the last minute and she thought it was because although he was clearly Mr Right, his ex-fiancées had all without fail run off with Mr Totally Wrong But More Exciting.
‘His last fiancée was the daughter of old family friends and he’d known her for ever, so we really thought it would happen that time. I’d even bought a hat – one of those feather fascinators,’ Ruperta said regretfully.
‘So what went wrong?’ I asked, deeply interested, as you can imagine.
‘She fell for his best man. The first Nathan knew about it was a text message when they were halfway to Scotland.’
‘That’s quite incredible!’ I said. ‘And what on earth was she looking for that Nathan hasn’t got?’
She shrugged. ‘A bit of edge? I think perhaps Nathan is just too nice for his own good.’
I said that nice would be a new quality to me in an agent, since Miracle didn’t do nice with any great conviction, and she said she was glad I’d changed agents because Miracle could be very difficult, not to mention scary.
Then Ruperta said that it was strange how getting the push from her job at Salubrious had led to wonderful new doors opening in both our careers. And I said yes, and the only way was up, failure was not an option. Then over tiramisu I casually mentioned that I was going to do the Wryhove Festival this year and she was deeply impressed, I could tell – and so am I actually. I’d tell Het to stick her ‘little reading session in the library’ at the Shrimphaven Festival of Culture except that she thinks hers is the only festival in the world that matters, and anyway it would make things difficult for Jackie.
This reminded me that I hadn’t sounded Sergei out about the Shrimphaven Festival yet, so when I got home I phoned him, and he was predictably not at all keen on the idea until I swore he wouldn’t have to stand in the fresh air for any part of it (I lied), and mentioned that Lady Het Woodwind-Chote would be personally inviting him to open it. He was such a sucker for any form of title that he was definitely weakening so, if she played her cards right and didn’t mention perry, I thought she’d be in with a chance.
‘My renovations to the back of the house are finished – you must come and see, my darling,’ he said. ‘It is a surprise for you.’
‘I suppose you were having patio doors fitted?’ I suggested, for he’d often mentioned his desire to leap straight from the house into the lush greenery of his garden in order to be at one with nature when the fancy took him, as it very often did.
‘Ah-ha!’ he said annoyingly. ‘If I told you, it would not be a secret.’
I only hoped my first guess was right, and it wasn’t something ghastly like a Jacuzzi, because sitting in a hot festering tub of breeding bacteria is not my idea of fun.
Libby Garnett was sending me enthusiastic plans for advance publicity for the launch of Dark, Passionate Earth, which was a novelty, because normally I’d be chasing her up by this stage. In the past my books hadn’t so much been launched as dropped into a backwater and left to drift downstream as the current took them, like discarded Pooh-sticks.
But now, suddenly, Dark, Passionate Earth was to have a tube poster, supermarket promotion, shop-window displays in Piccadilly … I think it was Piccadilly … the works. I’d believe it all when I saw it.
I’d started to check my Amazon rankings hourly when I was home. Did I require compulsive behaviour therapy?
The Women For Intellectual Advancement had invited me to take part in a march for peace through Shrimphaven on the next Sunday and, even more strangely, we had all been asked to wear something sparkly and will be divided up into sections colour-wise for the march itself: doctors, teachers, housewives, intellectuals, etc., etc.
My invitation said to wear something sparkly and pink, which I assumed was for all the writers until I phoned Ramona Gullet and discovered her invite said lilac, so God knows which bit they’ve put me into, probably at the back in Miscellaneous or Morons.
Ramona said she never wears lilac – it makes her look the same colour as a frog – and she didn’t possess anything sparkly and clearly she was not a glittery sort of person. I said the only sparkly outfit I had was a hand-beaded skirt and top, which I was not going to waste on a WFIA march, and if we were both in the writers section, why did I have to wear girly pink?
She said God knows, and did I intend going? And I said of course not, because although of course I supported peace I didn’t think that marching about being spangly was going to help attain it one little bit, especially somewhere like Shrimphaven where publicity would be nil – and in any case, would I want to appear on the news as a glittery pink-clad brunette like an ethnic-nod Barbie?
Then I said I’d see her at the next Affiliated Authors meeting in London on ‘How to Promote Yourself in the Media’, and told her about the Wryhove Festival. It turned out that she was going too, but only for the last day to do a workshop on Crime, with a reading for the stronger-stomached punters.
The first of Sergei’s memoir extracts was out! It was all about his boyhood in Russia, with only occasional flashes of what was to come, to tantalize the readers into expecting something terribly revealing in the later instalments, but it was like Billy Elliot Goes Ural so far.
In the photo with the extract he looked terribly Slavic and beautiful, and years younger, so either the cameraman was clever or the facelift had knocked a few years off, though come to think of it, on closer study he also looked slightly waxy and blank.
You couldn’t say he hadn’t suffered for his art, and as far as I was concerned he could carry on suffering acute sex deprivation
too, until he could look at me while registering some appropriate emotion.
Twenty
Action Man
NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY
Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven
Dear Randi Tisward,
Can this be your real name? I did wonder if it might be a pen name, possibly an anagram of your real one, but when I tried to make another name, all I came up with was ‘isn’t dirt award’, which is clearly nonsense.
Thank you for your cheque and manuscript. Yes, Newcastle-upon-Tyne does seem to be the new London of the North, doesn’t it? I will get back to you with my critique as soon as I have read it.
Yours sincerely,
Tina Devino
I was feeling absolutely devastated! Linny called to tell me that Nathan asked her if he could bring someone to dinner, all terribly tactfully, and that he would understand if it was inconvenient, so what could she say but yes?
He told Linny it was the daughter of old family friends, unexpectedly in town – and call me Sherlock Holmes, but could this be the girl he was engaged to that Ruperta told me about, who upped and dumped him on the eve of their wedding? Has she come back for another bite of the cherry?
I immediately felt very possessive, although he wasn’t mine to possess except in an agenty sort of way, or between the covers of my books – and he must certainly never be allowed between the covers of my bed; so it was probably all for the best. I made a mental note never to visit a hothouse in his company, because there is something about the verdant, steamy scent of lush greenery under glass that gets me going and I couldn’t answer for the consequences.
‘Are you still there?’ Linny demanded. ‘You’ve gone silent.’
‘Yes, I’m still here. I was just thinking.’
‘So there wasn’t anything else I could do but invite her, was there? Only that makes thirteen for dinner, which won’t do.’
‘No, it won’t, but I’m not going to come, so that will make twelve now. You can tell me everything later in detail.’
I very nearly rang her back later and suggested I come anyway and bring Sergei with me, which would show everybody … Well, I’m not sure what it would show, or to whom, but it seemed like quite a good idea until I remembered just how Sergei behaved at private dinner parties, when he actually deigned to grace them with his presence, and also that he and Linny seemed to have rather taken against each other lately, so I had to give up on this idea.
Pity. I looked absolutely stunning in that Titania blue beaded outfit.
The first morning of the Shrimphaven Annual Festival of Culture weekend dawned bright, breezy, and smelling of rotting fishing nets: a typical day, in fact.
Sergei arrived at my cottage early and dressed in beautiful suiting, looking suave and a bit exotic, what with his designer shades and glistening blue-black hair ruffled by the brisk breeze.
I’d been on the lookout for him, but all I’d seen was an early tourist with binoculars dodging about the harbour, probably looking for birds, as they do, though the only birds that hang around Shrimphaven are dreadfully common seagulls and they will find you at the rustle of a paper bag – there’s no need to look for them.
I heard the car door slam and was in time to watch Sergei leap from the car into the cottage in three long, elastic strides, whereupon he immediately insisted I shut all the windows, although I told him he would have to face the ozone at some point, since he would be standing outside the town hall opening the festival in less than an hour.
‘Outside?’ he said, shivering, adding pathetically that he hoped it wouldn’t be the death of him, and hadn’t I assured him it would all take place under cover? Then he bent and picked up something white from behind the door, though I wasn’t expecting any post since the postman only delivered on days when the wind was from the north-east and magpies were flying backwards, and from the sound of it we would all soon be paying for stamps to not have our post delivered at all except to some pick-up point miles away, and perhaps we should all start training carrier pigeons.
Sergei seemed to be engrossed by it, whatever it was.
‘Is that another flyer?’ I asked without much interest. ‘All I seem to get these days are leaflets telling me about hearing aids and Avon catalogues, but you can have it, whatever it is.’
To my surprise he looked up at me all slitty-eyed with suspicion. ‘No, it is a letter from an admirer called Neville, saying he is here – hot, ready and waiting!’ he snarled.
‘Neville?’ I exclaimed, startled and annoyed. ‘For goodness’ sake! And he’s not an admirer, Sergei.’
‘No?’ Sergei said, crossing his arms over his chest and staring at me like a jack-in-the-box about to explode into action.
‘Well, he sort of is,’ I amended. ‘I critiqued his novel and now he’s got this crush on me and wants to meet me, though I’ve told him absolutely not.’
‘So you haven’t encouraged this man?’
‘Of course I haven’t, you imbecile,’ I snapped, and added that not only had I not encouraged him, I’d positively discouraged him once I saw which way the wind was blowing, and it was all very tedious, but we would ignore him.
And then to distract Sergei, I made him his favourite kind of tea and crisp buttered toast with Gentleman’s Relish, which he loved despite being no gentleman, and I let him moan on and on about his allergy to ozone and his general health and the harmful effect lack of sex and sympathy from me was having on it, and how there were plenty more fish in the sea, so if I didn’t love him any more, I only had to say.
I said of course I did, and I thought the Botox had worn off a little bit. But honestly, when he went all whingy it gave me a real idea of what it would have been like had we married in the first flush of our love for each other, and thank God it never came to that.
As you can imagine, by the time we left for the festival I was ready to enthusiastically embrace the dried-up, embittered and lonely old spinsterhood Linny was always predicting for me if I didn’t play my cards right.
I’d left it a bit too late for Happy Families anyway: Linny may have managed to snatch the last jelly baby out of the bag, but I bet there wasn’t even a bit of powdered sugar at the bottom of mine.
I’d omitted to tell Sergei that, as well as opening the festival, walking around looking beautiful, and then having lunch with the Great, the Good and the Godly, he would also have to judge the Best Lobster class and crown the Lobster Princess. It was bad enough breaking the news that he could drive only as far as the town hall car park and he’d have to walk at least two hundred yards after that in the fresh air. I didn’t want to add any more bombshells and have him waltz off back to London in a huff.
When we went out I expected him to dart for the safety of his car while I locked the cottage door, but instead I heard a scuffle behind me and turned to find him hauling a thickset man with a familiar face out from behind the wall.
‘Neville?’ I said resignedly.
‘He was staring right into the house with binoculars!’ Sergei said. ‘Is this the man who is annoying you, my darling, and sending the messages that insult your honour?’
Neville shook himself free of Sergei’s hold, all red-faced and blustering (quite frankly he did look much better in the photograph), declaring hotly: ‘Tina wants me to be here – she encouraged me, I could read between the lines, all right! And who could blame her if she’d rather have me than a nancy-boy dancer?’
‘Now, just wait a minute—’ I began indignantly, but Sergei didn’t wait – he had such a very short fuse and it was a big mistake calling him a nancy-boy, because although I don’t think he knew the term, he got the gist. He punched Neville good and hard so that he went reeling back across the road.
Sergei leaped after him like a very bouncy tiger and poor Neville turned to flee, collided with a bollard, tripped over a mooring rope, and fell headlong into the harbour with a mighty splash.
Luckily the tide was in, even if the flotsam was lookin
g very dubious.
Sergei dusted himself off and pulled down his cuffs. ‘There, that will be a lesson to him!’ He looked terribly pleased with himself, as men do in these situations, and seemed to have entirely forgotten all about the ozone being deadly. He didn’t even notice his rather battered knuckles, but said masterfully, ‘Come, Tina – we had better head for the ceremony.’
‘Shouldn’t we see if Neville’s drowned first?’ I suggested.
But when I peered over the edge, he hadn’t. Instead he was swimming round in circles like a mentally challenged water rat, and luckily just then one of the lifeboat men came along with a hooked thing on a stick and attempted to fish him out, so we left them to it and drove off.
Well, at least the fracas caused Sergei to be in a good mood throughout the proceedings, although the lobster judging, which took place while I was doing my well-attended library session, was apparently done long distance, since he flatly refused to touch any of them.
Then he went on to astonish everyone by choosing an overdeveloped brunette teenager as Lobster Princess over the petite blonde everyone expected to win, but they clearly didn’t know his tastes ran to the dark and busty. It certainly made her day when he put the crown of crossed lobster claws on her head with his own bruised hands and kissed her on both cheeks twice.
There was a slight commotion at the lunch when Sergei realized that I was seated some way below the salt and not next to him, and he insisted on a rearrangement. Although I would have been happier in a less prominent position, it did mean I got in all the photos, even if it was just in my supporting role of eye-candy, though what kind of candy I leave to your decision. Nut brittle?
There was no champagne, but luckily Het hadn’t provided perry either but settled for wine, so there was no explosion, just a sort of sad resigned look on Sergei’s face as he sipped his perfectly good Chardonnay. I thought that was just as well since he was driving himself home later, and which imbecile ever let him pass his driving test is a mystery! (If he ever did?)
Written From the Heart Page 13