Bobbie Darbyshire is the author of Truth Games (2009), a satirical novel of sexual manners in 70s London. She won the 2008 fiction prize at the National Academy of Writing and was published in their anthology Finding a Voice. Bobbie has worked as barmaid, mushroom picker, film extra, maths coach, cabinet minister’s private secretary, and as a care assistant, as well as in social research and policy. She hosts a writers’ group and is a volunteer adult-literacy teacher. She lives in Clapham, London.
By the same author
Truth Games
Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones
Bobbie Darbyshire
SANDSTONEPRESS
HIGHLAND | SCOTLAND
Table of Contents
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Postscript
First published in Great Britain in 2010.
Sandstone Press Ltd
PO Box 5725
One High Street
Dingwall
Ross-shire
IV15 9WJ
Scotland
www.sandstonepress.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this production may be reproduced,
stored or transmitted in any form without the express
written permission of the publisher.
Commissioning Editor: Robert Davidson
Copyright © Bobbie Darbyshire 2010
The moral right of Bobbie Darbyshire to be recognised as
the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.
The publisher acknowledges subsidy from the Scottish Arts Council
towards the publication of this volume.
ISBN-epub: 978-1-905207-44-2
Cover design by Raspberryhmac, Edinburgh.
Typeset in Linotype Bembo by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore.
For Roger, Pip and Elizabeth
Acknowledgements
My thanks go to my mother Beryl and sister Pip; to West Hampstead Writers; to the reading groups at Clapham Library, Northcote Road Library and Lavender Hill Library; to Alan Bevan, Charlotte Mendelson, Cynthia Shepherd, Davinia Andrew-Lynch, Elizabeth Barton, Ian Jewesbury, Janet Mitchell, Joanna Devereux, Jonathan Masters, Kate Ibbotson, Kim Busen-Smith, Margaret Clare, Paul Lyons, Roger Hurrey, Sarah Naughton and Stephanie Busen-Smith; and to Alison Joseph for her workshop Shaping the Story.
I consulted numerous sources while writing this novel and found particular inspiration in The SAS at War by Anthony Kemp.
Excerpt from the Inverness Library Events Bulletin
Book Group Update – January 2000
The December meeting was well attended, and our discussion of George Orwell’s ‘Homage to Catalonia’ was enriched by Angus Urquhart’s eyewitness recollections of the Spanish civil war. We were also glad to welcome Sara Ross of Princes Street Publishing as our guest for the evening.
In an exciting change to the forward programme, Miss Ross has persuaded Princes Street’s bestselling author, Marjorie Macpherson, to lead a writing workshop at our February meeting. So for January we ’re reading her latest book ‘Heart of the Glen’ (copies available at the library).
The Book Group meets in the Reference Room on the third Friday of each month. 7 till 10. All comers welcome.
Dearest Marjorie, No one speaks to my soul as you do. I mean you no harm. Why will you not answer me?
Henry Jennings’ last letter to me, I have it by heart. Has he forgiven me, I wonder? Has he found a way through?
I wish I could stop thinking about him. I want to be writing again, immersed in some make-believe world where he can’t follow. Lord knows I’ve tried, but each project dies on the page, because he may read it, and what will he make of it?
So I’ve seen I can’t dodge this. I must first write about Henry, as honestly as I can, and hope that then he’ll stop haunting me and let me move on.
I’ll start with that last letter he sent me, try to recall in what frame of mind I received it, how I came to act as I did. It dropped on my doormat between Christmas 1999 and the New Year, forwarded by my publisher, arriving the same day as a request to run a workshop for a reading group in Inverness. The combination was disconcerting. I don’t know which unsettled me more.
The Inverness thing verged on an instruction. It’s high time you went public, emailed Sara from marketing. It can only add to your sales now. Let’s start with some low-key events and build.
I took calming breaths. I find it hard, saying no. I gathered myself and picked up the phone.
‘Come on now,’ Sara scolded. ‘You’re going to have to face this sooner or later. Just a toe in the water, we won’t broadcast it. I’ll be surprised if it gets picked up. And trust me, I’ll square everything with the librarian. She’s warm-hearted, you’ll like her. I know she’ll take perfect care of you.’
I don’t know why, but as Sara banged on I was beginning to waver. Was it Henry who was changing my mind? Or the kind Scottish librarian? Or my fondness for Inverness, one of the gentler places on this benighted planet? Whatever it was, my nerves were subsiding. The craving to meet my readers was outweighing the fear. I was saying yes.
‘That’s marvellous,’ cried Sara. I had to hold the receiver away from my ear. ‘You’ll be fine, I promise. They’re a lovely bunch. You won’t regret it for a minute.’
What had I done? I put down the phone expecting panic to hit, but it didn’t. Instead I found the small, irrevocable act of courage was giving me a lift. An infusion of luck and capability. It had me looking at Henry’s letter, too, with a different eye.
Reading your books is like meeting my better self in a dream . . .
Dear Henry. He was a decent man, I had no doubt of it, as genuine as any of us manages to be. He was lonely, that was all. Had need, as each of us does from time to time, of an imaginary love. I’d been a coward not to reply to him.
But please, Marjorie, don’t be alarmed. I completely understand that you are separate from me. You have only to say and I will stop sending these letters. Until you do I cannot help but hope.
He wrote from the heart, he deserved careful answer. I’d sat down to do it once or twice, but whether I resorted to truth or fiction I found my words would inevitably cause him anguish; it is no sma
ll matter to puncture a dream. So I’d kept putting it off. It was bad of me; I make it a rule to answer fan mail by return, if only with brief thanks, so why not Henry?
The truth is, I liked him. Liked getting his letters. Didn’t want them to stop. His comments on my books were pleasing; he saw the things I’d put in that no one else spotted, connections and echoes that I flatter myself lift them a touch higher, make them more than mere potboilers for the romantic fiction market.
I don’t have you on a pedestal. I’m sure you are as fallibly human as the next person. But I know that a woman who can write as you do is a woman I must love.
Nice one, Henry. And I liked the photograph he’d sent me. His eyes. His ingenuous smile.
Okay, I’ll come clean, he appealed to me. I’d even sunk to making a few enquiries, rung round for business references to check if his letters were a wind-up.
They weren’t. He was just what he said and what his photograph displayed. Forty-one years old. Shortish, roundish, shy. Engagingly old-fashioned, somehow marooned outside the flood of modern life. Ex bank manager, now sole embodiment of HIJ Associates Financial Advice, working from his home in Guildford. Only one discrepancy. He claimed to be a widower, but one of my sources indiscreetly let slip that Mrs Ingrid Jennings, the missing I from HIJ, had deserted with a stockbroker seven years since. A forgivable spin on a lonely heart’s life, I decided.
I have ‘Heart of the Glen’ at last. I haven’t opened it, just weighed it in my hands. I’ve learned not to rush or spoil . . .
There was a rhythm to his prose that suggested he would never desist. My discomfort was growing as I kept failing to answer him. And then, that morning, at last I thought I saw how to do it. Meeting my readers. Meeting Henry.
So little divides kindness from cruelty. I meant well, that’s my excuse, but it hardly serves. So thank goodness – though I take no credit for it – thank goodness it turned out more or less for the best in the end.
At least, I believe and hope it did. For Henry, and for the others too.
Henry Jennings, Peter Jennings and Elena Martínez. Those were their names.
I wasn’t with them that dark February morning at the turn of the millennium, rattling over the privatised points between the fields of mad cows towards Inverness. I’d gone up earlier, decided to make a week of it, research the next book, do a bit of misty reminiscing and moseying around.
No, Henry, Peter and Elena, in various states of excitement, each was travelling alone that day. Each stared alone through a rain-streaked window, anxious for the journey to be done and the future confronted. And at intervals each sought solace for a nervous stomach in the buffet car.
In Henry’s case, the dash from his seat was so furtive that it drew the attention of all who witnessed it. He’d jumped out of his skin at Kings Cross at the sight of his brother, with tatty backpack, slouching ahead of him towards the front carriages. Landed, sweating with panic, in his first-class compartment at the rear. What on earth was Peter doing on this train? Such an unkind blow, it seemed deliberate, yet he could think of no reason. Fighting paranoia, he decided that only strong drink would do the job properly and managed to fetch it without bumping into the lout.
Peter’s trip to the buffet was also reluctant, in his case because of penury. The fare was a rip-off, he was down to a fiver and some loose change, and he had no idea where he would spend the night. Reward? He must be off his head; this had to be some nasty bastard’s idea of a joke. Ha ha, fucking hilarious, mocking an unrecognised genius. Just wait till he caught up with whoever it was.
Elena waited in line for food behind Peter in a state of fretful impatience, her one thought to track down her quarry in Inverness. Was el malo still alive? He must be, he had to be, she willed it to be so.
Henry Jennings, Peter Jennings and Elena Martínez. Swaying towards the buffet car and back to their seats. Negotiating the doors that slid shut in their faces. Stepping around children and over dogs. Seeing and trying not to see the sleepily entwined couples whose body language said, ‘We just travel between beds.’
Henry tried not to see the couples because he wanted Marjorie in his arms so badly he could barely draw breath. He was weary of sharing his life with ghosts. He prayed that this journey would deliver a real woman to him at last.
Peter tried not to see them because the chance would be a fine thing. All the women he knew had grown tired of ooh-aahing his poems and lending him money. Plus women were trouble. Was this paper-chase some ratbag’s idea of revenge?
And Elena tried not to see them because the miles and days were piling up between her and the bed she belonged in, which might not be kept warm for her return.
Unpacking their little paper carrier-bags alone. Henry, a clutch of brandy miniatures plus a large packet of prawn-cocktail-flavoured crisps. Peter, a can of bitter and two KitKats to last him eight hours. Elena, orange juice and a chicken-salad sandwich on wholemeal. The rage was consuming her. She must stay strong for what was to come.
Henry, Peter and Elena. Each agitated. Each alone. Each seeking release in Inverness.
Chapter One
Henry
There was a dark pink envelope in among the manila, addressed in an italic hand that Henry didn’t recognise.
He wasn’t fooled for a moment; it was junk mail no doubt. Likely another of those introduction agencies. A few hundred quid for six phone numbers, a champagne dinner for ill-assorted strangers. Jumped-up computer dating. He’d given up on all that, but he was still on their mailing lists, salt in the wound.
Sure enough, there was nothing inside but a printed flier. A flimsy bit of rubbish, not up to the style and weight of the envelope, folded blank side out. Open it up, just a cheap-printed ad for some damn thing –
He stared.
Marjorie Macpherson! It was a flier advertising Marjorie Macpherson!
He had to sit down. He had to take this in. He pushed the breakfast crockery aside and sank onto the kitchen chair, smoothing the paper flat on the table.
SHAPING THE STORY How are novels invented? Have you ever wished that you could invent one? Spend three hours with Marjorie Macpherson and discover her secrets. Join her 7–10pm, Friday 18 February, in the Reference Room of the Inverness Library. All welcome.
There was a computer graphic of a quill pen, and a fragment of local street-map with the library shown in red. That was all.
Except the envelope.
He picked it up. Looked inside. Sniffed it. Examined the points and flourishes of his name and address, the blurred imprint of the postmark.
London. Not Inverness. London.
Did Marjorie send this? Had she answered him at last? Could it be?
Second class. No message.
Of course. He remembered. He’d bought ‘Heart of the Glen’ on the Finchley Road the day he called on that client. He’d used his MasterCard. Targeted marketing, that was all this was.
He could ring the shop. He remembered the garish shopping centre. Which of the glossy book-chains had it been?
Although actually, no, he didn’t want to ring. They would only confirm it was a promotion, and he wanted to believe, or pretend to believe just for a while, that it wasn’t. That Marjorie’s hand had touched this envelope, her tongue had moistened the flap, her fingers had guided the pen, shaping his name, shaping the story, calling him to Inverness.
Damn it, what did it matter who’d sent it? Friday the eighteenth of February, the Reference Room of the Inverness Library. He would be there, of course he would. At last he would be where she was.
What was today, the fifth? He counted days on his fingers. Thirteen to wait. It was so long, how could he sleep or eat or work meanwhile? For then he would see her, the actual Marjorie Macpherson, not his dream of her. He would see her face and hear her voice. And she would see him.
He was trembling, he realised, and leaving damp prints on the dark pink envelope. His brain was trying to dislodge the thought that was flashing in projected letters, li
ke credits on a cinema screen. He got up and paced the kitchen, refusing to read the message in his head.
YOU’LL SEE HER. AND THEN IT WILL BE OVER.
He struggled to hold on to hope.
IT’S USELESS. SHE’LL SAY NO.
How could he tell what she would do? He hadn’t a scrap of information, not even a picture of her face. The dust-jackets of her books were inscrutable, her publishers said she didn’t ‘do publicity shots’, they weren’t ‘at liberty to divulge personal details’.
Yet he knew so much. Her warmth, her humour. Her solitude. She wasn’t married, he felt sure. Or not happily. It was there in her writing, she was as alone as he was. And her age, he could sense that too. Not too impossibly old or too foolishly young for him, her take on life was so similar. A few years his senior perhaps, was that why she was shy?
YOU’RE MAD. SHE’LL SAY NO.
How slim the chance was. Three hours in a room full of strangers. A queue of lingering fans seeking autographs and advice. How could he win her? What could he find to say?
And then he realised.
‘I’m Henry Jennings.’ That was all he needed to say. She would know him; she had his photograph and his letters. Marjorie wasn’t shy, she wasn’t cold, she was romantic. She was testing his love, his courage. He stared at the flier, willing this to be true. She would smile and agree to a drink or a meal. Her presence would make him bold. He would become the man he could be, the man who lacked only Marjorie Macpherson to make him himself.
All welcome. He frowned. That was odd. More than odd, completely ridiculous. Her books were so popular, the event would be oversubscribed. Unless . . .
Yes! He banged fist on table, making the eggcup jump. For wasn’t this proof that the flier was a personal invitation? He would accept. He would go. He would match her romantic gesture.
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