How Greek Is Your Love

by Marjory McGinn

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  She poured more wine. She seemed calm and composed, and yet I saw her hand tremble slightly when she lifted her glass to her lips.

  “What I’m going to tell you is strictly off the record. It would do me irreparable harm if this story got out. Okay?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said. Now she had my whole attention.

  “Well … the writer’s block I’ve mentioned – it’s not really a writer’s block as such. As you know, my latest book isn’t finished and I won’t make the summer deadline – or even the autumn one at this rate. The publisher is nettled with me. My agent is trying to be supportive but her patience is also wearing thin. They don’t know what the delay’s all about. Whenever they ask, I fudge things and go on about having to do more research. No point in wittering on about a writer’s block. The problem is, you see … I’m not a writer!” She clasped her hands together in her lap and tipped her head lightly to the side, as if to gauge the effect of her strange comment.

  “I don’t know what you mean. You’ve penned 12 bestselling novels.”

  “Yes, that part’s true, and I’m grateful for the books’ huge success. But the fact is … I didn’t write them,” she said, looking pained. She leaned forward for her wine again. Her hand shook more visibly this time and she had to put down the glass after one sip.

  I gasped. “Okay … you have a ghost writer to help you, is that what you mean? Quite a few celebrities do.”

  It had briefly crossed my mind once, I admit, that Eve may have had a lot of help with the writing in the beginning as an actress turned author, but I’d never heard any rumours that she had a ghost writer, and these things always seep out in the end.

  She sighed heavily and I saw the start of a sweaty sheen on her smooth forehead. She dabbed at it with her unused serviette. “Let me explain if I can. There was someone, someone special, working on those 12 books, but whether she would be classed as a ghost writer, I don’t know. She’s certainly a ghost.”

  “A ghost?”

  “Yes,” she said, mournfully. “She died two months ago. No-one but me knows who she is, and no-one knows the whole story. That’s why I can’t finish this book, or ever write another. The writer has departed and I’m a creative husk, that’s all I am. But apart from her writing gifts, she was a great friend, and I do miss her terribly.”

  She sat quietly for a moment, as if collating her thoughts. I was stunned. I hadn’t seen this coming.

  “Before I left acting which, by the way, I enjoyed but felt a little unfulfilled with in the end … I think it was the cop series. Poor choice really and hardly the height of thespian achievement. But as I was saying … I had always had an ambition to write. It went back to childhood. I had loads of ideas and was very creative but I hadn’t the patience to apply myself. That sums me up actually, as I have a very low boredom threshold and I’m terribly impatient. But once acting swept me up I forgot about writing. Then I went to Tuscany one summer, where I got the idea for a novel. It fell into my head, just like that,” she said, clicking her fingers. “I worked out the plot and the characters and I thought it was great. All I had to do was write it up.”

  She wrinkled her face at me. “Harder than I thought! Harder than any role I’ve taken on, but I worked at it for many months, wrote several drafts, until I was finally pleased with it. First real piece of writing I’d ever properly finished. But before I sent it off to an agent or publisher, I wanted another set of eyes to look it over. In the apartment building where I live in north London was a woman called Grace Phimister. A wonderful woman, very down-to-earth but well-educated. She had spent her working life in secretarial positions, which seemed beneath her abilities, I always thought. Her income would have been quite modest, I imagine, but she’d managed to get by in London because her apartment had been left to her by a family member years before. It’s one of the more expensive ones in the building and on the top floor. And she also did some freelance work in the evenings: proof-reading and editing, which I think was more out of interest than a financial consideration. She lived a frugal kind of life. So we became great friends. She was unmarried with not much family left and perhaps she treated me as a bit of a surrogate daughter. She was also a fan of all my acting work.

  “Grace was also an obsessive reader of fiction, so I decided to give her my manuscript to read. Dear me, but she was very direct! She loved the plot, but she thought the writing wasn’t up to scratch. It was laboured. No real surprise there, I guess, since my forte had always been ideas. She seemed to know what she was talking about, so I offered to pay her to knock it into shape before I approached a publisher because in those days it wasn’t quite as easy for celebrities to get a publishing deal just because they were well-known, like it is now.

  “Grace actually rewrote the story and the version she came up with was brilliant. In fact, it was almost unrecognisable from the one I’d written. She had brought it to life. She obviously had a gift for writing but had never done anything with it, which is remarkable. So the novel that became Five Nights in Tuscany was sent to a few publishers, and Greyfriars and Perryman, whom I’m still with, published it to great acclaim. Grace didn’t want to be recognised as the writer, or indeed the ghost writer. She was quite happy to be in the background. That’s how she was. Very unassuming and generous.

  “So that was the start of a long collaboration that neither of us really expected. I had the ideas, Grace wrote the stories. We both played to our strengths and I gave her an increasingly larger cut of the royalties as well, enough for her to retire from full-time work after a couple of years. We were both very happy and thriving. I never thought of the future; what might happen, even though she was 20 years older than me. I thought we would just go on forever like that, turning out book after book. And then Grace died suddenly.”

  She stopped a moment to see how I was taking her revelations. I was pretty shocked, and mostly by the fact she’d managed to pull off the deception for so many years without anyone winkling out the truth. But then, essentially, she was an actress and she’d probably just acted the role of best-selling author with all the usual foibles, and ego turns, many of which came naturally to her anyway. She’d pulled it off perfectly, now better known as a writer than an actor. She must have noticed my slightly disapproving look.

  “Don’t misunderstand me, Bronte. In the beginning I never thought this would go on for so long. I thought, okay, I’ll do a few books, fulfil that childhood ambition and get on with acting. But we both got swept along with the success of the venture. It wasn’t just a business collaboration either. Grace and I had great fun with all of this and it changed our lives completely. She was like family to me for those 15 or so years, especially since I don’t have much family left and what I have aren’t particularly supportive. I’m devastated that Grace is gone.”

  Eve stopped a moment and I thought I saw her eyes gleam with tears. I hoped it was sincere.

  “How did Grace die?”

  “A sudden heart attack. No warning signs in the weeks beforehand. She’d just come back from a short holiday in Scotland, where she went every year. She never came here, by the way. She was one of those Brits who hates to go abroad. It was one thing we didn’t have in common. Anyway, she was out shopping and died on the bus home. Quite terrible really,” she said, lapsing into silence.

  Friendship apart, it was a pity Grace hadn’t finished the book before she died, was all I could think of. No doubt that thought must have secretly nagged at Eve, though she’d never say it.

  “What will you do with your book then? Finish it yourself?”

  She shrugged in the Greek way, arms out, eyes closed a moment. It was painful to watch.

  “I don’t know, Bronte. That’s the thing. Grace was about two-thirds of the way through the first draft when she died – though her first drafts were always pretty clean, I must say. But there’s no way I can finish it. I know the plot, of course, but I can’t write the rest in her style
and I certainly can’t do it in mine. Readers are very sophisticated. They’d know it was different. And I’ve tried, believe me. Up in that Vathia tower with the manual typewriter, I had a go at it. I mean, I really tried for a few days solid, but the results were absolute bollocks!” she said with emphasis. I had to stifle a snort of laugher by pretending a cough. As her agent would have said, it was so unlike Eve Peregrine.

  She sipped a lot more wine, then slumped back onto the sofa, lightly hugging her chest. I thought about Vathia. It meant that the tapping I’d heard from the tower was her writing nonsense, or perhaps just a long and complicated shopping list.

  “Well, Eve. That’s quite a story! I’m gobsmacked you were able to do what you did for so long without coming unstuck, you and Grace. It’s a huge achievement. But now, basically … you’re fucked, if you don’t mind my saying that!” No point in beating about the bush, I thought.

  She smiled lightly “No, I don’t, and you’re right. I can’t see any way around this problem.”

  “What about your publisher? You’ve known him a long time, can’t you tell him … well not the whole truth, but tell him you’ve got serious writer’s block, or burn-out or something? Maybe he could find a proper ghost writer to discretely finish the novel – just this once. There are loads of writers making a living this way.”

  “Ha!” she said, flicking her hand in the air with impatience. “My publisher’s a miserable old goat! He’s become worse over the years. Okay, he’s not been bad in publicising the books and all that but he’s already petulant over this delay and if I told him I couldn’t finish the book at all he’d go mad. Even if I could fudge some kind of excuse for the delay, claim a temporary mental health issue or something, he might be cunning and tease out the real story. It would make its way into every British tabloid. I’d have to move to Greece permanently. So, you see, unless a miracle befalls me, there won’t be a book coming out this year, or any year.”

  She gave a mournful stare and rubbed her long fingers nervously up and down one of her forearms. I sensed the hairs on it were standing on end. Mine were.

  “Bronte, I’m telling you all this because, for one thing, it’s such a blessed relief to get it off my chest. But since you’re a writer you might have some idea what I can do. I’m at my wit’s end.”

  “One thing that occurs to me is … I’m assuming Grace wrote the books on computer, right? And you have access to it and that’s where you found the incomplete first draft?” I asked.

  “Yes, of course. I had a key to her apartment and access to her desk drawers and the computer, though I’d never had any reason to do that when she was alive.”

  “Did you check all her computer documents in case she had, for some reason, written the rest of the book on a separate document?”

  “I checked all her documents. Grace was very meticulous. If the last part of the book was there, on a separate document, I would have found it. Also, she regularly backed up her work onto small storage discs and I found one in her desk drawer. The book manuscript was on it, but again, only two-thirds finished. When I came to Greece, she always gave me a small storage disc so I could read through the current manuscript on my laptop and make any changes while here. When I told you I came here every year to write, that’s what I was really doing, reading the manuscripts, and creating new plots of course.”

  We both became silent a moment with the sheer hopelessness of the situation. Finally, she gave me a pleading kind of look.

  “Can I ask, Bronte, have you ever written a novel?”

  I shook my head. I feared this was where the conversation had been heading, but I had no desire to be her ghost writer, or another ghost.

  “Lots of journalists toy with the idea of writing a book but I’m afraid I’m not one of them, Eve. Not at this point anyway.”

  She pouted with disappointed. “I quite understand.”

  “So, what will you do?”

  “What can I do?”

  “One thing’s clear. You’re going to have to tell the publisher soon that you can’t finish the book, and let him sort it out. What’s the worst that can happen? The book remains incomplete. You have to give your advance back, endure a mighty strop, some bitching in the press and so forth. At least you can just stay in Greece until the furore dies down.”

  She reached forward, poured more wine into our glasses, finishing off the bottle, and said, with a wry smile, “Retreat to Vathia, I’d say. But first of all, I have to go back to London soon, and not for the publisher. Grace left her apartment to me, as it happens, which was very generous of her. She didn’t have much surviving family, as I said, and was only in contact really with one of them, Imogen the niece. According to Grace’s will, she wanted most of her personal possessions, excluding the computer and desk contents, and family mementoes to go to Imogen, or whatever she wants of them. When I’m in London again I must arrange for her to come to the apartment to look through Grace’s things. I just hope Grace never let on to Imogen she was actually writing my books. But Grace was very tight-lipped about our arrangement, I’m sure of that, but I’ll never know. Inheriting her apartment right now has been a godsend because, although I’ve made a lot of money from the books, apart from the ongoing royalties, I will have no more regular income.”

  She slumped back on the sofa cushions, a pale shadow of the feisty woman I’d first seen at the house. I felt a bit sorry for her. But only a bit, because now I’d heard all of the story, I could never forget the fact she’d spun this literary mess herself and deceived millions of loyal readers in the process. I seemed to remember from my research that she’d won a major Best Romantic Novel prize a few years ago, and had been shortlisted for others. And she’d been quite brazen in lying to the press all these years, including myself, to start with at least.

  “You could always go back to acting,” I suggested.

  She pulled a face. “That might be hard. Who wants to hire an actress at 50 who hasn’t had a decent role in years?”

  “Well, okay,” I said, wearily, feeling sucked into the vortex of her desperation. “Then the only thing I can suggest is that you try again to squeeze out the last part of the novel yourself. I’m sure you must have picked up a lot more from Grace over the years than you think – like her authorial voice. Have a go!”

  Another face pulled. More wizened than before.

  “Maybe, and if I do, perhaps you might cast your eye over my efforts. No more than that.”

  “Yes, I’d be glad to do that.” What else could I say? But I doubted she’d get that far. Trapped in the Rapunzel tower for ever more.

  “Thanks, Bronte. Now let’s sort out your dress. It’s the least I can do for you.”

  She ushered me back to her bedroom, where all the dresses she pulled out were draped over the bed, but it was the purple and blue number that my eyes kept trailing over.

  “Try it on and if you like it, take it,” Eve said, as she wandered off to check her mobile phone.

  I tried on the purple dress. I don’t think I’d every worn anything as brilliantly cut and styled in my life. It was nipped in at the waist, with a deep V neckline that showed a bit of cleavage, and a full, but not too billowy skirt. And it suited my colouring and long curly auburn hair perfectly.

  When she returned to the bedroom, she gasped. “Bronte, you look sexy. It suits your curvy figure perfectly. It was made for you.”

  “Thanks. I love it!” I said, twirling round, wondering if it was quite the right thing for a rural barbecue in Greece. I expressed that thought and she shook her head in mild frustration.

  “If you’ve got the least suspicion that this Phaedra woman is out to snatch the doctor back, you need to go in with all your big guns this weekend. And by the way, I can’t believe she’s glamorous and also a dentist. That doesn’t quite figure, does it?” She winked.

  “Phaedra won’t be at the lunch at least. She has Easter Sunday with her family.”

  “Excellent! The doctor can concentrate his min
d on you, my dear. And you must make a big splash, if you see what I mean.”

  Later on, I would have good cause to laugh at that last remark.

  When I got back early in the evening, I found Angus sitting on the balcony, drinking beer. He’d been to Kalamata that afternoon to see the cardiologist again for some test results.

  “How did you get on? What did the doc say?”

  “Same old thing. I have to watch what I eat and drink and live like a monk on Mount Athos,” he said, skulling his beer with evident enjoyment.

  “I keep telling you, it’s not rocket science, is it?”

  I told Angus about my meeting with Eve and about her ‘secret’. I know I’d promised to keep it to myself but Angus was completely reliable. I just had to tell someone else. He threw back his head and roared with laughter.

  “Oh dear, oh dear, what a clusterfuck! So that’s what the typing in the tower was all about. She probably didn’t even have any paper in the typewriter.”

  I laughed. “Don’t breathe a word, Angus. If this got out it would be a car crash, believe me.”

  “It’s a crash already, by the sounds of it. But don’t worry, I won’t say a word. But I may extract something from you one day in return.”

  “Don’t even think about it, Angus, or I’ll extract something from you, and it will hurt.” He winced. We often bantered on in this manner, a hangover from our earlier slightly petulant relationship when I came to Greece last year. Although we had happily overcome our former problems, we had stuck to our same wind-ups and pretend-bickering because they were generally amusing diversions in our little Greek rural life.

  “There was I, telling you one day that real writers don’t get writer’s block, remember? Boy, I was right on the money with that.” He chortled a bit more.

  “By the way, I’ve invited Eve to Leo’s lunch on Sunday, and she’s given me a gorgeous dress to wear.” I fetched it from the posh shopping bag Eve had put it in.