Mollie steered Cathy and Dorothy between groups of teenagers wearing high-tops, reversed baseball caps and T-shirts, Frank and Marius, un speaking following close behind. Between River Island and HMV they passed several mothers, dragging squawking children in their wake, fathers striding several paces ahead, the fuss and commotion no concern of theirs. Cathy saw one woman spin a small boy, no more than three, out of the path of a push chair and give him a slap, hard, across the backs of his bare legs.
"There! Now stop scraighting, you mardy little sod, or I'll slap you again." For a moment, Cathy caught her eye: blonde hair tight like copper wire, cigarette, eyes hard as coal. Pregnant again. No way was she more than twenty, twenty-one. A moment, then she was gone.
"Here we are," Mollie said cheerfully.
"And look, there's a queue already."
Cathy's face beamed back at her in full-colour from a poster in the window. Inside the shop, it was reproduced many times: smaller posters on the walls, dump bins at the ends of aisles, a whole shelf of paperbacks and hardcovers, book back to front, displaying the same image. How did she look to all these people, Cathy wondered? Sunny, smug, self-satisfied. American. But, in truth, most of the people pushing round her seemed quite oblivious, not to care.
In contrast, the publicity for Dorothy Birdwell, who stood talking now to Marius, was noticeably less prominent, her books less visible.
"Cathy Jordan?" She shook hands with a surprisingly young woman in a light grey suit with a faint stripe.
"It's a pleasure to welcome you.
We've got you set up over there. " Cathy shook her hand and she turned aside to Dorothy.
"Miss Birdwell, how are you? If you'll excuse me, I'll be with you in just a moment."
Leaving Dorothy and Marius stranded, she led Cathy past the line of fans towards a table piled high with yet more copies of her books; those waiting to speak to Dorothy Birdwell were far fewer and mostly older.
"Is that her?" one woman said of Cathy as she passed.
"That's never her."
"Bet you it is."
"Some of those photos don't do her any favours, do they?"
"Not much. Lop a good ten years off her age, that's all."
"Get away!"
The manager saw Cathy installed and moved swiftly across to deal with Dorothy Birdwell and an increasingly irate Marius, who was quick to complain about what he saw as second-rate treatment.
Responding to Cathy's request, Frank had positioned himself midway along the queue, feigning an interest in a shelf of books dealing with railways. If he went and stood right behind her, he'd only succeed in looking like a semipro bodyguard, with his brains firmly in his biceps.
"Hello, Miss Jordan. It's really nice to meet you. My husband and I've read all of your books, haven't we, Trevor? I wonder if you could just sign this for me? Yes, that's it Janice and Trevor. That's lovely. Oh, yes, and the date. Ta ever so much. Bye-bye."
The first railway in Britain, Frank read, was a simple set of wooden beams laid on the ground in Nottinghamshire in the reign of Elizabeth I, to transport coal from the coal field
Mollie drifted off towards the contemporary fiction shelf and thumbed through the latest Michele Roberts.
"You're not going to stop writing them. Miss Jordan? I mean, you won't pack it in will you? You'll not get bored with Annie? You can't, not while there's so many of us, all waiting for the next' Confused between the LMS, the GWR, the Southern and the LNER, Frank set the' book back. Mollie moved on 152 to find something that would do for her mother's birthday. Fay Weldon or Joanna Trollope, perhaps. Something that would take away the taste of the Jeanette Winterson she had given her the year before.
Cathy Jordan's hand was beginning to ache and she still hadn't got to the additional copies she was sure the manageress would want her to sign for stock. But at least the end of the line was at hand, and not a single troublemaker in sight.
The queue to Dorothy Birdwell's table had long since dried up and she was still sitting there, straight-backed and hopeful, Marius gently massaging away a little stiffness in her shoulders, whispering in her ear.
"What name would you like me to put?" Cathy asked for the umpteenth time. And,
"How do you spell that?"
With only a few people still to go, Frank had seemingly got bored with watching over her and was chatting to Mollie instead, the pair of them up at the front of the shop, near the cash desk. Cathy dipped her head to sign another book and the next time she looked up, there was Marius, immediately in front of her.
Cathy jumped, surprised at his being there, disturbed by the intensity of his stare.
"Marius, you don't want me to sign a book for you, I suppose? For Dorothy?"
She forced herself to smile, but Marius was not smiling back.
Instead, unnervingly, he slowly leaned towards her, the table edge gripped with both hands. His stare was fixed on Cathy and would not let her look away.
"What I want," he said, his voice intense and low, 'is for you to understand what's happened here today. All these people, foolish, small-minded people nocking around you, I want you to understand what that is about. It's not you. Not talent. Not originality, not skill. That woman over there has more of those qualities in her little finger than you'll ever have in the whole of your life. No, what this. this charade is all about is publicity, media, money. That and the sordid muck you wallow in every day of your writing life.
Sensationalism of the kind that real writers would never for one moment soil their hands with. Or their minds. "
He held her gaze a moment longer, straightened, and turned away, leaving Cathy shaken and pale.
"What the hell did he want?" Frank asked, moments later, glancing over to where Marius was now helping Dorothy Birdwell from her chair.
Cathy shook her head.
"Nothing," she said.
"Nothing important." But the coldness that had spread along her arms and the backs of her legs was still there and although Marius now had his back to her, she could still clearly see her image, reversed, reflected in his eyes.
Twenty-eight
Back in the Book Dealers' Room at the festival hotel, business was in full swing. Derek Neighbour had spent some time moving from stand to stand and had finally come upon Ed Leimbacher, from Mist erE Books in Seattle, who had assured him that he could he could lay his hands on a first edition of Uneasy Prey in mint condition. Something of a snip at four hundred and sixty pounds. Plus commission. And handling. And packing. And insurance.
"And a bargain at that," Leimbacher had smiled reassuringly.
Neighbour wondered why he wasn't reassured.
There was no getting round the fact, though, that the damage to the copy of Cathy Jordan's book he had taken with him to Waterstone's was even worse than he had feared; as many as fifty pages were stuck together irretrievably with paint, many of the others spotted and splotched. And the dust-jacket. "Look," Neighbour had finally said, fingering his cheque-book nervously inside his jacket pocket,
"I'll have to think about it a little longer. I'm sorry."
"You could be," Ed Leimbacher said.
"Pass it up and by the time you've done another circuit of the room, it could be gone."
"I know, it's just…"
But the book dealer had turned aside and was no longer smiling not until the next potential customer came along moments later. Books may be books, but business, well, that was business.
Dorothy Birdwell was leaning back in the armchair of their hotel suite, a damp cloth lightly across her eyes. Marius had helped her to remove her shoes and stockings and now was slowly massaging her feet, first one and then the other, each held close against his chest as he worked his fingers around the ball and carefully across the instep, knowing exactly when and where to apply pressure, when his touch should be little more than a breath.