Alice smiled. ‘Sounds like she’s a bit stuck on you.’
‘Who, Joan? No. We hardly know each other, really. We were just kids.’
‘I don’t know, though: keeping your photograph all those years. And now that you’ve had books published and everything you might seem very glamorous to her.’
‘No, I mean, all this is really just for … you know, old times’ sake.’
Despite all that I was doing to play things down, I could see that the subject of Joan was starting to make Alice uncomfortable. A twinge of incipient jealousy, perhaps? Already? That was how I chose to interpret it, at any rate, in my treacherous exhilaration, and my suspicion was merely confirmed when she glanced at her watch and changed the subject with shameless abruptness.
‘Do you make much money from writing, Michael?’
This might well have been an impertinent question; but if Alice had taken a risk, it was a well-judged one: I would have told her anything by now.
‘Not a lot, no. That’s not why you do it, really.’
‘No, of course not. I only asked because – well, I’m in the publishing business myself, and I know the kind of sums involved. I know it can’t be easy for you.’
‘You work in publishing? Who for?’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t have heard of them. I’m afraid I work at the most disreputable end of the spectrum. Those two deadly words – I can hardly bring myself to utter them.’ She leaned forward, and her voice sank to a dramatic whisper: ‘Vanity publishing.’
I smiled indulgently. ‘Well, most publishing is vanity publishing, when you think about it. I certainly don’t earn a living wage, and my writing takes up a lot of time which I suppose I could be spending on other sorts of jobs, so you could say that I was paying for the privilege, in a way.’
‘Yes, but we publish the most dreadful kind of rubbish. Terrible novels and boring autobiographies … Stuff that’ll never get within five miles of a halfway decent bookshop.’
‘You’re an editor for these people, are you?’
‘Yes, I have to deal with all these mad authors on the telephone and reassure them that their books are worthwhile, which of course they aren’t. And sometimes I have to find writers, which is slightly more tricky: you know, somebody wants a book written – a history of their family, or something – and we have to find a writer who’ll take it on. That’s what I’m trying to do at the moment, as a matter of fact.’
‘The arrogance of these people, though: to assume their family histories are worth writing about.’
‘Well, they do happen to be quite famous, actually. You’ve heard of the Winshaws, have you?’
‘As in Henry Winshaw, you mean – that maniac who’s never off the television?’
She laughed. ‘That’s right. Well, Henry’s … aunt, I think it is, wants to have a book written about them all. Only she wants it to be done by – you know, a proper writer. Not just any old hack.’
‘God, you’d have to be a glutton for punishment to sign up for that, though, wouldn’t you?’
‘I suppose you would. All the same, they’re absolutely loaded, you know, the lot of them, and it seems she’s willing to pay the most absurd amount of money.’
I stroked my chin thoughtfully, beginning to pick up a hint of where this conversation was heading. ‘You know, it almost sounds … it almost sounds as if you’re trying to sell this idea to me.’
Alice laughed: she seemed truly shocked by this suggestion. ‘Toyou? Goodness, no. I mean, you’re a real writer, you’re famous,I’d never in my wildest dreams expect that –’
‘But you’d never in your wildest dreams have thought you’d meet me on a train, would you?’
‘No, but … Oh, I mean, this is ridiculous, it’s not even worth talking about. You must have so much to do, so many ideas for new novels …’
‘As it happens I don’t have any ideas for new novels at the moment. I was talking to my editor only a few weeks ago and we reached something of an impasse.’
‘But – look, you’re not telling me you’d be seriously interested in this, are you?’
‘Well, you haven’t told me what the deal is yet.’
When she did tell me, I tried to stop my eyes from widening and my jaw from dropping, but it wasn’t easy. I tried to look cool and confident in the few seconds it took to work some things out: how I could afford to move out of the flat in Earl’s Court, for instance, and buy my own place; how I would be able to live quite comfortably off the sort of sum she was talking about for several years. But there was something else I needed to know, something even more important, before I let myself be taken any further down this dangerous path.
‘And this book,’ I said: ‘this is your project, is it? Your baby.’
‘Oh yes, very much so. We’d … well, I imagine we’d be working together on it.’
The guard’s voice came over the speaker system, announcing that the train was about to arrive in Kettering. Alice stood up.
‘Well look, this is where I have to get off. It’s been really nice meeting you, and … Listen, you don’t have to be polite. You wouldn’t really be interested in taking this on, would you?’
‘It’s not out of the question, actually. Not by any means.’
She started laughing again. ‘I can’t believe this is really happening. Honestly, I can’t. Look, I’ve got a card in here somewhere …’ She fumbled inside her handbag. ‘Take this, and give me a call when you’ve had time to think about it a bit.’
I took the card and glanced at it. The name of the firm, ‘The Peacock Press’, stood out in red lettering, and beneath it came the legend, ‘Hortensia Tonks, Senior Editor’.
‘Who’s this?’ I asked, pointing at the name.
‘Oh, that’s … my boss, I suppose. They haven’t given me my own card, yet: I’m a relative newcomer. But who knows,’ and here – I can remember this clearly – she touched me lightly on the shoulder, ‘you could well turn out to be my passport to promotion. Just wait till I tell them that I’ve got Michael Owen interested in doing the Winshaw book. Just wait.’ She crossed out the unfamiliar name and wrote her own, in large, angular handwriting. Then she was taking my hand and pressing it in a formal farewelclass="underline" ‘Well. Bye for now.’
The train was on the point of stopping. Just before she got to the door of the carriage, I said: ‘How long did you say you were staying with your sister?’
She turned, still smiling. ‘A couple of days. Why?’
‘Travelling rather light, aren’t you?’
I had suddenly noticed that she had no luggage; just a small black handbag.
‘Oh – she keeps a set of things for me. It’s lovely – almost like a second home.’
She pushed open the carriage door and left me with a final image of her delighted grin, her waving hand: an image which was to fade slowly into blankness over the eight long years which passed before my next, and final, glimpse of Alice Hastings.
2
… necessary brilliance … necessary bravado …
Almost. Very close, now. Very close.
∗
My spirits continued to rise as the journey progressed. The books I’d brought with me lay unopened on the table, and I abandoned myself instead to dreamy contemplation of the scenery. As we left Derby, the redbricked factories and warehouses backing on to the railway line gave way to rich green countryside: Friesians grazed on hilly pasturelands dotted only with handsome sandstone farmhouses or the occasional village, a few rows of grey slate terraces nestled warmly in a valley. Later, immense heaps of coal began to appear beside the track as Chesterfield announced the beginning of mining country, its skyline dominated at first by cranes and pit shafts and then, incongruously, a crooked church spire which jerked me into nostalgia, taking me back fifteen years or more to the opening credits of a silly comedy series about clergymen which I had enjoyed on television as a teenager. I was sunk deep in the memory of this as we passed through tunnels and long rocky cuttings. The line was planted so thickly with trees that Sheffield itself took me completely by surprise, my first sight of it being a row of terraced houses silhouetted against a sky of Mediterranean blue, and perched on the edge of a ridge, impossibly high: on a clifftop, almost. All at once a spectacular townscape lay before me: the steelworks and factory chimneys beside the railway line were shrunk to insignificance beside the sheerness of the hillsides on which the city had been boldly raised, with phalanxes of tower blocks climbing steeply to their summit. Nothing had prepared me for such sudden, austere beauty.