A quick glance at the dawn sky from any bedroom window showed rosy fingers at their very best. Black hair, in certain lights, definitely took on the glossy hue of a raven’s wing. And where was the besotted eye that did not shine exactly like a star when alighting on the object of its affection?
Amy was slightly comforted in the knowledge that this waning of writerly confidence was not entirely unknown even among the most successful. Max Jennings had described how he always started a new book convinced that this time the relationship was going to be one of unalloyed bliss and that they would be walking off into the sunset hand in hand with never a harsh work spoken. But it never happened. Long before the end of Chapter One they’d be back in the thick of it, screaming, swearing and throwing plates.
Amy sighed, gathered her thoughts and applied herself once more. The scene on which she was working was a dramatic one. Araminta had escaped from Black Rufus by leaping from his droshky (suitably clad in a Donna Karan jump suit) into a drift of newly fallen snow. Emerging, she had been reluctantly compelled to abandon her mock-ermine Versace throw with genuine amber toggles and rhinestone hood and was now fleeing across a frozen lake pursued by bloodhounds. Amy chewed her pen some more. Decided bloodhounds were a bit tame and substituted wolves.
She had no problem empathising with her perilously placed heroine, for she herself was shivering in a sub-zero temperature. She got up and placed her mittened hand on the rusting radiator. Rather pointlessly, for it had been stone cold all day and, sure enough, remained so.
Amy jumped up and down a bit, the thick ridged soles of her fur boots bouncing on the threadbare rug. She blew on her fingertips and rubbed her cheeks hard, but the friction only made them sore. She decided, bearing in mind Honoria’s promise that the heating would definitely be looked into, to go down to the library and have a word with her sister-in-law.
Amy made her way along the landing, her passage marked by dark, heavily varnished portraits of grandly robed Lyddiards going back to the sixteenth century. Her own particular aversion was a hawk-faced judge who looked as if he not only derived great pleasure from passing the death sentence but for two pins would roll up his sleeves and carry it out.
Honoria was at her desk severely engrossed in matters dexter and sinister. She looked aloof and far removed from worldly things. Though the one-bar electric fire was on, the big, high-ceilinged room felt almost as cold as the one upstairs. Amy hovered in the doorway but without attracting any response.
‘I say ...’
‘Blood and bone.’ Honoria was mumbling to herself. ‘That’s what counts. Blood counts. Bone counts.’
‘Honoria?’
Honoria looked up. Her eyes burned into Amy’s yet appeared not to see her.
‘It’s terribly cold. Could I—’
‘Go away. Can’t you see I’m busy?’
Amy went away. This was plainly not the time to ask if Honoria had ordered the coke. Or if she would be prepared to down tools and bend the Neanderthal boiler to her will. As she crossed the ancient flagstones in the hall Amy stopped to pull out a couple of weeds that had seeded themselves between the cracks. The garden it seemed was trying to enter the house and, in this weather, who could blame it? She tried the cellar door, but it wouldn’t open.
Amy frowned and tried again, sure that the door was simply stuck, for she had never known it to be locked. However after two more good pushes there seemed little doubt about it. Amy hesitated and wondered if she might not just make herself a nice hot-water bottle and sit with it on her lap. But then soon she would have to come down and start preparing dinner and she could hardly carry it round the chilly kitchen.
Honoria having made it plain she did not wish to be disturbed, Amy set off to find the bunch of internal house keys herself. Sometimes they hung on an iron nail in the lumber room, sometimes they were in the drawer of the kitchen table, occasionally Honoria put them down and completely forgot where. Once Amy had found them in a flower pot in the greenhouse.
Today they were not on the nail. Amy felt her way along the bench of drying dahlias and bulbs and old seed packets without success. She was moving Honoria’s upright bicycle out of her way when she saw the keys lying in the bicycle basket.
The one for the cellar was an old-fashioned iron thing almost as long as her hand. She fitted it into the lock, where it turned smoothly. She switched on the light, which was so dim it made little difference and, holding the rail tightly, made her way down the steps.
The boiler took up so much space there was not much room for anything other than its food. A heap of coal, a smaller heap of sticks, piles of old newspapers and parish magazines tied with string. Boxes of cardboard or wood, some rags and a can of paraffin.
Amy approached the monstrous apparatus - vast, round-bellied, black with age, neglect and bad temper - with some trepidation. Pipes sprouted from the back and writhed away through the cellar ceiling. There were three dials with red pointers like those on a speedometer. They all registered 150. She gave the glass an authoritative tap. The readings fell to 98.
Amy laid her hands gingerly on the metal. It was barely warm. She opened the door and peered inside. As far as she could make out there was a pile of ashes and little else. She took the raker, a piece of metal the size and weight of a crowbar but shaped like a long T, and poked about, activating one or two pallid sparks. Then she tore up several pages of the parish magazine and laid a few thin strips across the sparks before they expired. The paper browned, crisped, flamed.
Amy flung on some more paper and took a few sticks from the pile. She laid them carefully on top and picked up several more in readiness should the first ones ignite.
It was then she noticed there was something underneath. More paper? A label certainly - bright yellow with blue lettering: Hotel Masima, Tangiers. Amy swept the sticks aside. More labels, almost covering the top of a brown suitcase.
She dragged it out, laid it flat and pressed the catches. The lid sprang open. Amy knelt down, ignoring the grit and dirt beneath her knees and examined the contents. A black suit and veiled hat, lingerie, including a suspender belt and filmy stockings, high-heeled shoes. Two plastic tubs holding costume jewellery and cosmetics. And a shoe box crammed with photographs. How absolutely extraordinary.
She took a handful of the photographs out and started to look through them. Some were in colour, others black and white. Many featured a blonde-haired woman both on her own, with a couple of friends and playing with a dog. There was a relaxed holiday air about the snaps and several had actually been taken on a beach or around what appeared to be a hotel swimming pool. Two men wearing the briefest swimwear imaginable stood in front of a splendid boat.
And there was Ralph. Even in the poor light there was no mistaking his vivid smile, dark curls and direct gaze. He was with a crowd of people apparently at some sort of party. Certainly an air of jollity prevailed. They were all sitting round a table covered with glasses and bottles and paper streamers. Perhaps it was someone’s birthday. The picture was a large one taken by flash. Ralph was wearing a square-necked, short-sleeved white cotton top, part of the Royal Navy’s summer rig.
Amy peered more closely. There was something about the person next to her husband. A handsome man with blurry features, hair all over the place and a flower stuck behind his ear. Amy climbed the cellar steps and held the picture up to the light and gasped in disbelief. It was Gerald!