Living Proof (17 page)

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.

"Marius, my dear..."

"Mmm?"

"When you went across to speak to the American, you didn't say anything too, well, distressing, I trust?"

"Oh, no. No." Sliding one of his fingers along the delicate curl of her toes.

"Of course not. Nothing like that."

"I know. I know. Some people, some men, if they were annoyed, they could be a little crude. But not you. I don't think you could ever be crude in the slightest."

Mouth curved into a smile, Marius bent forward and lightly kissed the underside of her foot.

"How'd it go at the signing?" Tyrell asked. It was mid- afternoon and he was snatching the chance for a quick sandwich and a pot of tea at the convention hotel.

"Okay," Mollie said.

"At least as far as Cathy was concerned. It was Dorothy Birdwell I felt sorry for. I doubt if she had more than half a dozen people standing in line. Still, I'm arranging transport for her and Marius to go out to Newstead Abbey. Apparently she's got this big thing about Byron."

Tyrell's eyes brightened.

"Did you know Curds was going to make a film about Byron? Ages ago. Late fifties biopic. Script, locations, everything. Apparently, some of his original drawings are around somewhere. Sounds like a really interesting project. James Mason as the man himself- can't you just see it? Mad, bad and dangerous to know. Patricia Medina. Vincent Price as Shelley. Aside from that Steve Reeves thing he did in Italy, it would have been the only costume piece he made."

"How is Curds?"

Tyrell inclined his head in the direction of the bar. "Keeping himself topped up." He lifted up the pot and gave it a gentle shake, offering it towards Mollie, who shook her head.

"What amazes me," Mollie said, 'he seems able to drink all the time and never get drunk. "

"He explained it to me the other night," Tyrell said. "Claims he attained a state of perfect equilibrium in 1965 and he's been balancing there ever since."

"What crap!" Mollie said.

"All Curtis has done, like a lot of other piss heads is attain a state of being perfectly unemployable."

Tyrell was on the verge of arguing back, but thought better of it; no sense in taking on Mollie when he didn't have to. Easing his slim body back into the comfortable chair, he opted for enjoying his tea instead.

As soon as the signing was over, Cathy Jordan had decided what she wanted most was to walk. She didn't know where and perhaps it didn't matter. She just wanted to walk.

"Want me along?" Frank asked.

Cathy gave a suit-yourself shrug and began to push her way through the crowds entering the Victoria Centre. Crossing the road in dangerous defiance of a black and white cab and a green double-decker bus, she hurried past the Disney shop on the corner and plunged into the Saturday afternoon throng.

Frank knew his alternatives: let her go her own way and head off back to the hotel and watch TV; or do what he actually did, tag along several, yards behind and wait for her to slow down, for whatever was irking her, gradually to become less troublesome.

With no clear idea where she was beading, Cathy found herself on a recently re-cobbled road that led towards the castle; dropping down below the sandstone rock, she turned past the Trip to Jerusalem, local bikers and Japanese tourists sharing an uneasy space outside the proclaimed oldest pub in England. Beyond Castle Boulevard, Cathy crossed the bridge above the canal and walked down towards the lock.

Pigeons roosted in the broken windows of abandoned warehouse buildings. Brickwork blackened and cracked. Iron gates bloomed rust.

Idling past, a freshly painted longboat leaked colours onto the oily surface of the water. Mallards, unconcerned, rocked and resettled in its wake.

"I'm sorry," Cathy said, pausing.

"No problem."

Ruefully, Cathy smiled.

"Why do we say that? No problem, all the time. Waiters in restaurants, cab drivers, clerks. You. Especially when it isn't true."

"Hey, I didn't mean anything."

"Exactly."

"You mean there is a problem? That's what you think?"

"Don't you?"

They were walking slowly now; heels of Cathy's boots clipping the uneven concrete of the canal path.

"It's not that guy, Marius, is it?"

Marius? What about him? "

"I don't know. Just the way he came up to you at the end, there. I thought maybe he had you spooked."

"Jesus! It'd take more than a creep like Marius to Spock me."

They walked on. Between the buildings on the far side of the canal, traffic shunted eastwards in a slow line.

"Is it the letters?" Frank asked.

Cathy sighed.

"I've hardly thought about the damned letters."

"Then it's somebody else."

158 Cathy laughed, short and humourless.

"You mean, a man?"

"Unless you've changed a lot more than I thought."

She shook her head.

"You know you amaze me, Frank. There you are, shaking your dick at anything in sight, telling me it doesn't mean a goddamn thing, where if it's me..."

"There is somebody then."

She stopped, folded her arms across her chest.

"Frank, you have my word, I have not been screwing the home help."

"Maybe not. But that might have been better than banging that plastic surgeon."

Cathy didn't respond. She set off walking again, watching as a pair of ducks, grey-green, floated past along the canal.

"Water under the bridge, Frank. Old water under an old bridge. And, besides, he was interested in offering a little liposuction, that was mostly all."

"I can imagine."

"God, I hope not, baby."

"What?"

"The two of us hacking at it in that hotel room, the size of a domestic freezer. Me struggling with my thermals and Mr Plastic with the kind of all-over body hair that puts King Kong in the shade." She shuddered.

"Not a pretty sight."

Frank strode on ahead, putting some distance between himself and his wife's revelations. He didn't know how much she was joking, if at all. After twenty or thirty yards, Cathy caught up with him, touching the fingers of her left hand to his neck, the ridge of muscle just above the collar. "I'm sorry, I'm a bitch. You don't deserve that."

"I do," Frank said.

"Okay," Cathy agreed, laughing.

"You do."

Thirty minutes later and they were sitting at one of the 159 wooden tables outside the Baltimore Exchange, staring off towards the water with a couple of beers. Away to the east, where the canal disappeared between low, suburban houses on its way to join the River Trent, the sky was suddenly thick with clouds and the near horizon had misted over with slanting rain and violet light.

"How many years," Cathy asked, 'have we been together? "

Seven," Frank said, not looking at her direct

"Eight." "I wonder,"

Cathy said, 'if that isn't long enough? "

Twenty-nine Resnick's friend, Ben Riley, had never been much of a ladies' man.

Back in the late sixties, early seventies, when they had been young constables there in the city, there had been girls, certainly nurses from the old city centre hospital, since rationalised out of existence, workers from the hosiery factories strung out along the roads northeast of the city, long since pulled down for DIY stores and supermarkets. Toys R Us. But the drinking, hobnobbing with the lads, to Ben they had always been more important. Until Sarah.

Sarah Prentiss had been a librarian who worked at the central library when it was on Shakespeare Street, close behind the Central Divisional police station. It was a place Resnick himself had liked to wander through, sit in sometimes, reading through the jazz reviews in back issues of the Gramophone. A solid building, thick stone walls, monumental, long corridors and high ceilings, shelves of books that seemed to stretch on forever, a pervasive silence to Resnick, it was the essence of what a good library was about. Some years back, it had become part of the new university and the main library had moved even closer to the city centre. Now you had to push your way through a conglomeration of sales goods, advertising, magazines, videos and CDs before coming face to face with a good old-fashioned book. As far as marketing went, Resnick was sure it was successful, he was certain the library boasted a greater number of clients than before; he just wasn't one of them.

Neither was Ben Riley, who, to Resnick's continuing regret, had relocated to America some ten years ago. He doubted whether Sarah Prentiss visited the library much either, now that she was Sarah something else, and living in Northamptonshire with a husband, kids, and a couple of cars. He had learned this from Ben, with whom she had, for some years. "exchanged the obligatory Christmas cards.