Black Rock Page 4
Janie watched this take place and distantly wished that there was a magic phrase she could say to good old Billy-Joe which would do the same.
‘What did she want?’ he demanded, the slur completely absent from his voice. He looked like a little boy who’d lost his mummy at a carnival and had just been told by a policeman that she was on her way to collect him: anxious and hopeful.
‘She just wanted to ask you something about a manuscript you left in her flat.’
Martin’s face became stricken. He nodded slowly, looking as if he suddenly understood the worst. ‘She was annoyed. Christ, I wish I hadn’t done that. But I was livid with her. Bloody thing was good, see? Even I could see that and I hate haunted house books. Christ, I’m a wanker. Why’d I do it?’
He’s right about the wanker bit, Janie thought and said, ‘Slow down Martin. You lost me somewhere. She wasn’t annoyed, she was quite calm. What are you on about?’
‘The book,’ Martin said plaintively. ‘Black Rock. That’s just about scotched any chance I had. I wish I’d just said I liked it.’ He clapped his hands to his face, doubled over and heaved a sob.
Janie didn’t much like him, but she liked seeing him cry even less. She wasn’t the kind of girl who found it easy to clasp a weeping companion to her breast and say, ‘There there.’ All she did was become embarrassed for the distressed person. Anyway, it should have been her sitting there weeping.
Some of us have to soldier on, she thought. Even when we have split lips, loose teeth, bruises all over us and a pain in our ribs each time we breathe in.
While she looked at Martin’s shuddering back, wondering what to do, a demon spoke up inside her and suggested, quite calmly, that she ought to whack him over the back of the head with her computer keyboard while she had the chance because he would probably never make such a good target again. Janie almost giggled, then hated herself for it. No, I don’t suppose the keyboard wire’s long enough to reach anyway, the demon said before it departed.
She scooted her chair a little closer to Martin, hesitated for a moment, then reached out a hand, intending to touch him, but not knowing where. His arms were folded in under him and his back was too far away to reach, which left his head as the obvious place. Janie could see his shiny pink scalp beneath his thinning hair and didn’t really want to come in contact with it, but she swallowed her pride and her reservations and did it anyway.
Martin jumped as if he had been shot.
‘S’okay,’ she said quietly, ‘I’m here,’ she added, wondering what kind of consolation that was for him.
‘Oh, Janie,’ Martin’s muffled voice said from somewhere beneath the folded-up tangle of arms and legs that he’d made of himself. ‘I still love her.’
You shouldn’t have been such a shit to her then, was the obvious reply, but Janie did not say it. She said, ‘I know. I know.’
Martin unfolded himself and sat up. ‘You don’t understand what I’ve done,’ he said sadly, shaking his head.
‘You’re right there, Martin,’ Janie said. ‘I haven’t a clue.’
‘Black Rock,’ he said.
‘Yeah, I’ve gathered by now that Black Rock is the word-pairing of the day. You’d better explain its significance.’
‘I wrote on it,’ Martin said, as if writing on a manuscript was a sin akin to chiselling a smiley face on one of the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments.
‘That’s what editors are for, isn’t it?’ Janie replied.
‘It was good.’
‘Yeah, you said that. Nod if I have it so far. You had this bit of manuscript - twenty-four pages, so Drezy said - and it was called Black Rock and you wrote on it.’
Martin looked at her in torment.
‘You didn’t nod.’
For one ugly moment she thought he’d slipped into a catatonic trance. ‘Martin?’ she asked.
He nodded.
‘Right. Now tell me why you shouldn’t have written on it.’
‘Because it was good.’
That never stopped you before, she wanted to say, or me, come to that. But Martin hadn’t finished yet.
‘It said it was written by someone called Peter Perfect, down in the footer, it said, Peter Perfect, Black Rock, Tintagel.’
‘Yeah?’
‘But it was such a stupid name and the address belonged to the haunted house in the story… so I knew.’
‘Knew what, exactly?’
Martin shook his head. ‘It didn’t come in the post you see. The envelope was sealed but there was no stamp on it, or addressee written on the front. So I knew. She left it there on the mat.’
‘Sarah-Jane left it there?’
Martin nodded. ‘Sarah-Jane wrote it. That’s why she used a silly name and address. She wrote the first few pages of a novel - something that could have been excellent - and left it for me to find. And I played the game. I didn’t mention it to her. I picked it up and read it and wrote some editorial comments on it. It was good, but I said it was crap because I was mad with her when I read it. I left it under the bed where I thought she’d find it, but she didn’t and I forgot all about it. Now she’s seen what I wrote on it there’s no chance of a reconciliation.’
Two large tears formed in the corners of Martin’s eyes. Janie watched them gather, no longer thinking of her colleague’s distress or her own troubles at all. The words that swam in her head pushed everything else aside:
Sarah-Jane Dresden has begun to write a book.
Janie felt a moment of literally insane jealousy because this was the very thing she’d been promising herself she would do any day now, knowing she’d never get around to it. Then she felt a sudden surge of warmth for her friend who had started a book that wasn’t going to be an ordinary ‘I wish I could write a book’ book, but one that - in Martin’s own words -‘could have been excellent.’
In the moment of editorial competitiveness that followed, Janie had to stop herself asking if Martin had a copy that she could look at. Then she started to play Agony Aunt again.
‘I think you should phone her and tell her the truth,’ she advised.
‘You do?’
‘Yes, I do. Turn round, pick up that phone and tell her how good you think her writing is. I’ll vacate the premises while you do it, if you like.’
‘Thanks Janie, I’ll ring her mobile now,’ Martin said. ‘And you can stay too, if you like.’
Janie liked.
4 - Romantic Interlude
Sarah-Jane’s mobile telephone was supplied and paid for by Ace Publishing. This was not an act of kindness by Ace. In fact, some of the sales force regarded the sudden introduction of the mobiles as an act of treachery by their employer. A tighter rein could now be kept upon the sales staff. Which meant no more bunking off to go shopping, no more POETS days (Piss Off Early Tomorrow’s Saturday) and no excuses about not getting messages. If Marketing Director Del Blass sent you a memo, you could say you didn’t receive it - if he left a messa
ge on your answerphone, you could lie that the machine was cranky, but if he spoke the words of his urgent message in your very ear, the only excuse you had later was that you forgot.
Sarah-Jane had mixed feelings. Sure, it was equivalent to having Del sitting in the passenger seat of your car, but Del didn’t make a point of ringing you every five minutes and if you did your job you didn’t have a lot to worry about. You could still fit in those little trips to the shops and wherever you were (theoretically, at least), you had instant contact with the world at large. This was a good thing.
Because although Sarah-Jane didn’t believe in ghosts, she did have some fears. For example, walking back to her car in any one of a hundred dimly-lit and deserted multi-storey car parks, her red Ford Sierra estate always seemed to be a good fifty yards away from the stairs and there was always a heap of boxes or promotional stands in the back which would magically transform their outlines to resemble a figure. Waiting for her. And the phone was handy because Sarah-Jane would wait a few seconds, her fingers ready to turn on the phone and punch three nines if that vague shape on her back seat moved so much as an inch.
But it was not yet dark and Sarah-Jane was thinking not about finding men in her car, but bad-mouthing the woman in the Austin Allegro that she’d been stuck behind for five miles on the A3 84 to Launceston. She muttered curses by rote while she treated herself to a frame of Snowy Dresden’s world; a scene starring Mr Winter and the fur rug in front of the fireplace. Sarah-Jane’s imagination was fertile but she wasn’t above stealing someone else’s fantasy if it suited her. And the gothic romance Peter Perfect had set up in Black Rock suited her.
When the phone began to bleat, she jumped and felt absurdly guilty - as if she’d been caught masturbating.
Which was true - up to a point, she told herself.
She pulled over, put the car in neutral, applied the handbrake and leaned down towards the passenger’s side of the car for the mobile. The seatbelt locked. Sarah-Jane fought a brief battle with it before getting it undone. She leaned over, grabbed the bleating phone then lost her grip on it.
Dropsy! she scolded.
And stopped dead, staring at the phone.
Suddenly she didn’t want to answer it.
Because something had gone awry.
In Sarah-Jane Dresden’s twenty-eight years on the planet Earth, she had called herself Dropsy exactly no times at all.
But it wasn’t just that. She also had the distinct feeling that when she put the phone to her ear she was going to be listening to the dulcet tones, not of Del Blass, but of Mr Winter himself; suddenly fictional no more, but alive and kicking. She was sharply aware that in the story Snowy had felt as if reality had subtly altered to accept her into a new version of it.
The odd sensation of fear and excitement ceased at the moment the phone stopped ringing.
Just being silly, Sarah-Jane told herself. Get on your bike and get outta here!
She used this other Snowy Dresden expression purposely, as though consciously adopting it would sap whatever power that fictional world might have. Then she grinned. The trouble with fictionalizing yourself, she thought, was that after a while, you wouldn’t be quite sure where fiction finished and reality began. Like the man said, getting in was easy, it was the getting out again you had to worry about. But it wasn’t as if she was going to visit a real place called Black Rock and a real Mr Winter, merely the real location upon which her ex-lover had sited his fantasy haunted house. What kind of trouble could you get yourself into by visiting Tintagel Castle? Other than falling off it into the sea?
The phone didn’t ring again until Sarah-Jane was on the A39 at Camelford. This time there was no sense of foreboding. But this time its ringing hadn’t broken into one of her fantasies.
‘Look, Essenjay, I’m calling about the book.’ Silence.
For a moment, Sarah-Jane didn’t have the faintest idea who it was. Then she twigged. Martin, of course. How could she have forgotten his voice so easily?
‘Black Rock?’ she asked, knowing that was exactly what he meant. He thought his use of her as his heroine had offended her.
‘Yeah…’ he said and paused the way he always did before he said something nice to her. Handing out a compliment always seemed to hurt him badly - almost as if he were being forced to open his belly with his fingernail and pull you out a length of intestine which he badly wanted to keep for himself.
Sarah-Jane pre-empted him. ‘It’s good,’ she said. ‘Very good. You should be pleased.’
‘I am pleased,’ Martin said.
‘You don’t sound as if you are,’ she replied.
‘It’s difficult for me,’ he said. ‘Y’know.’
Sarah-Jane didn’t quite know whether he meant that writing it was difficult for him, now that she and he were parted, or that it was difficult for him to ask her if he could continue with it without her eventually suing him.
‘You carry on,’ she said brightly. ‘I’m flattered.’
Silence.
‘I said I’m flattered,’ she repeated. ‘You carry on. Do what you want to do. I don’t mind.’
‘I phoned to say I was sorry,’ Martin said.
‘It’s OK, really Martin. I don’t mind.’
For some reason Martin still didn’t sound as if he believed her. ‘You don’t?’ he said. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Sure I’m sure. I won’t sue you.’
Martin chuckled then and Sarah-Jane wasn’t sure why. Relief perhaps. ‘I’d like to talk to you,’ he said.
Sarah-Jane was instantly on her guard against any onslaught he might be planning. She would not be emotionally blackmailed. ‘You’re talking to me now,’ she said, knowing that this statement might not be true for very much longer. Her finger was a millimetre from the switch and if Martin started on his favourite subject, ‘Us’, he would be talking to a dead line in very short order.
‘You’re playing hard to get,’ he said, almost certainly with a smug expression on his face. She could picture how he looked sitting in his office in ‘doing deals’ mode. She suddenly remembered why she’d threatened him with a rolling-pin and thrown him out. Martin had a good side, but it was his bad side she was reminded of now. If he was trying to get back into her favour, he was going about it entirely the wrong way. A red rose every day for a week would have been a start. An apology for his awful behaviour, accompanying said roses, might have softened her still further - and if the week’s last rose had brought with it a receipt which said he’d added her to the insurance for the Ferrari, she might have begun to believe he’d changed.
‘So what?’ she said, suddenly bored with the conversation. If Martin wanted to novelize all her personal details, let him. As long as he kept out of her way, anything was fine by her.
‘I want to publish it,’ Martin said with a distinct question in his voice. That qu�
�estion asked: Aren’t you just ecstatic? and it was probably present in the voice of God when he explained to Job what all the tribulations had been about.
‘Oh, go whistle, Martin,’ Sarah-Jane said mildly and rang off.
When the phone rang again, she ignored it. She did so all the rest of the way to Tintagel. The book would be good, and if it was published she would buy herself a copy, because Martin had achieved the writer’s goal of making her really want to know what happened next.
But as far as screwing the author went, well, she’d tried that and didn’t damned well want to do it again.
Big headed bastard, she thought as she drove into Tintagel. He’s writing a book about me and he’s publishing it himself and he expects me to be thrilled.
Then her Girl Guide added, but you are thrilled. You’ve driven all the way over here just to look at the place in which the book is set,
Sarah-Jane no longer really knew what she felt about the whole thing. All she knew was that the Girl Guide spoke in the eminently reasonable voice of her dear departed mother.
Tintagel in late October looked much the same as all the other small towns in Devon and Cornwall: closed. There was one gift shop still open, but most of the hotels and guest houses were shut down for the winter. Barring the few late trippers, only the natives were here now and Tintagel had changed back from a pretty little tourist village to a drab-looking farming community. Bude, where Sarah-Jane lived, looked much the same at this time of year, but bigger.
She drove down the main street, past the silent Tintagel Toy Museum and the closed Wooton’s Country Hotel. King Arthur’s Bookshop stood at the top of the walk down to the ruins of King Arthur’s Castle and appeared to be shut for the winter too. Sarah-Jane followed the road round to the right, heading towards the hotel which stood on a cliff on the edge of town. Where the row of houses ended, the road turned sharp left towards the sea and terminated at the hotel. This hotel was called The King Arthur. Sarah-Jane remembered it from the last time she was here years ago. It too was closed.