by Unknown
“There’s that salsa place on Charing Cross Road. We’ve made inquiries, and they could do shared platters at a twenty percent discount. Your ladies and gentlemen would be very welcome to stay and dance afterward. It’s popular with hen parties.” Nik looked wretched. As well he might.
“A salsa bar on a Saturday night—that sounds like it might involve a little too much loud music and shouting. A brown-bag lunch sounds very…well it sounds very literary and hardworking, doesn’t it? And American. One imagines T. S. Eliot having a brown-bag lunch.”
“What is a brown-bag lunch?” asked Emily. Though she was vegetarian and she had developed a subtle palate, she couldn’t imagine eating a brown paper bag, if that’s what Nik was suggesting.
Nik explained, “It’s a sort of picnic. Cold cuts. A slice of cake. A nectarine each, if we’ve got it. Chef said he thought he might have forty kiwi fruit. Of course, the wine tonight is on us.”
“A picnic! Why, Virginia Woolf herself might have enjoyed it, then,” Morgana said miserably, though she was trying to express delight. “And, thank you. We’ll take you up on the free wine.”
“I’ll bring you in a glass each now of the white, so you can try it.”
“Would you!” Morgana accidentally shouted. She was making too much effort not to sob to have any energy left over to regulate the volume at which she expressed her enthusiasm for wine.
As Nik went back through the service door to fetch the wine, Emily heard the incongruous sound of a voice singing mockingly: “Heigh-ho!”
Lex was one of the first dinner guests to arrive. Emily wondered where he’d been when Teena had been pushed off the roof. She was to be seated next to him, so perhaps she’d have a chance to ask him. Morgana had explained her decision to put Emily next to Lex by saying, “Lex does like the company of intelligent young women, he finds it very stimulating.” She didn’t say whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, and Emily felt that would rather depend on the crime he’d been accused of, though it shouldn’t.
Lex had sat down in his place, and Morgana paused for a brief chat, leaning on the back of Dr. Muriel’s empty chair, which was positioned on Lex’s right side. Lex was in a generous mood.
“I could do a session at one of these things for you, Morgana. ‘The Future of Publishing: New Ways of Working.’”
“Oh! Aren’t you brilliant. I’ll bear you in mind for a conference that isn’t cursed—our next one, we hope. ‘New Ways of Working’…You know, Lex, I’ve nearly finished my latest book, and while I was writing I kept thinking, there must be a better way of doing things. Ideally, I’d like to team up with someone.”
“My client, Audrey Debenham—”
“Not Audrey. She writes too much like me. I’d want to write all the similes and pare down the prose. The other person would be responsible for the plot. Audrey’d be no good for that at all. Do you know what would be even better than teaming up?”
Morgana noticed she had finished her wine and interrupted herself while she looked around for a waitress to bring her a refill. Fortunately, she soon caught Maria’s eye, and the soothing sound of wine sploshing into her glass signaled to her distressed mind that it was safe to resume the conversation. “Wouldn’t it be great if you could just hire someone to outline for you, and then fill in the gaps, like those painting by numbers pictures that were popular in the 1970s? Do people do those anymore? Or do they just make videos of their children poking the cat in the eye and put it on YouTube? This millennium has more diverse outlets for the creatively minded, that’s for sure.”
“Well—” said Lex.
“Crafting’s very popular with young women these days,” said Emily. “Cross-stitch and knitting and quilting, but maybe with a slightly anarchic tone.”
Apparently neither Lex nor Morgana was interested in crafting.
Morgana continued, “Even better than writing a book would be to find a way of transmitting the story directly into the reader’s brain. It would dispense with the hours and hours of tedium sitting at the computer and getting it all down. I know that some writers say they’d like their books to be read as widely as possible, but I don’t feel that way.”
“You’ll think differently once the latest book’s done,” Lex said. “This is just pre-delivery nerves.”
“If people aren’t going to like my books, I’d rather they left them alone and went and did something else. I’d be happy enough if just one person read my new book, so long as they liked it. Of course, that wouldn’t be commercially viable—I do know that, Lex—unless I were to find a way to auction off the book for a million pounds.” She brought up her hand to shield her mouth and murmured to Emily, “Though, privately, I don’t mind admitting I’d probably accept ten thousand.”
“You mustn’t undersell yourself, Morgana,” scolded Lex, who’d heard what she said very clearly.
“Forty thousand, then. Fifty! I’d leave the negotiations to you. Then I’d go off with this other person, and dream the book for them. It would be like having a love affair, except for the financial arrangements, and of course there would be no hard feelings when it was over, and no risk of disease. And no one-star reviews on Amazon, one hopes.”
“For my Future of Publishing session I was thinking more along the lines of talking about ebooks. Twitter. Software for writing books, social media for marketing them. That type of thing.”
“Oh yes! Yes. Marvelous. Where would writers be without agents? You do keep our feet on the ground.”
Morgana swept off to take her place at the head of the table. Emily took out her notebooks and made a few notes.
“Are you a writer?” Lex asked, politely but resignedly. No doubt he thought Emily was going to pitch him her latest manuscript.
Emily put the notebook away. “No, no. I just wanted to write that down before I forgot it, because wouldn’t that be a brilliant way to read a book? Having someone dreaming it directly into your head?”
“Not in our lifetime, alas. Though I must admit, I never thought I’d be able to hold a library in my hand. And yet they’ve found a way to do it.” He held out his hand for a moment and shaped his fingers around an imaginary, orb-shaped e-reader, and he shook his head and smiled.
Emily asked him, “If they invented the technology to do the person-to-person book dreaming, and there was a risk involved, and they needed someone to test the prototype, would you volunteer?”
“Interesting. I’ve had a good long life. I’ve seen my children and my grandchildren grow up…No, I don’t think I would. Would you, Emily?”
“I thought, when I was younger, that I’d like to be an explorer or an adventurer. But they’re done with space exploration, aren’t they? I can’t see them going much further with that. I think they’ll have to turn inward: explore the mind. So maybe I’d do it, if someone asked.”
“Ah. And which book would you choose to have transmitted in such a way, direct from the author’s mind into yours?”
“That’s the thing. It would be a book that hadn’t been dreamed of yet, wouldn’t it? That’s why it would be so exciting. That’s why I’d do it.”
Dr. Muriel arrived to take her place at Lex’s right-hand side, with a cheery hello to Emily. Lex stood and drew out Dr. Muriel’s chair for her, and ensured she was sitting comfortably. While he was doing that, Emily looked around the room as it filled up.
Cerys was to her left, and Zena was the other side of her. Polly and Archie were on the top table, a few places along on either side of Morgana. Among the other faces she recognized, Maggie was sitting opposite, on the other side of the horseshoe, next to a floppy-haired, youngish chap who was trying to chat to her. Emily couldn’t hear what was being said, but she could see that Maggie was making a fuss about something. Emily made an Are you all right? face across the room. When it seemed she wasn’t, Emily decided to go over there.
As the waiters and waitresses began to bring in the brown-bag meals—which were pretty much as described, being brown paper bag
s containing cold food—Morgana stood to welcome her guests. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us at this gala dinner to celebrate this year’s conference of the Romance Writers of Great Britain. For newcomers, I should explain that we are in no way affiliated to…” And on she went, much as she had at the start of the press conference, listing the names of all the august organizations that had no connection to the RWGB.
Emily ducked along the open end of the horseshoe and reached Maggie who explained the problem in a piercing whisper.
“I can’t eat this.”
“Are you allergic?”
“It’s not that.”
At the head of the table, Morgana was drawing her brief introduction to its conclusion. “And of course, Maggie Tambling—”
All eyes turned to the direction in which Morgana pointed her two upturned hands, like Judy Garland acknowledging the orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
Maggie’s querulous whisper could be heard, quite distinctly. “What if it’s poisoned?”
Morgana soldiered on. “Maggie Tambling, who is joining us for the first time after beating off fierce opposition to win our inaugural short fiction competition.”
Morgana led the applause and then sat down and wordlessly raised her glass in a salute to the room, to signify that everyone should get on and eat, and drink. And then they could all go home.
“What makes you think it’s poisoned?” Emily asked Maggie. “Was it something Teena said?”
Morgana had got up from her seat and was hurrying in their direction. “It’s perfectly, perfectly OK, Maggie, I assure you.”
“First Tallulah, then Teena. I don’t want the next body in a bag to be me. Someone’ll have to taste it before I eat it, won’t they?”
“Darling, I think it’s all over now. Their deaths were accidents. You’re quite safe. There’s no question of the food being poisoned.”
It was unfortunate that just at that moment M. Loman burst in. “Poison!” he said. “Poison? Is this how you repay me?”
“Now,” said Morgana, “Dear Monsieur Loman, I do think there might have been a mistake.”
“I have never been so humiliated!”
Cerys whispered to Zena, “There speaks a man. Never had a smear test or a mammogram.”
By now everyone was watching with the mixture of embarrassment and engagement familiar in small fringe theaters where the actors are just a little too close to the audience.
“First they break my heart. Is OK. It beats. I am still alive. Then they break my body. It hurts. Is OK. I am still alive. They cannot break my spirit. Cannot take my honor. I come here, to live among British people. I am safe, I think. But now, you try to take my livelihood. I will live. But I want to know why.”
“Is this about the chocolates?”
“So you admit it!”
“No, no. Dear Monsieur Loman, please sit down and have a glass of wine. I wish I could do something…I wish I could do something kind for you, to show you that we mean you no harm.”
“You wish to make reparation? A donation, then. To charity. Children of the Congo.”
“I’ll do it,” Polly spoke up. “I’ll be glad to do it. This is all my fault, anyway.”
She picked up her handbag and took M. Loman by the arm. She led him outside to the lobby area where she had stuffed the gift bags with Emily, so she could make arrangements to send him a donation.
Maggie had watched all this without comment. As Polly came back in with the air of a deed well done, Maggie said to Morgana, “So there’s no poison?”
“Absolutely not. No.”
Maggie pushed her brown-bag executive lunch toward Morgana. “You won’t mind tasting this for me, then?”
Morgana did mind, obviously. But she acquiesced. And so Maggie picked up her handbag and walked to the head of the table. Room was made, and a chair was found, so she could sit next to Morgana. Morgana then proceeded to take up her knife and fork and cut mouselike bites out of the various items that had been supplied to Maggie in the brown bag, putting them in her mouth, chewing thoroughly and then swallowing them under Maggie’s direction, before Maggie consented to eat them. Morgana also tasted the wine before it was served. With her jaunty pink fez and tragicomic expression, Morgana made a passably good jester and chief food taster to Maggie’s intransigent monarch. When Morgana went out to the front of the hotel to stand by the steps and smoke, Maggie watched impatiently for her return.
At some point, before she got too drunk, Morgana rose to make a simple, moving tribute to Winnie. “Let us not forget the power of words to live on after we die, and move those who read them…”
As she spoke, Cerys leaned in to whisper to Zena, “They’re not going to leave up her website, now she’s gone? Surely they’ll take down her reviews?”
“Immortality, innit, babes? You want them to shred your books after you’ve gone?”
“No, I’d hope sales would soar.”
“There you are, then. Her website will have more visitors than ever.”
Cerys sighed. “I suppose I’ll just have to get on and write the next book, then.”
At the head of the table, Morgana concluded by saying, “Winnie’s talent was not for writing fiction, much as we must admire her for trying. Winnie’s talent came when she donned the mask as Tallulah, and she wrote about her appreciation for other people’s talent for writing fiction. She was witty, she was funny, she was truthful. We need people who have her talent for appreciating books. Not many can do it. She found her true talent before she died. Not many can say that. She was appreciated. She achieved something. What she achieved will endure. To Winnie!”
As the people around the room raised their glasses in a toast, Emily instinctively looked toward the door. By rights, Des should have been standing there with tears in his eyes, having slipped in unannounced to hear this moving tribute. But this wasn’t a British romcom film. Des wasn’t standing by the door, he was upstairs in his room grieving.
After that the evening was a success because everyone who was involved in publishing got very, very drunk and gossiped about other people in the publishing industry. These were activities that revived memories of a halcyon past and seemed to cheer everyone up— even those who didn’t have much faith in the future of publishing. And then, to cap it all, at about ten o’clock Polly got a call from her agent in New York, which of course is five hours behind London in temporal terms, and twenty years ahead in lots of other ways. But no one was considering the other ways tonight.
Morgana rose from her seat and dinged her glass. “We’ve just had some wonderful news. Wonderful! Polly Penham has been nominated for a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Romance Authors of America.”
“RAA!” a few people said, in tiger growls of appreciation.
“Lifetime achievement?” Emily overheard Zena saying to Cerys. “She’s only thirty-three!”
Cerys shuddered. “I wouldn’t want to be presented with a lifetime achievement award, even at my age, a grandmother with nearly thirty books to my name. Bad luck, see? I mean, where do you go after that? It’s all over, isn’t it?”
“Yeah…Hadn’t thought of it that way. You think it’s a warning? The universe is trying to tell Polly something?”
“No I don’t! I’m an agnostic Presbyterian. Besides, any more bad news and I won’t need to dye my hair this color. I’ll wake up tomorrow and my roots’ll have turned platinum blonde overnight.”
“No more expensive visits from the hairdresser. If it happens, it’ll be the first time in your life that coming up to London ever saved you money, Cerys.”
The two women laughed the special laugh some women reserve for acknowledging extravagance, especially as it relates to overspending on clothes or shoes. But as events unfolded that night, Emily—also an agnostic—had cause to wonder whether the universe might, after all, be trying to communicate some sort of warning. To all of them.
Chapter Fifteen
THE HERO
The gala dinner
ended with everyone in good spirits. Some of the younger members of the RWGB and their guests made plans to go on to a club in Soho to drink overpriced drinks and mingle with television presenters, actors and former pop stars. Others went home. Those who remained, including most of the committee, Emily, Dr. Muriel and Maggie, professed themselves too tired to do anything but fall into bed to sleep, in preparation for the long day ahead.
Lex kissed Morgana goodbye as he hailed a taxi to take him home. “What a magnificent evening. You know I’d go to the ends of the earth to attend one of your marvelous conferences.”
Morgana said, “I don’t believe a word of it. You old fraud!” And then both she and Lex looked terribly embarrassed, and Emily thought she might have an idea of the crime Lex had once been accused of.
There was lots of kissing on both cheeks, and hugging and laughter, and then the hotel went quiet. There was the muffled sound, now and again, of people laughing too loudly in the street outside as they walked home or waited to get a night bus. The thick walls of the hotel kept out most of the noise, including the traffic sounds. As she fell asleep, Emily heard the occasional cry of an urban fox, which sounds like the desperate call of a man being stabbed. She dreamed of four foxes playfighting in her garden in South London.
The toast’s burning! thought Emily. I’ve got to get up before the smoke alarm goes off.
And then the alarm went off. And then she thought, I’m not making toast.
She was awake, and outside it was pandemonium. Again.
“Fire!” someone called. “Fire! Come on, now. Everybody out. Walk, don’t run.”
Knuckles rapped at her door, flung it open and moved on. Don’t mind me! thought Emily. Fortunately, she was wearing cream-colored pajamas with blue bunnies on them. When choosing nightwear to take with her on trips away from home, Emily had noticed that most manufacturers seemed to think women of her age were either sex-starved sluts or oversize toddlers who craved a return to the nursery. Though she was aware she looked ridiculous in her bunnies, she was glad at least that her natural prudishness had saved her the embarrassment of running about Bloomsbury in something flimsy that showed her nipples.
