Written From the Heart

by Trisha Ashley

  Should you indeed decide to set up Potter-Rubrick Press, I can put you in touch with another author, Bob Woodelf, who is writing not dissimilar work and who has not, so far as I am aware, managed to sell his children’s novel yet. He does delightful, if uncommercial, illustrations, too.

  I hope you find my critique helpful, though it is mostly confined to pointing out those places where charming whimsy tilts in the direction of twee, always a hard balance to maintain in a book of this kind. You also have a slight tendency to change from first person to third, sometimes in the same sentence, which can be disconcerting, and these I have also marked.

  I wish you all the best with your inspiring work.

  Yours sincerely,

  Tina Devino

  We actually had a fun weekend, sorting out the manuscript and shopping (even if Linny had a tendency to linger in babyGap), and chilling out with large quantities of fattening foods and a box of tissues in front of romantic DVDs.

  Then on the Monday morning I woke up early with that feeling of anticipation I always used to get, knowing I would see Sergei soon …

  Only, of course, I wasn’t.

  But I was too restless to go back to sleep, and then I had an idea: I would get up and walk around to Nathan’s on the pretext of dropping off the pen he left behind (which I was actually going to push through his letterbox on my way to the station later anyway, and he wouldn’t know which train I meant to get, would he?), I’d catch him early and maybe off guard, so that he would have to ask me in for coffee at least … and who knew what might happen then?

  Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

  I left a note for Linny saying I was popping out but I’d be back soon to pick up my bag, then I set out through the bright early morning streets, glad I wasn’t having to scurry off to some office for the day – even though I would soon have to scurry off to my own office in Shrimphaven and get on with The Orchid Huntress.

  Excitement lent wings to my feet and I was soon ringing Nathan’s doorbell … but it was immediately evident that that was the only bell of his I was likely to ring, since the door was opened by Runaway Rachel, dressed in an insecurely tied man’s bathrobe over nothing and bearing that give-away heavy-eyed look.

  ‘Oh, it’s you!’ she said, looking taken aback, but probably not as much as I felt, although hopefully I didn’t show it.

  ‘I didn’t expect to find you here this early, Rachel,’ I said pleasantly, which was quite an effort, I can tell you.

  She said with a smirk, ‘Oh, didn’t Nathan tell you I’d moved back in?’

  ‘No, I thought it must be dress-down Friday and I’d got the wrong day of the week.’

  She frowned and twitched the edges of the robe closed. ‘Nathan’s showering. Can I take a message?’

  ‘Not really, I’ve just brought his rather swish fountain pen back. I found it down the back of the sofa and I was going to push it through the letterbox, only it looks valuable … and anyway, people get attached to these things, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes, and he adores it, because it was a present from me, actually.’ Then she smirked a bit more and said she was glad I’d called because I could be the first to congratulate them, and flashed the rock on her ring finger at me.

  ‘Oh, is the engagement on again?’ I said casually. ‘That’s very understanding of Nathan.’

  And she said yes, he knew it had all just been pre-wedding nerves before, and I said that was one way of describing it, but congratulations anyway.

  Then Nathan’s voice called down the hall: ‘Who is it, Rachel?’

  I said quickly, ‘I’ll let you get back to it, then. I’m just on my way to see Sergei.’

  She stared at me. ‘But everyone said you and Sergei had split up!’

  ‘Everyone is wrong then, aren’t they? Just like everyone saying you and Nathan had split up, but these days hearts can be so seamlessly mended you’d never even know where the join was … and will you excuse me, because I need to go and write that last sentence down.’

  I left her on the doorstep, and I’d dug out a pen and notebook from my bag and made a note of it for The Orchid Huntress before I heard the door close. She could have caught her death of cold … with a little luck.

  Then I walked on round the corner and suddenly everything sort of hit me and I felt totally humiliated as though I’d been caught trying to prostitute myself, and clearly Nathan would rather have a skinny young girl than me and he was just keeping this gullible old author sweet.

  I wandered on without noticing where, but my feet automatically took me right to Sergei’s door, though I didn’t realize it until I found myself nose to nose with a brass knocker shaped like a pair of ballet shoes, with no recollection of getting there. I was just about to turn away when it swung open to reveal Sergei, with his glowing, slightly manic dark eyes and dishevelled black hair.

  ‘At last! At last you have forgiven me, my Tina – my darling!’ he exclaimed in a voice breaking with emotion, then swept me into a rib-crackingly muscular embrace.

  After that it was hard enough to concentrate on breathing, let alone thinking, and perhaps thinking is something I do too much of anyway and should give up.

  Much later I rang Linny and told her where I was, and she said, ‘What about the pearls?’

  Straight to the point as usual. ‘Sergei was going to take them and have them made into a necklace for me anyway, for my birthday. And we’ve been talking—’

  She giggled, ‘Well, that’s one word for it!’

  I continued, with dignity: ‘We’ve been talking, and Sergei wants to show the world how much he loves me, so we are getting engaged.’

  She shrieked, ‘Engaged! You’re getting married? Are you mad?’

  ‘No, of course we aren’t getting married, there’s no way we could live together as man and wife! We are just getting engaged, that’s all.’

  She said she could see where I was coming from because it was terribly trendy to get engaged and it needn’t lead to anything, and were we going to have a party?

  ‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but perhaps we could book Lemonia, what do you think?’

  She thought it sounded fun so I said I’d put it to Sergei. ‘And do you know, he bought every single plant, tree and shrub for the conservatory on that list of suggestions I gave him, which must have cost him a fortune, because they are all tropical and some of them are very rare! Isn’t that romantic?’ But I didn’t tell her what we did in there earlier, on the wicker daybed under its canopy of greenery.

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ she agreed kindly, for she didn’t share my passion for plants.

  Then I told her I was accompanying Sergei to his book launch in July, so she would have to help me choose something extra special to wear for it, and just then Sergei came back into the room and that was the end of all conversation for quite some time.

  Later I let Sergei drive me home himself (stopping at Linny’s briefly for my case on the way), which was something I didn’t usually do, due to him driving like the possessed, but I was so tired I could hardly move, even to get out of the car. I even let him carry me over the threshold, which he did without one single murmur about his bad back.

  Then he kissed me passionately and left with a little box of pearls in his pocket, singing something stirring in Russian.

  Due to excessive languor I didn’t actually do anything constructive until next morning, when I checked my voice-mail and discovered a rather incoherent and shame-faced message from Nathan, more or less saying that Rachel had foisted herself on him and put his ring back on her finger herself. He certainly hadn’t done it, and he didn’t want to marry her despite being still fond of her, but she was making it very difficult to say so.

  But really, that was not my problem, so when he added, ‘Rachel says you and Sergei are together again, but I don’t know if that’s true. I’m sure you were determined not to see him ever again, weren’t you? So it seemed unlikely …’ and rambled on and on agai
n about his own problems. I deleted him.

  I think I liked him better as a distant inspiration than as a man, and while writing the next bit of The Orchid Huntress I found my thoughts turning more and more to Grigor, who seems to possess most of the attributes needed in a hero, except for a slight lack in the chin department, although when I was face to face with him in Sergei’s flat I realized that it is not so much that he hasn’t got one, just that it is small and rather pointed and perhaps does not show to best advantage from a distant stage.

  NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

  Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

  Dear Glenda Strudwick,

  Thank you for your letter.

  While I am delighted to hear that Neville has had good feedback from Rangerider Books Ltd, when I encouraged him to write Westerns I certainly didn’t imagine for one moment that he would then embrace the whole cowboy lifestyle, let alone insisting on being called Bullwhip O’Sullivan and wearing a Stetson all the time, which must be deeply embarrassing for you!

  I do sympathize, and I can only think that he must be going through a sort of late male crisis of some kind, especially those strange ideas he was having about you dressing up in a gunbelt and cowboy hat too … Well, quite frankly, Glenda, I would only go down that route if the idea does something for you, otherwise I’d tell him to go live in his little log cabin until he’s regained his senses.

  No, I didn’t realize that the farm actually belonged to you – and perhaps you ought to give a timely reminder about that to your husband? You never know who he might meet at the Western Re-enactment Society, after all, though at least you can always cut your losses, as you say – if I read your reference to ‘culling the old bull’ correctly.

  How practical you farming folk are!

  With admiration and best wishes,

  Tina Devino

  Twenty-Nine

  Cross Currents

  Dear Tony,

  Here is some news that will, I hope, gladden your heart: Sergei and I are not only together again, but are also engaged to be married.

  But don’t immediately jump to conclusions and start organizing a wedding or anything, because that is the only step I am prepared to take towards respectability. Everyone is getting engaged these days as a way of signifying the permanence and depth of their love for one another – it’s terribly trendy.

  There will be full-colour coverage of our engagement party in a magazine too, always helpful to my career, which is actually the only reason I am telling you about plighting my troth, so you don’t get too overexcited when you read about it.

  Your affectionate sister,

  Tina

  Sergei threw himself into organizing our big, fat Greek engagement party with passion, and although we’d only booked half of Lemonia all the rest of the customers were soon sucked into the festivities too, for while there may be no such thing as a free lunch, wherever Sergei was, the champagne ran like water. I sincerely hoped both his book advance and his investments were still flourishing.

  We’d invited an eclectic mix of people between us: there were ballet dancers (including Grigor), choreographers, ordinary friends, literary contacts, a journalist or two, a photographer, his editor, my old (and now new) editor, Ruperta, and Tim (how could I resist inviting him?), who came with his colleague Jinni in tow.

  Of course Tershie and Linny were there, and Jackie and Mel, plus a sprinkling of writer friends, a ballet critic, a couple of Cossacks (Sergei said he didn’t remember inviting them, and anyway they were ejected halfway through the evening for being drunk and trying to dance on the tables), and Nathan, with Rachel clinging possessively to his arm looking smug, an expression that turned to envy when Sergei gave a short speech paying me compliments of the effusive, blush-making kind and then presented me with a most beautiful ring.

  Thank goodness he has such good taste in these things, because I’ll have to wear it all the time, like my other decent jewellery, due to the lack of security in my cottage. At this rate I would soon be decked out like a Christmas tree everywhere I went.

  At least the pearl string was still a work in progress.

  Every time I looked up during the evening I caught Nathan staring rather intensely at me, Rachel looking suspiciously from one to the other of us as if we might be making secret signals, and Jinni gazing adoringly at Nathan, so clearly Rachel would be better employed in watching her back than me.

  There were no members of either family present, apart from the unacknowledged Grigor, since Sergei hasn’t got any others, and the Devino contingent were thankfully still in Wales … or so I thought until I looked up to find my brother, Tony, had suddenly appeared and was standing looking belligerently at Sergei.

  So then of course I had to introduce them, and Tony announced loudly that he’d come to give the family blessing on my engagement, and to Sergei he said that for the honour of the family he had to agree to the wedding, and it was right that Sergei make an honest woman of me.

  I could see he was really throwing himself into the role and enjoying it, though the fractured Italian accent was a bit thick at times. ‘Since the untimely death of our parents, I have been as a father to her,’ he said brokenly, which he hasn’t, just a bossy older brother who always thought he knew best and was dying to see me married to someone respectable. Sergei did not quite seem to fit that bill, but Tony obviously despaired of my tying the knot with anyone else.

  Sergei, deeply moved, sprang up, kissed him on both cheeks and said he respected his viewpoint entirely and Tony could be sure his sister was in safe hands. (And it was quite true that he had never dropped me.)

  ‘We are to be brothers – let us drink to that!’ he said warmly, and pressed a glass into Tony’s not unwilling hand. Then they had a conversation that sounded like War and Peace crossed with The Sopranos, while the rest of the guests, the excitement over, began to take their leave.

  Grigor kissed me enthusiastically as he left; a pleasure somewhat spoiled by the realization that I was only one rung below the level of being his stepmother, which was very odd to contemplate: only of course it wouldn’t actually come to that.

  Eventually it was just me, Sergei and Tony.

  ‘I’ll drive Tina home to Shrimphaven,’ Tony declared with a challenging look at Sergei, though actually I was going to splash out on a taxi home anyway: I’d had enough of people for one night, even people I love. And if poor Tony thought he was removing me from temptation he was closing the stable door so long after the horse had bolted that it wasn’t even a dust cloud on the horizon.

  So I kissed Sergei a loving goodbye and Tony and I headed off to my cottage, where he spent a hideously uncomfortable night on my little sofa, but it was all his idea to take me home, after all.

  He creaked off back to Wales at the crack of dawn, leaving me a message of complaint in the kitchen, including his opinion that pet mice in the house were unhygienic, though in my view not as unhygienic as dumping used tea bags in the sink and scattering toast crumbs everywhere, but I expect he was just peeved because Minnie kept him awake all night running round in her wheel. Mary obviously has a lot to put up with.

  Husbands: you can’t live with them – but you can live without them.

  NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

  Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

  Dear Fanny Gotobed,

  Thank you for your letter, cheque and the manuscript of your novel, One Village, One Heart.

  No, I’m sure I can’t imagine why those agents who asked to see your manuscript on receipt of your letter of enquiry expected something much more risqué, unless perhaps they thought your rather unusual name was a pseudonym indicative of your style?

  I am so sorry to hear how recently you were widowed, and what a difficult financial situation you now find yourself in, and I truly applaud your bravery in trying to pick up the reins of the writing career you abandoned over fifty years ago. One piece of good news on this score: the charge fo
r reading your manuscript quoted on my flyer is actually a misprint, and I am therefore sending you a cheque to refund half of it. I really must speak to my printer!

  Unfortunately, the market for novels has changed slightly over the ensuing years, and apart from the perennial Miss Read I can’t think of another author in print who is writing your kind of sweet, gentle village-affairs sort of book. This is not to say that people don’t want to read them any more, just that publishers don’t think they want to.

  I certainly found One Village, One Heart absolutely charming, but I do think you will find it difficult to get a publisher to take it. However, all is not lost: the novel is extremely episodic and would lend itself brilliantly to being divided up into lots of short stories for those magazines catering for the older reader, for whom your work is perfect (list appended), and who pay quite well. I think they would love them, and who knows – once you have had a large number accepted a publisher might just think twice about refusing your next book!

  I am quite sure you will be successful, and look forward to reading your stories soon in magazines.

  By the way, as soon as you can manage it I would at least upgrade to an electric typewriter. It will make your work much easier to read and so vastly increase the chances of having it accepted.

  Good luck with your writing.

  Yours sincerely,

  Tina Devino

  Much coverage of the party in the press, with everyone looking half-cut, especially the roped-in Lemonia clients, and no one told me that that famous actor was there! (Not that I’ve seen him in anything, but I have heard of him.)

  All the press coverage called me ‘bestselling novelist Tina Devino’, which was gratifying, and most also mentioned my new, beautiful, clingy, smoky-purple, hand-beaded and embroidered dress, which I refused to tell anyone the source of, even Linny, because I wanted to keep the fairies at the bottom of my garden to myself.