Written From the Heart

by Trisha Ashley

  My book was now firmly lodged at the top of the bestseller charts and everyone wanted a piece of me – or me and Sergei, since the ‘engaged and living miles apart’ angle seemed to be a strange concept to everyone, even though creative people marrying and living apart had been done already by several couples, as I recall, and worked very well. And anyway, it was our own business, although the party placed us more in the public domain, I suppose. There was by then such a feeding frenzy over Sergei’s memoirs that it wouldn’t surprise me if they shot up the non-fiction bestseller charts as soon as they were out, so we may be occupying the tops of adjacent charts. It may surprise the readers to find that actually, despite a tendency to hyperbole when describing his own performance, Sergei wrote quite well.

  He was pleased with the photos, in which he said he looked very young and fit, and I also looked beautiful, and he was buying us each a new cuttings book since both of ours were now full. He had been approached about doing a new edition of his SergeiYoga exercise DVD and book.

  Ruperta had been shown the first chapters of The Orchid Huntress and had made an offer for it, as had Tim the Suit at Salubrious for rather more than my last one with them, but not enough to tempt me and so I signed with Ruperta.

  Nathan kept looking at me with a sort of sad resignation whenever we met, but the thought of his cut from the advance should have cheered his heart, and if he was sad because he didn’t make his move before I got engaged, tough; and if it was because he didn’t want to marry Rachel any more, tough again, he should have done something about it.

  Flushed with success and money, I had a tiny safe installed in my cottage and a burglar alarm, though whether they are a good idea I don’t know, because when alarms go off no one ever takes any notice, so it’s just a beacon screaming that there’s no one there, burglars welcome, isn’t it? Still, at least now it was reasonably safe to leave some of my bits of jewellery at home, rather than carry my spoils of war around with me all the time.

  Otherwise, life resumed its normal even tenor, except that sometimes Sergei and I accepted invitations to things and went out together as an official couple, and when I took him to an SFWWR meeting it took me ages to extricate him afterwards. I nearly gave up and left him there, surrounded – and no one ever presses free copies of their steamy novels into my hands.

  I even went to the ballet with Sergei a couple of times to see Grigor leaping about! It was quite conducive to plotting out the last chapters of The Orchid Huntress, and, through long practice, I was able to totally blank out Sergei’s running commentary on the finer points of the dancers’ technique, while smiling faintly and nodding, back in enigmatic mode.

  NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

  Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

  Dear Will Quinn,

  Thank you so much for the latest copy of Strimp! containing your exciting new poem cycle ‘Snort, snort, snort’. Avant-garde poetry magazines do not often come my way.

  I am so pleased that you found my advice helpful, and clearly your technique of ceaselessly bombarding every poetry publication with your work has paid off in an increasing number of acceptances, although I am sure that would not be the case were you not such an interesting poet.

  Things are looking promising for you, and good luck with that competition with the prize of having your first poetry collection published in book form! I will keep my fingers crossed on that one.

  Meanwhile, I wouldn’t give up your job just yet, unless you are an exceptional performance poet willing to do the rounds of small venues and literary festivals. Besides, your work clearly gives you lots of deeply meaningful life experience, which always makes for good copy.

  I wish you every success with your writing.

  Best wishes,

  Tina Devino

  Thirty

  On Film

  Dear Tony,

  I asked Sergei, and he said Russian Orthodox, whatever that is. Does this mean that you are going to forbid the banns? (Not that we intend putting them up in the first place.) Oh, do, please do!

  Tell Mary, regarding her kind enquiry as to the respective merits of bread-making machines over juicers as gifts, that I don’t have a wedding list, and will never have a wedding list, because there isn’t going to be a wedding. I know you are both finding this concept hard to grasp, but do try.

  Your affectionate sister,

  Tina

  The Wryhove Literary Festival was looming. Having been fêted a bit I didn’t feel quite so overwhelmed by the honour, though I was aware that earning huge amounts of money had never given other non-literary authors any street credibility with the highbrow set.

  Tershie agreed to Linny coming with me provided we booked in somewhere civilized for the duration, although at four months-ish pregnant I don’t think she was particularly delicate, only Tershie was touchingly concerned about her. As it turned out, it was just as well, because apparently things got booked up for miles around absolutely months ahead, but by flourishing indecently huge amounts of money Tershie managed to install us in a swish suite in a country-house hotel fairly near.

  Hereward Brunswick was staying there too, with a young female minder, and he joined us for dinner the first night. Linny said afterwards her thigh was black and blue, but I’d warned her not to sit too near to him because I had got his measure at Mallard Rise.

  I’d begged Linny to come to the writers’ panel event for support since I was quite nervous about being there with all those terribly serious literary types; but actually it was a big mistake, because when someone in the audience asked me whether I aspired to write something a bit better than chick lit one day and I replied that I didn’t consider myself a chick-lit writer in the first place (old broiler, maybe?), and this man persisted …

  Well, then Linny stood up, all five foot nine of her, bristling with indignation (I keep telling her about that facial hair, she really should have kept those laser appointments), and said I was more dick lit than chick lit – but then he wouldn’t know about that, would he?

  Then she turned scarlet and sat down suddenly and so did the man, and Hereward bobbed up at the back and shouted, ‘Hear, hear!’

  There was this stunned silence – you could have heard a page turn in the next tent – and the chairman wasn’t doing anything except catching flies with his mouth, so I looked around and said brightly, ‘Anyone got any more questions?’

  The chairman finally pulled himself together. ‘Actually, Ms … er … Devino, we’ve run out of time.’ Then he thanked the panel, though he gave me a strange look and I don’t somehow think they will be asking me again, unfortunately, because I enjoyed it in a strange sort of way. Poor Linny has probably been blackballed from anything literary for ever.

  But I still had to do my little talk next day, so I suggested tactfully to Linny after the panel thing that perhaps she might like to go to one of the other talks rather than mine?

  She said she was so sorry, she was absolutely mortified and she didn’t know what had come over her, even when I assured her it was worth it to see everyone’s faces, but she wanted to turn tail and flee for home.

  ‘No, we’re here for the duration, Linny, and we’re damned well going to enjoy ourselves!’ I informed her, and she was sulking a bit until she spotted an old beekeeper’s hat in an antiques shop and insisted on wearing it immediately with the veil down, and only took it off for meals.

  Actually it worked terribly well because everyone thought she was someone famous incognito and so I got fame by proximity; and in that safari suit with the unfortunate breast pockets and the billowing waistline that could have hidden six pregnancies, and bearing in mind the scale she’s built on, she could have been absolutely anyone, male or female, but with a leaning towards the Attenboroughs.

  My talk on the sexual imagery of flowers seemed well attended, but mostly by men, oddly enough, and some of the questions were a bit offbeat in a scholarly sort of way. Strangely, there seemed to be a clear division betw
een the literary academics who would quite happily argue minor points and references all day in a dry-as-dust finicky manner, and the loose cannons like Hereward Brunswick, who just wanted to dig dirt.

  But they all seemed to have read the newspaper serialization of Sergei’s memoirs and had made their own minds up about me, and why men should think that because I got up to fun and frolics with one man, I was up for it with any of them I simply didn’t understand. I doubted whether some of them had looked in the mirror within living memory, but it was always so. I had to verbally slap a few of them around the head before I could escape from the tent with my virtue more or less intact.

  Oh, and Elvira Pucklington was there, because she introduced herself afterwards and said she was a huge fan, and she knew my aunt, the other Tina Devino, who had been a great help in getting her published.

  ‘Oh, yes, she’s a batty old tart and I’m afraid we’ve rather lost touch, but I hear she’s living quietly in Shrimphaven, running some kind of literary agency, these days,’ I said quickly, and just then Hereward bounced up and said he was going to escort me to the refreshment tent for a stiff bracer, which was all right by me as long as he wasn’t it.

  When I staggered out into the sunshine again I found Linny had been searching for me and she said, ‘Why do people keep asking me for my autograph?’

  ‘Because you look like someone famous, but they don’t know who, so they’re hedging their bets. What did you sign as?’

  ‘Sigmunda Rigley, my pen name for M & B,’ she said proudly, so that must have puzzled them.

  I went to Hereward’s talk, which was a lot of entertainingly salacious froth, really, about his recent book-signing tour and what else he had put – or tried to put – his name on besides books. The audience listened to him with total respect because he was (a) male and (b) writing thrillers, which were mostly read by men, and so obviously several rungs up the literary ladder above my mere romances.

  And at the end, when someone asked him where he got his inspiration from, as they always do, he said he got most of the inspiration for the purple passages from beautiful ladies of his acquaintance and then he winked at me and tossed me the pink carnation from his buttonhole.

  I can think of several words to describe Hereward, but ‘irrepressible’ is the only one you could repeat in polite company.

  Thirty-One

  Picture This

  NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

  Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

  Dear Ms Mendosa,

  Thank you for your new manuscript, Tears of the Mangrove, a sequel to your first. And thank you also for the bundle of East Caribbean currency. I am sure you are quite right about the exchange rate.

  I do admire your perseverance in continuing to write in English instead of exploring the Spanish markets for your interesting works, despite your lack of success in placing Voice of the Mangrove to date. And it is always a bit of a gamble writing a sequel to something that hasn’t yet been published.

  Actually, your grasp of English has improved in this one, making it much easier to read, though I have pointed out in the margins where you have gone somewhat astray with the grammar.

  The major problem I can see is that the plot is more or less the same as the first: the beautiful, recently widowed, very young Cuban heroine finds that she is not quite so well-provided for by her late husband as she expected and so travels to Grand Cayman in search of husband number two. Like her first, her new husband is old, American, overweight, and very, very rich (she checks that out thoroughly this time, which readers might find just a little cold-blooded). Then he dies in that freak boating accident while they are sailing together on his yacht, leaving her adrift alone in the vast Caribbean sea until she is rescued by attractive tourist-boat-boy Dessie.

  Mind you, I’m not saying that this one won’t sell, though readers may find it hard to empathize with a heroine who, however young and beautiful, is so clearly on the make.

  Anyway, you will find my full critique enclosed, and I will send it addressed to your friend on St Lucia as you requested. I am sorry to hear that the trouble you were having with the authorities on Grand Cayman (although you didn’t say exactly what) caused you to have to leave the island so suddenly, and without most of your treasured possessions. But how fortunate that your new boyfriend has his own boat!

  Hope everything has been resolved by the time you get this.

  With best wishes,

  Tina Devino

  I spent many happy hours rearranging and nurturing the plants in Sergei’s conservatory while Linny did much the same for the room she was transforming into a nursery, both sets of activities probably being facets of the same innate urge.

  Since he’d bought the biggest specimen of everything on the list that he could, it wouldn’t surprise me if Sergei would very soon be picking his own bananas without leaving the house, not to mention pineapples.

  Of course, he would actually have to get up off the wicker daybed to do that, where he lazily reclined like a pasha, sipping tea while watching me and making earthy suggestions, not all to do with the plants.

  Sergei’s book launch party was like a repeat of our engagement party on a much larger scale, and was held in an art gallery, but lots of the guests were invited by the publishers so we didn’t know who half of them were.

  As I stood next to him, sipping pink champagne while we talked about our respective writings to all kinds of people, it occurred to me that this was it: I was now a success.

  Not only had I just signed a new and lucrative contract with Crimp & Letchworth, I was also engaged to a gorgeous and very famous man, while still having plenty of time to lust after other men as the fancy and inspiration took me. Everything was going so well …

  Then Miracle (whom I certainly didn’t invite) loomed up with a one-hit-wonder in tow, but don’t ask me which one, because they all look the same to me, and congratulated me on the deal and the engagement. Then she said I remembered Tanya, didn’t I? And had I heard? Tanya here had sold the film rights to her new book, and she was sure it would be a big commercial success.

  Nathan suddenly appeared behind me and said, ‘Don’t you mean they’ve taken an option on it, Miracle? There’s many an option taken up that never gets to be a film, but well done anyway, Tanya.’

  That was quite sharp of him, but I was still staring at Tanya and thinking, wow, a film! Now there was a possibility I’d never even thought of before …

  As Miracle, smiling stiffly, moved away like a barge attended by a light and giddy skiff, I grasped Nathan by the arm and said urgently, ‘Nathan, about film rights—’

  I was right about Sergei’s book, because it bounded up the charts like a monkey up a banana tree, and he was asked to write a biography of a ballerina but he said no, he wasn’t interested in any other dancer’s career, which was honest.

  He certainly didn’t need the money either, being cleverer with his investments than many people would expect, so his ballet teaching and SergeiYoga classes were because he liked doing them. He just sort of presided over the exercise classes anyway, which were actually taken by relays of out-of-work ballet dancers. He still spent hours every day exercising, though what he was keeping fit for I leave to your imagination. At least he’d be in trim for the new exercise DVD when they started to shoot it.

  Ballet in some form was his life, just as writing was mine, and the critiquing, which I could give up now, of course, though I thought I would really miss it, so I wasn’t going to stop just yet.

  And let’s be practical here: how many novelists sign a big contract with a major publisher and then that’s the last you ever hear of them? They don’t earn out their vast advance, the next one’s given no publicity, and then it’s ‘Goodbye, we’ll have to let you go …’ I could still go up with the rocket and down with the stick, and I could name you a round half-dozen off the top of my head who’ve done just that.

  Nathan said I was being paranoid, I’d made it, bu
t I told him, ‘Not until one of my novels is a film!’

  The Orchid Huntress, which I’d finished bar a polish, could be the one to break into the wonderful world of moving pictures, preferably before some bright spark decided Sergei’s spicy memoirs would make an even better one.

  But who on earth could they get to play his part? It’s as if there can only ever be one truly amazingly attractive male ballet star at a time, and he was it for his generation, though Grigor was shaping up very well for the next.

  Linny was busy writing another Mills & Boon while awaiting the advent of her offspring, but she’d also suddenly gained a keen interest in genealogy and was tracing her family history, which apparently now numbered an exiled Slavic princeling among her ancestors, though it was the first I’d heard of it.

  Mind you, she said anything was possible when you had a Lebanese grandmother, which was unanswerable really, and I wondered whether records were harder to trace out there.

  However, she looked perfectly unselfconscious while telling Tershie all about her findings while I was there one day, so maybe I have a deeply suspicious mind to think she might just have been hedging her bets.

  Our lives had all settled into a perfectly acceptable new pattern, so I had no intention of stirring anything up. I didn’t see why I couldn’t go on like this for ever, only, I hoped, with more bestsellers, a film or two and a bit of security in the form of a queen’s ransom in diamonds.

  Thirty-Two

  Sour Cream

  This morning I was sitting in Sergei’s tropical conservatory thinking happy thoughts and sipping tea out of a gilded pink tumbler, while he whipped up blinis and sour cream to go with the inevitable caviar, which I am resigned to now, because I could have fallen for a Scandinavian, who are apparently all mad about herring and eat it at every meal, according to Jackie, who once worked in Sweden for six months. So, thank my lucky stars for that one.