by Simon Brett
Jude recognized the type, the woman whose motive for offering her services as a volunteer was loneliness. Evvie worked at Fethering Library because it offered her the opportunity to talk to people. She probably was useful at times, but as she grew older became more of a liability. People like Evvie would create a problem for someone in Di Thompson’s position. At some point, she would have to suggest that the woman’s infirmity meant that her helpful volunteering days were over. Yet she would know that, when she spoke those words, she would be destroying what remained of the woman’s life. And, since Eveline Ollerenshaw lived right next door to the library, the old lady would be constantly reminded of what she had lost.
Jude saw this all in a flash, and what happened next illustrated the situation perfectly. The chair Evvie leant on in the middle of the room was now the only one unstacked. Di Thompson came across, saying, ‘Can I give you a hand with that?’
‘No, I can manage,’ the old lady repeated with dignity. And, dragging the chair behind her, she tottered across towards the trolley.
Jude took advantage of the lull to find the Ladies. It was through the staff room which, compared to the chilly space of the main library, was almost excessively hot.
Jude was not to know it, but a library staff room would have been a very familiar sight to Burton St Clair – or indeed any other author. A career in literature involves many library talks and, before each one, the staff room is where the visiting writer is invariably ensconced. There he or she will be offered sandwiches, cakes and something to drink. This last may sometimes be a glass of wine. More often it’s tea or coffee and, occasionally, the minimum hospitality of a glass of water.
Conversation would be manufactured during this pre-talk hiatus by a senior librarian, who would keep having to rush off to check that the chairs are set out properly or that relevant volunteers have arrived and know what to do. The librarian might also double-check with the author the text of the introduction that she (it usually is a she) is planning to make. She is almost always more nervous about delivering these two minutes than the writer is about spouting for the three-quarters of an hour of all the old rubbish that he or she has delivered many times before.
The staff room of Fethering Library was almost identical to all the others around the country. There was a sink, over which hung a row of mugs (whose ownership was a carefully respected issue of protocol). There was a fridge, and lockers in which the staff would stow their valuables. Shelves were piled with books and files. Pinned on a corkboard were various directives from the county librarian, mostly about Health & Safety issues. There was also literature from Unison, the public service users’ union.
Under a table was a cardboard box on which was written in blue felt pen: ‘JAM JARS FOR VERONICA’.
Three bottles of red wine stood on the work surface. Their screw-tops had not been unscrewed. Being allowed to ‘breathe’ would not have made much difference to wine of that quality. Presumably the white was still in the fridge beneath.
On her return journey from the Ladies, Jude noticed that the wine bottles were still there. And, back in the main library space, she found their delayed appearance was causing complaint.
‘Come on, we’re meant to be getting a drink! Speed it up a bit! There are people dying of alcohol deprivation out here!’
The shouts came from the man who had had a go at Burton St Clair about his photograph. Clearly, he had a habit of bad manners. The good ladies of Fethering moved a little further away from him and, once space had been cleared, they clustered round the table where Burton St Clair was signing paperbacks of Stray Leaves in Autumn. As well as setting up the display screens, his publishers had also arranged a healthy supply of the books. They clearly regarded this particular author as one to invest in. And the way copies were being snatched up suggested that their instincts were correct.
Because most of the audience was preoccupied with the evening’s author, Jude found herself one of the first in the queue once the drinks table had finally been set up. The only person ahead of her was, predictably enough, the man in camouflage kit. A junior member of the library staff, a dumpy girl with green-dyed hair and too many facial piercings, was rather shakily pouring white wine into lines of glasses.
‘You got any red?’ asked the man.
‘Yes, I was just about to pour—’
‘Well, move it along, darling. I’m panting for a glass of red.’
The girl fumbled with opening the relevant bottle. Thank goodness it was a screw-top; dealing with a corkscrew might have been beyond her. As soon as she had poured one glass, camouflage man had picked it up and downed the contents in one. Then he held the glass out for a refill.
The junior librarian looked confused. She must have been instructed that the five-pound admission charge only included one glass of wine, but she was too cowed by the man’s belligerence to argue with him. Her expression also suggested that she wasn’t too bothered. The girl carried with her an air of truculent boredom. She refilled his glass.
‘Thanks, sweetie,’ he said, and moved away from the table with the satisfaction of someone who’d proved a point. Jude picked up a glass of white and followed him.
‘I was interested in what you said about the photograph,’ she lied. But she did want to get into conversation with this man. Her work as a healer had increased her natural curiosity about human psychology, and the man’s behaviour had intrigued her. Immediate confrontational rudeness of the kind he had just demonstrated did not come from nowhere.
Before he’d had time to respond to her opening remark, she thrust out a hand to him. ‘I’m Jude.’
He only hesitated for a moment before taking it and squeezing with a little more pressure than was necessary. Close to, he looked more youthful, early forties perhaps. A decade younger than she was.
‘Steve Chasen,’ he said. Jude recognized from long familiarity the way he was appraising her. She had always been attractive to men and, even now when her body had filled out and the haystack of hair on top of her head might no longer be naturally blonde, the magnetism remained. It did not worry her. She was not offended by men’s interest. And, though she never exploited it, she recognized that her attractiveness could sometimes be useful.
‘Well, it was a bit ridiculous, wasn’t it?’ said Steve Chasen. ‘With the real him bald in front of that poncy image that looks like a bloody album cover.’
‘Publicity photographs,’ Jude observed, ‘have always been more touched up than air hostesses.’
He conceded her a giggle.
‘And are you a writer?’ she asked. It was an educated guess. Why else would he be at the library to insult another author?
‘Yes,’ he replied, with a glint of hope in his eyes. ‘Have you read any of my stuff?’
Jude was forced to admit that she hadn’t.
‘You and a few billion others,’ he said cynically.
‘What sort of books do you write?’
‘Bloody good ones.’ He curled his lip. ‘Not that any publishers have yet recognized that fact.’
‘Ah. So you never have been published?’
He raised an admonitory finger and shook it at her. ‘Ah, depends what you mean by “published”. Not so easy to define these days. There are more possibilities out there than chopping down trees to produce Stray Leaves in Autumn.’ He gestured with contempt towards the table where Burton was still signing, full of bonhomie and magnanimity. ‘My books may not be “published” in the traditional sense, but they’re out there.’
‘By “out there” do you mean they’re e-books?’
‘Better than that. You can read them online, through my website. And I’ve got links to them through social media.’
Jude nodded, thinking that it had never been easier for a writer to make his book available, but the old problem remained. How did you get potential readers to know that it was available? The established publishing houses with their publicity departments would always have the advantage over the individual
, self-promoting author.
She found that a cheaply printed garish flyer had been thrust into her hand. Revenge of the Plague Planet was the book it touted. How had she known from the start that Steve Chasen would write science fiction? Though she read little fiction of any kind (except when she was on holiday), Jude had always had a strong resistance to anything involving other worlds or aliens. Through her varied life, she had encountered as much weirdness as she needed to in the real world.
‘You’ll like it,’ the author assured her. ‘Really got some ideas in it. Makes you think. Not like that bland pap which people like him produce.’ There was another derisory gesture made in the direction of Burton St Clair.
‘Do you actually know Burton?’ asked Jude.
‘What if I do?’ came the defensive reply.
‘Nothing, really. I just wondered what he’d done to annoy you.’
‘People like that don’t need to do anything to annoy me. His very existence annoys me. The world would be a better place if Burton St Clair wasn’t in it!’ Apparently deciding that he wasn’t going to better this as an exit line, Steve Chasen moved abruptly away from Jude. Saying, ‘I’m going to get another refill,’ he went across to cause further embarrassment to the young librarian at the drinks table.
‘Bit old to play the enfant terrible card, isn’t he?’
Jude turned at the sound of this urbane voice and found herself facing the man in pink trousers. Because her previous vantage point had been from behind the rows of chairs, this was the first time she’d seen him from the front. He was probably in his sixties, but he wore it well. His hair, ringing a central bald patch, was long but well cut. His generous lips wore a pleasingly sardonic expression.
‘I’m talking about God’s gift to the world of science fiction,’ he continued, nodding in the direction in which Steve Chasen had gone.
‘I thought you must be. So I gather you know him?’
‘Met him when the library set up a Writers’ Group. He was a member for a while; stopped coming when he discovered that other people wanted to talk about their writing too.’
‘Ah. Does that mean you’re a writer?’
‘Hardly. Spent my working life dealing with scripts, though.’ Jude looked at him for an explanation. ‘Television director. No work now, I’m afraid. Producers tend to favour the younger model.’
‘So you joined the Writers’ Group because you wanted to try your hand at creating your own television scripts?’
‘Good Lord, no. If there’s ageism in directing, there’s even more in writing. With a couple of famous exceptions, no one over sixty gets a look-in. Over fifty, probably. Television is a young man’s game.’ He spoke wryly, but without bitterness. He was just accepting the way the entertainment business worked.
‘If you’re not writing scripts in the Writers’ Group, what do you write?’
‘Very little. Or, to be more accurate, nothing. I went to a few meetings, but it wasn’t really for me. Full of old biddies who thought they could write poetry. Though actually I should be careful who I describe as “old biddies”. In this day and age, the phrase is no doubt sexist. What’s more, the people I’m referring to are probably the same age as I am.’
‘Is it the Writers’ Group who organized this evening with Al … Burton?’ asked Jude.
‘No, that’s the library staff. The Writers’ Group actually no longer exists. Apparently, got too expensive. Funding cuts, you know, hitting libraries hard. Places like this have to rely increasingly on volunteers.’
‘Like you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I saw you dutifully folding up chairs.’
‘Yes, and I came early to put them out too. Least one can do. Anyway, I think, once they couldn’t use the library, the Writers’ Group started meeting in people’s houses. Whether they still do, I don’t know. I rather lost interest. But the former members certainly knew all about this evening.’ He looked round. ‘There are a lot of them here.’ He focused his attention back on Jude. ‘You called him “Burton”. Does that mean you know him?’
‘I was a friend of his first wife’s. Used to see a lot of them at one point. We’re talking twenty years ago. I haven’t seen either of them for a while.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t think he needs other female friends now he’s got the immaculate Persephone.’ The man spoke with sly cynicism, and his words ambiguously contained the possibility that Jude’s relationship with the author might have been more than friendly.
Jude instantly picked up on that. ‘As I said, it was Megan who was my friend. I only met Burton through her.’
‘And are you saying he never came on to you?’
‘No, I’m saying that when he did come on to me, I gave him a very immediate and firm brush-off.’
‘Hm.’
‘The way you talk about him … I’m sorry, I don’t know your name …?’
‘Oliver. Oliver Parsons.’
‘I’m Jude.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Oh?’
‘Come on, we both live in Fethering. Almost everyone in the place knows the names of all the others, even if they’ve never actually met.’
‘True. So I’m surprised I don’t know yours. And surprised we haven’t met before. Or even seen you round the place before.’
‘I used to travel a lot when I was directing. And now maybe I keep myself to myself. My wife died a couple of years back. I think she must have been the social one in our partnership.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
He shrugged. ‘One recovers.’
‘Anyway, what I was going to say, Oliver, is that the way you talk about him, it sounds as if you know Burton.’
‘I don’t know him, but I know a lot about him.’
‘Oh?’
But he didn’t take the cue to open up as much as Jude had hoped. ‘As you may have gathered from my questions,’ he said, ‘I’m very interested in crime fiction.’
‘Yes.’ Jude didn’t feel inclined to admit at that moment what she knew about Burton’s earlier writing, probably under the pseudonym of Seth Marston. She still had some residual loyalty to him. She’d wait and see where Oliver Parsons was going with the subject.
‘I’ve made a bit of a study of the Golden Age,’ he went on. ‘You know, Twenties, Thirties …’
‘Christie, Sayers, that lot …’
‘Exactly. And some of the less well-known ones. Yes, I got quite caught up in it, the research and so on, at the start. Some of the murder methods and things are quite ingenious, but …’ The tailing-off of his words suggested that the appeal of the Golden Age was fading for him.
At this moment, further conversation was prevented by the arrival of Di Thompson, who had just emerged from the staff room, clutching a sheaf of printed sheets. ‘Sorry, forgot these,’ she said in a rather flustered manner. ‘Evaluation forms. If you could just fill them in to say what you thought of the evening …?’
‘Are we allowed to be honest?’ asked Oliver Parsons sardonically.
‘Well, of course,’ Di replied, clearly not skilled in picking up when someone was joking. ‘That’s the aim of the exercise. If you need a pen, Vix has got some over at the drinks table.’
‘No, it’s fine, I’ve got one.’ Oliver reached into his tweed jacket.
The just-mentioned Vix was now sidling over, trying to attract her superior’s attention. Jude noticed that, as well as the green hair and piercings, a red snake tattoo was crawling up the girl’s neck. Her voice was local West Sussex, whiny and slightly put-upon. ‘Di, don’t know what I should do. There’s this feller who keeps just filling up his wine glass and they’re only supposed to get one—’
‘I can’t be bothered with that now, I’m busy!’
The sharpness of the reaction surprised Jude. When she had introduced Burton at the beginning and then thanked him at the end, Di Thompson had seemed a mild, rather benign personality, but her mood had certainly changed. Or maybe Vix, the junior l
ibrarian, had always got on her boss’s nerves. There was a recalcitrance about the girl’s body language which suggested she might not be the easiest person in the world to work with.
But even as Jude had this thought, another explanation offered itself. The star of the evening, Burton St Clair, came out from the same door as Di and, as he insinuated his arm around her waist, said, ‘Well, how about a drink for me? I think I’ve deserved one.’
The way the librarian flinched, and the speed with which she disconnected herself, asking a sharp ‘Red or white?’, suggested that, however well he’d gone down with most of his female audience, here was one Fethering woman Burton St Clair had failed to charm.
FOUR
Burton St Clair asked for red wine and there was a moment of confusion while Vix Winter explained to her senior that there wasn’t any left on her table and she’d have to go back to the staff room to get some. Di, apparently unwilling to spend more time with the evening’s guest than she had to, said she’d come and help.
Burton St Clair directed at Jude what he would probably have defined as ‘a roguish smile’. ‘Long time no see. I’m so glad you made the effort to come to hear my modest presentation.’
‘No worries. I live just down the road.’
‘Funny. When we used to see a lot of each other, in what feels like another life, it never occurred to me you might end up in a backwater like Fethering.’
Jude shrugged. ‘It suits me very well.’
‘And what are you doing now? When we last met you were a restaurateur … or was it a model?’
‘I did a bit of both back then.’
‘And are you still …?’
His look suggested that Jude’s fuller figure might not now be so much in demand for fashion shoots. Rather than be offended by the implication, she giggled. ‘I’ve done a lot of things since then. Now I’m a healer.’
‘A healer?’ Burton’s eyebrows rose towards his receding hairline. ‘What, you mean “laying on of hands” and ginseng and bloody dumping hot stones on people’s—’
