The True Story of Maddie Bright

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  ‘McIntrick didn’t mention the royalties for Autumn Leaves, which was odd. You’d think that’s the first thing an agent would do. But he just said there was a second novel she wanted us to look at, the long-awaited Winter Skies.

  ‘I was thrilled but wary. Was it real? What was the novel about? How could we be sure? All of that. We talked, my senior editor and I, and agreed we would proceed with caution and anticipation in equal measure. The letters came soon after my own father’s passing, and Bright was in her late seventies then, so I was cautious on a number of counts. On the other hand, M.A. Bright might have a new novel! Worth a risk, I’d say.’ He grinned.

  ‘McIntrick and I corresponded over several months. We were preparing to meet the author herself—I planned a trip to Australia—and then the correspondence stopped. I was finalising dates for my visit and I got no reply. I sent further letters to the post office box but, again, no reply. To be honest, I assumed M.A. Bright really had died and I was sure we’d soon hear from the estate.

  ‘There wasn’t much more to be done other than start some sort of intrusive search, which was never an option. My father had asked me to respect M.A. Bright’s privacy ahead of everything else. That was the last conversation I had with him about her. It was paramount in relation to M.A. Bright, he said.

  ‘At any rate, it was not the way of Barlow Inglis to chase her, no matter how good the new book would be for us.’

  He sat back, sighed. ‘I heard nothing, and so there it lay. Every few years, we’ve followed up with a letter. No reply.

  ‘Until three months ago. We received a letter, not from Bright’s agent but from a fellow named Shaw, Andrew Shaw, who claims he’s a friend of Madeleine Bright. He used the same post office box address that the agent used fifteen years ago.

  ‘This Shaw fellow says M.A. Bright has had the second novel for some years and now wants it published. I wrote and asked politely about the delay and he wrote that she’d been tweaking it. That’s the word he used. Tweaking. Fifteen years of tweaking. ‘Shaw isn’t an agent, he says. He knows nothing about books, but he knows M.A. Bright well, he claims. There’s no email, no phone number, just the post office box again. But it’s the same one. I’m more wary than thrilled this time, but a new novel from M.A. Bright after all these years would save Barlow Inglis in the current climate. The long-touted sequel to Autumn Leaves? I’m willing to take that risk. You bet I am. Especially with a lost baby.’ He sipped his water as if it was whisky this time, to give himself the courage he needed.

  Victoria looked at him. Was he serious about the lost baby?

  ‘M.A. Bright wants you to interview her, the letter says.’ He smiled. ‘You know she’s never been interviewed? Not once. And she picked you.’

  ‘Really? What about when Autumn Leaves came out?’ Victoria asked, ignoring the flattery. ‘The publicity.’

  ‘In the twenties and thirties, we didn’t care so much about who wrote a book. All press requests came to Bingles and Sir Antony did the interviews. You’d never get away with that now. Talk about a cult of the author.’

  Victoria sat back. ‘So, have you read the new novel?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t have it yet, just the first chapter on file which McIntrick had enclosed with his letter.’ He leaned down to a red leather briefcase on the floor, flicked it open and took out a yellowed envelope.

  He handed it to Victoria. She took out a sheaf of unbound paper, a yellowing letter on the front. It smelled not musty but sweet, like honey. ‘What’s wrong with the t?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He sighed. ‘To be honest, this is all a little beyond me. My degree is in art history. I called Ewan when they mentioned your name.’

  Thanks, Ewan, Victoria wanted to say. It sounded so preposterous. Ewan surely wasn’t taking it seriously.

  Victoria picked up her glass, put it back down, skimmed the letter quickly. My client … another manuscript … chapter earlier forwarded … world rights. She had a picture of Ewan’s face in her mind, a study in mockery. It was probably a hoax, or some wannabe author taking advantage of Finian’s good nature. Why didn’t Ewan just say that instead of sending Victoria along today, especially given she had to get to Paris?

  On the other hand, what if it were real, M.A. Bright producing a new book decades after Autumn Leaves? What a scoop!

  ‘But how will you test its authenticity?’ Victoria asked. ‘The book, I mean. How will you know Bright wrote it and not this Shaw fellow?’ Victoria didn’t know where you’d start. ‘And what’s been going on for the last fifteen years?’

  ‘If it’s not genuine, it’s an awfully sophisticated ruse. In the first letters, the ones from the agent, there were details about the publication of Autumn Leaves that only Bright would have known. But you’re absolutely right. We can’t be sure. I think meeting her will help. She has that voice in Autumn Leaves. That would have to be reflected in the author herself, I think.

  ‘As I say, initially it was an agent who wrote to me. Ed McIntrick struck me as a pretty tough cookie. I don’t think he’d be easily fooled. He doesn’t seem to be in the picture now though. At the time, when we went searching for his agency, we couldn’t find him, not through other publishers or through the local society of authors. If he was Bright’s agent, she was his only client, I suspect.’

  ‘And you don’t know Bright personally,’ Victoria said. ‘She must be in her nineties by now.’

  He scratched behind his ear and frowned. ‘I know. It’s all a bit farfetched. I’ve made it clear to Shaw that if we are to publish, it cannot be on condition of anonymity. I can’t make it work, not these days. I have to meet M.A. Bright. And she has to stand up as the author. In the end, that may prove too difficult.

  ‘The newspapers leave her alone now because Autumn Leaves is old. Even if they knew how to find her, they’re not motivated. But if there were another book, I think they would go looking and they would find her. Your folk, I mean. She has to be robust enough in mind and body to withstand that, I should think. I won’t do this if she’s lost her marbles, say, and this Shaw fellow is just taking advantage of her. I don’t want to be accused of anything here. Barlow Inglis couldn’t survive one of those literary hoaxes. I won’t be tricked. Bright must agree to be revealed as part of all this. We must be convinced.’

  ‘That’s fair.’ Victoria sat back in her chair. ‘So, you’re going over?’

  ‘Yes. I had hoped I would precede you. But I have commitments here—actually, my son is singing in the opera in Vienna,’ he said proudly, ‘so I’d suggest I follow on from you if the story appears to have veracity. Ewan has agreed that Knight will fund an airfare now, and we’ll fund one later, nearer publication. This one’s a fishing trip, for both of us. But Ewan wanted you involved now because he thought there would be a process story about the new book and you’d need to be in on it from the start.’

  ‘Really?’ Victoria said. Ewan must have some inkling the story could be real to fork out for an airfare. Strangely, Victoria had a feeling that there was truth in this somewhere too. While she was still sceptical, it was too weird to be entirely false. It had to have something to do with the real author. And even if there was no book, it would be a great feature for Vicious: In search of M.A. Bright.

  ‘Well,’ Victoria said.

  ‘Well, indeed,’ Finian said.

  ‘At least it’s a consistently awful title. Autumn Leaves followed by Winter Skies,’ Victoria said.

  ‘Quite,’ Finian said. ‘Probably no need to say all this must remain between us. You can speak to Ewan, of course, but no one else.’

  ‘Of course,’ Victoria said.

  He breathed out. ‘I was relieved Bright said she wanted you.’ Victoria looked quizzically at him. ‘You’re Michael Byrd’s daughter. Some of your colleagues, I wouldn’t trust.’

  Victoria didn’t respond. Some of my colleagues, she thought, I wouldn’t trust. She looked at him. And if I were you, I wouldn’t trust me either.

 
; ELEVEN

  Brisbane, 1981

  I AM THINKING OF CONVERTING TO THE LATTERDAY Saints. They came today—I thought it was Andrew Shaw when I heard the knock—and one of them had the loveliest smile. It is possible I called him Andrew, because whatever I called him surprised him.

  It is now a full month since Andrew Shaw came to the house. He said he would be back but he hasn’t been back. Perhaps he’s decided to do as I asked and leave me alone. I’ve seen his truck parked outside the neighbours’ house. I find myself hoping he might visit without knowing why as I also know I will be difficult to get along with if he does.

  I saw him get out of the truck last week, early in the morning, and I nearly called out but stopped myself.

  The other Latter-Day Saint reminded me of my brother Edward. He could be funny, our Edward; he had such a good way with accents. He used to lean in close and train one eye on me and tell me people were threatened by his intellect. ‘I am very intelligent,’ he would say. For some reason, it never failed to make me laugh. I often wondered, did he make his jokes over there in France? Did the other boys value him the way we, his family, did? Was someone with him at the end? It’s the kind of thing you wonder about.

  I’m sure he’d have made me laugh about those poor lost boys from the Latter-Day Saints.

  I had seen the preview for the news earlier in the day, or at least the tail end of the preview. The writing has been going more slowly than I’d hoped. The television is surely the invention of the devil, who hates books.

  On the news preview, she was on the screen again, up close and broken down in tears. It’s a wonder the camera didn’t bump her, although perhaps they had a special lens. Perhaps the photographer was some distance away. She looked forlorn, just like a startled deer, even before she cried, her beige hair and jumper against a rainy English day. I didn’t have the sound on so I wasn’t sure what had happened. But, frankly, it’s no surprise to me. She’s lost weight too, I’ve noticed when I’ve seen pictures of her up at the newsagent. She’s on all the magazine covers looking like she needs to eat.

  They finished the preview with a picture I’ve seen before, many times, the first picture I saw of her after the newspapers got wind of her relationship with the prince. She was at work at the childcare centre, wearing a skirt she never bought to be see-through, a skirt you’d never pick as see-through, with one child on her hip, another holding her hand, a young photographer named Danny Brown having his fun by photographing her with the sun behind her so you see her legs straight through the skirt.

  We might put a picture of you in the paper in your underpants, Danny Brown, with danny brown stains on them, I said to the screen when the picture came up. I had made a note of his name the first time I saw the picture, in case I might have need. If I met him at the library, for instance, I could whack him with my bag. Who takes a picture of a young girl like that? Is this the world now?

  Nineteen. She’s nineteen years old.

  When I said to Ed earlier today that she was going to be on the news tonight and she’d lost weight, he said it was the wedding, planning for the wedding in July, just three months off. I said she was in a leg trap. Ed didn’t disagree. He’s gone home now. He’s not well, he said, and I noticed he has a cough on his chest. I didn’t say he ought to give up the cigarettes. He probably knows that, and if life teaches you anything it’s that the last thing people need is unsolicited advice about how they might live it. In my experience, even when people ask for advice, advice is not what they want. They want someone to say they’re all right.

  I’ve had no reply to my letter to Mr Barlow. Perhaps, like Mr Waters, he’s no longer with us. I imagine he might not be. He’d be well into his nineties now. Perhaps the new owner doesn’t want a second book. I should send a new first chapter, and I would if I’d actually written a new first chapter. It’s the right place to start, I think, and I also think I know where to finish, but the middle is a problem, and also the television, which keeps calling me.

  In the evening, I turned the television back on so I could watch the news itself. I was getting my glasses from the study when I heard a knock on the door. Another religion! I thought. I had started to wonder if, knowing about the broken leg, or knowing about the letter, some whisper from God above, they were circling like happy reapers, competing for my soul. It can’t be too much longer, they might say to one another.

  Not now, I muttered. I want to watch the news.

  I left the television on and went out to answer the door. My leg no longer bothers me too much. I am faster every day, and when I opened the door to Andrew Shaw I must have been grinning like a duck with pride at how quickly I’d managed the journey. Andrew Shaw grinned back, although he can’t have known why I was grinning. He’s that sort of person, the sort who grins for no earthly reason, just to return someone else’s grin. We all know those people. They are an insult to grumpiness.

  I tried to whip the grin from my face quick smart and did my best to look stern. Because he was employed by the neighbours I dislike so much, and because he was employed specifically to make judgements about the reliability of my house, I very much wanted to dislike Andrew Shaw. But he makes that task difficult. He is like the sun, making everything around him more bright, including my worst moods, which seem to flow out to him and pass away. This was the source of my conflicted feelings for him. I wanted to dislike him only a little bit more than I wanted to like him.

  Confronted with his lovely smile, my most worked-up stares of anger turn to the kind of idiotic grin I couldn’t get off my face now. It’s something to do with a silent energy our bodies must emit, and his positive energy is stronger than my negative. That’s what I said to Frank at the post office after Andrew Shaw’s first visit, although Frank looked at me oddly, as if I’d suggested he and I get married.

  ‘I’ve just dropped a written report next door,’ Andrew Shaw said, ‘and I promised I’d drop off a copy of what I found in relation to your place.’ He handed me a substantial document, twenty pages at least. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get it done until now. I’ve had a few dramas.’

  He’d already told the neighbours that my house was not a threat to theirs, he said, but he wanted to make sure I was aware of what was needed in terms of work. ‘Just to do the right thing here,’ he said. He nodded, looked concerned.

  Oh no, I thought then. He was after a chance. I had allowed myself to hope he was a good man, but he was just the same as the rest of them. Well, I wouldn’t be so easily fooled, I thought.

  There was a summary page; no costings, of course. That would come later, I was sure.

  I glanced at the summary. ‘It looks to me like so much work is needed I may as well bulldoze the house,’ I said, more worried about the seven o’clock news than the house, to be honest. When you don’t see the beginning, you never know what’s come before, and I didn’t want to miss her.

  ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘It’s an old house in need of maintenance. That’s all.’

  ‘The back wall eaten out by termites? That’s maintenance?’

  ‘Not the frame,’ he said. ‘As I said last time, I don’t think there’s structural in that.’

  ‘But it needs to be replaced?’ I said. Back walls wouldn’t come cheaply, I didn’t imagine. I turned my head, trying to hear whether the music had started for the news.

  ‘Well, treated first,’ he said, ‘and then, yes, there’s work there. But it’s not all bad, Miss Bright. Can I call you Maddie?’ He was standing one step down from me, just like the first time we met, which I liked. We were at the same level.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘The news is on. Do you want to come in? She’s lost.’

  ‘Diana,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ I found myself pleased he remembered.

  ‘Look, you don’t have to get me to do this work,’ he said, without coming in or acknowledging the news. I noticed his hair was longer and more unruly, and he looked tired. ‘It’s not that. But you should get it done. Is money the
problem?’

  Here we go, I thought. He’ll have a friend who can lend me the money. I know about these types. I was about to start saying as much when I noticed his truck parked down on the street was moving from side to side. Not very much, and at first I thought I must be imagining it, but it kept going, which made me think I couldn’t be imagining it.

  ‘How is it that your truck rocks like that?’ I asked, pointing.

  He looked at the car. ‘I’ve got my kids in the back,’ he said, ‘and they want to get home.’

  ‘I should think so,’ I said. ‘How old are they?’

  ‘Two and four. The dog’s with them.’

  ‘And you locked them in the car? With a dog? Have you not seen what happened at Ayers Rock?’

  He sighed. ‘To be fair, I wasn’t planning to be long and, yes, I need to get them home for tea. How about I call you in the next few days and see how you’re travelling with this?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said, feeling quite stressed about the news and also pressured by Andrew Shaw.

  My brain had been right, despite what my stupid body did by way of response to him. He was just a crook like the rest of them. And his crookedness was about money, the most disgusting crookedness there is, the way of greed, that basest human instinct.

  ‘Where’s their mother then?’ I said, looking down to see a dear little face at the window under the streetlamp. I couldn’t help but smile as a tiny hand came up to wave. I waved back.

  ‘She died,’ Andrew Shaw said then, and his own face, not unlike the little face in the car window, looked as if it might crumple into tears.

  I knew then that he would become a part of my life. Of course he would. Who needs money when children are without their mother? And who needs the news when someone has shared their truth with you?