Eirion stiffened. ‘Spooky stuff?’
‘I dunno, son. A spell or something, I suppose. Something to prove they can make things happen. I dunno, basically – it’s all cobblers, anyway.’
Jane looked at Eirion. She was still shaking. They had a little file on Mum; if the show lost momentum, shafting her became an option.
13
A Surreal Memory
BETTY’S DAY CLEARLY hadn’t been too great either. You could tell not so much from her face as from her manner: no bustle.
‘You don’t tell me yours, and I won’t tell you mine.’ Robin didn’t even lift his head from the kitchen table where he’d fallen into a sleep of dismay and frustration. ‘We’ll call it a shit amnesty.’
Ten-fifteen on this cold, misty, moonless night. Betty had been out since mid-afternoon. She’d been to see the widow Wilshire in New Radnor again, taking with her an arthritis potion involving ‘burdock and honeysuckle, garlic and nettle and a little healing magic’. Betty was good with healing plants; after pissing off her parents by walking out of teacher training, she’d worked at a herb garden and studied with a herbalist at nights for two and a half years. She’d gone to a whole lot of trouble with this potion, driving over to a place the other side of Hereford yesterday to pick up the ingredients.
‘How is she now?’
‘Oh... more comfortable. And happier, I think.’
Around six she’d phoned him to say she was hanging on there a while. Seemed Mrs Wilshire’s home help had not made it this week and she was distressed about the state of her house and her inability to clean it up. So Betty would clean up, sure she would. Wherever she went, Betty added to her collection of aunts.
‘OK,’ Robin said, ‘if she’s so much better, I give up. Where’s the bad stuff come in?’
‘It isn’t necessarily bad – just odd.’ Betty took off her coat, hung it behind the back door, went to get warm by the stuttering Rayburn. ‘So you first. It’s Ellis, isn’t it?’
‘No, haven’t heard a word from Ellis. This is Blackmore. He faxed. He doesn’t like the artwork.’
‘Oh.’ Betty pushed her hands through her hair, letting it tumble. ‘I did say it was a mistake, dealing with him directly. You should have carried on communicating through the publishers. If he can get hold of you any time he wants, he’ll just keep on quibbling.’
‘It was what he wanted. And he is Kirk Blackmore. And, frankly, quibbling doesn’t quite reach it.’
‘Not something you can alter easily?’
Robin laughed bleakly. ‘What the asshole doesn’t like is... everything. He doesn’t like my concept of Lord Madoc – his face is wrong, his hair is wrong, his clothes are wrong, his freaking boots are wrong. Oh, and he walks in the wrong colour of mist.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Betty came round the back of his chair, put her hands on his shoulders, began to knead. ‘All that work. What does it mean? What happens now?’
‘Means I grovel. Or I take the one-off money and someone else’s artwork goes on the book.’
‘There’s no way—’
‘Betty... OK. I am a well-regarded illustrator. Any ordinary, midlist fantasy writer, they’d have to go with it. Blackmore, however, is now into a one-and-a-half-million-pound three-book deal. He walks with the gods. Different rules apply.’
Betty scowled. ‘Doesn’t change the fact that he writes moronic crap. Tell him to sod off. It’s just one book.’
He sat up. ‘It’s not moronic. The guy knows his stuff. And it’s not just one book. His whole backlist’s gonna be rejacketed in the Sword of Twilight format, whoever’s artwork that should be. Which is seven books – a lot of work. Face it, I need Blackmore. I need to have my images under his big name. Also, we need the money if we’re gonna make a start on getting this place into any kind of good condition. We were counting on that money, were we not?’
‘I suppose.’
‘Right, end of story. Back to the airbrush.’
She bent and kissed his hair. ‘You’ve gone pale.’
‘Yeah, well, I didn’t expect it. It was a kick in the mouth. Do me good – getting too sure of myself. All right, go ahead. Regale me with the unglad tidings you bring back from the big metropolis.’
They’d taken to calling New Radnor the big metropolis, on account of it having three shops.
‘Well...’ Betty sat down next to him. ‘Mrs Wilshire was all worked up because she remembered she’d promised to get the home help to hunt out some of the Major’s papers relating to... this place. He kept them in a wooden summer house in the garden. And of course, the home help didn’t show up. Anyway, she gave me the key. That’s why I’m so late. I was in there for over an hour. Quite a little field HQ the Major had there: lighting, electric heater, kettle, steel filing cabinet.’
‘And she let you loose in there? Almost a stranger?’
‘She needs somebody to trust.’
‘Yeah.’ People trusted Betty on sight; it was a rare quality.
‘And she wanted it sorting out, but quite clearly couldn’t face going down there, because of the extra responsibility it might heap on her, which she’s never been good at. And also because there’s a lot of him still there. You can feel him – a clean, precise sort of mind; and frustration because he couldn’t find enough to do with it. So when he was buying a house, he was determined to know everything, get the very best deal.’
‘Not like me, huh?’
Betty smiled. ‘You’re the worst kind of impulse buyer. You even hide things from yourself. You and the Major wouldn’t have got on at all.’
‘So what did you find?’
‘Mrs Wilshire said I could bring anything home that might be useful. I’ve got a cardboard box full of stuff in the car.’
‘But you didn’t bring it in?’
‘Tomorrow.’ Betty leaned her head back. ‘I’ve read enough for one night. No wonder he kept it in the shed.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I mean, in one respect, Major Wilshire was like you – once he’d seen this place, he had to have it. But it also had to be at the right price. And of course he wasn’t remotely superstitious. An old soldier, he wasn’t afraid of anything that couldn’t shoot him. But I suppose that if he happened to come up with certain information that might upset any other potential buyers...’ Betty stopped and rolled her head around to ease tension. ‘It’s funny... the first time I ever went in those ruins, I thought, this is really not a happy place.’
‘This is something the agent should’ve told us? We get to sue the agent?’
‘How very American of you. No, I rather doubt it. All too long ago. Anyway, they told us about Major Wilshire’s death, which was the main drawback, presumably, as far as they were concerned.’
‘So what is this? The ruins are haunted?’
‘We jumped to conclusions. We assumed the church was abandoned because of flooding or no access for cars. Or at least you did.’
‘I assumed. Yeah, assuming is what I do. All the time. OK.’ Robin stood up. ‘I can’t stand it. Gimme the car keys, I’ll go fetch your box of goodies.’
When he arrived back with the stuff, she had cocoa coming up. He slammed and barred the door. He was tingling with cold and damp.
‘Whooo, it’s turned into fog! Was it like that when you were driving home?’
‘Some of the way.’
Just as well he’d fallen asleep earlier and hadn’t known about the fog; he’d have been worried sick about her, with the ice on the roads and all.
He dumped the cardboard wine box on the table. ‘Best not to go out at night this time of year, living in a place like this. Suppose it was so thick you drove into the creek?’