‘It’s quite good,’ she said. ‘Although some of the dialogue’s a bit dated. Who wrote it?’
‘I did,’ said Cory.
Harriet was so glad the room was lit by the fire and Cory couldn’t see how much she was blushing.
‘Have some meat and mushroom, it’s quite good too. I wrote it,’ he went on, ‘with a Hollywood Pro called Billy Blake. It’s the last time I’ll ever collaborate with anyone. It shortened my life, but I learnt a lot.’
‘What was she like?’ said Harriet, as the heroine took off her dress.
‘Thick,’ said Cory.
‘And him,’ said Harriet, as the hero hurled her on to the bed.
‘Nice fag — lives with a hairdresser.’
‘Golly,’ said Harriet, ‘I never knew that. If you know all these people, why don’t you ever ask them up here?’
‘Film people are all right to work with,’ said Cory. ‘But I don’t want to go into their houses, and I don’t want them here, talking the same old shop, movies, movies, movies. And I don’t like the way they live, eating out every night in order to be seen. If you hang around with them you start believing you’re a star, everyone treats you like a star, and doesn’t act normally towards you, and you start thinking that’s the way people really behave, and you lose touch with reality — which is lethal for writers.’
He threw a chicken bone at the fire, it missed, and Tadpole pounced on it.
‘No, darling,’ said Harriet, retrieving it from him, ‘It’ll splinter in your throat.’
Cory emptied the bottle between their two glasses.
‘The script I’m doing now’s a bastard,’ he said. ‘It’s about the French Civil War in the seventeenth century.’
‘The Fronde,’ said Harriet.
‘That’s right. It needs so much research.’
He picked up two biographies of French seventeenth-century aristocrats, which were lying on the table.
‘Instead of stuffing your head with novels, you could flip through these and see if you could find anything filmable.’
Harriet wiped her chicken-greasy fingers on Tadpole’s coat and took the books. ‘I could certainly try,’ she said.
Cory’s glass was empty. ‘Shall I get another bottle?’ she said.
‘Nope,’ said Cory. ‘That’s my lot for tonight. I’m not risking hangovers like yesterday any more. I’m turning over a new leaf. Bed by midnight, no booze before seven o’clock in the evening, riding before breakfast. Don’t want to die young, I’ve decided.’
‘I’ll cook you breakfast,’ said Harriet.
‘That’s going too far,’ said Cory nervously. ‘How did you get on with Sammy?’
Harriet giggled. ‘She’s staggeringly indiscreet.’
‘I hope you never discuss me the same way,’ said Cory.
‘I s-said you were absolutely marvellous,’ said Harriet, her words coming out in a rush. ‘Then you spoilt it by coming in and shouting about that telephone call from Italy. She’s going to take me to the Loose Box one evening to pick up rich Finns.’
‘Not sure that’s a very good idea. From all I’ve heard about that dive, “Loose” is the operative word.’
He picked up a handout from Jonah’s school that had been lying under the big biographies. ‘What’s all this?’
‘The Parents’ Association on the warpath again,’ said Harriet. ‘They want money for the new building, so they’re holding a Parents’ dance. Tickets are £3.50 and for that you get dinner, and a glass of wine. You should go. You might meet Mrs Right.’
‘Not if I’m going on the wagon,’ said Cory. ‘I can’t allow myself lapses like that.’
Chapter Fourteen
Cory kept his word. He cut down smoking and drinking to a minimum and although occasionally she heard the gramophone playing long into the night, he was usually in bed by midnight.
Most evenings he would come downstairs and talk to her while she was giving William his last feed. They spent a lot of time together, gossiping, reading, playing records, and talking about Cory’s script. Harriet was enjoying the research she was doing for him; it was the first time she’d used her brain since Oxford. She also found she was taking more trouble with her appearance. She was tired of saving up money for her and William’s future. She wanted to buy some new clothes.
There were also two new additions to the household: Python, a little black mare who arrived from Ireland — Cory was delighted with her and immediately began getting her fit for the point-to-point — and Tarbaby, a lamb with a sooty face, whose mother had died on the moors, and who Harriet was trying to bring up with a bottle.
‘Just like having twins in the house,’ said Cory, as he watched her make up bottles for the lamb and William.
One Monday towards the end of March she was cooking breakfast and getting Jonah and Chattie off to school when Cory walked in. She still couldn’t get used to seeing him up so early.
He threw a pair of underpants down on the kitchen table.
‘I know you think I’m too thin, but this is ridiculous. These pants belong to Jonah.’
Harriet went pink. ‘I’m sorry, I get muddled. I’m just putting eggs on for Chattie and Jonah. Do you want one?’
Cory grimaced.
‘It’d be so good for you,’ she said.
‘All right. I suppose so.’
He sat down and picked up the paper.
‘I haven’t finished my general knowledge homework,’ said Jonah, rushing in, one sock up and one sock down, hair unbrushed, waving an exercise book.
‘Who was Florence Nightingale?’ he said.
‘She was a lesbian,’ said Cory, not looking up.
‘How do you spell that?’ said Jonah.
‘You can’t put that,’ said Harriet. ‘Just say she was a very famous nurse, who looked after wounded soldiers in the Crimea.’
‘She was a lesbian,’ said Cory.
‘Can I have sandwiches today?’ said Chattie. ‘We always have mince and nude-les on Monday, it’s disgusting.’
‘You’ll eat what you’re given,’ said Cory.
‘What has a bottom at the top?’ said Chattie.
‘I really don’t know,’ said Harriet.
‘Legs,’ said Chattie, flicking up her skirt, showing her bottom in scarlet pants and going off into fits of laughter.
‘Oh shut up, Chattie,’ said Jonah. ‘I’m trying to concentrate. Why is a Black Maria called a Black Maria?’
‘She was a large black lady who lived in Boston,’ said Cory, ‘who helped the police arrest drunken sailors. She kept a brothel.’
‘What’s that?’ said Jonah.
‘Better call it a house of ill-fame,’ said Harriet. ‘Oh God, the toast’s burning.’
She rescued it from the grill, and cut three pieces into strips, then unthinkingly cut the tops off three eggs, and handed them out to Cory, Jonah and Chattie.
‘Toast soldiers,’ said Cory, ‘and no-one’s taken the top off my egg for years either.’
Harriet blushed: ‘Sheer habit,’ she said.
‘What’s a house of ill-fame?’ said Chattie.
Harriet dropped off Jonah and then Chattie.
‘Don’t forget to feed Tarbaby,’ shouted Chattie, disappearing into a chattering sea of little girls.
As Harriet walked out of the playground, she met a distraught-looking woman trying to manage three rather scruffy children, and a large grey and black speckled dog, who was tugging on a piece of string. Harriet made clicking noises of approval. The dog bounded towards her pulling its owner with it.
‘What a darling dog,’ said Harriet, as the dog put his paws on her shoulders and started to lick her face. ‘Oh isn’t he lovely?’
‘We can’t bear to look at him,’ said his owner. ‘Come on Spotty.’ She half-heartedly tried to pull the dog away.