Written in Blood(10)

Honoria jerked her head round suddenly as if she had been dreaming. She rose and took the catalogue without looking at Laura. Her lips, always of a censorious set, seemed even more rigidly clamped than usual. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes burned with a cold puritanical fire. Laura was glad when the front door closed behind her. And it wasn’t even as if anything would come of it. This wasn’t the first time such an idea had been mooted. Honoria was far too mean to spend five pounds, let alone five hundred.

It was when she was once more sitting at the table wondering whether to start crying again or make some fresh tea that she noticed the photograph. About half an hour before Honoria arrived Laura had removed it from its silver frame beside her bed and dropped it in the waste basket. Since then a certain amount of tear-soaked Kleenex had gone the same way but the picture was not quite concealed. Gerald’s face was still visible, smiling through the sog.

Had Honoria seen it? Seen it and filled in the missing links, crossing the ‘t’ in romantic and dotting the ‘i’ in despair. Laura raged at her own carelessness in forgetting the picture was in there. At Honoria for barging in. And at Gerald for being Gerald. Impelled by a mixture of anger and disgust she tipped the contents of the basket into the Raeburn and was immediately and bitterly sorry.





Rex was on the point of starting work. He had thoroughly masticated some bran and prunes, trotted his dog three times round the houses, taken fifty deep breaths in front of an open window and washed his hands. This last was of vital importance. Rex had seen a television interview once with a famous screenwriter during which the man had expressed great reverence for his hands, repeatedly referring to them as ‘the tools of his trade’. They were insured for huge amounts of money, ‘like the feet of Fred Astaire’, and the screenwriter washed them thoroughly each morning, using only the finest triple-milled honey and glycerine soap. After being carefully rinsed in spring water they would be patted dry with a virginally white, soft, fluffy towel kept pristine until that very moment beneath a sealed wrapper. Only then did the celebrated inkslinger even think of approaching his state-of-the-art computer.

Rex had been terribly impressed by the man’s faith in this ritual and straight away claimed it for his own. He knew the importance of routine. All the How To Succeed As A Writer manuals, of which he had practically every one extant, stressed it. Rex started work at eleven a.m. precisely. Not a minute later, not a minute earlier. There was a transistor on his desk to make sure he got it right. As the pips started he picked up his pen. By the time they finished he had written his first sentence. So vital was this procedure that if anything happened to disrupt it he never really recovered. He completed his two thousand words of course (writers write), but nevertheless felt peculiarly out of sync all day.

Now, at five minutes to eleven, someone knocked at the front door of Borodino. Rex, at that very moment turning into his study, heard them with a mixture of irritation and alarm. Would it be a matter he could handle in five - no, he glanced at his pocket watch, nearer four minutes? Or someone who would want to come in and start going on?

One thing was certain. There was no way he could go into his study and settle down with someone standing on the front step. For a start they would spot him through the window. And he couldn’t draw the curtains without giving away the fact that he was in. Botheration take it. He opened the door. It was Gerald.

‘Rex - I’m sorry.’ He stepped inside. ‘I know you start work around now—’

‘Yes. At eleven o’ clock act—’

‘I simply have to talk to you.’

‘Is it about the food?’ Rex was supplying a tin of glazed pralines, having been dissuaded from preparing one of his famous curries.

‘No. Though it is about tonight. In a way.’

To Rex’s dismay Gerald walked into his holy of holies. Just strolled in, lifted yesterday’s pages from the seat of a tapestry wing chair, dropped them on the floor and sat down. Rex stood and hovered, unable to bring himself to sit behind his desk merely for the purpose of idle banter. He waited, but having moved in the first instance so decisively Gerald now seemed to have difficulty getting to the point.

He stared distractedly out at the garden - not seeing the bird table, a battleground of squabbling starlings and sparrows, or Rex’s great hound, Montcalm, absentmindedly truffling among the frosty cabbage stalks - while Rex stared, covertly, at him.

Gerald looked terrible. He had not shaved and looked as if he hadn’t washed either. His eyes were red-rimmed and crusty with sleep. He kept clenching and unclenching his fists while seeming to be unaware of the fact. Rex, genuinely concerned, put all thoughts of The Night of the Hyena aside and said, ‘Gerald old chap. You look completely done in. Would some coffee help?’