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June 4th 2019
‘How was it?’
‘Oh, the usual. Got to up our game, market share dropping, Pearson beating us in the upper-intermediates. And the train ride back a nightmare. Bomb scare at Paddington, stuck for an hour on the platform.’ He tossed his briefcase onto the sofa, the day’s tension coming out in a grumpy sigh, and crossed to the drinks cabinet to pour a scotch. He took a gulp before pecking her on the cheek. ‘And you? A good day? Safe and serene in the pastures.’
‘Productive, mmm. Two more chapters done. Lunch with Julia. A bit of gardening. Oh, and I signed us up for that course I mentioned.’
‘The one in Provence? Are you sure it’s good? I said I’d check up on that man’s credentials. Never did. What was his name again?’
‘Gareth Forster. Best-selling author, but anyone says that these days. Written a couple of thrillers. Oh, he’s not James Patterson but I’m not that bothered. It’ll be good just to bat around some ideas.’
‘Couldn’t you do that with Julia?’
‘She’s not that keen to see me branch into adults. Not as long as she thinks there’s mileage in Lucy.’
Julia was her agent. She knew when she was onto a good thing. ‘And is there?’
‘Lucy could go on forever. But I fancy a change.’ Like Joanne, you know, after she’d finished with Potter. That’s what she’d said when she first spoke of the course. Joanne. Not Jo – not yet a member of the inner circle – but on intimate terms with the most successful novelist in history. Except that as far as he knew, she’d met ‘Joanne’ once, half a dozen years ago, at a conference about fantasy worlds. Never mind – in Penelope’s world, it was ‘Joanne.’ Oh, yes, Penelope knew a lot about fantasy worlds.
‘Besides, it’ll be a break. Then we could travel around a bit.’
‘Right.’ Martin grimaced, staring into his whisky. Travel around. She liked that. Writing in the morning, sightseeing in the afternoon. They used to stay in hotels, which suited him fine, but the last few years they’d rented, and room service switched from liveried staff to Martin: fetching and carrying of suitcases, cups of tea, glasses of wine, seeing that she was comfortable. Martin Best, professional valet. At your service. He wouldn’t be surprised if one day she started tipping him.
But hey, why not? This was the year of her fiftieth birthday, their tenth anniversary, so a week or two in Provence, Penelope coughing up – go for it! He might even resurrect that novel of twenty years ago. He’d never heard of Gareth Forster but he had a couple of books out there, which was more than he could say for himself. Proper books, that is, not the guff he had to churn out for the wops and krauts and frogs. They want to learn English, fair enough, but the sooner we’re shot of the Brussels fucking gravy train, the better. He drained his glass, grimaced again, and placed his hand on his heart. Must be going wild. When you already have an irregular heartbeat coupled with high blood pressure, a day like this could be enough to kill you. Whisky wasn’t the best medicine of course, but a quick shot dissipated the stress. Now he needed to wind down properly over a pint.
‘Fancy a drink before dinner? I’m nipping down to The Fox if you want to come.’
She didn’t. He knew she wouldn’t. She very rarely came to the pub, preferring her own company to other people’s. Including his, no doubt. But if he didn’t ask, she’d sulk. She was good at that. Penelope’s sulks could last for days, ending abruptly when she decided she’d punished him enough.
Ten years. Jesus! Where had his life gone? More to the point, he thought as he got back into the car, where was it going? The question made him shake his head wryly at his own predicament. Midlife crisis still not over. Soon it would be too late.
Too late for what? For dumping her, that’s what. Recognising the mistake, being honest with himself, seeing himself as he really was. A hanger-on like her so-called friends who pretended not to notice. Like Julia. Though at least Julia had an excuse. It wouldn’t do to tarnish the image of the author of Lucy Locket.
You ought to get out more, promote yourself. Presentations, conferences... Would you like me to get you a slot at the Hay-on-Wye festival? That was a few years back, when Julia harboured the notion that ‘getting out’ was what Penelope needed. She never actually said, ‘It would do you good,’ because that would be to recognise there was a problem. And every so often, dutifully, Penelope did ‘get out’, doing the round of book signings and interviews whenever a new title was launched. She performed remarkably well, her answers a little succinct maybe, but always pertinent. Good for sales no doubt, and Julia was pleased, but it didn’t do Penelope any good. She simply developed the trick of being there just enough to handle the occasion, as if demonstrating some spectacular advance in artificial intelligence. But the real Penelope was somewhere else. You never knew quite where the real Penelope was.
In cancer remission. Please don’t tell anyone. Julia doesn’t know. I’d rather it stayed that way. That was a couple of years after they married. Every so often, she went to see the oncologist in Oxford, coming back with long reports of what he’d said, the results of tests, T-cell levels not as good as they should be, complications that needed to be monitored. At first he offered to accompany her, but she didn’t want to put him out, and what with his heart, he saw enough of doctors already. On her return she was always upbeat, even when the news was bad, and he admired her optimism and courage, feeling almost ashamed that he so often thought of his own mortality with a suffocating sense of dread. The more fickle my heart in its work, the more constant in its love for you. He wrote that in a birthday card which she kept for months on the dresser.
One day when she went for her tests, a meeting of his was cancelled, and he went to the bookshop in Banbury, and there she was with Julia, the pair of them happily browsing. They didn’t see him and he hastily withdrew, but he told her later and she said she’d got confused with the date of her appointment. The next time he went to Oxford, he made discreet enquiries. Cancer? What cancer? We have no record of that. A biopsy once but the result was negative.
When he challenged her, it didn’t faze her one bit. A foible, she said, a facet of her personality that was good for her creativity. To listen to her, you’d think it made her a fascinating person to be with.
He wasn’t sure why she did it. Mythomania? Compulsive telling of tales? Her previous marriage was another one. The way she spoke of him, you’d think her husband was Bluebeard, and she was constantly foiling his attempts to kill her. She’d managed to escape his clutches, but he could be back any time. Was that all nonsense too? She was good at playing the victim. You might say it was her speciality. That and celebrity friends. You met them of course, in a sense you couldn’t avoid it. Living in the Cotswolds, you rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous. If he wanted, he could say he was a mate of Jeremy Clarkson’s. If he was Penelope, he would. A little chat in the pub would be turned into a tour of Argentina.
But she could go for a long while quite sensibly. More discreet enquiries among her friends led him to realise that she spun different stories to different people, and he wondered how she kept track of what she’d said to whom. Worse than the plot of Bleak House. Try to summarise that in an EFL reader. Then it struck him that she didn’t have many friends in any case. And the ones she did have were after a free meal or an invitation. Hangers-on, who suspected she was odd, but humoured her, listened to her tales as if they believed them. Penelope fed them what they wanted to hear, and if she got caught out, she simply kept on bluffing. Double or quits.
He parked outside The Fox and sat for a while twisting the keyring in his fingers. Creativity. Maybe it was true. Lucy Locket couldn’t tell dreams from reality, lived them the other way round. Could Penelope ever write those books if she wasn’t the way she was? She was writing about herself. Who was he, in any case, to question it? When he got fed up with summarising Dickens, he’d asked about writing one himself. Sure, his editor said, there was always room for original titles, upper-intermediate especially, you know the sort of thing, a murder mystery would be perfect. Martin delved into Agatha Christie, figured out how she did it, but when he sat down to do it himself, nothing came. Next month, he told his editor, but he kept putting it off. Frankly, it was easier massacring Dickens than making one up yourself.
He wondered what she’d come up with during the course. Maybe nothing, though that seemed wishful thinking. A week with a new audience would be too tempting. With a bit of luck, though, it would be harmless, perhaps no more than a little embellishment on the William and Kate story. That was one of her favourites.
Of course, if he dumped her, he’d lose everything. The house was hers, he was paying his first wife alimony, his EFL earnings could never buy him a place in the Cotswolds, not like this. As he got out of the car and walked towards the pub, his attention was caught by a brand new Aston Martin Vantage. Was Jeremy in the pub? Could be. You never knew what feat of engineering he’d been given to test this week. Martin straightened his hair, tucked in his shirt, prepared himself to share a couple of jokes, comment on the latest Brexit news. Yes, he thought, as he stepped inside, there are perks to everything. Even marriage to Penelope.
