On Beulah Height. Reginald Hill

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       EIGHT

      Ellie Pascoe was ready for fame. She had long rehearsed her responses to the media seagulls who come flocking after the trawlers of talent. For the literary journalist doing in-depth articles for the posh papers she had prepared many wise and wonderful observations about life and art and the price of fish and flesh, all couched in periods so elegant, improvement would be impossible and abbreviation a crime.

      For the smart-arses of radio and television she had sharpened a quiverful of witty put-downs that would make them sorry they’d ever tried to fuck with Ellie Pascoe!

      And for her friends she had woven a robe of ironic modesty which would make them all marvel that someone revealed as so very much different could contrive to remain so very much the same.

      She’d even mapped out a History of Eng. Lit. account of her creative development.

      Her first novel, which she steadfastly refused to allow to be published, but whose discovery in her posthumous papers was the literary event of 2040 – no make that 2060 – is the typical autobiographical, egocentric, picaresque work by which genius so often announces its arrival on the world stage. Much of it is ingenuous, even jejune, but already the discerning eye can pick out that insight, observation and eloquence which are the marks of her maturity.

      Her second novel, which after much pressure and considerable revision, she allowed to appear at the height of her fame, is the story of a young woman of academic bent who marries a soldier and finds herself trying to survive in a world of action, authority and male attitudes which is completely foreign to her. The autobiographical elements here are much more under control. She has not merely regurgitated her experience, but first digested it then used it to produce a fine piece of … art.

      (That metaphor needed a bit of work, she told herself, grinning.)

      But it is in her third novel, which exploded her name to the top of the best-seller lists, that the voice of the mature artist – assured, amused, amusing, passionate, compassionate, compelling and melismatic – is heard for the first time in all its glory …

      After Peter had left that Sunday morning, she lay in the sun for a while, playing the fame-game in her mind, but found that it quickly palled. If it ever did happen, she guessed it would be very unlike this. Reviewers, interviewers, and programme makers might be the poor relatives at the great Banquet of Literature, but one tidbit they were always guaranteed was the Last Word.

      So finally her thoughts turned to where she had been trying to avoid turning them – to Peter.

      She knew – had known for some time – that something was going on inside him that he wasn’t talking about. He wasn’t a reticent man. They shared most things. She knew all the facts of the case which had thrown up the devastating truth about his family history. They had talked about them at great length, and the talk had lulled her into a belief that the wounds she knew he had suffered would heal, were already healing, and only needed time for the process to complete. She was sure he had thought so too. But he’d been wrong, and for some reason was not yet able to admit to her the nature of his wrongness.

      So far she hadn’t pressed. But she would. As wife, as lover, as friend, she was entitled to know. Or, failing those, she could always claim the inalienable right of the Great Novelist to stick her nose into other people’s minds.

      The thought made her pick up her notebook and pen and start considering the jottings she’d made for her next opus. But looked at with these personal concerns running around inside her head, and this sun beating down on its outside, the jottings seemed a load of crap.

      Dissatisfied, she got up and went into the house in search of something that would really stretch her mind. All that she could come up with was a pile of long neglected ironing. She switched the radio on and set to work.

      It was, she discovered (though she would not have dreamt of admitting it outside the cool depths of the confessional which, as a devout atheist, she was unlikely ever to plumb anyway), a not unpleasant way of passing a mindless hour or so. From time to time she went outside again to give herself another shot of ultraviolet, followed by another slurp of iced apple juice, while the local radio station burbled amiably and aimlessly on. She even ironed some bed sheets with great care. Normally her attitude to sheets was that, as one night’s use creased them like W. H. Auden’s face, what was the point in doing much more than show them a hot iron threateningly? But Rosie, she guessed, would have been sleeping on Jill Purlingstone’s smooth and crisp sheets last night, and while the Pascoe house might not be able to compete by way of swimming pools and ponies, in this one respect, on this one occasion, her daughter would not feel deprived.

      The radio kept her up to date with reports of the marvellous weather and how the incredible British public were finding intelligent ways of enjoying it. Like starting fires on the moors or sitting in crawling traffic queues on the roads to and from the coast.

      Finally, with the ironing finished and the apple juice replaced by a long gin and tonic, she sat down calm of mind, all passion spent, at about six o’clock, just in time to hear a report of a major traffic accident on the main coast road.

      There was an information number for anxious listeners. She tried it, found it engaged, tried the Purlingstones’ number, got an answering machine, tried the emergency number again, still engaged, slammed down the phone in irritation and as if in reaction it snarled back at her.

      She snatched it up and snapped, ‘Yes?’

      ‘Hi. It’s me,’ said Pascoe. ‘You heard about the accident?’

      ‘Yes. Oh God, what’s happened? Is it serious? Where …’

      ‘Hold it!’ said Pascoe. ‘It’s OK. I’m just ringing to say I got on to the co-ordinator soon as I heard the news. No Purlingstones involved, no kids of Rosie’s age. So no need to worry.’

      ‘Thank God,’ said Ellie. ‘Thank God. But there were people hurt …’

      ‘Four fatalities, several serious injuries. But don’t start feeling guilty about feeling relieved. Keeping things simple is the one way to survive.’

      ‘That what you’re doing, love?’ she asked. ‘How’s it going? No mention of developments on the news.’

      ‘That’s because there are none. We’ve got a couple of dog teams out on the fell now and as many men as we’ve been able to drum up with all this other stuff. You’ve heard about the fires? God, people. I’m going to join the Lord’s Day Observance Society and vote for making it an offence to travel further than half a mile from home on a Sunday.’

      Beneath СКАЧАТЬ