'Not much. Lop a good ten years off her age, that's all.'
'Get away!'
The manager saw Cathy installed and moved swiftly across to deal with Dorothy Birdwell and an increasingly irate Marius, who was quick to complain about what he saw as second-rate treatment.
Responding to Cathy's request, Frank had positioned himself midway along the queue, feigning an interest in a shelf of books dealing with railways. If he went and stood right behind her, he'd only succeed in looking like a semipro bodyguard, with his brains firmly in his biceps.
'Hello, Miss Jordan. It's really nice to meet you. My husband and I've read all of your books, haven't we, Trevor? I wonder if you could just sign this for me? Yes, that's it Janice and Trevor. That's lovely. Oh, yes, and the date. Ta ever so much. Bye-bye.'
The first railway in Britain, Frank read, was a simple set of wooden beams laid on the ground in Nottinghamshire in the reign of Elizabeth I, to transport coal from the coal field
Mollie drifted off towards the contemporary fiction shelf and thumbed through the latest Michele Roberts.
'You're not going to stop writing them. Miss Jordan? I mean, you won't pack it in will you? You'll not get bored with Annie? You can't, not while there's so many of us, all waiting for the next' Confused between the LMS, the GWR, the Southern and the LNER, Frank set the' book back. Mollie moved on 152 to find something that would do for her mother's birthday. Fay Weldon or Joanna Trollope, perhaps. Something that would take away the taste of the Jeanette Winterson she had given her the year before.
Cathy Jordan's hand was beginning to ache and she still hadn't got to the additional copies she was sure the manageress would want her to sign for stock. But at least the end of the line was at hand, and not a single troublemaker in sight.
The queue to Dorothy Birdwell's table had long since dried up and she was still sitting there, straight-backed and hopeful, Marius gently massaging away a little stiffness in her shoulders, whispering in her ear.
'What name would you like me to put?' Cathy asked for the umpteenth time. And,
'How do you spell that?'
With only a few people still to go, Frank had seemingly got bored with watching over her and was chatting to Mollie instead, the pair of them up at the front of the shop, near the cash desk. Cathy dipped her head to sign another book and the next time she looked up, there was Marius, immediately in front of her.
Cathy jumped, surprised at his being there, disturbed by the intensity of his stare.
'Marius, you don't want me to sign a book for you, I suppose? For Dorothy?'
She forced herself to smile, but Marius was not smiling back.
Instead, unnervingly, he slowly leaned towards her, the table edge gripped with both hands. His stare was fixed on Cathy and would not let her look away.
'What I want,' he said, his voice intense and low, 'is for you to understand what's happened here today. All these people, foolish, small-minded people nocking around you, I want you to understand what that is about. It's not you. Not talent. Not originality, not skill. That woman over there has more of those qualities in her little finger than you'll ever have in the whole of your life. No, what this. this charade is all about is publicity, media, money. That and the sordid muck you wallow in every day of your writing life.
Sensationalism of the kind that real writers would never for one moment soil their hands with. Or their minds. '
He held her gaze a moment longer, straightened, and turned away, leaving Cathy shaken and pale.
'What the hell did he want?' Frank asked, moments later, glancing over to where Marius was now helping Dorothy Birdwell from her chair.
Cathy shook her head.
'Nothing,' she said.
'Nothing important.' But the coldness that had spread along her arms and the backs of her legs was still there and although Marius now had his back to her, she could still clearly see her image, reversed, reflected in his eyes.
Twenty-eight
Back in the Book Dealers' Room at the festival hotel, business was in full swing. Derek Neighbour had spent some time moving from stand to stand and had finally come upon Ed Leimbacher, from Mist erE Books in Seattle, who had assured him that he could he could lay his hands on a first edition of Uneasy Prey in mint condition. Something of a snip at four hundred and sixty pounds. Plus commission. And handling. And packing. And insurance.
'And a bargain at that,' Leimbacher had smiled reassuringly.
Neighbour wondered why he wasn't reassured.
There was no getting round the fact, though, that the damage to the copy of Cathy Jordan's book he had taken with him to Waterstone's was even worse than he had feared; as many as fifty pages were stuck together irretrievably with paint, many of the others spotted and splotched. And the dust-jacket. 'Look,' Neighbour had finally said, fingering his cheque-book nervously inside his jacket pocket,
'I'll have to think about it a little longer. I'm sorry.'
'You could be,' Ed Leimbacher said.
'Pass it up and by the time you've done another circuit of the room, it could be gone.'
'I know, it's just…'
But the book dealer had turned aside and was no longer smiling not until the next potential customer came along moments later. Books may be books, but business, well, that was business.
Dorothy Birdwell was leaning back in the armchair of their hotel suite, a damp cloth lightly across her eyes. Marius had helped her to remove her shoes and stockings and now was slowly massaging her feet, first one and then the other, each held close against his chest as he worked his fingers around the ball and carefully across the instep, knowing exactly when and where to apply pressure, when his touch should be little more than a breath.
'Marius, my dear…'
'Mmm?'
'When you went across to speak to the American, you didn't say anything too, well, distressing, I trust?'
'Oh, no. No.' Sliding one of his fingers along the delicate curl of her toes.
'Of course not. Nothing like that.'
'I know. I know. Some people, some men, if they were annoyed, they could be a little crude. But not you. I don't think you could ever be crude in the slightest.'
Mouth curved into a smile, Marius bent forward and lightly kissed the underside of her foot.
'How'd it go at the signing?' Tyrell asked. It was mid- afternoon and he was snatching the chance for a quick sandwich and a pot of tea at the convention hotel.
'Okay,' Mollie said.
'At least as far as Cathy was concerned. It was Dorothy Birdwell I felt sorry for. I doubt if she had more than half a dozen people standing in line. Still, I'm arranging transport for her and Marius to go out to Newstead Abbey. Apparently she's got this big thing about Byron.'
Tyrell's eyes brightened.
'Did you know Curds was going to make a film about Byron? Ages ago. Late fifties biopic. Script, locations, everything. Apparently, some of his original drawings are around somewhere. Sounds like a really interesting project. James Mason as the man himself- can't you just see it? Mad, bad and dangerous to know. Patricia Medina. Vincent Price as Shelley. Aside from that Steve Reeves thing he did in Italy, it would have been the only costume piece he made.'
'How is Curds?'
Tyrell inclined his head in the direction of the bar. 'Keeping himself topped up.' He lifted up the pot and gave
