Longshot

‘Tremayne agreed you can write his book. He quite took to you yesterday, it seems.’ Pessimism vibrated down the wire. ‘He’s agreed to guarantee you a writing fee.’ Ronnie mentioned a sum which would keep me eating through the summer. ‘It’s payable in three instalments — a quarter after a month’s work, a quarter when he approves the full manuscript, and half on publication. If I can get a regular publisher to take it on, the publisher will pay you, otherwise Tremayne will. He’s agreed you should have forty per cent of any royalties after that, not thirty. He’s agreed to pay your expenses while you research his life. That means if you want to go to interview people who know him he’ll pay for your transport. That’s quite a good concession, actually. He thinks it’s odd that you haven’t a car, but I reminded him that people who live in London often don’t. He says you can drive one of his. He was pleased you can ride. He says you should take riding clothes with you and also a dinner jacket, as he’s to be guest of honour at some dinner or other and he wants you to witness it. I told him you were an expert photographer so he wants you to take your camera.’

Ronnie’s absolute and audible lack of enthusiasm for the project might have made me withdraw even then had Aunty not earlier given me a three o’clock deadline for leaving the house.

‘When does Tremayne expect me?’ I asked Ronnie.

‘He seems pathetically pleased that anyone wants to take him on, after the top men turned him down. He says he’d be happy for you to go as soon as you can. Today, even, he said. Will you go today?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘He lives in a village called Shellerton, in Berkshire. He says if you can phone to say what train you’re catching, someone will meet you at Reading station. Here’s the number.’ He read it out to me.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘And Ronnie, thanks very much.’

‘Don’t thank me. Just... well, just write a brilliant chapter or two and I’ll try to get the book commissioned on the strength of them. But go on writing fiction. That’s where your future is.’

‘Do you mean it?’

‘Of course, I mean it.’ He sounded surprised I should ask. ‘For someone who’s not afraid of jungles you exhibit the strangest self-confidence deficiency.’

‘I know where I am in jungles.’

‘Go and catch your train,’ he said, and wished me luck.

I caught, instead, a bus, as it was much cheaper, and was met outside the Reading bus station by a shivering young woman in a padded coat and woollen hat who visually checked me over from boots six feet up via ski-suit to dark hair and came to the conclusion that I was, as she put it, the writer.

‘You’re the writer?’ She was positive, used to authority, not unfriendly.

‘John Kendall,’ I said, nodding.

‘I’m Mackie Vickers. That’s m, a, c, k, i, e,’ she spelled. ‘Not Maggie. Your bus is late.’

‘The roads are bad,’ I said apologetically.

‘They’re worse in the country.’ It was dark and extremely cold. She led the way to a chunky jeep-like vehicle parked not far away and opened the rear door. ‘Put your bags in here. You can meet everyone as we go along.’

There were already four people in the vehicle, it seemed, all cold and relieved I had finally turned up. I stowed my belongings and climbed in, sharing the back seat with two dimly seen figures who moved up to give me room. Mackie Vickers positioned herself behind the wheel, started the engine, released the brake and drove out into a stream of cars. A welcome trickle of hot air came out of the heater.

‘The writer says his name is John Kendall,’ Mackie said to the world in general.

There wasn’t much reaction to the introduction.

‘You’re sitting next to Tremayne’s head lad,’ she went on, ‘and his wife is beside him.’

The shadowy man next to me said, ‘Bob Watson.’ His wife said nothing.

‘In front,’ Mackie said, ‘next to me, are Fiona and Harry Goodhaven.’

Neither Fiona nor Harry said anything. There was an intense quality in the collective atmosphere that dried up any conversational remark I might have thought of making, and it had little to do with temperature. It was as if the very air were scowling.

Mackie drove for several minutes in continuing silence, concentrating on the slush-lined surface under the yellowish lights of the main road west out of Reading. The traffic was heavy and slow moving, the ill-named rush hour crawling along with flashing scarlet brake lights, a procession of curses.

Eventually Mackie said to me, turning her head over her shoulder as I was sitting directly behind her, ‘We’re not good company. We’ve spent all day in court. Tempers are frayed. You’ll just have to put up with it.’

‘No trouble,’ I said.

Trouble was the wrong word to use, it seemed.

As if releasing tension Fiona said loudly, ‘I can’t believe you were so stupid.’

‘Give it a rest,’ Harry said. He’d already heard it before.

‘But you know damned well that Lewis was drunk.’

‘That doesn’t excuse anything.’

‘It explains things. You know damned well he was drunk.’