Zelda’s Cut

The waiter hovered, bottle in hand, openly listening.

‘Go on.’ Troy was intrigued.

‘She is examined by a doctor, she is indeed a virgin, and then she walks towards the large house in the country for the cult to use her as they wish for twenty-four hours.’

Troy leaned forward to listen. The woman on the next table leaned too.

‘They use her sexually, they tie her up, they cut her with their silver knives so that her body is tattooed with occult signs, then they lie her on the altar and she thinks they are going to slit her throat at dawn. Scented smoke wreathes around her, they give her a strange-tasting drink, a man, a dark and handsome man, comes slowly towards her with his silver knife held before him …’

Troy hardly dared to speak. The waiter poured more wine for Isobel, like a fee for the storyteller.

‘She wakes. It is broad daylight. She can remember only the faces of the thirteen people of the coven. But in her hand is a cheque for her sister’s treatment.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Troy whispered. The woman on the next table and the waiter were rapt.

‘She walks from the house, she goes to bank the cheque.’ Isobel paused for dramatic emphasis. ‘The cheque is no good. There is no such name, no such account. She has no money. Her sister dies in her arms.’

‘Oh, my God!’ exclaimed the waiter involuntarily.

‘She swears complete revenge against the thirteen members of the coven.’

‘Too many, too many,’ Troy whispered.

‘Against the five members of the coven,’ Isobel corrected herself, hardly breaking her pace. ‘She goes to the police but no-one believes her. She decides to hunt each one down individually.’

‘Very Jeffrey Archer,’ Troy muttered to himself.

‘There are two women and three men. Each one she tracks down and then ruins. Social shame, bankruptcy, death in a car crash, their house burned down, and then she comes to the last man, the leader of the cult whose cheque was no good.’

The waiter removed their plates as an excuse to linger at their table.

‘He has reformed,’ Isobel said. ‘He is a changed man, the leader of a charismatic Christian church.’

‘Television,’ Troy whispered.

‘He’s a television evangelist.’ She improved at once on his hint. ‘He does not recognise her, he welcomes her to join his flock. She has the decision: should she believe in his genuine reform and help him with the wonderful work he is doing with the – ’

‘Homeless children,’ Troy suggested.

‘Homeless abused children,’ Isobel supplemented. ‘Or should she pursue her revenge against him? Is he, in fact, still an evil man, who has just seized power over these helpless children in order to abuse them further? She joins the cult to discover the best way to destroy him, but then she finds that she has fallen completely in love with him. What will she do?’

‘What does she do?’ the waiter demanded. ‘Oh, excuse me!’

Isobel came to herself, tucked back the stray hair, drank a sip of water. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I always have difficulties with the endings,’ she said.

‘My God.’ Troy leaned back in his chair. ‘Isobel, that was fantastic. That is a fantastic story.’

She looked primly pleased. ‘I told you I could do it,’ she said. ‘It is a matter of choice for me – I choose to write well rather than to churn out dross. I have pride in my work. I like to do the very best that there is, not thick books of nonsense.’

The waiter stepped back from the table, the woman at the next table gave Troy a little smile, mouthed the word ‘Fantastic’, and returned her attention to her lunch. Isobel took a sip of wine.

‘But if fine writing doesn’t pay the bills?’ Troy suggested.

There was a long pause. He watched her brightness drain away. She twisted the stem of the wineglass, her face suddenly tired and heavy.

‘I have to consider Philip,’ she said. ‘It’s not just me. If it were just me I could sell the house and reduce my expenses. I would never compromise with my art.’

Troy nodded, concealing a rising sense of excitement. ‘I know that…’

‘But Philip may never get any better, and he may live for many years. I have to provide for him. He was talking only yesterday about converting the house in case he can’t get upstairs.’

The waiter brought their main course and set the plate before Isobel with ostentatious respect. Troy waited until he had reluctantly stepped out of earshot.

‘I thought you said he was fine.’

She smiled, a sad little smile. ‘I always say he’s fine, hadn’t you noticed that? There’s no point in complaining all the time, is there? But it’s not true. He’s ill and he’ll never get any better, and he may get very much worse. I have to provide for him, I have to think about the future. If I were to die before him – who would look after him? How would he manage if I left him with nothing but debts?

Troy nodded. ‘A big commercial book could earn you – I don’t know – a quarter of a million pounds? Perhaps half a million with foreign sales too.’

‘That much?’

‘Certainly £200,000.’

‘Would it be possible for me to write such a book, a commercial book, and no-one know that it was me?’

Of course,’ Troy assured her. ‘A nom de plume. Lots of writers use them.’

Isobel shook her head. ‘I don’t mean a nom de plume. I mean a complete concealment. No-one is ever to know that Isobel Latimer has ever written anything but the finest of writing. I couldn’t bear people to think I would write something so …’ She hesitated and then chose a word which was almost a challenge: ‘So vulgar.’

Troy thought for a moment. ‘We’d have to create a false client account at the agency. A bank account in another name, in the name of the nom de plume. I could be the main signatory, and draw the funds for you.’

She nodded. ‘I’d have to sign the contracts in the false name?’

‘I think you could,’ he said. ‘I’d have to check with the lawyers, but I think you could. It’s the ownership of the manuscript that matters, it’s not as if it’s not your work.’

She gave him a wonderful secretive smile. ‘And I could write an absolutely torrid shocker.’

‘Would you want to do that?’

‘For two hundred thousand pounds I’d do almost anything.’

‘But could you do it? Could you work on it for day after day? The story’s fantastic. But you’d have to write and write. These books are huge, you know, Isobel. They’re not a hundred pages or so like your usual work, they go to seven hundred, a thousand pages. Two hundred thousand words at the very least. You’d have to write in a way you’ve never written before and it would take you at least six months. It’s a long project.’

The look she shot across the table was one of bright determination. He thought he had never seen her so sharp and so focused before. ‘I’m in real trouble,’ she said bluntly. ‘All we own is the house, all that’s coming in is my advances. I was counting on a good sum from Penshurst Press and now you tell me all they want to pay is £20,000. It’s a hard world we live in, isn’t it? If they won’t pay me to write good books, then I’ll just have to write bad.’

‘Can you bear to do it?’ he asked quietly.

Isobel gave him a glance and he realised, for the first time in their long association, that this was a passionate woman. Her frumpy clothes and her faded prettiness had hidden from him that this was a woman capable of deep feelings. She was a woman who had dedicated her life to being in love with her husband. ‘I’d do anything for him,’ she said simply. ‘Writing a bad book is the least of it.’

Isobel was silent on her return from London. When Philip asked if she was well she said that she was a little tired, that she had a headache.

‘Were you drinking at lunchtime?’ he asked disapprovingly.

‘Only a glass of wine.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘That Troy always tires you out,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you just post the manuscript to him? What d’you have to see him for?’

‘He’s amusing,’ she said. ‘I like him.’

‘I suppose he’s a change from me.’

‘It’s not that, darling. I just like to deliver the finished manuscript. It’s a bit of a lift, that’s all.’

‘I’d have thought you had enough to do without becoming a courier service as well,’ he said grudgingly.

‘I do have,’ she said. ‘I’m going to start a new novel at once. I got the idea over lunch.’

‘What will it be about?’

‘Something about the notion of personal responsibility and whether people can genuinely reform,’ she said vaguely.

He gave her an encouraging smile. ‘That sounds a bit like The Dream and the Doing,’ he said, citing one of her earlier books. ‘I always liked that one. I liked the way the heroine had to make a choice not between which man she married, but actually between two contrasting moral systems. It was a very thoughtful book.’

‘Yes, I think it’ll be very like that,’ she said. ‘Are you coming up to bed?’

‘I’ll have a nightcap before I come up.’

Isobel paused. ‘Oh, come up before I fall asleep.’

He smiled. ‘Of course,’ he said evasively.

Since his illness, his desire for Isobel had almost completely disappeared. He refused absolutely to discuss this either with Isobel or with his doctor, and if Isobel insisted that they go to bed at the same time, or if she tried to kiss and caress him in the morning, he would gently but firmly push her away. It seemed to be another of the many things that had melted away from Isobel’s life, like her looks, her youth, her sense of joy, and now – her ability to make money from her fine writing. She did not complain. When Philip had first become ill she had gone down on her knees to pray. She had made an agonised bargain with the god of her imagination, that if He would spare Philip’s life she would never ask for anything ever again.

When they were finally told, after years of tests, that Philip would become progressively weaker for the rest of his life, but would not die in the near future, she thought that God had taken advantage of her trust. God had cheated on the deal. Philip would not die, but the man she had loved and married was gone forever.

Isobel felt that it was not in her power to withdraw her offer to God. She had promised that if Philip lived then she would never ask for anything again and she intended to keep that promise. She would never make any demands of Philip, she would never ask God for extravagant luck or wonderful opportunities. She thought that what lay before her was a life of duty which would be illuminated with the joy of self-sacrifice. Isobel thought that she might create a life which was itself a thing of beauty – a life in which a talented and devoted couple turned their energies and abilities into making some happiness together despite illness, despite fear of death. She thought that she and Philip might be somehow ennobled by the terrible bad luck that they had suffered. She had thought that she might show him how much she loved him in constant, loving, willing self-sacrifice.

Instead, what she actually experienced was a slog. But she knew that lots of women were forced to slog. Some had disagreeable husbands, or arduous jobs, or difficult children. Isobel’s witty, charming husband had become a self-pitying invalid. Isobel’s love for him had been transformed from the erotic to the maternal. Isobel’s sense of herself as an attractive woman had been destroyed by night after night of the most tactful but unrelenting sexual rejection.

She thought that it should make no difference. She was still determined to keep her side of the bargain with God. She had promised never to ask for anything ever again, and she was holding to her side of the deal.

‘All right,’ she said, smiling, making it clear that she would embarrass neither of them by making a sexual advance to him. ‘You come to bed when you like, darling. Anyway, I expect I’ll be asleep.’

She did indeed fall asleep almost at once but she woke in the light of the summer morning at five. Outside the window she could hear the birds starting to sing and the insistent coo of the wood pigeon, nesting in the oak tree beside the house. For a moment she lay beside Philip, enjoying the warmth of the bed and the gleam of the early-morning sunlight on the ceiling. She turned and looked at him. Peacefully asleep, he looked younger and happier. His blond forelock fell attractively across his regular features, his dark eyelashes were as innocent as a sleeping child’s on the smooth skin of his cheeks. Isobel was filled with a sense of tenderness for him. More than anything else in the world she wanted to provide for him, to care for him as if he were her child. She wanted to earn enough money so that he could always go to the housekeeping jar to take whatever cash he wanted, without asking, without having to give thanks. She wanted to provide for him abundantly, generously, as if her love and wealth could compensate for the awful unjust bad luck of his illness.

Isobel crept out from the warmth of the bed and put her dressing gown around her shoulders, and slid her feet into her sensible fleecy slippers. She left the bedroom quietly, went downstairs to the kitchen and made herself a pot of strong Darjeeling tea and then carried her china cup through to her study.

The word processor came alive with a deep, reassuring chime. She watched the screen gleam into life, and then created a new document. The blank page was before her, the little line of the cursor waiting to move, to tick its way into life. She laid her fingers on the keyboard, like a pianist waiting for the signal to play, for the indrawn breath, for that powerful moment of initiation.

‘Devil’s Disciple,’ she typed. ‘Chapter One.’

Two

Isobel wrote for three hours until she heard Philip stirring in the bedroom above her study. She shut down the file on the word processor and paused for a moment. Philip very rarely came into her study and read her work in progress, but he might do so, there had never been any suggestion that Isobel’s work was private. Now, for the first time in her life, she did not want him to read what she had written. She had a very strong sense that she did not want him to know that she was writing a form of literature that they both despised. Also, she did not want him to know that she was spending hours every day letting her imagination roam over erotic and perverse possibilities. Philip would find the scenes of the heroine tied on the altar immensely offensive. Their love-making had always been gentle, respectful of each other, sometimes even spiritual. The notion of his wife writing soft pornography would have disgusted Philip. Isobel did not want him to know that she could even think of such things.

She closed the file and considered what name she should give it to ensure that Philip would not read it. She leaned forward and typed in the name: ‘letters to the bank’. Philip never concerned himself with money now. Since he had taken early retirement from Paxon Pharmaceuticals he had handed over to her all the control of their finances. They held a joint bank account into which Isobel’s royalty cheques and advances were paid, and it was her task to draw out what was needed and to make sure that the housekeeping money jar on the kitchen worktop was filled once a week with whatever cash he might want. When they went out together, Philip paid with his credit card; he liked to be seen paying in a restaurant. If he wanted new clothes or magazines, books, or CDs, he used his credit card and then Isobel paid the bills when the monthly statement arrived. If he wanted a tenner in his pocket when he walked down to the pub, he simply took it.

It seemed to Isobel absolutely fair that she should support him so completely. When he had been well he had bought the house she had liked, he had paid for the food and wine that they ate and drank. Now that she was earning and he was not, she saw no reason why they still should not equally share. Her only difficulty arose when she realised that she was failing to earn the money they needed.

Philip was not an extravagant man. He seldom went out without her, he preferred to wear old clothes. The greatest expense in his life was his occasional visits to exotic and overpriced alternative therapists in case one of them might, one day, have some kind of cure. Isobel learned to dread those visits because they were so costly both in money and in emotion when Philip soared into hope and then dropped into despair.

‘I wouldn’t mind them being so pricey if they worked,’ she had said to him once as she wrote a cheque for £800 for an Amazonian rainforest herb.

‘They have to be expensive,’ he had replied, with a flash of his old worldliness, taking the cheque she held out to him. ‘That’s what makes you trust them, of course.’

She heard him coming slowly down the stairs. She could tell by the heaviness of his pace that today was a bad day. She went swiftly into the kitchen to put the kettle on to boil and the bread in the toaster so that he should be greeted with breakfast.

‘Good morning,’ she said brightly as he came into the room.

‘Good morning,’ he said quietly, and sat at the table and waited for her to serve him.

She put toast in the rack, and the butter and marmalade before him, and then the small box which contained the dietary supplements for breakfast – an array of vitamins, minerals and oils. He started taking the pills with dour determination and Isobel felt the usual pang of tenderness.

‘Bad night?’ she asked.

He made a grimace. ‘Nothing special.’

She poured the tea and sat beside him with her cup.

‘And what are you going to do today?’ she asked encouragingly.

Philip gave her a look which warned her that he was not in the mood to be jollied out of his unhappiness. ‘I’ll do my exercises, and then I’ll read the newspaper, and then I’ll start the crossword, and then I’ll have lunch, and then I’ll go for my walk, and then I’ll have tea, and then I’ll have a rest, and then I’ll watch the news, and then I’ll have dinner, and then I’ll watch television, and then I’ll go to bed,’ he said in a rapid drone. ‘Amazing programme, isn’t it?’

‘We could go to the cinema,’ she suggested. ‘Or the theatre. Why don’t you ring up and see what’s on? Wasn’t there something you liked the sound of the other day?’

He brightened. ‘I suppose we could. If we went to a matinée we could go on for dinner after.’

Isobel mentally lost another afternoon’s writing. ‘Lovely,’ she said. ‘Could we go to that Italian restaurant that was so nice?’

‘Italian!’ he exclaimed. ‘We’re going to the White Lodge if we can get in.’

Isobel dismissed the little pang of dread as she mentally doubled the likely bill for the cost of the whole evening. ‘Lovely,’ she said enthusiastically.

The house at the end of the drive loomed up as Charity walked nervously towards it. Her little heels tapped on the paving slabs as she walked up to the imposing door. There was a thick, rusting bell pull to the right of the massive wooden doors. Charity leaned forward and gave it a gentle tug.

Isobel hesitated. It seemed to her that there was a good deal too much landscape and furniture in this paragraph. Her usual novels concerned themselves with the inner psychology of her characters and she generally had only the mistiest idea of the rooms they inhabited or the clothes they wore. Her usual style was too sparse to allow much room for description of material things. Besides, Isobel was not interested in material things. She was far more interested in what people thought than the chairs they were sitting on as they thought.

There was a ring at the front door bell. Isobel pressed ‘save’ on the computer and waited, listening, to see if someone answered the door. From the kitchen she could hear Mrs M. chatting with Philip as she cleared the table. There was another ring at the door bell. It was clear that although there were three people in the house, and two of them were doing virtually nothing, no-one was going to answer the door. Isobel sighed and went to see who it was.

There was courier with a large box. ‘Sign here,’ he said.

Isobel signed where he indicated and took the box into her study. The sender was Troy Cartwright. Isobel took a pair of scissors and cut the plastic tape. Inside the box were half a dozen violent-coloured novels. They had titles like Crazed, The Man Eater, Stormy Weather and Diamonds. Isobel unpacked them and laid them in a circle around her as she kneeled on the floor. The note from Troy read:

just a little light reading to give you a sense of the genre. Can’t wait to see what you’ll do. Hope it’s going well. Do call me if you want some moral support. You’re such a star – Troy.

A footstep in the hall made Isobel jump and gather the books into a pile. She threw the note over the topmost one, which showed a garish photograph of a woman embracing a python, as Philip put his head around the door.

‘I thought I heard the bell.’

‘It was a delivery. Some books for me. For review.’

He hardly glanced at the pile. ‘Can we have an early lunch?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And have you rung the cinema?’

‘Give me a chance,’ he said. ‘I’m going to do it now.’

‘All right,’ she said and smiled at him until the door closed.

As soon as he was gone Isobel took the glossy dust jackets off the books and crammed them in the wastepaper bin. Underneath the garish pictures the books looked perfectly respectable, though overweight compared with Isobel’s library of slim volumes. She scattered them round the bookshelves and wrapped one – The Man Eater – in the dust jacket of The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, and left it beside her desk to read later.

She turned back to the screen.

The door swung open, on the threshold was a man. He had a dark mop of long black hair, dark eyes set deep under heavy eyebrows, a strong characterful face, a firm chin marked with a dimple. Charity stepped back for only a moment, fearful and yet attracted at the same time.

Isobel paused, she found she was grinning in simple delight at the unfolding of the story.

He took her cheap raincoat from her thin shoulders

Isobel hesitated. ‘Cheap’ as well as ‘thin’? She shrugged. She had a reckless sense of pleasure that she had never felt when writing before. ‘What does it matter? If it’s got to be two hundred thousand words it could be a cheap, light raincoat. No-one is going to care one way or another …

‘No-one is going to care about the writing one way or another,’ she repeated.

She flung back her head and laughed. It was as if the great taboo of her life had suddenly been rendered harmless.

‘How’s it going?’ Troy telephoned Isobel after six weeks of silence. He had been careful not to ask before, frankly doubting that she could manage such a revolution in style.

‘It’s fantastic,’ she said.

Troy blinked. In all their long relationship she had never before described a book as ‘fantastic’. ‘Really?’

‘It’s such a complete holiday from how I usually work,’ she said. He could hear something in her voice which was different, something playful, lighter, younger. ‘It’s as if nothing matters. Not the grammar, not the choice of words, not the style. Nothing matters but the narrative, the flow of the narrative. And that’s the easiest thing to do.’

‘That’s your talent,’ he said loyally.

‘Well, I do think I might be rather good at it,’ she said. ‘And I’ve been thinking about who I am.’

‘Who you are?’

‘My persona.’

‘Oh yes. So who are you?’

‘I think I’m Genevieve de Vere.’

‘My God.’

‘D’you like it?’

He giggled. ‘I adore it. The only thing is, that it sounds like a pen name. If we want no-one to know that it is a pen name we need something a little more ordinary.’

‘Griselda de Vere?’

‘Griselda Vere?’

Oh, all right. But it seems a bit prosaic. Tell you what, let’s call her Zelda, like Scott Fitzgerald’s wife.’

‘Fantastic,’ he said. ‘Not too romantic. Leave the romance for the novel.’