A home for broken hearts, p.11
A Home for Broken Hearts, page 11
‘Of course that’s just my opinion and my opinion is hardly worth knowing, in fact when I think about it I’m not altogether sure that it’s right anyway.’
‘And?’ Allegra questioned her.
‘And?’ Ellen repeated the word as the faintest of echoes.
‘You told me that I was treating the backdrop of the English Civil War as if it were incidental and then you were about to add something further. What?’
‘It hardly matters.’ Ellen squirmed, wishing the voluminous folds of the overstuffed leather chair would swallow her up and spit her back out in her world, the world where she existed in simple suspended animation and read and daydreamed and waited for her husband to come home and her real life to begin at the touch of his lips on her cheek.
‘Ellen.’ Allegra enunciated her name with such care that it sounded as if it should have a good deal many more syllables in it. ‘If you and I are to work together then we must be straight with each other. I know that you are sitting there wondering how you could possibly have anything to say to me about writing, and I understand why you would feel that way. But let me assure you one does not become as successful as I have without listening to criticism. I might hate it but I can take it and I am not in the habit of shooting the messenger, only torturing them a little. Yes, you are little more than a housewife with barely any experience of the creative arts but you are my reader, you are the person I write for, and now I have an opportunity to meet you face to face I want to know what you think. You need not be afraid.’ Allegra’s mouth hinted at a smile. ‘Not very afraid anyway.’
Ellen braced herself.
‘Your characters, especially your female characters usually have something else about them. Wit, intelligence – bravery. Something else apart from their beauty and perfect bodies that makes the reader wish they were them. I know that in the end everything will come right for Eliza, knowing that is sort half the fun of reading about the other things that happen to her, but at the moment I wonder if she is just a little bit too passive. Look at Helga in your Viking trilogy – despite being sold as a slave and ravished by her new master she always maintained her dignity until he had no choice but to fall in love with her. And Caroline in The Pirate Lover. Beaumont snatches her from the docks when she is lost and locks her in his cabin to have his wicked way with her for weeks, but she challenges him, constantly. She doesn’t let her circumstances change who she is. Although Eliza puts up a bit of a fight and runs away she just seems to lurch from one ravishing to the next. I started to feel sorry for her and I’ve never felt that for your heroines before.’
Allegra nodded once and then was silent. Not for a few seconds or a few minutes but for almost half an hour. For almost half an hour Ellen sat in her chair and waited for Allegra to speak, unsure if she should stay or go – or even if she still had a job. Finally, her thighs cramping from being clenched for an extended period, she moved to stand up. But just then Allegra spoke, forcing her back into the chair.
‘You’re right,’ she said simply. ‘You are quite right. I’ve been relying on all the clichés, all the things that make a work of art, such as mine, no better than pulp fiction. Sex sells and I know that. I’ve become little better than a whoremonger.’
‘Oh well, I wouldn’t go that far …’ Ellen began.
Slowly and with some difficulty Allegra stood up, straightening each vertebra one by one.
‘Ellen, can I confide in you?’
Ellen gripped the arms of the chair, not absolutely sure she wanted the responsibility of being Allegra Howard’s confidante. Still, unable to refuse, she nodded.
‘Of course.’
‘Ellen, I’m seventy-three. My home was destroyed by floods, nearly everything I’ve ever loved, all my memories, all my photos, my works of art – they were all swept away in a river of muck and sewage. I didn’t think that it mattered, I always believed that mere objects weren’t what made a person human – that it was their feelings, their experiences and memories that made a person exist. But when I was alone in my hotel room I realised that without my things, my photos to look at or my books to pick up, my memories were slipping away from me. And I’m slipping away with them, a little more each day. I’m vanishing.’
‘No, no – you couldn’t be more alert and sprightly,’ Ellen assured her.
‘Sprightly.’ Allegra pursed her lips. ‘It is always the curse of the elderly to be either frail or sprightly. I don’t mean that I am suffering from dementia, I mean simply that I have reached a crossroads in my life. After seventy-three years of knowing who I am and what I want and what I do, suddenly I’m no longer sure, suddenly I’m afraid. With this last book I’ve been writing by numbers, papering over the cracks and hoping that no one will notice or care – but if you can see it, then so will everyone else and I’ll be vilified as a fraud! They’ll see that I don’t feel like a writer any more. They’ll see that I am not a writer any more. My creative fire was quite drowned in that flood along with everything else. Ellen, I am finished.’
Ellen looked into Allegra’s pale blue eyes.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, you’re not finished. You’ve taken a knock, you’ve had a setback and when you’re … a more mature person then it’s harder to move on from such things. When my husband died I couldn’t imagine another day, another hour without him in the world. If it wasn’t for my son I would have happily curled up and waited for my heart to stop beating. But I couldn’t do that, I had to keep going and somehow I’ve got through my first year and then the lodgers happened and working for you, and for the first time I feel as if … there is a future.’
‘There is a future for you.’ Allegra looked down at her. ‘You are young and beautiful. But for me? My future is behind me now and suddenly I find I don’t have the energy to keep going. I don’t have a husband or a son to keep going for. After all these years writing grand romances I forgot to find the time to have one myself. I just can’t do it any more. I just don’t want to.’
‘But you do have someone to carry on for.’ Ellen stood up, her legs on fire with pins and needles, and came around the desk, only just resisting the urge to touch the older woman. ‘You have me and all the tens of thousands of people who have read your books. We need you, Allegra. We need the next Allegra Howard book and the one after that. You give us … hope. And even if what I said about The Sword Erect is true, that doesn’t make it a bad book, I still couldn’t put it down. I still couldn’t wait to find out what happened to Eliza.’ Ellen smiled. ‘It still made me daydream about having my own Captain Parker crazy with lust for me. All it means is it isn’t as good a book as it can be – yet.’
Allegra twisted her mouth into a knot of a smile.
‘Let me help you fix those things,’ Ellen went on. ‘I know a little about history and what I don’t know I can find out. I can establish the facts and the backdrop and you can weave them into the story and make Eliza a true Allegra Howard heroine. Fearless, defiant and undefeated by whatever life throws at her – just like you.’
Allegra looked into Ellen’s eyes and slowly one feather-light hand floated upwards, its papery palm cupping her cheek.
‘I believe that you might just be a very passionate person, Ellen Woods,’ Allegra told her solemnly.
‘Who, me? No, I’m just … normal.’
‘A passionate person with a whole undiscovered universe locked away inside.’
‘Really?’ Ellen was sceptical.
‘Really, and I hope that you and I will work very well together. The question is, where do we start?’
‘Here,’ Ellen said. ‘Well, not here in my dining room. Here as in London during the Civil War. You see, it was a Parliamentarian stronghold throughout the war. With Eliza intent on escaping Captain Parker, it’s natural that she would head here, to a place where she would feel safe. Imagine the historical figures she could encounter, perhaps even Cromwell himself. She could become a sort of seventeenth-century poster girl for the cause. And I thought if the captain followed her into the enemy’s lair in order to win her back, then—’ Ellen stopped herself. ‘I’m sorry, of course it’s not up to me to think of the plot.’
‘Nonsense. Keep talking,’ Allegra told her, easing herself back on to her seat. ‘Keep talking. I will see the pictures.’
And as the morning rolled into the afternoon they had talked over ideas, Allegra painting plotlines in the air with a sweep of her hand and Ellen suggesting historical figures and events that they could weave into the story.
Finally Allegra held up her hand.
‘You must forgive me, Ellen, I’m not as invincible as I used to be. We missed lunch and I fear I must eat something soon or perish.’
‘Oh no!’ Ellen looked at her watch. It was just after three and before she knew it Charlie would be ambling through the front door. ‘How awful!’
‘Not at all, it has been rather wonderful actually.’ Allegra’s smile was warm. ‘Let’s finish now. Today we laid the foundations. Tomorrow we will write.’
As Ellen shut Allegra’s door behind her and headed for the kitchen she realised that she hadn’t felt so excited, so optimistic or such a part of something in a very long time. It was almost as if she had only just started to exist.
Charlie had bowled into the kitchen as Ellen was making a smoked-salmon salad for Allegra, one of the components of her eating plan that had been delivered by the supermarket earlier that day along with Earl Grey tea.
‘That stinks,’ he said, peering over Ellen’s shoulder briefly.
‘So what did you get up to at school today?’ she asked him.
‘You know, the usual,’ Charlie said, ripping open the packaging of some new bread even though there was still a third of a loaf left in the breadbin.
‘No, I don’t know because you never tell me any more.’ Ellen turned to face her son as he lathered with butter the slice of bread he cupped in the palm of his hand. ‘When you were little I couldn’t shut you up, you’d tell me about what you’d learnt, the games you’d played – you’d skip home holding my hand and talk and talk.’ She smiled at him, seeing that tousled-headed little boy who’d once been her best friend. ‘Now I can barely get two words out of you half the time. I know you’re growing up and changing but – well, I’m still your mum. Come on, something must have happened today.’
Charlie crammed in a mouthful of bread and observed Ellen while he chewed.
‘Not really,’ he said on a swallow. ‘Oh wait – James Parks asked Emily Greenhurst out and she said no.’
‘James asked a girl out!’ Ellen felt unsettled. ‘Really, you are all asking each other out now are you, getting girlfriends and things?’
‘No, not all of us.’ Charlie looked gratifyingly horrified at the idea. ‘Most of the girls at my school are right mingers – just James. He likes Emily because she’s in this band and she’s cool and she’s not like the other girls, you know – she doesn’t just giggle and talk about crap. She has opinions and she’s funny, and she’s got long hair sort of like the colour of honey right down to her waist and … well anyway – James likes her but she knocked him back. It was funny.’
‘James likes her,’ Ellen smiled, reeling from the longest burst of conversation she had had out of her son in an age.
‘Yes,’ Charlie said. ‘He was gutted. It was really funny.’
‘So you gave him lots of friendly sympathy then?’
‘No! We told him he was a gay for liking girls in the first place.’
‘I think that’s probably a contradiction in terms,’ Ellen smiled.
‘A what?’ Charlie looked at her.
‘Never mind – so you’re not planning on asking any girls out just yet, then? Not this Emily, for example?’
‘God no, Mum – I’m not gay!’ Charlie exclaimed in horror, before scrambling up the stairs no doubt to find his DS, leaving Ellen alone with her salad, wondering exactly when and how gay had started meaning the opposite of … well, gay. And she wondered if she had been sticking her head in the sand, determined still to think of him as her little boy. Clearly he was becoming interested in girls, even if he wasn’t ready to admit it. If Nick were here it would have been simple, Nick would have guided him along the rocky road of adolescence, helped him find his way from boyhood to manhood. But, as Ellen had to keep reminding herself on a daily basis, Nick was not here – she was all Charlie had in the way of guidance and she was only too aware of her inadequacies. She barely knew anything about being a woman, let alone how to be a man.
Later, when he had reappeared for fish fingers, his eyes still glued to his games console, Ellen had tried to talk to him.
‘Charlie, you and I have never really talked about … well, about the things that you are beginning to be interested in.’ She had slid the plate of fish fingers garnished with ketchup towards him. ‘The thing is, you are learning to grow up and turn into a man and I’m learning too, learning how to be the mum of a young man. But you know, if you ever want to talk to me about those things then of course you can, and I will try and help as best I can.’
‘Things?’ Charlie looked up from his DS. ‘Are you talking about sex again?’
‘Yes, I suppose I am. When you talked about it the other day, I don’t suppose I took you seriously enough. But you are growing up, there are things that you will want to know and, well – I’m just saying that you can ask me. I won’t mind.’
Charlie had picked up his fork and stabbed it into a fish finger. He had looked at Nick’s empty chair and said, ‘I wish Dad was here.’
Before Ellen could respond Matt had arrived with a packet of fish and chips, and ruffling Charlie’s hair promptly plonked himself down in the one vacant chair. In Nick’s chair.
‘Just gonna dash this down then I’m off out again, got a date,’ Matt told an immobile Ellen as he unwrapped his takeaway. ‘Girl from the chick magazine one floor below me, she lives round here so I’m meeting her down the road … What?’
Finally Matt realised that he was being stared at.
‘It’s just that …’ Ellen started.
‘You’re sitting in my dad’s chair!’ Charlie bellowed at him.
‘Am I?’ Matt jumped up, spilling greasy chips, looking around as if he fully expected to find that he’d been sitting on a dead man’s lap. ‘I’m really sorry, mate, I didn’t know.’
‘You don’t just come in here, move in and sit in my dad’s chair,’ Charlie shouted, sliding his plate off the table with a sweep of his hand and sending it crashing on to the tiled floor.
‘I hate you!’ he shouted and Ellen wasn’t sure if it was her or Matt, or his absent father that he was addressing. In a second he was gone, thundering up the stairs, slamming the door behind him.
‘Oh fuck, I put my foot in it didn’t I?’ Matt said, bending down and beginning to pick up the spilt food.
Frozen by Charlie’s explosive reaction it took Ellen a second to respond.
‘No, you weren’t to know. I was going to mention it, but I didn’t really know how … it’s not something you just drop into conversation, after all.’ Shaken, Ellen took a breath, fetched the dustpan and brush from under the sink and knelt down beside Matt, sweeping up the lumps of plate that had exploded on the tiles. ‘It was my fault, I put him on edge, trying to talk to him about “becoming a man”. I didn’t know he’d be so sensitive about it, it only seems like yesterday that he was obsessed with Power Rangers and took his teddy to bed.’ Ellen bent her head, letting her hair curtain her face as she struggled not to cry. ‘And it’s not as if he’s got a dad to talk to or learn from any more.’
‘Eleven, nearly twelve, it’s a weird time for a boy,’ Matt told her. ‘Everything’s changing, you know – your body, the way you feel – the way you speak, even. It’s all up and down, and no one understands. I remember when I discovered …’ He paused, sitting back on his heels and popping a chip he had just picked up off the tiles into his mouth.
‘Discovered what? Girls?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’ Matt’s smile was rueful. ‘When I discovered – you know, the pleasure of my own body.’
‘Oh I see.’ Ellen put the dustpan and brush down, feeling suddenly exhausted. ‘But you were much older than twelve, weren’t you?’
‘Not so much,’ Matt broke the news gently. ‘Anyway, it’s difficult for us men, you know. We’ve got to work out what it all means, how it all works, even how to walk down a road like we’ve got control of all our arms and legs, and we try our best to do it without anyone noticing, especially not our mums.’ As they both sat on the kitchen floor he reached out and tucked the curtain of her hair behind her ear, chucking her under the chin as he might a small child. ‘It’s nothing personal, Ellen, it’s not anything you are doing wrong. It’s something he has to get through on his own, and for what it’s worth by the time I was his age my dad was long gone and I turned out all right in the end.’
Whether it was his touch or the softness in his voice, Ellen didn’t know, but the tears that she had been battling broke free and rolled down her cheeks.
‘He must miss his dad so much.’ Her voice was barely more than a whisper. ‘And I’m not enough, I’m not nearly enough to make up for him.’
‘He does miss his dad.’ Matt spoke quietly, wiping away one of her tears with the ball of his thumb. He stretched a hand out to Ellen as he rose, helping her to her feet. ‘And it hurts him like hell and he’s angry and confused. And so are you. Look, I know I barely know you but for what it’s worth it looks to me like you are doing an amazing job.’ He dropped his chin and shrugged. ‘My dad only left home and my mum spent the rest of her life in the bottom of a vodka bottle. You’re keeping it together for Charlie and once all this settles down, once he sees the light at the end of the tunnel he’ll realise that, I promise.’ Matt ran his fingers through his hair and winced. ‘What a fuckwit I am, crashing in here treading all over your feet. I’m sorry I sat in your husband’s chair. But look, don’t cry, yeah? Give us a smile. If you don’t smile for me now it’s going to be nearly impossible for me to enjoy my date with a leggy blonde subeditor.’
