Hell Or High Water

‘Of course.’ She sounded as if she had never doubted it. ‘But you will make up your mind soon, won’t you, darling? I mean, I told Alice I’d let her know within a couple of days.’

‘A couple of days,’ echoed Jarret irritably. ‘Hell, I can’t make that kind of decision in forty-eight hours!’

Margot hesitated. ‘Come and see it,’ she suggested again. ‘It’s only an hour or two’s drive. We could go tonight, and come back tomorrow.’

‘We?’

‘Of course, darling. I promised Alice I’d introduce her to you. She’s one of your fans, you know. She has all the books you’ve written.’

‘All three of them?’ mocked Jarret cuttingly.

Margot flushed. ‘Will you come?’

‘I can’t,’ he stated flatly. ‘Not today. It’s out of the question.’

‘Tomorrow, then,’ she persisted, only the tightening of her lips indicating her reaction to the inevitable reasons for his refusal. ‘Jarret, you owe it to yourself——’

Jarret cut her off without preamble. ‘Tomorrow morning,’ he specified abruptly. ‘It’s Friday. We can drive down before lunch and be back in town in time for dinner.’

‘Are you making me an offer?’ Margot probed, but Jarret’s expression was not encouraging.

‘I have work to do,’ he reminded her, and she made a sulky gesture of acceptance.

‘What time tomorrow?’

‘Nine o’clock.’

‘So early!’ Margot was horrified.

‘If I can make it, surely you can,’ he averred dryly. ‘Is it a date?’

‘How could I refuse such a gallant proposition?’ she retorted, showing a little of the humour which had attracted his attention in the first place. ‘All right, darling, nine o’clock it is. Will you pick me up?’

‘Promptly,’ he affirmed, with a bow of his head, and forced to the conclusion that for the present this was all she could expect of him, she put down her glass and moved towards the door.

‘Until tomorrow,’ she murmured, lingering long enough for him to respond if he chose, but Jarret remained where he was.

‘Tomorrow,’ he agreed shortly, and the door closed rather heavily behind her.

With her departure, Jarret breathed a sigh of relief. Then, raking back his hair with aggressive fingers, he went to take one of the narrow cigars he favoured from the carved box on the bookshelves. He was already regretting the impulse he had had to give in to her, and impatience carved its identity across his dark features. Why the hell had he agreed to such a wasted outing? It was only her way of getting him to spend the day with her. Why on earth hadn’t he told her to go to hell, and shut her out of his life once and for all? He shook his head. A country estate was not for him, and she knew it. A house, maybe. That had possibilities. But forty or fifty acres of arable land …

He slumped down into the chair beside the typewriter and propped his head on his hand. What had he done that morning? Two, maybe three pages! He wasn’t even satisfied with what he had written. It was vacuously amateurish, he thought, with savage criticism, ignoring completely the incisive prose which had made a bestseller of his first novel and subsequent successes of his second and third. Nevertheless, the meaningless words and phrases were not Jarret Manning at his best, and the horrible suspicion that he had nothing more to say stirred in his stomach like a corpse in its tomb.

It was useless to pretend he was working at the moment. He was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate, and where once these minor distractions would not have troubled him, lately he was inventing reasons for not sitting down at the typewriter.

Would a change of surroundings help? He suspected it might. Margot had been right when she had said he was too accessible in London, too open to distraction, and maybe for his own good he needed a change. Too many parties, too many drinks, too many late nights … The indictment was endless, and he had no one to blame but himself. He had let the fruits of his success dictate his style of living, and for a writer that was professional suicide. Maybe if he got away from town for a while, he would have time to think. In the clean, unpolluted air of the countryside his brain would reassert itself, and recover from the crippling effects of too little stimulation and too much apathy.

Realising he was not about to write anything of significance today, he determinedly put his self-doubts aside and went to wash and shave. Then, adding a navy corded jacket to his denims, he left the apartment. Downstairs in the underground car park, one of the fruits of his success he did appreciate awaited him, and he lowered his lean body behind the wheel, and started the powerful twelve-cylinder engine. It responded without effort, and he reversed out of the space and then accelerated smoothly up the ramp to the street.

It took him less than half an hour to reach his destination, a narrow terraced house in a row of the same, situated in a less salubrious area across the river. The sun was endeavouringto break through the clouds as he parked his car at the kerb, and levered himself out on to the pavement, and he paused to grin at an elderly matron peering through the lace curtains of the house opposite before walking up the path to the house.

It could do with painting, he reflected, letting himself in with his key and slamming the door behind him. ‘It’s only me, Dad!’ he called by means of a warning, and then strolled down the narrow passage to the back of the house.

The old man was not in the living room or the kitchen, but the open back door indicated his whereabouts. He was in the long narrow garden, pottering about in the greenhouse, and Jarret pulled a wry face as he went to show himself.

‘What are you doing here?’ the old man demanded peevishly, not entirely able to hide his pleasure nevertheless. ‘I don’t normally see you Thursdays, do I? You got some trouble or something, or is this just a social call?’

Jarret grimaced. ‘That’s some line in welcomes you’ve got there, Paddy,’ he remarked without rancour leading the way back to the house. ‘I make a special effort to come and see you, and what do you say?’

‘Don’t call me Paddy,’ the old man grunted, coming into the kitchen after him and reaching for the kettle. ‘Do you want a cup of tea or are you needing something stronger? I’ve a bottle of stout in the cupboard, if it’s not too strong for your taste.’

Jarret grinned. ‘The stout would be fine,’ he agreed, propping himself against the table. ‘And how have you been since the last time I saw you?’

The old man busied himself getting out two bottles of stout and levering off the caps. Jarret saw, with some concern, that his hands were getting shaky, and there wasn’t the strength in them there had been a year ago. That stroke he had had, had taken more out of him than he cared to admit, and Jarret wished he would let him do something for him.

But Patrick Horton was intensely independent, he always had been, and since Jarret’s mother died he had resisted all efforts to share in his stepson’s success. It was ironic really, Jarret thought now, that his mother should havedied only weeks after his first book was published, and the subsequent success it had enjoyed had never made her life any easier.

Now he accepted the stout the old man handed him, declined the offer of a glass, and raised the bottle to his lips. It was rich and black, and only slightly warm despite the heat of the day, and he drank it thirstily, acknowledging the old man’s pleasure in his enjoyment as he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

‘So?’ he urged. ‘You’re keeping well? No more of those dizzy turns you were having a month or two ago?’

‘Psshaw, dizzy turns!’ His stepfather was impatient. ‘I’m getting too old, that’s all that’s wrong with me. And you didn’t come here to discuss my aches and pains.’

Jarret sighed. ‘I wish you’d let me find you somewhere—pleasanter, somewhere smaller. Somewhere you could look after your garden, and not have to bother about taking care of a house. A bungalow, for——’

‘I was born in this house, Jarret, and I intend to die here,’ his stepfather interrupted him firmly. ‘It may seem scruffy and old-fashioned to you, after that place of yours up West, but it suits me down to the ground.’

Jarret shook his head. ‘You’re an obstinate old fool, do you know that?’

‘Why? ‘Cause I won’t let you squander your money on me. Humph!’ He chuckled. ‘You save it for those skinny bits of skirt I see you going about with. Don’t know what you see in them, I don’t honestly.’

‘Don’t you?’ queried Jarret lazily, and his stepfather chuckled once again.

‘Well, yes, I guess I do at that,’ he agreed wickedly. ‘But that’s not to say I approve. You’ll be getting yourself into trouble one of these days, and then all that money of yours won’t be enough to get you out of it.’

‘Mmm.’ Jarret took another mouthful of his stout as if considering the point, and the old man continued:

‘Like that Honourable what’s-her-name you used to see sometimes. Margaret something or other.’

‘Lady Margot Urquart,’ amended Jarret dryly. ‘As a matter of fact, I saw her this morning.’

‘Did you?’ His stepfather made a sound of contempt. ‘Soshe’s still hanging around, is she? What the hell do you want with an old bird like her?’

‘I have to remind you that it was Margot who persuaded James Stanford to publish Devil’s Kitchen!’ he retorted, shrugging. ‘Besides, she’s not that old, Paddy. I doubt if she’s even forty.’

‘And you’re thirty-one,’ his stepfather pointed out shortly.

Jarret sighed. ‘Well, as a matter of fact, Margot did have a reason for visiting me …’