Authors: ed. Simon Petrie
* * *
As the afternoon steadily progressed HG noticed Eliza’s strength waning, and gently suggested she should lie down for a nap. He accompanied her to her bedroom where she retired to her bed.
“Stay!” she commanded as he tried to leave her to her rest. She feebly tapped the duvet beside her, and he lay there, settling her into his arms. She pressed her head to his chest and observed, “I can hear them again.”
“Hear what, my love?” HG asked, puzzled.
“My nano army sweeping away through my veins.” She could feel him smile as HG drew her closer.
“Keeping you alive, my love. So you can write more beautiful words.”
* * *
As the days passed and Eliza’s confidence in her writing grew, HG removed himself from her office, leaving the windowsill entirely at the cat’s disposal, and took to spending more time in his own office, where Eliza presumed he was also writing.
He was so absorbed in the book he was reading on his laptop that he didn’t hear her approach his sanctuary. Something—he wasn’t even sure what—made him glance up and towards the door, and there he found her, leaning against the frame, studying him intently.
For a split second he thought she’d finally begun to puzzle over why he was so much younger than her, though from what she said, it was obvious she thought of them as about the same age. Then a split second later he thought she’d worked it all out and he quickly closed the computer screen. He’d observed how astute she could be. She only missed the things she chose to miss.
“What is it, my love?” he asked her, an enquiring smile about his lips.
“You weren’t writing?”
“I was revising something I’d written earlier,” he said, belatedly realizing the trap he’d set for himself, hoping she wouldn’t ask to view his words.
“Do you think you could come and revise mine?” she asked him.
“Your muse has left you?” he asked her with a raised eyebrow.
“My muse is sitting in his office, and I have a horrible bout of writer’s block today.”
Dutifully he accompanied her to her creative den.
In a glance at her computer screen he realized she had added another five thousand words to her latest novel since this morning. She was throwing herself at her work like a mountain goat at a snow capped peak, and not for the first time HG wondered if he should counsel her to take her time. But those two from her publishing house always insisted that hard work was good for her.
“You remember how the protagonist was trapped in that cave … ?” Eliza began.
“Tom Burrows, your adventure-seeking librarian, yes?”
“I’m damned if I know how to get him out now.” She took her seat and considered the computer screen with an exasperated sigh.
“Let me see.” He leant in close to study her writing, aware of her warmth, the light pressure of her body against his. “You don’t say if he’s carrying a length of rope or not. If you mention it in the previous page … ?”
She considered that for a moment then dismissed it. “Rope’s a bit passé, isn’t it? Besides, it’s a subterranean cave. How about he feels a breeze on his cheek and follows it to another exit?” she suggested, inspired by his closeness, looking up to him for his approval.
He considered a moment and said, “Yes, that would do it too, I guess.”
“Thank you, HG, you’re a treasure.” She pressed closer into him affectionately, then resumed typing, her bird-claw-like hands fluttering over the keyboard.
“Why don’t you take a break?” he suggested.
She hummed him away dismissively, fingers still flying as she tried to capture words and lodge them on the screen before they flew out of her mind.
He persisted. “Then why not use the speak function on the computer?”
“You know how I hate to use that, HG. It interrupts the flow of the movie in my mind.” The words didn’t stop spilling onto the screen as she answered him, he noticed.
“Leave you in peace, shall I?” he suggested, leaving her to her work.
* * *
Back in his office, HG decided it might be wise, considering he was supposed to be a writer, if he had some of his writing to show her just in case she asked to see his work next time she was standing at his door with writers’ block.
But what to write?
He pondered, he played, but noticed the words did not escape from his fingers to the keyboard with the same velocity as they did when she had mastery over them. And they didn’t sing as sweetly when they were all aligned like hers did. He frowned at the screen. There seemed to be a lot more to writing than he’d thought, but he stuck with it long into the night until she was standing at his office doorway once again, looking peeved.
“HG?” She sounded cross, and something registered in him that this wasn’t the first time she’d called his name. “You didn’t come out for dinner.”
“Not hungry,” he said dismissively, eyes never leaving his screen. He thought he was on the verge of cracking the code. It had taken him all afternoon, but he thought he was shaping into a reasonably good writer.
“Just as well. Nona’s long gone, though I could make you a sandwich or something?” she offered with a small smile. “Not tired either, I bet? Well, I’m off to bed.”
He knew that was a hint for him to escort her to her room, lay down beside her, let her rest her head on his chest. He went to close his program, had a second thought, had a third to dismiss the second, saved his work and turned his computer off and followed her to bed, even though he yearned to stay and play with the words some more now that he thought he was getting the hang of it. It was addictive, this writing she did. And it seemed to make time pass more quickly.
“Maybe you’ll let me read it tomorrow?” she suggested as she settled her head in its accustomed place on his chest. Her proposition filled him with delight for reasons that he couldn’t fathom.
* * *
HG waited pensively for Eliza’s response as she sat at his computer reading his words. He was surprised how keen he was to get her approval on this.
“Not bad.” She finally passed judgement on his words, and the thrill of accomplishment he felt was completely unexpected. “It needs a little tightening here, and here, I think. And what made you go back to short stories all of a sudden? You haven’t written one of those in years.”
“Seeing you in hospital,” he answered. “Realising none of us is sure of how long we have.” Then hesitantly he added: “Do you think it’s publishable?”
“Definitely. It just needs a little work, then I suggest you send it to Colin for his magazine. I’m sure he’d be pleased to have your story grace his pages. Now will you help me with my book? I’ve hit a hard spot again.”
HG complied, returning to his work after he’d assisted her and surreptitiously asked her the name of Colin’s magazine. He made good use of her suggestions on how to improve his story and quietly e-mailed it away at the end of the day, saying in his covering letter that Eliza had suggested he submit it to them, not sure of what to expect.
* * *
There was an acceptance letter in his inbox within a fortnight.
“They accepted my story!” he crowed to Eliza.
“Well, of course they did,” she replied as if she hadn’t expected anything else. “You’re a good writer and it’s a good story.”
* * *
Eliza was so engrossed in her own writing that she didn’t register the ring of the doorbell, or that Carter and Powell were in the hallway outside having another whispered and heated discussion with HG until several comments had been said above a whisper. Powell hissed something about ‘This isn’t what you’re being paid for.’ At least that’s what Eliza thought he said, as she headed out to the hall to see what all the fuss was about. The talk lapsed into a guilty silence the second she arrived, a sure sign that what they were all talking about concerned her.
“What’s the problem here?” she enquired when the silence stretched between the argumentative men gathered in her hallway, which put her even more on her guard.
“My bank account … isn’t recognised. I can’t get paid for that short story I sold to Colin.” HG looked sheepish.
Eliza frowned. “Get them to transfer the money into my account then. HG, you’d better sort it out with the bank immediately. And your on-line transfer account? That hasn’t been breached, has it?”
HG raised an eyebrow of understanding, wished he’d thought of that first. It’d be relatively easy to set up a small e-pay account. “I’ll have to check.”
He made his way to his office down the hall as Powell and Carter were ushered into Eliza’s inner sanctum to review the nearly completed manuscript that suddenly she had doubts about. Fear clutched her heart with icy fingers.
They read, they approved, they left. Powell in particular had the happy glint of bestseller profits in his eyes as he departed, but Eliza still had her doubts. She summoned HG from his office urgently.
“What is it, my love?” He must, surely, see her uncertainty, the worried look on her face.
“Read this manuscript out loud for me, HG, from this page here.”
She’d only written those words this afternoon. They were fresh, he hadn’t looked at them yet, couldn’t extrapolate the new words from what she’d written so far if her greatest fears were based in truth.
And he read them back to her, word perfect, raising a quizzical eyebrow to her when he’d finished.
The confidence with which she had greeted the threesome in the hallway had quite evaporated. “Yes … that sounds like me. That is what’s written there, isn’t it, HG?”
“Of course, my love.” His answer emphatic.
“Prove it to me. Type in a line or two and let me read them back to you.”
And he did, and she was relieved to find that she could read them back to him in the order he had written them, not like when she was in hospital and the words came out all confused.
* * *
But HG still didn’t understand what was tormenting her so.
There was quiet desperation in her eyes and on her face as she grasped his arm with surprising strength and said, “You’d tell me the truth, wouldn’t you, HG? If this was all an elaborate mock up and my brain was too addled to write any more?”
Now he understood the cause of her anxiety. “I’d tell you, dearest. But would that buffoon, Powell, be hovering around you, urging you to complete your book if he couldn’t sell it?”
She conceded him the point, the anxiety fading from her face.
Not for the first time, he thought that she was working herself too hard, and this was yet another sign of the stress that she was under. Everyone acted as though she was the person she’d been before she’d had the stroke, but he knew this was not the case.
“I tell you what, why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off? We could take Bob down to the beach for a walk.”
“I’m not sure I could walk that far and back anymore.”
“Then we’ll take the car. Let the salt air clear your mind, get the feel of sand between your toes. Watch that damned dog of yours leap half way up the sky trying to catch seagulls. You’ll feel better for it, I promise you.”
And as Bob ran along the beach before them, leaping half way up the sky to catch seagulls that laughed in squawks as they escaped him, Eliza gave voice to all her fears. “How much sand is left in my hourglass, do you suppose?” She bent and grabbed a fistful of sand which slipped through her fingers and blew away to demonstrate. Before HG could formulate an answer she continued, “Do you know, when I first saw you in the hospital, I was sure I was dying, that my time had run out.”
“They managed to bring you back,” he told her quietly. “And when they inserted your nanos—well, they filled the hourglass to the brim again, so you have all the time in the world. No need to push yourself so hard, my dearest.”
“But I still feel that time is escaping me, HG, and I have so many books I need to write …”
“You will, my love, you will,” he soothed her. “And I will help you in any way I can.”
Back home, as she took a nap curled into his chest, he checked her health. The nanos were working perfectly, yet she tired so easily. She felt a little lighter pressed against him, as if she was fading away. He hadn’t been monitoring all her meals—Nona was still hostile towards him—but every night she slept deeply, her head resting on his chest while he researched story ideas of his own.
He thought he was coming to understand this necessity to write that burned in her like a fever. It seemed he’d been bitten by the same bug. He’d submitted another short story, and while she worked every day on her novel, he had another six stories on the go. He thought he’d test his emerging skills by writing a novel next.
The bank account Eliza had sorted for him still held the payment he’d received for the first story he’d sold. He didn’t need the money, yet he wanted to amass more. It was acknowledgement of his talent, of his very being.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He knew it, Carter and Powell knew it, Nona knew it, and in her own way, he expected even Eliza knew it despite the clever web of deception she wove around herself to make him appear a natural part of her life. It was because she needed him. Though to anyone who didn’t know her, she still appeared fiercely independent, she made room for him not only in her life but in her past, so that they could have a future together.
* * *
“There, I think I’ve finally finished.” Her hands were raised off the laptop keyboard with the flourish of an accomplished musician completing a complicated piece.
They were words HG thought he’d never hear. It had been a struggle as she’d alternated between confidence and self-doubt, repeatedly revising her work, making minor corrections.
While Robbie had been encouraging when ever he visited, or read her work in progress, Powell had done nothing but nag her to finish the manuscript. HG would see her tense up, swallow her anger. When he tried to protect her, HG’s efforts saw him receive a tongue lashing from Powell for having his own developing career. It wasn’t why he’d been engaged. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t
done
.