Philippa Gregory: Zelda’s Cut

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.’