‘I just want everybody to be happy. Is that so wrong?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not realistic. As I’ve told you before; just because you were born with a relentlessly happy disposition, it doesn’t mean the rest of us have to be like you. Take it from me, I’m happy enough when I’m working.’
‘So what are you currently working on?’
‘A new film script, if you must know.’
‘A commissioned script?’
‘No, somethingIwant to write.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing. You know I hate to share anything until it’s finished.’
She drained her glass of orange juice. ‘Tell me about this English woman called Romily.’
He kept his expression frozen in neutral. ‘Presumably Gabe and Melvyn brought her name up in conversation at your swanky dinner?’
‘They might have,’ she said carelessly. ‘Now why don’t you give yourself a break from your typewriter and take me for lunch. And then you can explain why you deliberately sabotaged the project Gabe and Melvyn wanted you to do.’
‘I didn’t sabotage the project,’ he said with heat. ‘If that’s what they told you, then they’re way out of line. It was Romily who walked away. She was the one who flew back to England in a state of high dudgeon.’
‘Did you try to stop her?’
‘Trust me, there’s no stopping a woman like RomilyDevereux-Temple; she’s a law unto herself.’
‘As are you, brother dear. As are you.’
Following lunch and his sister’s departure to rejoin her husband and fly home to Washington, Red sat in quiet contemplation outside on the verandah watching the setting sun.
Never one to pull her punches, Patsy had seen fit to put him straight. ‘You’re drinking too much and making yourself maudlin because some clever English dame got one over you,’ she’d said. ‘Personally, I’d like to shake her by the hand. God knows it’s high time your ego was given a good working over. Does it really matter so much to you that she outsmarted you?’
‘I never said she did!’ he’d remonstrated.
‘You didn’t need to. I know you, Red. I know howpig-headed you are when your pride has been dealt a blow. I also know that when somebody gets under your skin you deliberately push them away.’
‘How the devil you’ve reached that conclusion is beyond me.’
‘It’s based on what you’renottelling me.’
For all his sister thought she knew him, and she probably knew him better than most, she didn’t know the whole of him. No one did.
In the distance Mount San Jacinto shimmered with a vibrant roseate hue as the setting sun smouldered and dipped yet further in the sky. The sight of it made him wish he could paint. But stick a paintbrush in his hand and he could do no more than produce a childish daub. Words were what he painted with.
But as his frustrated attempts to write that morning before Patsy had arrived had proved, he wasn’t exactly scoring any bullseyes on that particular target. He gave the typewriter on the table in front of him a reproachful look. Then with sudden resolve, he pulled it towards him and putting in a fresh piece of paper, he took a deep breath.
An hour later, and in the light of several candles on the table, and with the ground around him covered in balls of screwed up paper, he took what he’d finally managed to write from the typewriter. He laid the single sheet of paper flat on the table and scrutinised every word he’d typed.
He then signed his name at the bottom of the page. First thing in the morning he would post it.
ChapterForty-Five
Melstead Hall, Melstead St Mary
November 1962
Julia
