Page 67 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
‘Oh, the characters are all off doing their own thing, now I’ve made Keturah’sdead lover come back as something notquite human. And then there’s this ancient family vampire that lives in the local hall that she finds quite attractive.’
‘You’re not going to do anything particularly revolting to him at the end, are you?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘I always get to kind of identify with someone half bad and half good in your novels, and then you do something awful to them!’
‘Of course I am! Don’t I always? But it won’t bemebut my heroine Keturah. She might eat him during the sex act, like a spider, since she is half-vampire, half—’
‘Oh God!’ exclaimed Orla. ‘Ugh! Don’t tell me any more. How can you sleep at night?’
‘I don’t, I’m too busy writing.’ I sighed. ‘After this, I think I’ll write a literary novel under an assumed name, and call itDante’s CompendiumorDante’s Goldfishor something.’
‘You are joking, aren’t you?’ she said suspiciously.
I woke Charles yet again with my phone calls. I really must learn to check the time before I call people.
He never seems to mind, but he is not a young man and needs his beauty sleep. Another thing to feel guilty about.
I brought him up to date on Rosemary’s letter, and how I’d made her suffer all these years,and how guilty I felt, and about Max now seeming a worthless thing to have swapped for my self-respect.
‘And, Charles, I had an absolutely horrible thought: did I choose Max simply because he was older and very charismatic, like Pa? (Only sane.) Or like Pa was, before he took to drink.’
‘You were simply desperate for love, Cass my dear: leave the psychoanalysis to specialists. As to the rest:yes, it is a heavy weight to bear on your conscience, but if you are truly sorry, God will forgive you.’
‘Actually, I feel more worried about me ever forgiving me at the moment. And it was a bit shattering to discover thatthe minute the path is apparently clear for Max and I to be together, Rosemary is always going to be blocking the way.’
‘Does Max accept that the affair is finished?’
‘I’mnot sure that I quite accept it yet, Charles: I mean, I didn’t know how I would feel about him until I saw him again, and then we just argued, and then he tried to be nice and get round me, and then he went huffy again and left … so it all seems a bit like it’s inconclusively petered out rather than ended.’
‘So you haven’t actually told him?’
‘I think he got the idea, but no, I haven’t actuallycome right out with it in so many words. I might have, except he was so much more like the old Max I loved towards the end of the visit – apart from the vile beard.’
‘The beard?’
‘Surely you noticed, at the pub on Friday? It was disgusting – sort of shaved at the sides. There’s no telling what might have happened if he hadn’t turned up with facial hair, but I’m glad now that he did, becauseit made me take a good hard objective look at him and decide to end it all. I must. Imustfinish it.’
‘You will feel much better when you do, Cass: but in your own time. God has infinite patience, and infinite love.’
‘It’s just as well, Charles,’ I said, before replacing the receiver.
