Page 8 of The Christmas Invitation
Poetic Licence
I spent the next two days in a whirlwind of activity, including answering all my mail and messages, once I’d charged up my iPad and phone.
I’d been quite right about at least half the messages being from Rollo and, sighing, I deleted them unread.
He was four years my senior. When I first met and fell in love with him at a student party in my second year, he had a golden, mercurial quality, combined with a lot of charm. He could be very sweet then, too … but I suppose the spoilt child was always lurking within the man.
Rollo was a poet and one of the proprietors and contributors to a precious little quarterly magazine calledStrimp!(Don’t ask me why it’s called that; I have no idea.)
By now he was also a part-time lecturer in creative writing, which gave him access to an endless supply of female students, though since he’d turned forty, all that mercurial charm had started to transmogrify into elderly Peter Pan, so perhaps it was drying up.
He was a performance poet, and came alive on the stage in a way that made his poetry sound a lot better than I suspected it really was.
As to his looks, imagine an ageing but still handsome cross between Dylan Thomas and Lord Byron, all red-gold hair, sulky mouth and brooding gaze, and you’ve got him.
My mind wandered back to that brief time six years before, when marriage and a family had finally seemed within my grasp, only to be snatched away again. I’d wanted a clean break between us after that. It was Rollo who insisted we remain friends, which would, he’d said, show that I didn’t entirely blame him for the accident.
I firmly wrenched my thoughts back to the present, but there was no escaping Rollo, for he rang me on the Monday morning to demand histrionically why I was ignoring him.
‘I’ve been ignoring everyone,’ I told him patiently. ‘I’ve had pneumonia, remember? Fliss told you and you sent flowers.’
‘But that was ages ago!’
‘I was very ill and you don’t get over pneumonia in five minutes. I’ve been at the Farm convalescing since I got out of hospital and I’ve only just come home. How are things with you?’
I wedged the phone between cheek and shoulder and let him ramble on while I made myself coffee and ate a couple of slightly limp gingernut biscuits. I caught the odd phrase like ‘… she didn’t really appreciate my work and then, when she saw me with one of the students, she …’
‘Did she?’ I murmured with absent disinterest. Since he flitted from female to female like a hummingbird visits flowers, I could join the dots without listening properly. I’d been the only woman he’d ever had a relationship with that lasted longer than a fortnight, even if it had turned out that I’d never had exclusive rights … but even now, so long after our break-up, he didn’t seem able to function without constantly unburdening his soul and using me as a sounding board. Thatwasnotwhat friendship was about and, along with his increasing and unattractive self-absorption, it was a habit I’d like to break.
‘But at least they appreciate my work in the States, and a new collection of my poetry is being published there next spring,’ he finished on a triumphant up-note. He’d always been more popular in the USA than here.
‘Well, that’s wonderful, Rollo. I’m so glad. But I’m afraid I’ll have to go now, because I’m off north on Wednesday to paint a portrait commission and I’ve got a lot to do.’
‘But you’ve only just got back, you said so,’ he said aggrievedly.
I thought of something, other than himself, that would interest him. ‘My sitter is the wife of Henry Doome, the poet.’
I wished I’d kept this information to myself because he instantly became over-excited.
‘Henry Doome?’ he gasped, awed. ‘They say he’s turned down the Poet Laureateship twice! Of course he’s a bit old hat,’ he added, on a less exalted note, ‘but still a Big Name.’
‘Well, I’m supposed to be painting him, too.’
‘He’s said to be a total recluse these days and hardly ever gives an interview … but what a coup it would be forStrimp!if he’d talk to me and perhaps let us publish one of his poems. Meg, you’ll have to prepare the ground before I contact him – or wait, maybe it would be better if I just happened to be in the area and dropped in to see you … and then you can introduce me and I’ll take it from there.’
‘Absolutelynot. Are you mad?’ I said, aghast. ‘If you want to interview him, then you set it up yourself and don’t try to involve me. I’ve never even met the man and I’m not going to try to persuade him into doing anything he doesn’t want to.’
‘But, Meg, it would be—’
‘No,’ I said flatly. ‘I’ll have to go now, Rollo, and I’m going to be very busy, so don’t call me. I’ll catch up with you when I get back.’Or not, if I can help it, I added mentally. Then I put the phone down while he was still being persuasive.
It didn’t work on me any more: the magic charm had broken, like my heart, several years earlier.
I managed a quick chat on the phone with most of my closest friends, though none was free to meet up before I left, for they were all busy procreating, or child rearing, except Fliss, and I expected she’d be following suit as soon as physically possible.
She was the only one who did manage to meet up with me for coffee. When I told her all about my commission and Clara and everything, she said I’d probably vanish into the Bleak North, never to be seen again, and I must ring and email her with updates because it sounded fascinating.
‘It’s a pity you’re going right away, though, because I wanted to introduce you to Calum’s cousin, Rob. He’s just your type.’
