Page 47 of The Cursed Writer
‘And he has revealed the circumstances behind my first novel?’
Harry frowned. ‘Yes.’
Philip St John stopped walking. ‘I will be blunt, Miss Moss. Were you sent here by the family of Rupert Templeton to make a claim against me?’
She felt her jaw drop in sheer astonishment. ‘What? No, I came because your nephew sent a telegram to…’ Harry gaped at him. ‘Why would Rupert’s family send anyone to…?’ And then in her mind, several things that had been fighting for her attention tumbled into place all at once. She let out a long breath ofunderstanding. ‘Oh. Because he wroteThe Blood-soaked Soil. Not you.’
He eyed her coldly. ‘If Rupert’s family did not send you, how could you know that?’
It took her a moment to formulate an answer, because she wasn’t sure herself. ‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘Or not until just now. But there were lots of little clues, really. The night we first met, you kept insisting it was your hand. I assumed at the time that you were distressed by the way it shook. But when I read some of your later works, I realised how different they were fromThe Blood-soaked Soil. I knew how you came to write it, so I thought that explained the differences. The mutilated first edition in your library confused me – I couldn’t understand who would do such a thing.’ She glanced over at him. ‘But it was you.’
He let out a slow sigh, laced with a pain that Harry suspected he had been holding on to for more than a decade. ‘You must understand, we had so much time to fill. Most of the men slept, or wrote endless letters home. Rupert and I discovered early on we were both storytellers. We used to dream of being published, of people reading our work, and somehow hit on the idea of using our time to write. But as the months dragged on, a sense of fatalism settled over us. Rupert in particular started to feel he would not escape the trenches and his gloom brought me down too. So we made a pact. If one of us died and the other made it out, the survivor pledged to find a way to see their writing published.’ He hung his head. ‘I am ashamed to admit that is exactly what I did.’
Harry kept her gaze averted as they walked, wanting to make the story easier to tell. After a moment, St John went on. ‘When Rupert died – a stupid, senseless death caused by a moment of carelessness – I was half-maddened by grief. I remember stumbling to his kitbag, digging out the battered old biscuit tin he kept the pages rolled in against the mould and the rats, andtucking it in my own bag. It sat there for months, untouched. And then there was a flood – some of the sandbags were blown away by shells and the rainwater poured into our billet. A lot of men lost everything – cigarettes, photographs from home, rations – all drenched and thick with mud. My own manuscript was ruined but I didn’t care. I’d lost the heart for writing when Rupert died. His tin was safe, though.’
She could picture the scene. ‘It sounds dreadful,’ she murmured, her heart aching.
Philip St John shrugged her sympathy away. ‘About six months later, the war was over. I got demobbed fairly quickly and went home to my old life, moving back in with my mother and my sister, who was raising her boy on her own, having lost her husband at Gallipoli.’
‘John,’ Harry observed.
He nodded. ‘I went back to work at the bank but nothing was the same.’ He paused, frowning. ‘No, that wasn’t it. In a lot of ways, everything was the same but I wasn’t. I found it almost impossible to blindly respect the people I’d once obeyed without question – the manager at the bank who had been too old to fight, the vicar who had seen nothing of life at all. I tried to settle back in, told myself the dissatisfaction would pass in time, but all the time I yearned for escape. And eventually, I remembered Rupert’s story, and the pact we’d made.
‘I hadn’t realised how much he’d written. I had only got about half way through the story I’d been writing, but Rupert had pretty much finished his. It was written in the funny sort of shorthand we’d developed between us – I’m not sure anyone could have made sense of it but me. Anyway, I began to write it out in longhand, spending every evening bent over the kitchen table until my hand ached. My mother suggested I get a typewriter but I didn’t want that. Writing Rupert’s words made me feel close to him again, somehow. I didn’t want anything toget in the way. Before long, I’d transcribed the whole thing and I knew right away that it was something special.’
He smiled sadly. ‘He was always so much better than me, you see. At first, I planned to send it to his family but there was the pact we had made. What if they didn’t appreciate how good it was, and kept it for themselves, as a piece of the man they had lost? Once it was out of my hands, I would have no say in what happened next. Wouldn’t I be letting Rupert down, breaking our pact, if I risked allowing that to happen?’
Harry nodded in slow understanding. The crime was undeniable but it helped to get a sense of why St John had done what he had.
‘I couldn’t tell you when I first considered passing Rupert’s writing off as my own. My mother was telling anyone who would listen that I was writing a book, oblivious to the fact that I hadn’t written an original word for years. I thought about sending it to some publishers with a covering letter explaining what had happened but realised that was fraught with difficulty too. In the end, I managed to convince myself that pretending I had written it was the only way.’ He let out a hollow laugh. ‘If only I had known.’
‘You didn’t anticipate the level of success,’ Harry said.
‘No,’ St John said. ‘Nor – somewhat naively – that the publisher would want more books.’ He stared at the ground. ‘I’ve spent the last ten years trying to live up to the promise of somebody else’s brilliance. It – it has not been a pleasant experience.’
Harry was quiet for a moment. ‘Your other books are good,’ she said. ‘Different, of course, and now I know why. But still engaging stories.’
‘You are being kind,’ he said. ‘But I am not ashamed of them – they were the stories I was meant to tell. I like to think I did agood thing in getting Rupert’s out there too, although taking the credit was very wrong.’
Harry could not disagree. ‘John tells me you take meticulous care over your royalty statements, that the payments forThe Blood-soaked Soilare held separately.’
He nodded. ‘My solicitor holds instructions on what to do with the monies after I die. I do hope poor John will not be too disappointed not to inherit the income. He will, of course, have Thrumwell Manor. I bought it with some of the royalties fromThe Blood-soaked Soilbut have long since repaid that money with my own earnings.’
There was no denying Philip St John’s actions had been criminal but Harry found it hard to judge him too harshly. It certainly seemed that no one could have berated themselves more strongly, in spite of the advantages he had gained. And she had no doubt Philip St John had worked hard at making the shorthand writings of his friend into something that would catch a publisher’s eye. He had probably put more of himself into the story than he had realised but she suspected that he would reject any suggestion that he had added anything to Rupert’s brilliance. ‘You did at least fulfil the pact,’ she said, after a long silence. ‘You found a way to get his story into the hands of readers.’
St John let out a bark of laughter. ‘I don’t think Rupert would see it that way. The thought of how I cheated him haunts me still, even after all these years.’
Harry shook her head. ‘I think it’s time to stop that, Mr St John.’
He turned to her then, and she saw resignation mingled with a strange sort of hope on his face. ‘Will you shame me, then?’ he asked.
Harry regarded him steadily. ‘I will not,’ she said. ‘You cannot change what is done and you have made more thanenough effort to redress the balance. I assure you, your secret is safe with me.’
His eyes moistened as he sighed. ‘I cannot tell you how much it helps to have told someone at long last.’
‘I can imagine,’ she said softly. ‘Secrets are a heavy burden.’
A strained silence fell over them as they walked. ‘I think you are quite a surprising young woman,’ Philip St John said, at length. ‘I’m not sure I’ve met anyone quite like you.’
