The Love Letter (73 page)

Legs closed her eyes. Liz was right. He was a horrible, bullish, poetry-quoting bore and he did sound like a Tory MP.

‘Now Liz, you are going to keep on holding tight to Legs’ legs,’ he went on. ‘And I am going to come alongside you veeery slowly and take hold of Legs’ legs.’

The blood rushing around her head and the adrenalin on full choke was playing tricks on her as she started to giggle. It all sounded so silly, all those legs.

‘Stop that, darling,’ Francis’s voice was rigid with tension, making him sound like Basil Fawlty once more. ‘You’re not helping.’

With great effort, she stopped giggling, hysterical panic and hysterical laughter all muddled up. Her eyes raked the cliff below her for the climber, but she could see nothing. It must have been an illusion, brought about by the fitful, desperate head-rush of certain death.

‘Right, Liz,’ Francis had edged much closer, his voice much louder. ‘I am going to—’

‘Get back!’ she screeched, swinging around so that Legs swayed sideways too, net skirts catching on the rocks and bringing down a shower of loose scree.

‘Oh please, Lord, no,’ she whimpered, and then almost passed out as a firm arm steadied her shoulders and she gazed out through layers of net to see Byrne standing on the ledge beneath the overhang, his upside-down head level with hers. He pressed his fingers to his lips.

‘“If you can fill the unforgiving minute—”’ Francis droned on, quoting Kipling again.

‘Will you shut up!’ Liz screamed at him. ‘I can’t think straight.’

Legs let out a moan of fear as she slipped yet lower, but this time two arms had her safely in their grip

As strong as Nureyev whirling Margot Fonteyn overhead, he lifted her away from Liz’s grip and slid her down one of his broad shoulders, turning her the right way up and landing her lightly on the ledge beside him where she swayed groggily, blood rushing away from her head again. His arm reached out like a fairground safety bar, pressing her back against the rock-face beneath the overhang.

‘Oh fuck,’ came a shocked voice from above, ‘I’ve just dropped her.’

Francis’s wail of grief could have graced a repertory production of
Lear
as he stood on the edge of the cliff screaming at the sea. It was existential.

‘It was an accident!’ Liz was shrieking too, barely audible over
Francis’s screams and the rush of the wind. ‘It wasn’t my fault! It was an accident. That poor girl.’

Francis let out another howl.

For a terrifying moment, Legs thought he was going to push Liz over and possibly even jump himself, but he seemed to gather himself together remarkably quickly and, as sirens and blue lights raced towards the clifftop, he sobbed: ‘You are right, of course. I saw it all. It was an accident. A tragic accident. The police must be told straight away,’ his voice tapered away as he limped off to greet the emergency services pursued by a sobbing Liz.

Legs’ eyes bulged in fury. He hadn’t even looked over the edge to check if she was hanging there. She knew he was pretty phobic about the sight of blood and gore – and seeing a lover’s body smashed on the rocks would be a sight no man would willingly endure – but surely he could have tried? He was a total coward.

She turned her head to look at Byrne, seeing his big, dark eyes like two clifftop braziers. Again, he held a finger to his mouth and then nodded to her far side, where the ledge widened as it ran up towards the cliff’s edge at the Lookout.

Swallowing in terror, she started to shuffle along sideways, gripping tightly on to his arm. Together they edged twenty yards to a point where it was possible to turn around and clamber onto the plateau of windswept scrub and heather directly beside the old hermit’s cave.

Legs embraced solid ground with such passionate relief that she half expected to sink into it and take root there. Eventually, she let Byrne prize her up into a sitting position, and he stooped down to pick her up, carrying her into the cave.

‘Thank you thank you thank you!’ she sobbed, clinging to him. ‘You saved my life.’

He settled her down on one of the rickety chairs and then stepped back, raking his fingers into his hair which had been whipped wild by the sea-spray and wind.

It was sheltered from the wind inside the Lookout, and very dark, just a faint thread of moonlight stealing in between black outs of cloud cover. Byrne started pacing around, still supremely edgy.

‘What is this place?’ He looked at the old furniture and effects, eyes squinting into the darkness.

‘An old hermitage. We used to come here as kids.’

‘You and Francis?’

‘All of us.’ She was starting to regain her breath at last, her heartbeat gradually coming down, but her teeth rattled like castanets at a fiesta and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could last without a large brandy and a warm hug. She stood up unsteadily. ‘We must go out there now and tell them I’m OK.’

‘Why?’ he snapped.

‘They think I’m dead!’

There was a pause and Byrne seemed to gather himself together, shaking his head briefly, clearing his thoughts.

‘Of course.’ He stepped back into the shadows. ‘You must go to Francis.’

She picked her way cautiously towards the entrance then turned back to him. ‘Aren’t you coming?’

‘Not right now.’

‘You must, please, Byrne. I need you. I can’t …’ Her eyes filled with tears as she looked from him to the cliff path. ‘I’m scared.’

‘Hey.’ He rushed forwards to wrap his arms around her. ‘Hey. Shh. Poor little one, poor Heavenly Pony.’

She clung onto him gratefully. She could hear his heart pounding in his chest, impossibly fast. The warmth of his body against hers gave her strength, and she curled more tightly into it, listening to his breathing, her teeth no longer chattering as her hands
reached up to his face, fingers exploring the sharp angle of his jaw and the soft hollows beneath his ears.

He trapped her hands with his, gently pulling them away and holding them together under her chin as though in prayer, his eyes blazing into hers through the darkness.

Aware of her bare fingers, she blurted. ‘I dropped your ring – well Delia Meare did. I’m sorry. I’ll buy you another one, I promise.’

‘Delia Meare was the woman on the cliff?’ His brows creased, trying to place the familiar name.

‘She wrote
The Girl Who Checked Out,’
she explained, still getting to grips with it herself.

Byrne took a moment to make the connection, then looked stupefied. ‘Oh God, I sent that to you,’ he remembered. ‘Strange correspondent; brilliant plot.’

‘She’s Kizzy’s mother. Didn’t you see the likeness?’

‘Funnily enough I wasn’t studying her too closely.’ He looked up at her sharply from beneath his curling black brows. ‘Why would Kizzy’s mother want to kill you?’

‘The poison pen letters have been a sort of misguided attempt to capture our attention including Gordon’s – yours – and Conrad’s.’

‘I know it’s hard to get representation these days, but surely that’s a bit excessive?’

‘I just hope she doesn’t try the same stunt with the Booker judges.’ She leaned closer into him, desperate to be hugged. She couldn’t stop shaking, her teeth chattering and her body uncoordinated.

He let go and stepped away, his forehead creased with discomfort. ‘I’m going back to Ireland tonight.’

‘No!’ She reached out for him again, but he crossed his arms defensively in front of his chest.

Then suddenly, in technicolour, high definition, 3D flashback, she remembered what she’d discovered before her imagination became so overactive that she’d started running around the cellars,
lanes and clifftop in a panic, imagining a murderer on her tail. ‘Oh Christ, Byrne, the letter!’

Face immediately shuttered, he looked away. ‘Forget about it.’

‘I wrote it over a year ago, but it was never intended to be sent. That is, I
did
send a version, probably almost as bad only with fewer spelling mistakes and no Donne, but Francis never acknowledged that one, and then this—’

‘I said forget it! I should never have read it. It’s your private business.’

‘It’s not!’ she implored desperately. ‘I love you!
Gráim thú.
Let’s run away together like we planned. Let’s live for the moment. I love
you.
’

But he was a stone wall of self protection, his head low and shaking slowly, so that all she could see was his lovely, wild black hair in thick heroic tufts on his crown.

‘“I love you”,’ he quoted bitterly, and she remembered the moment he’d told her that he loved her under the lamp-post and she’d believed him even though he was only teaching her a lesson. ‘You write it eighteen times in your letter to Francis.’

She closed her eyes as she realised he’d counted them up while she had been counting down the minutes through dinner.

‘Nineteen if you count the quote from Donne’s “Batter My Heart”,’ he added.

And suddenly Legs realised she was talking to Gordon Lapis now, just as she had been that night walking back to the Book Inn. Paranoid, infuriating, hyper-critical Gordon, her old friend and sparring partner, so clever and so contrary. The two halves of Byrne coexisted so closely under his skin. To kiss one was to taste the other, the bitter skin on the sweetest fruit.

‘I know you’ve written things you regret,’ she said hoarsely. ‘I’ve heard you say it.’

‘But I can’t take them back,’ he replied coldly, ‘What’s written, once read, is like ink in skin to me. You can’t undo that, however much you long to go back and change it.’

‘Well, it’s not like that for me! It’s never been like that for me. My love-life might be short on emotional damage compared to yours, but its annals are still layered with Tippex and eraser crumbs, and if I could spend life leaning on the backspace key I would. Unlike you, my writing isn’t a matter of public record. When I want my words to be published, I’ll get another tattoo, ink on skin.’

‘Take my advice and stick to shapes,’ he muttered, ‘or hire a copy-editor first. Your spelling’s atrocious.’

She knew his flippancy was born of hurt. He was more Gordon than ever. But knowing it did nothing to quell her rage. Her voice was climbing scales of panic: ‘That letter you read was never meant to be
read.
I should have destroyed it a year ago.’

‘Live for the moment, live with the consequences.’

‘But don’t ever die young wearing men’s underpants,’ she said shakily.

He shrugged, turning away. ‘It worked for Ptolemy.’

‘Why did you kill him?’

‘I figured if I had to sacrifice my life for him, he could return the favour.’

‘So you made up a rule saying he loses his immortality if he falls in love?’

‘I just wanted him gone.’

‘You must really mistrust love to want to publicly destroy it like that.’

‘That’s right.’ He steepled his fingers over his nose, and looked across at her. ‘I built an invincible boy and killed him for love. What a fucking waste.’

Legs shook her head angrily. ‘He doesn’t die for love, Gordon. He dies because he can’t
live
with love. You won’t let him. That’s the fucking waste.’

He stared at her for a long time, taking this in.

‘People can hurt you when you love them.’

‘Like Poppy hurt you by running away?’

‘This isn’t about Poppy. I only came back here to teach Hector a lesson.’

‘I don’t believe that. This has been all about Poppy from the very start.’

‘Hector screwed up my father’s life!’

‘And I’m sure you entertained ideas of throwing punches in retaliation, humiliating him, seeing him financially ruined and sexually undermined, all of which you’ve achieved in some way or another, but Poppy has always been your primary target. You wrote Ptolemy for her in the first place, Byrne. It’s so plain to see, and so heartbreaking. It’s the longest and saddest letter an abandoned child could write home to his mother, a story about a boy who can never grow old and can never love. This is all about her; Ptolemy is
all
about Poppy. He’s you as a child, isn’t he? He’s your avenging angel and you brought him back to his mother after all these years, only to kill him in front of her eyes. If that isn’t revenge, I don’t know what is.’

His eyes blazed from his face. There was a yawning silence before he spoke.

‘I can’t change it,’ he hissed. ‘It’s out there now.’

‘And your fans are heartbroken. They’re in outcry. They blame you for murdering their favourite hero; no matter that you created him in the first place. You just shot your career to hell days before you’re due to go public. But what the hell – you upset your mother, which is all this was ever really about, so you got what you wanted. Now you can go home to Ireland and bury your head under a Bushmills.’

‘I am not ashamed to stand by my work.’

‘You don’t regret it! That’s great! You should get it tattooed on your chest in Gaelic: “I killed Ptolemy Finch and I don’t regret it.” Hollywood will rewrite the end, but Gordon Lapis could never compromise his artistic integrity and admit he got it wrong. What’s written, once read, is like ink on skin to you, after all. Remind me to get “Allegra requires discipline to achieve
amelioration” tattooed on my buttocks. It was in my school report at thirteen. Once written …’