Page 10 of Infamous

‘Don’t call me Edith, Rose.’

Eddie sensed that she was pushing Rose too far and that they might be on the brink of a proper bout of hurt feelings, which simultaneously made her feel rotten to the core and even more inclined to dig her heels in, but there was a commotion in the hallway that caused all conversation to cease immediately.

It sounded as if a very large dog or a very small bison had just entered, ricocheting off the walls as it went; when the door opened, quite a few people actually inhaled sharply, and the newspaper editor, Mr Edwards, paused with his knife in the air as if he might be about to fend off whatever was about to descend upon them.

The tension was broken when a tall, moustachioed man walked in backwards, dusting off his sleeves as he turned towards them. He was all elbows and knees, with wild dark hair sticking up in all directions and an irritated expression on his pale face. A moment later, a very large dog entered, rather more politely than its owner had.

‘Bloody hell, sorry, Christ, it’s the .?.?. Well, of course,nowit’s all butter-wouldn’t-melt, but I swear to God, a minute ago she was channelling the spirit of her ancestors and trying to make sausages out of me – evening, Jonathan, Albert. Evening, all. You haven’t got any whisky, have you?’

If he was at all aware that this had been received by a stunned silence, he didn’t seem to mind a bit; Mr Edwards the editor broke it by getting to his feet and going to clap the newcomer on the back, while Mr Rednock went in search of whisky. The dog walked straight over to Rose as if she had called it and immediately leaned its enormous head against her leg, looking up at her through thick, wiry tufts of fur while Rose visibly struggled not to stroke it.

‘Whoisthat?’ Eddie said to Rose, who was distracted by the dog and needed a light poking to draw her attention.

‘Oh? I don’t know – a friend of Mr Rednock’s, I suppose. He knows all sorts of odd people, he used to write bits and pieces for quite a radical pamphlet. Oh, you aregorgeous,aren’t you, you darling thing .?.?.’

The dog responded by thumping its tail so hard against the leg of Eddie’s chair that she could have sworn she was shifted a full inch to the right.

Mr Rednock returned with whisky, and the newcomer thanked him profusely before taking the entire bottle from his hand and returning to his conversation with Mr Edwards, which was accompanied by many dramatic gestures and exclamations. He seemed to find his seat by accident, half-falling into it and only acknowledging that he had arrived by groping for a glass to decant some alcohol into. His cravat was loose, his collar was falling open, and he was wearing a waistcoat that Mrs Miller would have politely described as ‘courageous’.

Conversation resumed around the table. Rose was trying to mutter something to Eddie, but Eddie was staring in rapt fascination at this new man, who had managed to swallow half of his whisky in one graceful gulp.

‘The fellow who sold her to me said she was some sort of cutting-edge hybrid, you know – one third mastiff, one third boar-hound, one third ancient warhorse – she’s clearly a deerhound, but she has got the sense of a Pomeranian and she’s the size of a frigate and it’s a bloody lethal combination.’ He turned very suddenly to look at Eddie, who jolted backwards in her seat and then tried to give every impression that she hadn’t. ‘Who are you?’

‘My apologies, Miss Miller, the man’s not got a proprietary bone in his body,’ said Mr Edwards fondly. ‘Miss Edith Miller, this is Mr Nash Nicholson.’

‘No it’s not,’ Eddie said, so loudly and with such force that quite a few people turned to look.

The man who purported to be Nash Nicholson, the young poet whose works had been carefully cut from newspapers and plastered across Eddie’s walls – the man whose latest collected works had been a twenty-first birthday present from Mr and Mrs Miller to Eddie last spring – looked down at himself, shrugged, and then met Eddie’s eye and laughed delightedly, as if he had not been so entertained in quite some time.

‘Well. All right. I’m fairly certain that I am, but I’ll gladly hear your arguments in opposition.’

‘My apologies,’ Eddie said, feeling suddenly very sweaty. ‘It’s just .?.?. I didn’t .?.?.’ She could feel Rose staring at her – could sense that Mr and Mrs Li further down the table were also looking at her with even more concern than they had earlier, as if all their fears about her ruining the evening might be coming true – but she was floundering. ‘I didn’t know you had a moustache.’

‘Oh, Christ, do I?’ said Nash Nicholson, finishing his whisky and languidly reaching for the bottle. ‘Well, it can’t be helped, I suppose. Jonathan .?.?.’ He smacked Mr Edwards on the arm with the back of his hand to get his attention. ‘That bloody critique in theReview– have you read it? Don’t, if you haven’t. You’ll be tempted to put both your eyes out with rusty spoons .?.?.’

He kept talking to Mr Edwards about the various failings of a newspaper writer Eddie had never heard of, but she hung on his every word as if he were performing some of his poetry. She only realised that she had been openly staring, her chin resting in the palm of her hand as she leaned impolitely on her elbow, when Rose cleared her throat. Eddie turned, dazed, to see Rose frowning at her. The dog, its head resting fully in Rose’s lap now as she continued to try desperately not to stroke it, seemed to be frowning, too.

‘Are you having some sort of breakdown?’ Rose asked quietly. ‘You don’t seem to be breathing.’

‘I’m breathing a bit,’ Eddie said breathlessly.

‘Your elbow is on your plate,’ Rose pointed out. ‘It’s covered in cranberry sauce.’

‘Haven’t you got anything better to do than stare at me?’ Eddie said, removing her elbow from its bed of sauce and wiping it on a napkin. ‘Aren’t you trying tocourtthat second-hand sofa of a man down the end of the table?’

‘Keep your voice down,’ Rose hissed, glancing over at Mr Rednock, who was currently talking to her mother. A man had appeared to remove the plates, and Eddie noticed distantly as he whisked hers away that she had forgotten to eat her turkey. ‘Who is he?’

‘Nash Nicholson. The poet,’ Eddie said, trying to move her lips as little as possible; as a result, Rose clearly didn’t hear a word of it, and she had to repeat herself. ‘You know. Thepoet. I used to read his poems to you. He wrote .?.?. He wrote “To the Lady of London” and .?.?. and “The Death of Beauty”.’

Rose’s nose wrinkled in a way that Eddie knew she found mortifying.

‘I can never tell them apart. Did he write the one about the pilgrimage?’

‘God, no, that was Byron – donotmention Byron,’ Eddie said, glancing furtively at Nash Nicholson, who was too engrossed in his own story to notice that he was being discussed mere feet away. ‘I can’tbelievehe’s here. Were you aware that Mr Rednock knew him?’

‘He said he knew a poet,’ Rose said, wincing as a bit of dog drool dripped down her hand and trying to wipe it surreptitiously on the tablecloth.

‘He’s notapoet, he’sthepoet—’