Page 17 of Infamous

Eddie was irritated to discover that she was blushing, at both the mention ofhusbandsand of anything being kept beside some futurebed. She stuck her chin out in an attempt to distract him from it.

‘Itoldyou to call me Eddie.’

He waved a hand in dismissal. ‘I can’t call youEddiewith a straight face, I’m afraid. That’s a little boy’s name. And you are .?.?. very muchnota little boy. Can’t we compromise? Strike a deal? I can pay you off, as long as you don’t mind being compensated in .?.?. God, what do I even have in here? Bawdy pipes and rat droppings. Oh, look, there’s half a rotten poem here .?.?. I’ll give you a stanza, and you’ll let me call youEdie, instead.’

‘Edie?’ said Eddie, wrinkling her nose. ‘It sounds .?.?. I don’t know. Girlish.’

‘Youaregirlish, even if you claim otherwise. Don’t look like that, there’s no shame in it! Edie it is. And I owe you a poem. Here you are.’

Girlish or not, it gave Eddie a thrill to hear him using a pet name – a name that she could guarantee onlyhewould use, as she would not countenance it from anybody else. She took the poem with slightly shaking hands and thought about casually folding it and tucking it into her reticule, as if famous poets were always handing her precious unpublished excerpts of their work, but her enthusiasm won out and she unrolled the crumpled parchment eagerly on her lap, bending low to read it in the soft glow of the lamp:

Look no longer, fore or aft,

The sea scanned for that blooded foam,

She smites you true, that winged shaft,

The hunger and the limbs below,

’Tis a shrewd and wicked craft,

Struck down before you feel the blow—

‘You can keep that one,’ said Nash, leaning back in his chair and squinting up at the ceiling. ‘Hideous. It’s been reworked a thousand times since, and it’ll all come to nothing.’

‘I like it,’ said Eddie, suddenly feeling strangely protective of this scrap. ‘It’s about .?.?. love?’

‘Love, sex, Aphrodite, Eros, death .?.?. It might as well be an instruction manual about how to build a ship, I spent enough time studying vessel plans to eke out horrible little metaphors and turns of phrase that made me want to vomit.’ He rubbed his thumb over his dark moustache, and Eddie watched its journey, strangely fascinated. ‘Byron is squirrelled away in Europe writing an epic. It’s supposed to be a secret, so of course everybody I know keeps bloodyaskingme about it. You know – where’smyepic? Where’s my .?.?.? Well, I suspect it’ll be his magnum fucking opus, and I’m still fussing around with frothy descriptions ofloveand pictures of ships.’

‘But you’re a genius!’ said Eddie, forgetting that she had promised herself she’d stay cool and collected. ‘You’re brilliant, everybody thinks so. I can barely move for people recommending you, passing around your work – whatever you write next, it’ll be wonderful.’

Nash seemed to smile despite himself, but then he shook it off, put down his wineglass and scrubbed a hand through his already quite disorderly hair.

‘Certainly not everyone.’

‘You have a whole house full of admirers here!’

‘Ha! You’d be surprised. Liza, for one, isnotbest pleased with me. In fact, she’s sick of me – my writing, my moping – and frankly, who could blame her.’

‘What?’ said Eddie, genuinely stunned. ‘Surelynot.’

She had known that Nash was married – had discovered it years ago after reading some of his early poems, and had felt momentary but crushing disappointment, long before she thought she’d ever actually share aroomwith him – and had just assumed that whoever had the honour must have been as fiercely glad of it as she would be herself.

‘I am most certainlynotmistaken, but don’t cry for me, Edie – I’m sure the slow, agonising affliction of love gone putrid will do wonders for my work.’

He said it lightly, but Eddie was gripped by an urge to reach across the desk and touch his arm in an attempt to be comforting. She was just working herself up to actually do it when Nash clicked his fingers and pointed at her.

‘Aha! Diversions, distractions, misdirection. I want to read your writing.’

‘You can’t,’ Eddie said reflexively. Then she paused and looked down into her wine, which had a speck of dust floating on the surface. ‘Yet, I mean. It’s not ready.’

‘If you had to put an estimate on it,’ said Nash, ‘when do you imagine itmightbe ready? Come on, I showed you my dreadful stanza, please respond in kind.’

‘Give me .?.?. Give me one month,’ said Eddie, plucking the number from the air and then wishing she could put it back. ‘It won’t be great in a month, but it might be .?.?. readable.’

‘That’s all I ask,’ said Nash. ‘That’ll be, what .?.?. a week or two after Michaelmas?’

Eddie nodded. She had been so caught up in surviving this one evening and making an impression that she hadn’t thought beyond it, and the idea that Nash was making plans with her for four weeks hence filled her with scorching terror and anticipation.