Page 28 of Infamous

‘What fate is that?’

‘Obscurity,’ said Nash, smiling at Eddie in a way that made her feel warm from the tips of her fingers to the base of her spine.

‘And how exactly am I to be your means of rescue?’ said Eddie, hiding behind the flask so he couldn’t see her blush. ‘I am nobody, with nothing to my name but a hundred or so stories and a manuscript that, as of this morning, is covered with jam.’

‘You need not do anything but be exactly as and who you are,’ said Nash. ‘Just having you here, sitting in my parlour – well,’ he amended, ‘sitting inaparlour – is a greater source of inspiration to me than I’ve found all summer. The novel will flow out of me like a river.’ This brief, sparkling moment of hope seemed to gutter out almost as soon as it had begun. ‘If only I can remember who the hell I am, and what the devil I have to say about literally anything.’

‘Iknow who you are,’ said Eddie.

She really felt she did after years of reading his poetry, of following his career in the papers. She had grown up with him. He had guided her, without knowing, and now he was looking at her as if she might be able to return the favour.

‘Please, tell me,’ said Nash, leaning his head on the back of the sofa and looking up at her through dark lashes. He had shaved badly, or perhaps hadn’t shaved at all, a roguish scattering of stubble decorating his sharp jaw, and he smelled like a pleasant mix of musky perfume and sweet alcohol. ‘Sometimes I truly cannot remember. You’re a writer. Tell me the story of Nash Nicholson.’

‘You are simply setting me up to embarrass myself,’ said Eddie, but Nash waved away her protestations. ‘Fine, fine. Nash Nicholson. Nash Nicholson is a young—’

‘I’m eight and twenty,’ he said mournfully, rubbing his forehead against the sofa and then looking back up at her with wild hair and wincing eyes. ‘Young, indeed. Almost in middle age. No wonder my brain is rotting.’

‘Nash Nicholson,’ Eddie ploughed on, ‘is arelativelyyoung poet, who writes with .?.?. with heart, and spirit, and candour, about the many great and terrible facets of life on this earth and beyond—’

‘Can a facet be terrible?’ Nash said, nudging Eddie’s arm with his elbow. His whole body was curled towards her now, like a neglected bloom reaching towards the sun, and Eddie was acutely aware of their proximity.

‘A facet can be anything I like,’ said Eddie. ‘You cannot stop yourself from interrupting, can you? Go on, then. Tell it yourself.’

He didn’t even pause to draw breath, letting his hand trail along the back of the sofa as he spoke.

‘Nash Nicholson is a washed-up hack approaching middle age, slowly suffocating to death in an airless house, in a loveless marriage, suddenly deaf to a thankless calling. Andwhat’s more.?.?. he’s run out of gin.’

‘Well,’ said Eddie, ‘you’re wrong about one thing.’

‘Am I?’

‘There is plenty of gin to be had outside the confines of this room.’

‘That’s all very well for the rabble, butI’mdisinclined to leavethe confines of this room,’ said Nash.

He had been running his fingers lightly along the upholstery, back and forth in mesmerising laps, and it took Eddie a moment to realise that they had jumped ship; his fingertips were now brushing feather-light along her arm before returning to the sofa. She didn’t move or speak, didn’t acknowledge it, and he kept going, his face and demeanour entirely unchanged, as if he hadn’t noticed he was doing it at all.

‘Rose and Albert Rednock are to be married,’ Eddie said suddenly. ‘It’s not been made official yet, but I fear .?.?. it’s only a matter of time.’

‘Rose?’ Nash said, frowning. ‘Well .?.?. Albert’s a pleasant enough chap, I’m sure she could do worse. He doesn’t have the spirit of a true revolutionary, but I have known him for a very long time, and he’s never done anything remotely horrible. Or interesting.’

Eddie shook her head miserably. ‘You don’t understand .?.?. She doesn’t evenlovehim, and nobody is forcing her into it – I have no earthly idea why she’s marrying him. Things have been difficult between us lately, and she doesn’t understand any of .?.?. this.’ She waved around at the room, as if that would somehow convey the enormity of her feelings.

‘Peopledon’tunderstand,’ he said, his face softening. ‘Those of us who live to create, who throw ourselves upon the altar of art and bleed and bleed for it .?.?. how could we ever really inhabit the same world as those who simply dress for the day and read the paper and never dream that they could be the god of something new?’

‘I don’t even know if that’s who I am,’ Eddie said, wondering why her voice had gone so strangely quiet and husky. Nash’s hand landed on her arm and then stayed there, the pads of his fingers tracing slow circles at her wrist.

‘Of course it is, Edie,’ Nash said. ‘Why else would you be here? How would we have found each other?’ His voice was no more than a murmur, and Eddie’s eyes closed briefly like a soothed child, focusing on the sound of his breath and the feeling of his fingertips lingering over her pulse. ‘Listen, I’m getting out of here. London is killing me. The whole damned city is sitting on my chest, and I’m not quite sturdy enough to bear it. I’m absconding to my accursed little country estate – it’s upon a lake. You should come. Write, walk, cultivate genius. I shall invite Albert and your friend to accompany you – one last jaunt before marriage claims them. I’m going to drag Dayo and Valentine with me, and perhaps Kitty, if she soaks in turps for a few days to get the oils off her.’

‘And Liza,’ Eddie added. It wasn’t a question, although perhaps it should have been. Nash’s fingers had paused, and he removed his hand from hers to ruffle it through his hair.

‘Oh, yes. Well. That’s a given.’

There was a scattering of loud bangs that made Eddie jump in her seat; somebody was hammering on the door in drunken earnest, and Nash rolled his eyes, but got up to answer it anyway.

‘But .?.?. you said you’d leave by the window,’ Eddie said, jumping up and putting a hand to her hair as if it might have somehow been salaciously dishevelled.

‘Nobody will mind,’ Nash said, ignoring the fact thatEddiecertainly minded.