outside, following her stiff gait. ‘Something stronger?’ she asked over her shoulder, and this time it was a question. I declined.
Her garden was not large, but it was full of trees and bushes, and pink hollyhocks, more honeysuckle, the drone of accompanying bees, a little wilderness at the end. A church bell rang in the distance, a sombre line of twelve dongs to hold the time before it slipped away once more.
The garden moved in the breeze. Quick put the tray down on a stone table and a car revved in the road. ‘Pull up a pew,’ she said, gesturing to one of the three sun chairs. Two were old and saggy and had clearly seen much use. I obeyed, compelled by her authority. Lowering herself down gingerly into one of the older chairs, she slowly extended one leg after the other upon the grass. Kicking off velvet slippers, she revealed petite bare feet, browned by exposure. Looking at Quick’s ten toes, I felt trussed in my winkle-pickers, my wedged pill-box hat, my plain green dress. She pushed a pair of sunglasses down onto her face and I lost sight of her expression.
‘There are days like this,’ she said, ‘that I wish could go on for ever.’ She poured us each a glass of water, struggling a little with the weight of the unwieldy jug. She glugged her glass and smacked her lips. ‘Please eat,’ she said. In her own habitat, she seemed much more relaxed. Gone was the haunted expression in Reede’s office, even the debonair diffidence she sometimes employed for me and Pamela. I took up a quarter of the pork pie and began to eat it with a piece of bread roll. It was a good pie; the pastry melting away, the cool of the jelly, the rich shock of pig.
‘I hope we’re not giving you too much to do at the office?’ she asked.
‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘It’s all manageable.’
‘Good.’
‘How’s your married friend?’
I looked at Quick, worried she was a mind-reader. ‘Fine, thank you. She and her husband have moved to Queen’s Park.’
‘You’re not lonely?’
‘No.’
‘Writing anything?’
‘A little.’
‘Can I read it?’
‘Read it?’
‘Well, that’s what people usually do with writing, isn’t it?’ She looked amused.
‘I don’t—’
‘I’d be honoured if you showed me.’
‘It’s not very good,’ I said.
She pulled a face. ‘Does it matter whether you think it’s any good?’
‘Of course.’
‘Why?’
‘Well – because – because I have to be critical of it, to make it better.’
‘Well, that’s a given. But isn’t writing something as natural to you as breathing?’
‘In some ways. But I have to work at what I write,’ I said, my voice rising. ‘Every writer does.’
‘But you pick up a pen and write without much preamble.’
‘I suppose.’
‘And are you proud of breathing? Do you revere your ability to breathe?’
‘It’s who I am. So if it’s not any good, then neither am I.’
She stared at me. ‘Do you mean as a person?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, no. Don’t be moral about this, Odelle. You’re not walking around with a golden halo beaming out of you depending on the power of your paragraph. You don’t come into it, once someone else is reading. It stands apart from you. Don’t let your ability drag you down, don’t hang it round your neck like an albatross.’ She lit another cigarette. ‘When something is considered “good”, it draws people in, often resulting with the eventual destruction of the creator. I’ve seen it happen. So whether you think it’s “good” or not should be entirely irrelevant, if you want to carry on. It’s tough, but there it is. And of course, whether I think it’s good should also be neither here nor there. Even more so, in fact. I think you’re worrying too much.’
I was silent. I felt like I’d been shot.
‘Do you want to publish your work, Odelle?’ she went on, as if we were talking about nothing so substantial as a train timetable.
I dug my shoes into the grass and studied the tips intently. ‘Yes.’
Surprisingly, my honesty created a companionable silence, a moment of reprieve. To publish my work was what I wanted; it was the only goal I’d really ever had.
‘And do you hope to marry one day?’ she asked. ‘Have children?’
This was a swerve, but I had grown used to her staccato, jumping thoughts. Often with Quick you got the sense there was a whole other conversation going on underneath her words, one that only she could hear. The idea of being a wife was vaguely odd to me; the thought of being