Read Online A Cry from the Dark by Robert Barnard - Free Book Online Page A

there’s a studio nearby that—”
    â€œDarling, it’s all part of the service. We have a lot of old crocks like you who dictate their books. We know what needs to be done—we have a standard drill. Anyway, we’ll charge you the earth. Now, when we’ve done that, your very good little woman— bound to be a woman, I presume? And cheap as dirt—can collect them and begin the work of transcribing. And when you have a new tape ready—no, a new chapter ready—she can bring it in, then collect it when it’s been duplicated.”
    â€œYou’re going to an awful lot of trouble, Clare.”
    â€œDarling, you haven’t written a book in seven years, and you’ve only been with Tuckett and Mancini for ten. We can’t live off little pieces you write about your first book for the Author or celebrity paragraphs on your favorite city for the New York Times. You’ve got to throw us a bit of meat now and then.”
    â€œDon’t pull the line that you only keep me on out of charity, Clare. You’ll do very nicely out of reprints and film rights.”
    â€œAfter a great deal of spadework and a lot of hard bargaining. Anyway, all I’m saying is a real book to sell and promote will be a nice change. I have no intention of letting you be murdered.”
    â€œThat’s comforting to hear. Though I’ve no intention of letting myself be murdered either. You don’t just give up because your eightieth year is just around the corner. I’m not going to lie down and die.”
    â€œI’m sure you’re not, darling. Knowing you you’ve got a Kalashnikov stored behind your front door. Now, get me those tapes and I’ll be on my way.”
    When Clare was on her way, with the tapes stuffed into her handbag, Bettina luxuriated in the pleasant feeling of being looked after. Of course Clare was protecting her investment, but she felt sure that real liking was involved too. If the memoirs she was not writing proved to be a good commercial proposition then Clare would be well rewarded for years of support, tender loving care, and sheer cheering up. It was nonsense to see Clare as a person who was battening on her except in the obvious and accepted professional way. Meanwhile there was the wearisome and worrisome matter of the will. Bettina made some coffee and prepared to come to some decisions.
    Clare turned out to have some unexpected business that afternoon, so she sent a secretary from the agency whom she knew Bettina was fond of to take her to the solicitors’. She arrived at a quarter to three, and by then Bettina had made up her mind. Twenty minutes later she was spelling out the terms of her very simple new will to the agency’s lawyer: equal legacies of £5,000 to her brother, Oliver, to Sylvia Easton, Hughie Naismyth, Peter Seddon, and Katie Jackson. The rest, and all future royalties from her books, she left to the National Portrait Gallery. It was the place in London where she felt happiest.
    That settled (for the moment, and until she got a better idea), she got herself prepared, materially and mentally, for the arrival of her brother and her daughter. The last time Ollie had come to Britain he and Judy had done the flight in one. That was in 1977, and though they had left Mark and their daughter with Judy’s parents, they had been exhausted for days after their arrival. After a week in London they had flown on to their real destination, Los Angeles, to visit Judy’s brother. By Ollie’s account at the time they had arrived there all but dead, and the foul air had made sure that they hardly made any recovery during their two weeks there. This time Oliver had scheduled a stopover in Singapore. Bettina was informed of their intentions by a very casual Mark.
    â€œThey get to Heathrow at seven in the morning, Auntie Betty. Dad reckons they’ll both need eight or ten hours’ shut-eye, which at their age is