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Authors: Eric Brown

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BOOK: Writer's Life
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"What's strange?" Oddly enough, and for no apparent reason, I was aware of my increased pulse.

She stabbed at a book with a graceful forefinger. I sat on the sofa, watching her.

"This. I was reading the Cunningham-Price. There's a chapter set in North Yorkshire, about an artist who lives alone in a big house. It's haunted, and the artist has an affair with the ghost of a young girl..."

My stomach turned.

Mina went on, "I remember you telling me about the Edwards' book,
The Miracle at Hazelmere
. It sounded pretty much the same, so I checked. And look."

She passed me the Cunningham-Price and
Miracle
. Disbelieving, and feeling a little strange, I read passages from both books that she had marked with yellow Post-it notes. For the next hour I went through the books, while Mina prepared the girls for ballet lessons. She looked in on me before setting off. "What do you think?"

I looked up, nodded. "Remarkable. He must have used the Cunningham book as a template..."

"You mean he plagiarised," she said. "I'll be back in an hour."

I nodded again, absently. "I'll have dinner ready."

"That'd be great." She hurried from the room. The video noise ceased, and suddenly the cottage was deathly quiet.

I read through the Cunningham-Price book, discovering many thematic similarities between it and other of Edwards' novels. My first fear, that Edwards had merely lifted great chunks of Cunningham-Price and claimed them as his own, was not borne out. Although, as Mina had rightly pointed out, Edwards had used an episode in the Cunningham-Price and expanded it, delving into the themes and ideas that Cunningham-Price had left unexplored, I was loathe to accuse the modern novelist of plagiarising the Victorian. Rather, it was as if he had read the Cunningham-Price, found himself fascinated with the Victorian's ideas and concepts, and fleshed them out in his own fiction: Edwards' work, far from plagiarism, struck me as a tribute—acknowledged when he used certain of the older writer's characters and situations. A simple plagiarist without talent would simply have copied, not used Cunningham-Price as a starting point from which to explore his own ideas.

I recalled my promise to prepare dinner, and moved to the kitchen.

Later that night, with the girls in bed, I served dinner and opened a bottle of wine, and we discussed Mina's literary discovery.

"Think it'll earn me a footnote in some encyclopaedia?" she asked.

"More like a whole damn entry."

She sipped her wine. "But why would he do it, Daniel? Why would a writer simply steal another writer's work?"

I pointed my fork at her. "I don't think he did," I said. I explained my theory that Edwards had used Cunningham-Price as a starting point, and as a matter of course had acknowledged the Victorian writer by echoing some of his events and characters.

Mina stared at me. "Echoing?" she laughed. "That's the strangest euphemism for plagiarism I've ever heard."

"Mina, Edwards is no plagiarist. He's too talented for that."

"You just don't want to admit that your literary hero is a word-burglar, Daniel!"

I smiled at her turn of phrase. "There's one way to find out for sure. Tomorrow I'll go up to Highdale and fetch the rest of the books, the Edwards and the Cunningham-Prices, okay? If Edwards used any more of Cunningham-Price's books on which to base his own... then okay, I might admit you have something."

"It's a deal."

"But I'll bet you a pound that my man will be vindicated."

Her eyes flashed. "I don't gamble, Daniel. Remember?"

I nodded, chastised. Her ex-husband had been an inveterate gambler. "Okay, sorry. But if Edwards used any more of Cunningham's ideas and characters, I'll buy you a Thai meal, okay?"

She nodded and shook my hand with pantomime seriousness. "Deal," she said.

~

My dear Vaughan, I exhort you, as a friend as well as your agent, to consider again your preoccupation with the occult. We're living in an increasingly rationalistic age. Readers don't go for this kind of thing any more. Charlesworth at Hutchinson is having second thoughts about commissioning the next book
...

A letter from Desmond Maitland to Vaughan Edwards, July 1980.

~

The following afternoon I dropped Mina at the hospital and took the road due north to Highdale.

It had rained continuously all day, a monsoon downpour that reduced visibility to less than ten metres. In consequence I drove slowly, and the journey seemed to take an age. I usually listen to Radio 4 when driving, but that afternoon my thoughts were too full of Vaughan Edwards to concentrate on the play.

It was almost four o'clock when I pulled onto the cobbled square outside the White Lion. Evidently it had been market day; a few sodden traders were dismantling their stalls with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. I jumped from the car and ran across the cobbles to the public house, avoiding puddles but not the torrent that lashed down from a leaden sky.

A few more drinkers than last time were propped against the bar, and the publican greeted me with, "Not fit for a dog out there. Orange juice?"

Surprised that he remembered me, I nodded. I pulled the books from the inside pocket of my jacket. "And I've returned these."

He smiled as he fixed my drink. "Hope you enjoyed them."

I paid for the juice and carried it to the table beneath the bookshelf. Three volumes by E.V. Cunningham-Price, and nine by Edwards, still occupied the shelf. I pulled down the Cunningham-Prices and settled myself at the table. As with most Victorian novels, the date of publication was not given, though they had the look of books published in the last decade of the Nineteenth century. I began speed-reading my way through, first,
Green Pastures
, and then
The Halfway House
.

Again and again I recognised turns of phrase, and sometimes entire descriptions, from those works of Edwards that I'd read. The plot of
Green Pastures
was pretty much recapitulated in Edwards' 1958 novel
A Bitter Recollection
.
The Halfway House
featured a character I recognised from one of his short stories.

And yet... I found it difficult to agree with Mina that Vaughan Edwards was a plagiarist. Certainly he had lifted from Cunningham-Price's work characters, descriptions, and certain lines—but from these he had fashioned his own unique novels, using, as it were, the original novels as a spring-board for his own imagination. If anything, he could be said to have been collaborating with the earlier writer—even though it was a collaboration that had gone uncredited.

Then again, perhaps my love of his work would not allow me to accede to the charge that he was a plagiarist: in a court of law, the similarities between the two novelists' works would be sufficient evidence to have him declared guilty as charged.

I suppose the question now was, why had Vaughan Edwards used the works of E.V. Cunningham-Price as the starting point for so many of his own fictions? As a writer, and a voracious reader, I well understood that there were certain authors whose work was so overwhelmingly powerful, and which spoke to one's heart—irrespective of literary merit—that it was often difficult not to be influenced. But in my experience these influences were strongest when the writer was young and had yet to develop his or her own voice: with time one's vision matured, one's voice became wholly one's own... And yet Vaughan Edwards had clearly been influenced by Cunningham's work when working on his very last novel,
The Secret of Rising Dene
, published in 1996.

The affair had about it, in common with the man's life and disappearance, an air of insoluble mystery.

I turned my attention to the novels by Edwards, leafing through the volumes with that comfortable sense of anticipation that one inevitably acquires when handling unread books by favourite writers—and what if others might accuse him of plagiarism! I would argue with Mina that in Edwards' case the borrowings had been wholly justifiable, as they had helped to produce lasting works of literature.

The publican left the bar and made a tour of the snug, collecting empties. I took the opportunity to broach the subject of borrowing the books wholesale.

I held up a twenty pound note. "And I'll leave this until I return them," I offered.

He frowned at the note, and laughed. "You look like a gentleman and a scholar," he said, not without humour. "And you brought the others back. Take 'em. I'll trust you."

He moved away, balancing half a dozen pint glasses along the length of his right arm.

I waited until the rain had let up slightly, then thanked the publican and hurried out to the car. I stowed the books on the passenger seat and started the engine, wondering what Mina might have to say when I arrived home with enough reading material for the next few weeks.

I drove from the square and up the hill, my progress impeded by a small truck which laboured up the incline. It was not until it approached the crest of the rise, and turned right through the ivied gateposts of Edgecoombe Hall, that I recognised the vehicle as the one parked by the Hall on my first visit.

On impulse I braked, then sat and watched as the truck disappeared into the gloom of the driveway.

It came to me that I could always pose as someone interested in purchasing the tumbledown Hall, perhaps even ask the workman's permission to look around inside...

I turned down the drive and approached the Hall. The truck, parked around the corner as before, was emblazoned with the legend: Roy Giles, Builder. I saw a man, perhaps in his fifties, in baggy jeans and a red checked shirt, climb from the cab carrying a toolbox, and enter the building through a side door.

I braked and walked from the car, nervous now that the time had come to act the part of a prospective house buyer.

I rounded the corner and was approaching the side entrance when the man, presumably Giles, emerged.

"Can I help you?" Though his look was suspicious, his tone was friendly enough.

I gestured at the house. "I was talking to the landlord of the White Lion," I said. "I hope to buy a place in the area. I don't suppose you know if it's for sale?"

"Matter of fact, I do." He smiled. "Chances are that it might be—but I won't know for sure for a year or so."

He laughed at my puzzlement.

"Do you own the place?" I asked.

He scratched his head. "Look, it's not as straight forward as all that." He hesitated, considering. "Why don't you come in and I'll explain."

Bemused, I followed him through what I assumed was the tradesman's entrance into an old scullery. It had been stripped bare and repainted; plumbing fixtures and fittings lay around the floor, evidence of recent work.

He gestured to the only seat in the room, a wooden sawing horse, and I sat down.

He brewed a pot of scalding black tea on a Calor gas stove and handed me a chipped mug. I sipped experimentally: it tasted far better than it appeared.

He leaned against the wall beside a window darkened by ivy, gripping his mug in both hands. "It's a long story, but I'll make it short," Giles said. "I worked for the owner of the Hall for almost twelve years, you see. Odd job man, gardener, things like that. Then six years ago my employer vanished-" he clicked his thumb and forefinger. "Snap. Just like that." He shrugged. "A few months later I was contacted by his solicitor. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the owner had made a will, leaving the Hall and all its contents to me. Thing was, no one was sure that Mr Edwards—the owner—was dead. Until his remains were discovered, or seven years had elapsed, then the Hall was technically still his property. Well, his remains have never been found, and he's been missing six years now. So... until next year, I don't rightly know if I'm the owner or not. I come in from time to time, do the odd bit of work here and there to keep the place from falling down."

He looked at me. "Not that I hope they find his remains, understand? I'd be delighted if he walked back in here tomorrow."

"Did you know him well?"

He frowned into his mug. "Can't say that, but I respected him. He was a gentleman. He gave me work when I needed it and paid good money. He was a writer..." He shook his head and gave a wry smile. "I tried one of his books once, but it wasn't my cup of tea."

I nodded. "It must have been quite a shock when he went missing?"

"To tell the truth, it wasn't. It wasn't so cut and dried. He'd been away from the Hall for a day or two when someone discovered his car in the woods, and footprints leading towards the river. The days passed, and I expected him to turn up at any time. I never really thought that he'd thrown himself over the scarp, and anyway no body was ever found, like I said. There was even a sighting of someone fitting Mr Edwards' description getting off a train at York." He shrugged. "It's a mystery what happened to him. I still sometimes think he'll walk in out of the blue."

He laughed. "So that's your answer. Come back in a year and I might be able to tell you one way or the other."

I nodded, sipping my tea. "It's not in the best of repair," I began.

"I'll give you that," he said. He hesitated, then went on: "I'll show you around the place, if you like."

He led the way from the scullery and down a long corridor, tripping light switches as he went. He flung open consecutive doors and stood aside to let me peer within, maintaining a running commentary as we went. "Lumber room, still full of trunks and travelling cases." And, "Morning room, or that's what Mr Edwards called it, anyway."

We came to a spacious hallway, illuminated by the light from a dusty chandelier, and crossed the chessboard tiles to a room he announced as, "The study. This is where Mr Edwards wrote all his books."

He flung open the door and switched on the light. I stepped inside, aware of my heartbeat. I was on the threshold of the room where Vaughan Edwards had created—with a little help from E.V. Cunningham-Price—his remarkable novels.

But for the film of dust that coated every horizontal surface, the room gave the appearance of still being in use. A typewriter sat on a desk by the ivy-choked window, and a shelves of books lined the walls. A row of files—manuscripts, I guessed—occupied a bookshelf beside the desk. It was a pretty typical writer's study—the only thing missing being the writer himself.

BOOK: Writer's Life
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