Under a Watchful Eye(22)

‘I’m not worried. I don’t care.’

‘Oh, I think you will be quite surprised by what I have been up to. By what I have produced. And we’re talking about the real deal here. Something that will matter when it comes out. Oh, yes.’

Seb no longer thought about the vanishing act, or the lone sentinel watching from afar, or the figure up in the trees of Marriage Wood. Ewan had attacked the most important thing in his life: his writing. ‘Matter to who? You? And when what comes out? And when? How do you even know your writing is any good? What kind of scrutiny has it been put under? Does it not need any informed appraisal? Maybe not, because you just know that it’s brilliant. Still the same old Ewan. Delusional. Pissed and lazy. Just another entitled prick with family money. And that must have been pissed away by the look of you. Or were you cut off? Did your folks finally realize they’d sired a money pit? An ungrateful one at that. Your greatness doesn’t extend more than one millimetre further than your own grubby skull, and it never did. You keep telling me that I’m clueless. Me! That I’ve missed the boat. But I am inclined to believe that when the boat left port, you were still asleep in the park, unconscious on a bench.’

Ewan grinned and lowered his voice in a way that suggested the coming of danger. ‘Listen to yourself, playing at being some literary toff. Pretentious. Mannered. Some cosseted Hay-on-Wye ponce. Who do you think you are, M. R.-fucking-James?’

He roared with laughter at his own jibe. ‘It’s that voice. That horrible voice in all of your books. It’s fake. It’s not you! You’re working class, for God’s sake. A prole trying to write like a toff!’

‘You don’t have a clue about—’

Ewan rose, swaying, from his seat, gesticulating with those dirty claws, swinging his big red hands excitedly through the air. The last of the beer in his glass cut a foaming arc across the room and splashed over a table, the back of the sofa, a wall. ‘You’re the joke! You. Clueless!’

Seb clenched his fists. ‘You son of a bitch. My furniture!’

‘Oops.’ Ewan found the spillage funny, but looked oddly sheepish too, as if finally realizing that he had gone too far and risked losing control of his advantage.

Anger had all but closed Seb’s throat. He was shaking but he took a step forwards, and this time Ewan retreated. ‘I worked . . . so hard. For years.’

‘Misguidedly. It must be said.’

‘You went to a private school! You were born into privilege. Did you think I’d forgotten? You’ve never stood on your own two feet. You’ve never worked, have you? You’ve never even had a job. What’s your excuse? You don’t have one. What have you got to show for yourself? Nothing. You’re undisciplined and feckless, an overgrown adolescent. And you come here, to my home, to terrorize and criticize me? You call me a fraud? You try to threaten me with that . . . with whatever it is that you are doing? Are you so poisoned by envy?’

Part-way through Seb’s assault, Ewan had looked shocked, and even slightly remorseful. But the swinish grin eventually returned and the expression in his eyes darkened. ‘There, that. That’s more like it. You’re not trying to sound like bloody Walter de la Mare any more. That’s a bit more real. You’re making progress already.’

‘Piss off!’

‘Even better. But you still don’t get it. You can’t even see that I came here to help you. To do you a favour. To share something that’ll . . . well, that’ll make you a better writer for starters.’

Seb returned to his chair, trembling. Instability was contagious. He’d not been truly enraged for years, but was now unable to see straight. ‘I’m calling the police.’

‘Ha! And tell them what? Did I break in? No, you let me in. I’m just an old friend who’s come a long way to see you.’

‘Who’s been following me, watching me, harassing me. They’ll take one look at you and know the score.’

‘Call them!’ Ewan was excited again, as if Seb had succeeded in initiating one of his rehearsed ploys ahead of the planned time. ‘Get them to come here and escort me off the premises. Go on, do it! What are you waiting for?’

Ewan’s eyes shuttered up and down to refocus, probably from the effects of whatever he’d been drinking, or even taking, before he’d arrived. ‘You won’t call them because there’d be no point. Because I can come back, at any time, and you know it. I presume you’d like to get a good night’s sleep now and again? And to be able to go shopping, and on dates with that tart, without me just popping up, here, there and everywhere?’

He raised his long arms into the air and waggled his fingers spiderishly. ‘At any time, day or night, I can just call on you. If I want to. Tell you what, why don’t I go right now and then come back in a few hours when you’re fast asleep? How does that sound? We can get together then. You won’t need to get up and let me in, either. I’ll let myself in and we can resume our little chat, while you’re asleep or awake. I really don’t mind. What do you say to that?’

Seb felt his anger rapidly cool.

‘Now where’s my bloody beer? I’m parched.’ Ewan wafted a hand in the direction of the kitchen as if to hurry a servant along. ‘Well, go on then, get them in!’

Snoring grumbled from the adjoining room.