Writer's Life Read Online Free Page A

banks of cumulus. Highdale was a collection of tiny stone-built cottages and farmhouses set amid hunched pastures; I made out a church, a public house, and what might have been a village hall, all laid out below us like some sanguine architect's scale model of a rural idyll.
    We drove down the incline and into the village and parked on the cobbled market square before the White Lion.
    The pub was empty, save for a barman chatting to someone who might have been a local farmer. They both looked up when we pushed through the door, as if unaccustomed to customers at this time of day.
    I ordered a dry cider for Mina and a fresh orange juice for myself. While the barman poured the drinks and chatted to Mina, I looked around the snug. It was fitted out much like any typical village pub: a variety of moorland scenes by local artists, a selection of horse brasses, a battalion of Toby jugs hanging in ranks from the low, blackened beams.
    Then I noticed the bookshelf, or rather the books that were upon it. One volume in particular stood out—I recognised the Val Biro pen and ink sketch on the spine of the dust jacket. It showed the attenuated figure of a man doffing his Trilby. It was the cover of Vaughan Edwards' third novel, A Brighter Light .
    The barman said something.
    "Excuse me?" I said, my attention on the books.
    "I think he wants paying," Mina said. "Don't worry, I'll get these."
    She paid the barman and carried the drinks over to the table beneath the bookshelf. I was peering at the racked spines, head tilted.
    "Good God," I said. "They're all Edwards."
    "Not all of them." Mina tapped the spines of four books, older volumes than the Edwards. They were by a writer I had never come across before, E.V. Cunningham-Price. They looked Victorian, and caught her interest. She pulled them from the shelf, sat down and began reading.
    I sorted through the Edwards. There were ten novels, eight of which I had never read, and a volume of short stories. I pulled them down and stacked them on the table, reading through the description of each book on the front inside flap.
    I looked back at the shelf. I thought it odd that there should be no other books beside the Edwards and the four Cunningham-Price volumes.
    The barman was watching me. I hefted one of the books. "They're not for sale, by any chance...?"
    He was a big man in his sixties, with the type of stolid, typically northern face upon which scowls seem natural, like fissures in sedimentary rock.
    "Well, by rights they're not for sale, like. They're for the enjoyment of the customers, if you know what I mean. Tell you what, though—take a couple with you, if you promise to bring them back."
    "I'll do that. That's kind-"
    "You're not locals, then?"
    Mina looked up. "Almost. Skipton."
    "Local enough," the barman said. "Hope you enjoy 'em."
    "I'm sure I will." I paused, regarding the books and wondering which two volumes to take with me. Mina looked up from her book. "I wouldn't mind taking this one, Daniel."
    I selected the volume of stories, The Tall Ghost and other stories , and returned the others to the shelf.
    I finished my drink and moved to the bar for a refill. I indicated the books. "He was a local, wasn't he? Did he ever drop by?"
    "Mr Vaughan?" the barman asked. "Every Monday evening, regular as clockwork. Sat on the stool over there." He indicated a high stool placed by the corner of the bar and the wall. "Drank three Irish whiskeys from nine until ten, then left on the dot of the hour. Very rarely missed a Monday for over twenty years."
    "You knew him well?"
    "Mr Vaughan?" He grunted a humourless laugh. "No one knew Mr Vaughan. Kept himself to himself, if you know what I mean. Spoke to no one, and no one spoke to him. Reckon that's how he preferred it. Lived here nigh on forty years, and never said boo to a goose."
    "Strange," I said, sipping my juice.
    "Well," the publican said, "he was a writer chappie, you know?" He tapped his head. "Lived up here most of the