‘Ha! Didn’t think so. You’ve just become some fussy, pretentious, stay-at-home pulp fiction type. You haven’t done anything! You haven’t lived, man! Or seen anything. You’re a bit of a fraud, if I’m honest.’ Ewan’s mouth had become sloppy. His eyes were becoming increasingly unfocused and he was struggling to express what Seb suspected was a rehearsed spiel. Ewan may have waited a long time to say all of this.
Seb’s anger would no longer keep silent. ‘I’ll tell you what I did, Ewan: I read. I actually read books, and a great many of them. I learned from them, and from better writers. And I sat still, at a desk, and I wrote. I figured out the basics of the craft. And while I wrote for years without much recognition, I paid my bills doing boring, soul-destroying jobs. I stood on my own two feet and I supported myself. I had no choice. My parents weren’t rich.
‘I had some breaks. A lot of people helped me for sure, agents, editors, even critics, but I wrote my way out of some bad times. Only I could do that, alone. I have no control over the bigger picture, but at least I was consistent and I worked.’
Ewan tried to interrupt. ‘Listen to him!’
‘And I acknowledged my failings, Ewan. Confronted them, addressed them. And I searched myself, wrung myself out to see if I had anything to say, to see if I could make a contribution. Year after year. Half of my life making writing a purpose, including over a decade of indifference from publishers. Eventually I was noticed, because I stuck at it.’
‘Noticed by who? Some twats in London, with their soirees and festivals and launches. I’ve seen them. Been to those things. No one has a clue. No one. They’re not even fun. No one even knows how to have a bit of fun.’
‘Fun? Is that the goal? The party’s over, Ewan. It ended in 1990 for everyone but you. Your own approach doesn’t look like much fun to me. I mean, Christ alive, have you looked in the mirror recently?’
Ewan glanced down his body. ‘What?’ he asked in what appeared to be genuine surprise.
‘What have you produced? Where’s the body of work? You’re what, nearly sixty? Was this the endgame that you had in mind?’
‘Oh, I’ve been working. And writing! Oh, yes, but not some ridiculous crap they sell in some crappy supermarket. Some shit that mums read to pass a few hours. Oh, no, you don’t need to worry about that!’
‘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.’