To her these tears are a simple matter of faulty plumbing. Yet another inevitable, innocuous sign of my great age.
She doesn’t know I cry for the changing times. That just as I reread favourite books, some small part of me hoping for a different ending, I find myself hoping against hope that the war will never come. That this time, somehow, it will leave us be.
Mystery Maker Trade Magazine
WINTER EDITION, 1998
NEWS IN BRIEF
Author’s Wife Dies: Inspector Adams Novels Halted
LONDON: Fans eagerly awaiting the sixth instalment in the popular Inspector Adams novels will have a long wait on their hands. Author Marcus McCourt has reportedly stopped work on the novel, Death in the Cauldron, after the sudden death of his wife, Rebecca McCourt, last October, from an aneurism.
McCourt could not be reached for comment, but a source close to the couple has told MM that the usually approachable author refuses to discuss his wife’s death and has suffered writer’s block since it happened. McCourt’s UK publisher, Raymes & Stockwell, refused to comment.
McCourt’s first five Inspector Adams novels were recently sold to American publishers Foreman Lewis for an undisclosed sum thought to total seven figures. Crime Will Tell will be published on the Hocador imprint and is scheduled for American release in Spring 1999. Copies can be pre-ordered on Amazon.
Rebecca McCourt was also a writer. Her debut novel, Purgatorio, is a fictionalised history of Mahler’s unfinished tenth symphony, and was short-listed for the 1996 Orange Prize for Literature.
Marcus and Rebecca McCourt had recently separated.
SAFFRON HIGH STREET
The rain is on its way. The bones in my lower back, more sensitive than any meteorologist’s equipment, have begun to throb. Last night I lay awake, my body aching: bone moaning to bone, whispered tales of long ago litheness. I arched and bowed my stiff old frame, hopelessly pursuing sleep. Nuisance became frustration, frustration became boredom, and boredom became terror. Terror that the night would never end and I would be trapped forever in its long, lonely tunnel.
I must eventually have slept, for this morning I woke, and as far as I can tell the one cannot be done without the other. I was still in bed, my nightie twisted about my middle, skin grimy with the night’s labour, when a girl with rolled-up shirt sleeves and a long thin plait that brushed her jeans bustled into my room and threw open the curtains, letting the light stream in. The girl was not Sylvia and thus I knew it must be Sunday.
The girl—Helen, read her name badge—bundled me into the shower, gripping my arm to steady me, mulberry fingernails burrowing into flaccid white skin. She flicked her plait over one shoulder and set about soaping my torso and limbs, scrubbing away the lingering film of night, humming a tune I do not know. When I was suitably sanitary she lowered me onto the plastic bath seat and left me alone to soak beneath the shower’s warm course. I clutchedthe lower rail with both hands and eased forward, sighing as the water rained relief over my knotted back.
With Helen’s assistance I was dried and dressed, powdered and processed, seated in the morning room by seven-thirty. I managed a piece of rubbery toast and a cup of tea before Ruth arrived to take me to church.
I am not overly religious. Indeed there have been times when all faith has deserted me, when I railed against a benevolent father who could allow such earthly horrors to beset his children. But I made my peace with God a long time ago. Age is the great mellower. Our relationship is easy now: we don’t speak often, but I know where to find him.
It is Lent, the period of soul-searching and repentance that always precedes Easter, and this morning the church pulpit was draped in purple. The sermon was pleasant enough, its subject guilt and forgiveness. (Fitting when one considers the endeavour I have decided to undertake.) The minister read from John 14,
She doesn’t know I cry for the changing times. That just as I reread favourite books, some small part of me hoping for a different ending, I find myself hoping against hope that the war will never come. That this time, somehow, it will leave us be.
Mystery Maker Trade Magazine
WINTER EDITION, 1998
NEWS IN BRIEF
Author’s Wife Dies: Inspector Adams Novels Halted
LONDON: Fans eagerly awaiting the sixth instalment in the popular Inspector Adams novels will have a long wait on their hands. Author Marcus McCourt has reportedly stopped work on the novel, Death in the Cauldron, after the sudden death of his wife, Rebecca McCourt, last October, from an aneurism.
McCourt could not be reached for comment, but a source close to the couple has told MM that the usually approachable author refuses to discuss his wife’s death and has suffered writer’s block since it happened. McCourt’s UK publisher, Raymes & Stockwell, refused to comment.
McCourt’s first five Inspector Adams novels were recently sold to American publishers Foreman Lewis for an undisclosed sum thought to total seven figures. Crime Will Tell will be published on the Hocador imprint and is scheduled for American release in Spring 1999. Copies can be pre-ordered on Amazon.
Rebecca McCourt was also a writer. Her debut novel, Purgatorio, is a fictionalised history of Mahler’s unfinished tenth symphony, and was short-listed for the 1996 Orange Prize for Literature.
Marcus and Rebecca McCourt had recently separated.
SAFFRON HIGH STREET
The rain is on its way. The bones in my lower back, more sensitive than any meteorologist’s equipment, have begun to throb. Last night I lay awake, my body aching: bone moaning to bone, whispered tales of long ago litheness. I arched and bowed my stiff old frame, hopelessly pursuing sleep. Nuisance became frustration, frustration became boredom, and boredom became terror. Terror that the night would never end and I would be trapped forever in its long, lonely tunnel.
I must eventually have slept, for this morning I woke, and as far as I can tell the one cannot be done without the other. I was still in bed, my nightie twisted about my middle, skin grimy with the night’s labour, when a girl with rolled-up shirt sleeves and a long thin plait that brushed her jeans bustled into my room and threw open the curtains, letting the light stream in. The girl was not Sylvia and thus I knew it must be Sunday.
The girl—Helen, read her name badge—bundled me into the shower, gripping my arm to steady me, mulberry fingernails burrowing into flaccid white skin. She flicked her plait over one shoulder and set about soaping my torso and limbs, scrubbing away the lingering film of night, humming a tune I do not know. When I was suitably sanitary she lowered me onto the plastic bath seat and left me alone to soak beneath the shower’s warm course. I clutchedthe lower rail with both hands and eased forward, sighing as the water rained relief over my knotted back.
With Helen’s assistance I was dried and dressed, powdered and processed, seated in the morning room by seven-thirty. I managed a piece of rubbery toast and a cup of tea before Ruth arrived to take me to church.
I am not overly religious. Indeed there have been times when all faith has deserted me, when I railed against a benevolent father who could allow such earthly horrors to beset his children. But I made my peace with God a long time ago. Age is the great mellower. Our relationship is easy now: we don’t speak often, but I know where to find him.
It is Lent, the period of soul-searching and repentance that always precedes Easter, and this morning the church pulpit was draped in purple. The sermon was pleasant enough, its subject guilt and forgiveness. (Fitting when one considers the endeavour I have decided to undertake.) The minister read from John 14,
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