Almost an Author, page 23
Hunter ignores him. I strain to hear him above the rising sound of the music track. I nod my head although I had no idea Perry was ‘outside’.
James sighs. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”
Hunter says, without looking at him, “We’re not all that interested. We’re watching a movie so shut up or go home.”
So James’ flat mate arrives within the week. Her name is Maisie Montgomery. My initial thoughts are, Wow, with a name like that she should be a writer. Maisie Montgomery, Cecilia someone, Ruby Wright, Barbara Banning; there are some pretty choice names out there for writers, or for those associated with writers. My thoughts dart back to my writing, my laptop, and the ream of paper I’ve printed out hoping that a handful of A4 might help me through my writer’s block.
When James first brings her over to introduce us, Maisie is wearing a little white beret, cocked to one side in the French style, and white tights beneath white boots. With her matching white hair and white skin she could be a snowflake. Or a white rabbit. I take a mental note of this description to type up.
James is done up in his best funeral clothes. Let’s see how long that lasts, I think cynically. He’ll be back into his jandals and boy shorts in no time. Yet the suit gives him some kind of—something. I can’t work out what it is. Definitely not panache.
Within days, James’ beckons me over. With his jandals flapping at the bottoms of his feet, I follow him along the footpath, through the gate, and into his place. It’s completely empty. He takes me through it, room by miserable room. But, I reason to myself, it’s like this most days. He lives a Spartan-yet-messy lonely existence, except for his axolotls, and they don’t contribute much in the way of conviviality.
Maisie lasted four days. Rather than come out and tell me that, James seems to want me to experience it, with a minimal amount of mime on his part. I take in the emptiness. When I glance at him, I want to hug him, say it will be all right. He forestalls that by bursting into hideous gulps before burrowing himself headfirst into his sofa. I pat his bum a few times, and then my phone rings. I take that as an excuse to flee.
“Yes,” I say into my phone as I tear off out his door and along the path to mine, “my library book is overdue.” I’m happy, thrilled in fact, to pay the 20c outstanding fee. If that’s all it costs me to exit James’ appalling place, shoot, I’d pay double.
Now there’s someone at the front door. And I hear galloping sounds. It’s Bright Eyes thrumping up and down the short hallway. For her size, she’s amazingly noisy, and annoying. Then follows the dreadful baying sounds Armstrong makes when she becomes too much for him.
“Do you want to come down town with me,” James asks as soon as I open the door. I find I’m holding my breath. Didn’t I just leave his place? His eyes are red-rimmed. He waves the ‘Flatmate Wanted’ advertisement card in front of my nose.
“I’d love to, but I’ve got to do more writing. I’m terribly behind.” Then I further explain, “You see I’ve got this writers’ block and if I don’t keep at my writing I’ll lose it all together.”
“I know what you mean,” he commiserates as he sniffs the air. The vaguest of bacon smells drift through my un-insulated home.
“Oh, hang on,” I say before I can shut my mouth.
I sound insincere, but he beams and says, “I’ll spot you a latte on the way home.”
“I’ll get my coat.”
A couple more days pass, and I don’t see James. I phone and he answers on the second ring. “Ruby?” Hmmm, oddly breathless.
“Matey, our clothesline has broken,” I say. “Do you have any spare rope?”
“Well, I do, but I was going to use it to—” He stops short. “No, no—yes, but you can only have it until I need it.”
“What were you going to use it for? Perhaps we can cut it in half?”
“Half won’t be long enough. I need the whole length.”
“For what?” I further press him for want of something to say.
“Oh,” deep sigh, “nothing much.”
“That’s fine then. If you bring it over, you can have some hot pancakes.”
“Okay, I’ll bring syrup.”
He’s smiling when he arrives two seconds later, the rope wrapped around his shoulder like a mountaineer, and the syrup in his mitt.
I have an awful foreboding about James and his rope. It was in the tone of his voice. And hadn’t I seen him earlier, climbing onto his roof, checking out the strength of his chimney? Poor James. Poor, poor, James. I stand next to him, afraid of what he might say next, afraid to ask. As I take the rope from his hand, and lead him into the kitchen and the pancakes, I say casually, “Oh, and you wouldn’t mind if I needed to chop a weensy bit off it, would you? For my hanging flower basket?” And I leave that question hanging because…
Why did I have to say hanging? Then I imagine all the other hanging words I can never use again. Just hanging around, why don’t you hang with me? Hanging the washing. Hanging it out to dry. Hanging from a rafter. Hang as opposed to heck. Best stick to proper swear words. And so my brain goes. I don’t need to say hang. I can peg the clothes on the line, and so and so can go to hell instead of go hang themselves.
I know that James imagines we will one day share the same flat. Just him, me, his axolotls, Hunter’s dog that he quite likes now since it’s stopped baring its teeth at him. And Bright Eyes.
“Well, Ruby, here we are. Sharing our stuff. Hanging out together. (Did he actually say that word?) We’re both kinda betwixt and between, aren’t we?”
“How so?” I occupy myself by flipping a batch of pancakes. One lands on the rim of the pan, and when it slides down the outside it starts to burn. When he doesn’t expand on my question, I do. “I go down the hall to my office and look at the pages of writing, and think I’m losing my mind…” and I let that sentence hang to see what James might do with it. And there’s that word again.
He catches my free hand jerkily in his two. “Would you like me to read it for you? You know read what you’ve written.” He stresses the word read, though I can’t see how stressing it will change its meaning. “I could maybe edit it for you.”
What? The last thing I want is this illiterate dingbat pawing through my stuff, yet what harm can it do? It isn’t as if I’m writing for Black Bird or Crimson Slipper. “Oka-ay,” I concede. And seeing his face brighten as it does, I add, “That would be a great help.” And I actually mean it.
James leaves his squeezy, teddy bear bottle of syrup on the bench and takes off home with a bellyful of pancakes and a stack of typewritten pages.
Within the hour, he’s back with a smaller stack.
I blink at the state of them, all out of order, covered with ticks and crosses and enough scrawling around all four margins to warrant his own publication. Little smiley faces. Bigger frowns. And, against my better judgment, I’d let this pencil-wielding fiend loose on my private thoughts and inspirations? Shocked, I snatch the paper stack and slam the door in his face. Belatedly, I recall how he’d once got a job teacher aiding slow kids. They’d sacked him after three days.
I sit in a kitchen chair, staring at his scrawled, barely legible scratchings. I wonder which of my original words are salvageable? Obama used the word ‘prognosticating’, which effectively reduced those interested in him by 2/3rds. I apply it to James, in that I will see to it that his life is considerably reduced. The thought crosses my mind that all I have to do is return his rope intact. Give a fool enough rope and he’ll hang himself. Yeah, another one.
Meanwhile, he runs around to the side of the house and is peering eagerly into my kitchen window, within spitting distance of where I’m sitting.
“I’ll bring back the rest as soon as I’ve finished so you can start making the changes, okay?”
Sure, I mouth at the window. My heart is racing, my mind is alive with frustration and…and…hatred?
Chapter Thirty-Four
Hunter says every day is a surprise here. All because I turned the ironing board cupboard where we used to store the vacuum cleaner into a den full of writing paraphernalia, pencils, scraps of paper, and post-it notes stuck to every inch of wall space. I made the shelf across the entrance to this cupboard and on it sits my laptop. The door doesn’t shut now because I’ve got a kitchen chair sticking out into the hall. It’s my office, my den. This afternoon, I’m trying to make myself write. There are no windows. It’s at the end of the hallway so my view is into the open cupboard. No visual distractions. No air circulation either. I’m at the section in my story where a reader decides to continue reading or bin it. Page 50. My character is boring so I endeavor to make Page 50 the most fascinating page. I change her clothes, then change her outlook on life, and finally change her opinion on things. Then her name, Derian to Dana, because it no longer suits who the character has turned into. I plow on, pouring over the details of her life, and find myself unable to care about her. I gnaw my pencil, trying to decide if I should hit the delete key and erase all trace of this mealy-mouthed chick. Perhaps not. Perhaps Dana should die. But not in a boring way. Something spectacular has to happen. My thoughts return to that dreadful time with James and his rotten tooth. That could work. Death by foul fang. Or hanging?
Armstrong dawdles up to my office making enough harrumphs to show he’s sick up to here, with a final harrumph to indicate exactly where, with my incessant keyboard clicking and sighs of exasperation.
“Come on then,” I say. “Walkies.”
Once we’re outside, Armstrong breaks into a trot. I haul on his lead to show him that a trot is not what I have in mind. As we stagger in our unevenly matched gaits through the park our steps inevitably turn toward the cemetery. Although the signs say ‘dogs and bicycles are not permitted’, Armstrong is urging me along. I think I saw the word ‘strictly’ somewhere also.
“No, you’re not allowed inside. Strictly not allowed. Not allowed, strictly.” And I tug the lead sharply making him sit. Then we continue our walk, at my pace or no pace, around the perimeter of the cemetery. I hear a lone bagpipe pumping out a haunting tune—Ingrid?—with many broken notes included. Okay, not Ingrid. I’m glad when we’ve circled the dank side of the cemetery and are back level with the park again. Where the sun is shining.
Hard at work in my den, again, James’ singing interrupts me. He likes to sing. It’s not a song I know. It’s probably a television commercial. I accidentally kick my wastepaper basket and it falls over spilling weeks of typed, balled or ripped, white paper. Maybe I should get another job? I’d still be bored, I’d still have writer’s block, but at least I’d have a reason to leave the house without Armstrong. I realize, with a pang, that I miss the security of the welfare payments. In fact, I feel sad that I chose to be a responsible citizen all those months back, and cancelled the payments in lieu of working to keep myself fed and housed. I also regret that I let the ZING! franchise slip through my fingers, but I’d been asking too much of myself back then to the point where I had nothing more to give. I used myself up. Silly girl. I give a sharp kick and the papers on the floor disperse into patches of slippery ice or white cloud. I sit for a few minutes deciding whether or not to tidy the mess. I choose not to. Instead, I draw little pictures of sharp-facetted crystals.
Another day, I sit in the back garden with my porridge cooling. I’ve a blank sheet of paper and a pencil in my hand. It’s earlier than I normally get up so the wooden bench is covered with lichen and the damp is creeping through my dressing gown. I slide my feet out of my slippers and pop the slippers beneath my bum. I jot down all of these moves. Aha, seems I haven’t given up entirely.
James is singing. Does he ever stop? I feel him watching me. Sure enough he’s standing on the bar stool in his kitchen window. I pretend I don’t notice. He stays there for a while, serenading me with his telephone ring tune, making up words as he goes. I try to express the word I feel in writing, a word with no way of expressing in print. It’s a guttural sound.
Since I have nothing more to write, and I’ve finished breakfast, I climb over the fence that separates our yards. I follow his voice to his kitchen, where he’s now sitting at the bench on the bar stool, preparing to eat his weeties.
As time stretches on, neither of us speaking, James becomes twitchy. He’s eaten all his weeties, with his mouth wide open, milk dribbling down his stubbly chin. Since there’re no more, he doesn’t offer any to me. Washing the last fibers down with milky tea, he says, “What would you like to do next?”
I shrug. “Go home, I guess.”
“Oh, come on,” he says. “It’s such a nice day. Don’t go yet.”
“Okay.” My tone and body language makes it clear I don’t much care what I do.
“Let’s go for a walk.”
“Sure.” That’s safe. So we go for a short walk, James and me, and I consider it the most boring walk I’ve ever been on. I’m still in my dressing gown and slippers. He’s in his pajamas, and has sodden weeties on his unshaven chin.
Walk dealt with, I peel off at my gate.
He says he can help edit more of my pages. I decline.
With an infusion of chamomile and apricot tea, I sit at my laptop. I’m in despair. I will never do this, I think. And it’s beginning to look as though I’m right. My problem is that the more I research stuff, the more that has to go into it. I can’t seem to call it quits.
‘But, Ruby,’ the more reasoning part of my brain interrupts, ‘there’s no need for all that research and writing. There’s no need to completely recreate every scene you’ve ever visited on paper. You’re an author, correction almost an author— pick and choose. Just tell your story, include whatever is significant, delete gratuitous writing, and when you’ve done that type The End.’
‘I know all that,’ I mentally argue. ‘But it’s hard to stop gathering material.’
Hunter brings me a mug of Milo. I press my lips together and shake my head a few times. “What’s up?” he asks.
I give him one of my currently best smiles.
“Anything I can help with?” He drags a small stool from the bathroom and perches his lanky frame on it. “How long is your manuscript?”
“Four hundred and seventy-eight pages.”
“Is that long?”
“Well, yes. A bit. For fiction.”
“So, why don’t you just write it until the story is finished?”
“Because…well, it should be less than 120,000 words, or as low as 90,000. 80-ish would be better. Readers get bored easily.”
“So which is it? 120,000 or 80,000?”
I sigh. “Closer to 90,000.”
“That’s bloody marvelous then, all those extra words to play with. So it’s just a matter of culling words?”
I wish he’d go make date scones. “No, because I’m not up to the end yet.” I sound abrupt.
“But stories can have more than one ending.”
I shake my head and my eyes blur ever so slightly, as if to avoid the irrefutable logic coming at me.
“Well, I have to create my characters,” I say. “I have to make them come alive on the page. I have to make them either likeable or detestable. I have to build their life around them, their interests and failings. I need to—”
He cuts across me. “You’re not putting all that rubbish in, are you?” And stands up from the stool. Clearly he expects an answer. I squirm in my chair. “Haven’t you decided what’s relevant to your storyline, or what your voice is?” He looks as though he’s biting his tongue.
“My voice?” In my search for a storyline, my voice has deserted me.
“If you asked me, I’d say your writing style is heuristic.”
“Hyer-what?”
“-ristek. Heuristic.”
“Meaning?” He’s such a smart ass.
“That you do lots of research then keep what you need.” I’m sure he wants to say a great deal more, but chooses not to. He shrugs his shoulders, and wanders off.
“Oh, well, it’s good to know I have a style,” I sing after him. I type heuristic into Google, and am impressed. It sums me up.
The key is to not be called an arrogant, self-absorbed writer. What? Where did that come from? The aura in front of my closed eyes indicates the onset of a migraine.
James is back over, banging on about the pros and cons of female flatmates. “This situation never works out well for the man—”
Hunter butts in. “What precedent can you possibly be citing? But, yes, I’d have to agree; husbands and lovers generally end badly. And flatmates. Is that your point?”
The evening is overcast. James says he feels tired, and the thought of having to walk back next door makes his jaw ache. He holds out his coffee mug. I fill it. Hunter shoots a look at me, which says, Why are you encouraging him? We’ve discussed this, and yet here you are and here he is where he has no right to be, scoffing our food and supplies. I trusted you, Ruby, and you’ve let me down.
He stands there fuming, glaring at both James and me in turn.
James knows better than to ask for a third cup of our coffee. With the healthy attitude of a Huntaway, he scoots out the door.
Hunter continues his subliminal rant, verbally. “The rules are set for our mutual benefit. Just like we have a job roster. And I don’t see his bloody name on that.”
We stare at each other. I say quietly, “Let’s go for a wee walk in the park.”
He loses what little control he still has over his temper. “Why can’t you take this seriously? What do you see in that moron? And, no,” he storms, “I’m not going for a wee walk in the park with you.”
He stressed wee. When he’s not having a paddy, he thinks my idiosyncratic, Scottish expressions are cute.
“Now,” I say firmly, before either of us have our wits about us.
He stomps alongside me, on our way over to the park. Since we have a dog, we seem to spend half our life walking. I shove Armstrong’s lead into Hunter’s hand. “We can’t discuss James while yelling because he can hear us through the walls,” I reason when we’re further along. “And he sticks a glass against the wall to hear better. You know he’s like that.”
