I have finished Notes From An Exhibition and I still think it was fairly crap but it’s crappiness is slightly tempered by the fact that it is published and it sells.
I am always very impressed by successful novels. My novel is not successful and must therefore be very crap as opposed to fairly. Though, in it’s defence, no one with the power to publish or promote has ever read any of my novel and I harbour a secret belief that were I to dangle it in front of an agent a massiver bidding war would ensue, but then, I am nothing at all, if not a fantasist.
I have the most awful chest pains so after doing an online shop with Tescos I went on NHS Direct which said I should drop, my computer on the floor and dial 999 right NOW. I think they haver failed to take into account the fact that I am British and consequently not given to histrionics. I think I have a lung infection. Sometimes I think I have breast cancer but then I think I probably haven’t which makes me feel quite cheered.
Today I wrote this....
Elizabeth gazes out across the field to the moor and beyond to the thin, blue shimmer of the sea. She can hear the beat of the distant waves. She hs taken a break from her weeding for a minute to stretch her back, one hand is at her waist.
She is a tall woman, but lightly built. The wind lifts her heavy fair hair which she wears loose and long to her shoulders, just as she did when she was young, though now, it is faded and streaked with grey. She is forty -two today but she feels aeons older.
Elizabeth hears the regular beat of the sea, borne towards her on the warm wind and the feel of the sun on her back. Her other hand rests on the low, granite wall in front of her and slowly beats time and she allows herself to think, as she does every day, about her mother and her daughter, Kezia.
A line of poetry comes into her head, she doesn't remember who wrote it. “But neither ever found another.....” she knows that Kezia has found another mother. She’d seen her.
A snapshot, like a black and white photo leaps before her mind's eye. The young woman's short dark hair, her thin, pale face and the shielding man. A Routemaster bus is behind them, a black cab thunders by, the backdrop is of tall, grey Georgian buildings, white pillared, stony-faced..
“To stop the hollow heart from paining,”
The sea beat out the rhythm, just as it had beaten out the rhythm of Elizabeth’s days for the long intervening years.
“They stood aloof the scars remaining,
“Like cliffs that had been rent asunder.”
So then, who was rent asunder? Only her, only Elizabeth, standing before her squat granite cottage breathing the soft air, dreaming of the past, because the future held nothing for her but more of the same and an ache that seemed always to have been there.
Elizabeth had lost her man, her mother, and her baby in a few short months and the story ran in her head as it had so many times before.
“Get me a doctor.” Mummy had called her, in the middle of the night and Elizabeth had crawled from her bed and padded downstairs shivering as her bare feet touched the cold slate of the kitchen floor, so cold, that the floor had seemed wet.
She had made tea, still befuddled with sleep, pulling the old crocheted blanket from the back of the sofa as she passed to wrap arond her shoulders.
“Are you all right? What’s the matter” she’d asked, 'I've brought you a cup of tea.” She’d switched on the bedside lamp so the room glowed amber. Her mother’s face was livid. Elizabeth had put her hand on her her forehead and felt it clammy with sweat.
The doctor came. He’d injected morphine until her mother’s eyes had rolled back in her head. Elizabeth had sipped cold tea, standing in the bedroom doorway.
“Will she be all right?” she’d asked but the doctor hadn't answered, telephoning for an ambulance without asking if he could use the phone first.
“As quick as you can.” He'd said into the receiver. They’d taken Elizabeth’s mother to the cottage hospital at the top of the town. Elizabeth had dressed, and followed the ambulance on her bicycle and in the early hours of the morning her mummy had died. She’d been fifty-one.
She remembered coming home after the funeral. The vicar had been very nice, Elizabeth had meant to thank him for his kind words about her mother, although she hadn't gone to church and he hadn't known her. The coffin slunk shamefacedly through the curtains at the crematorium. Elizabeth had wanted to rip them apart, to tear the lid from the coffin. This was surely a terrible mistake. Mummy could not be dead, in a box.. Her sister, Ruth had sobbed desolately beside her, her brother in law, Simon, had taken their children for a walk on the harbour beach. Elizabeth felt her heart break.
“Come back home with me.” Ruth said after the funeral. “Stay as long as you want,” she’d hitched two year old Jack higher on her hip, the wind whipped lank hair across her red-rimmed eyes as the gulls screamed overhead. It began to rain.
Simon waited in the car, behind the two women, with the engine running, the wipers squeaking rhythmically back and forth across the windscreen. Ruth had her husband, her home and her children. Ruth would survive.
When they’d gone Elizabeth returned to the cottage she and Mummy had shared. The key stuck in the salt-rusted lock of the front door as it always had. The hinges creaked, and she was alone in the silent kitchen.
Later, she’d stood in her attic bedroom looking out over the grey, slate rooftops of the town and she’d rested her head against the cold glass of the window. She remembered how the baby inside her had kicked suddenly and convulsively making her cry out. A splatter of rain had hit the panes, the house shuddered in the wind and she’d stood back, doubled over, and the tears had come hurtling out of her, like vomit.
I don’t know if I will use it though. So much of my book is about structure and I’m not sure that I haven’t created something stupidly unwieldy.
Ellis is coming with his childen after school for chip night. Ellis’ builders have knocked a giant hole in his house to make space for the new basement windows but the glass isn’t arriving until next week so Ellis says they are all freezing all the time and everything is covered in a thin layer of brick dust. A friend in need is a friend indeed. I will put the heating on before they arrive.
The only trouble with Ellis coming is that we always drink too much. I think there is a very good chance that we are a bad influence on eachother.
I might go to AA and then I won’t be allowed to drink too much. I will be shocked into teetotalism by dreadful stories of lost lives and excruciating embarrassments. Ellis would respect my newfound puritanism because Ellis is a Quaker.
AA would also be very good research for my writing and if I go in an upmarket area I might meet a lovely ex-alcoholic man to flirt with. Although, obviously, he would have to be black or he wouldn’t want to flirt with me and I am not sure black men go to AA.
I haven’t actually been to AA so Ellis and I dranki too much.
At 3.30 pm I picked up Maisie and Billie from school. Maisie and Billie have been to Lords. They say they are ‘big fans’ of ladies cricket. Maisie says she wants to be a lady cricketer when she grows up.
‘But I thought you were going to see men cricketers.’ I say.
‘We think lady cricketers are better.’ says Billie.
‘’Yes,’ says Maisie ‘We are big fans.’
Billie looks very happy but she says her parents keep going on and on about how her grandpa has died. I say ‘ ‘Well fair enough.’
Ellis arrived at about 6 and we went to get chips from the Chinese chip shop man.
‘You have lots and lots of children don’t you?’he says ladling vast quatities of chips into little cones.
Ellis orders a sausage for his youngest and when we get home Hannah is really cross that Ellis hasn’t bought her a sausage.
‘I am so fed up with all this favouritism,’ she says.
‘It’s not favouritism.’ says Ellis ‘I didn’t know you wanted a sausage. How was I supposed to know you wanted a sausage? He’s having a horrible time at school, he’s only 8, I bought him a sausage. How is that favouritism?’
‘I’m fed up with you always saying he’s only 8. When I was 8 it was always “You’re a great big girl of 8. Grow up.” says Hannah ‘And everyone has a horrible time at school. School is horrible, it’s not something that only happens to people’s favourite little sons. I had a horrible time at school and at home when I was 8.’
Hannah finishes her chips and steals the last bit of her little brother’s sausage before rushing off to feed homeless Poles at the local catholic church for her Duke of Edinburgh Award.
Claire arrives at 7. ‘This is all incredibley difficult.’ she says ‘I feel awful. I feel surronded by death.’
Ellis pours her some wine. Claire looks exhausted. ‘Paul has to register the death. The funeral is happening when I am lecturing in New York. It mustn’t upset the children’s exams. Pauls brother says we won’t have to go and live in Stalybridge now. I don’t know what to do.’ She really does look awfully tired.
‘Paul wants to go ahead with Stalybridge.’ she says ‘But I’m not sure now.We could buy a London flat and still go to Stalybridge. What shall we do ?’
Abigail comes downstairs and cooks herself an enormous bowl of broccoli. I wish she would eat some protein. My mother sent her a book while I was away called ‘Getting Better Bit(e) By Bit(e)’. ‘I wouldn’t have minded the absurd title if it had been better written.’ said Abigail. ‘Honestly it’s such light, trite shite.’
Ellis says he thinks that, for Claire and Paul, now is not the time for life changing decisions. He says he thinks that Zac shouldn’t have told on Abigail and that seeing a sibling being sexual before you are, is incredibley difficult for adolescents and that perhaps Zac’s concern for Abigail was rooted in sibling rivalry rather than any real concern for her welfare.
Ellis is a very good psychiatrist.
I say I think it’s quite sweet when a young man wants to protect his sister.
Ellis says ‘Well, I think you may be missing the point and that his motives may have been entirely different.’
Abigail says ‘You just love Zac. You love all Zac’s friends. You’re always flirting with Otto, calling him ‘O’ and stuff. It’s really embarrassing.’
That is actually very unfair and very untrue. Next time The Vowels come over I won’t speak to any of them.
John comes home. He has been interviewing Kris Kristofferson in the Tescos carpark on the Cromwell Road.
‘Why?’ I say ‘You could have invited Kris Kristofferson for supper. It would have been nice.’
‘Kris Kristofferson is quite attractive isn’t he?’ says Ellis.
‘No,’ I say ‘His nose is too small. Why do you keep interviewing people with tiny noses John? Nick Cave has a tiny little nose too.’
‘I don’t actually choose my interviwees by the size of their noses.’ says John ‘And he was in the carpark because that’s where his tour bus was parked.’ John hasn’t had anything to drink yet.
“I went into Tescos after I’d interviewed Kris.’ says John ‘And I bought this bottle of wine. I didn’t realise until I got to the cashdesk that it cost £30. Shall we try it?’
Claire goes home and we drink the £30 bottle of wine. It gives me a headache.
Oh well.
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