Dead In The Water - Chapter One

Chapter 1

         The screen in front of me has remained blank for hours. Days, in fact. Inspiration for a new novel, a short story, an article or a poem has remained elusive, I am entirely dried up. It is as though my muse has deserted me, gone AWOL, and left me in a rather interesting position which sits, uncomfortably, somewhere between despair and depression.

         I have done all the things that self-help books advise you to do in a situation such as mine. I have visited my favourite beauty spots, notepad and biro in hand. I have strolled along the river, trying to empty my mind. I have people-watched, read newspapers and magazines, browsed the Internet and scoured any locked-away pieces of childhood memories that could toss a thread at my feet for me to pick up. Drawing up a list of names for my heroes and villains, another of possible titles and one of themes hitherto untouched by my ten finger typing; all such efforts have drawn hopeless and disheartening blanks.

         The cursor sits on the screen, flashing, teasing, beckoning me to have a go. Each time I sit down on my swivel chair I end up doing only finger gymnastics and not typing a single word. Frustrated, I slam the laptop shut, stamp my feet like a teenager and, angry now, grab my coat for another walk. Perhaps I should get myself a dog, at least then these solitary strolls would have some purpose. Hmm, I wonder, perhaps I could write an article about being a non-dog person on a search for the perfect canine companion? Nah, it doesn’t really grab me and let’s face it, if it doesn’t grab me, how on earth is it supposed to grab the reader?

         I return home to a dark, cold house. It occurs to me that in my quest to become first a published, then an established writer, I have wound up alone. Most of my friends are married, mortgaged to their eyeballs and mowing their lawns every Sunday. I pour myself a glass of wine and park the empty bottle in the corner beneath the boiler. Gosh, have I really drunk that much? I wonder, contemplating the horde of empty bottles now crowding the work surface. Yet I took out the previous horde of amassed empties only two nights ago. I pull my home-knitted cardigan around me as I curl up on the sofa, staring into the big, black hole that is the fireplace. Tears start trickling down my face as I reflect upon my life so far; how have I wound up like this?

         Almost exclusively, everyone who has ever tried to come close I have discarded, my cynic mind wanting to remain fiercely protective of my inner peace, feelings, even my privacy in case anyone should manage to scratch beneath the surface and see what I myself am terrified of seeing: that beneath the surface there isn’t an awful lot else. I have always preferred to escape into a world of my own creation, a fantasy existence where I can determine the outcome of any given situation, give advice where none is called for; play God, if you like. As the words flow from my brain through my fingertips onto the screen in front of me, I feel in control, in charge of a set of circumstances which, granted, I created in the first place.

         This control is now lost on me and I feel myself spinning into a pit of desolation as my writer’s block continues to gnaw away at my confidence, it’s grubby little paws pushing me back, leaving me unable to climb out of the slimy nothingness it leaves in its wake.

         My thoughts are pivoted back to the now as I realise a storm is brewing outside; the winds have picked up to such an extent that the branches of the bushes outside are whipping against the glass of the bay window, almost in a frenzy. I push the woollen cashmere blanket from my lap and rise to close the curtains and as I approach the window, the heavens suddenly open and rain lashes in heavy, thunderous streams down my window. It is as though each individual drop is determined to break through the glass barrier and thrash into my house, into my life, into my soul. The noise of the falling rain is less of a tap-tap-tap but more of a thunderous, incessant hammering. I sigh heavily and return to my settee, curtains still open.

         I spend a sleepless night wondering at a life led differently. I could have had a family by now, a career – in teaching, perhaps. Most certainly I would not be alone on this dark and gloomy November evening, but sharing a glass of wine with someone special. Yet, I concede, I never let anyone stay around long enough to become special, kept everyone at arm’s length. Had I been endowed perhaps with a fraction of passion and zeal, I could have escaped the crevasse of depression in which I buried myself, believing I had to be cynical, negative, sad or depressed even, to deliver good work. My greatest successes were testament of this; my first novel was about a depressed woman living in rural England in the late nineteenth century. How else could I have gained such an insight into her feelings, had I not lived through it, felt it, suffered it across every hurdle, through every hardship, emotional and financial?

         So, you see, I have in a way suffered for my art. Now I realise I am suffering because of it. I may have an elaborate vocabulary stored in my brain, always ready for me to tap into, then – mostly – flowing easily from grey cells to white paper. Alright, to the laptop screen. It is a damning indictment of my commitment to my art that yesterday, the first of November, saw the arrival of only two birthday cards; one from my Auntie Mildred who, after the passing of my parents, ran what was my childhood home with a despotic hand, the other from my agent.

         Poor Owen. Poor, dear Owen, my long-suffering agent has – bless him – stood by me in these previous months of verbal drought. He phones me once a week to provide encouragement and, I suspect, hear if anything is in the pipeline, so to speak. After all, he too, earns his money from my writing. After each call I grow increasingly despondent while he sounds increasingly peevish; no, actually, I take that back. Considering just how long it’s been since I’ve produced a piece of work of anything nearing publishable standard, Owen is still my tower of strength, still encouraging, still patient. But there is also a hint of fractiousness; Owen never was a great actor.

         I pour water in the battered kettle and place it on the gas stove, look around the kitchen and sigh at the sight of it; I wish I were flush with money so I could hire myself a cleaner to do some tidying up; I am spectacularly hopeless at housework. Dishes, empty bottles, crisp packets, half a loaf of almost mouldy bread. Everywhere you turn is mess, mess, mess. The sad truth of the matter I am wrestling to pay for the electric bills as it is, let alone being able to pay for domestic assistance. After a half-hearted attempt at a clear-up I finish making my cup of tea and return to that evil, black monster with a Dell badge on its lid.

         The china mug has turned scalding hot in my hands so I place it on the small area next to my laptop which was been cleared for the exact same reason. Sighing heavily, I sit down, flip open the lid and hold the power button for a few seconds until the familiar green light appears and the machine starts whirring. As the machine moves through its pre-programmed motions of booting up, I rub my face and lean back in my chair, watching the small multi-coloured windows appearing on the screen. I stare for long, morose moments at the cursor as it winks at me.

         I open my pocket diary which is full not so much of important meetings, birthdays and anniversaries but rough sketches, ideas, fleeting thoughts, prompts and other such transitory, spontaneous moments of inspiration – or madness, depending on how you look at it. It’s five years out of date, which tells you, I suppose, a lot about my time management skills. Towards the back of the diary I stumble upon an old and very rough sketch of a woman working in a mango grove. “She Picks Mangoes” it says in my crow’s feet scribble of handwriting beneath the sketch. I muse on this for a while, absentmindedly chewing my nails as I do so. Ideas, images, phrases slowly start to transcend the mental barrier I have suffered. I draw breath as if about to plunge into deep water, throw my head back and then sit upright in my chair, fingers hovering above the keyboard.

         My eyes wander around the room, taking in the mess that it has become since I last tidied up. I try to ignore and look beyond it, to absorb, perhaps some of the life that once lived within these very walls. Back in the days before Mum and Pa passed away, before Aunty Mildred moved in and ruled the roost. I remember suddenly the smell of freshly baked chocolate muffins, Mum’s meatloaf, the scent of the pine tree in the middle of the room on Christmas Eve. I see, too, Pa sitting on the sofa, reading the paper, legs crossed while smoking his pipe. I close my eyes and revel in all of those impressions, the very few, scant memories I have from before I became me.

         When opening my eyes, I find that windows are whirling around my screen once more and I decide it’s time to change the screensaver and in the same instant decide that that is such a bizarre thought to have; surely I have more pressing worries than which screensaver to use. My eyes dart around the room again, desperate now, but the memories, the images have disappeared and I’m back in my messy lounge. My eyes linger for a while on the mantelpiece, crowded with knickknacks and two birthday cards. I sip my tea and cup my hands around the mug as I stand up to read the cards.

         Aunty Mildred never did have anything much nice to say to me; throughout my childhood I have felt her intense sense of resentment at being charged with my upbringing. Even so, the simple message “Love Aunty M” with no kisses, no enquiries as to my health or happiness, is too much to bear. Owen’s card, on the other hand, leaves me with a small smile on my face; he has known me long enough to now have tapped into my sense of humour and the tone of his message lies safely somewhere between friendly and professional. I let my finger run over the card and I smile again. I would never have thought that Owen and I would one day be, well, friends.

~~~*~~~

         Writing is all I have ever wanted to do. Even as a little girl, shutting out the coldness of my life with Aunty Mildred under my parents’ roof, I would spend hours making up stories. To begin with they were amateurish, of course, childish to say the least but also with a level of maturity and insight with baffled my teachers in Middle School. Children this young don’t normally write stuff like this, a teacher told Aunty Mildred at a parent’s evening when I was about eleven. I beamed with pride, knowing a compliment when I heard it (which wasn’t often) and yet somehow the three days of stony silence that ensued, starting from the drive back in the car, left me confused, thinking I had done something wrong. On the fourth day after the parent evening, Aunty Mildred told me she was signing me up for Brownies and piano lessons. I was to do all of my homework in the kitchen, two hours each night, one hour piano each night (two on a Saturday).

         My desk, chair and lamp were removed from my room and replaced with an old chest of drawers in which Aunty stored her doilies, tablecloths, embroidered handkerchiefs and other such items, which rarely saw the light of day. My life from then on became regimented.

         Aunty may have thought she had me beaten and removed Satan (as she once expressed it) from my life. Clearly, the invention of the handheld torch had passed her by. I suppose this is where my sense of privacy connected with anything to do with my writing stems from, where the first seeds of distrust were sewn. Of distrust, but also of inadequacy – regardless of how hard I tried I just never seemed to be able to please Aunty. I practiced piano according to her schedule, though I had not a shard of talent, being tone-deaf as I am. I was a straight A’ student during most of my education (though not necessarily during University as I here discovered the distraction of the opposite sex) and brought home Brownie badges, reading prizes and sports certificates. None of it ever earned so much as a nod of praise.

         It was thus by pure coincidence that I became a published writer. An old University friend of mine, Laura, was getting married to a printer named Peter Whinney and I decided to write them a poem in celebration of their union. Dressed in a maroon bridesmaid dress with far too big sleeves, I stood up in front of almost one hundred strangers and read my poem out loud. At first, my hands were shaking so badly I couldn’t read the words on the paper in front of me but as the voices gradually hushed to a level of stillness I had never experienced before, I imagined myself in a different place, a place of solitude and calmness and I delivered all twenty-eight lines without tripping over my own words. As I folded the paper after the final line, I looked up over my spectacles, nervously, thinking I had made a complete fool of myself. Instead, the room erupted in a rapturous, thunderous applause and I turned to see everyone on the top table moved to tears. I never knew that words could have such a profound impact on people.

         Peter’s boss, Owen Weatherley, pulled me to one side, bought me a drink and gave me his card.

          “I want to read some of your work”, he said, in between rushed, excited gulps of champagne. “Short stories, novels, drafts, poetry, the lot. I want to see more.”
          “But why?” I hesitated. Save for essays written for school and, later, assignments and dissertations at University, I had hidden my work from the public eye and wasn’t about to surrender it to a complete stranger. “I’m not famous or anything…”
          “Perhaps not, my dear”, he said, putting his arm around me and squeezing my shoulder tightly, “but you ought to be.”

         He continued for some time, filling my head with similar compliments, names of contacts were thrown around like confetti at the church earlier and gradually I relaxed in his company and admiration. I agreed to send one of my novels to him and meet him a month later in his London office, after he had a chance to read it.

         And so it was that a had-been agent discovered a was-to-be darling of the critics and public, winner of two Whitbread Awards, three number one best sellers (including a collection of poems) and the world was at our feet. Over the next sixteen years I published over 20 books, collections of short stories and poetry, was invited to write columns in writers’ magazines, judged Young Talent competitions and, I am ashamed to add, opened two motorway service stations and eight supermarkets. I was a guest speaker at all red brick universities, at conferences and I travelled the world to promote my books. My fourth book, Lies Lie Beneath, came close to becoming a Hollywood project but negotiations stalled. Owen never did tell me why, and I was sufficiently self absorbed, focused on an impending tour to the States where several radio and television appearances had been lined up.

         I suppose, for much of that time I was also off my face. Success and fame bring with it the inevitable parties, some more of an excuse to blow – or snort as it were – thousands of pounds up one’s nose, and copious amounts of alcohol – champagne in my case. I spent most of 1997 in a drunken stupor. The American Tour was supposed to mark my return to normalcy, to hours dedicated to nothing but writing, planned with military precision. I still managed to fit in some parties. I never took any drugs; as I said, champagne was my vice. Gradually, however, I rediscovered my love for writing and withdrew to a cocoon, a self-imposed solitary custodial sentence. By this time, I now realise, it was perhaps already too late.

         My last novel, Panic in the Olive Grove, set in rural Tuscany, was a flop. It sold less than five thousand copies in Britain and never went to paperback production. The second, third, fourth and sometimes fifth editions of my books belonged to a distant past.

~~~*~~~

         I carefully place Owen’s card back on the mantelpiece and spend the next several minutes in quiet contemplation. Without ever wanting to admit it to any of my friends, I am insanely jealous that they on their birthdays, for Christmas, Easter and anniversaries and most likely on several other occasions in between have gifts, flowers, thoughtful gestures and other such tokens of affections lavished upon them, while I have no one to do that for me. Laura once told me she, in a way, was jealous of me, for my independence, my willpower, determination and, as you might expect, success and admiration of the public. I suspect she said those things to be kind.