Dying to Write (2 page)

But he came back to me. I knew he would. There he was, clutching a custard cream and smiling at me.

‘You see,' he was saying. ‘I always loved feet. I wanted to be a chiropodist. But I couldn't pass the A levels. Couldn't even get on the course.'

The trouble is, I always ask sensible questions. ‘Couldn't you do an access course at a further education college?'

What if he evinced a sudden desire to try William Murdock College? And ended up in my English class? But I needn't have worried.

‘Oh, no. I'd want to do it properly. Real exams.'

Ah. That sort of person. The sort who wouldn't do any of the writing exercises the tutors here might set because he wanted to write
War and Peace
straight away.

By now there were plenty of other people dunking their teabags. Shazia was busy distributing name badges. ‘Just put your first names on – nothing formal.'

‘Christian names,' said a voice with too much emphasis. I watched him write, ostentatiously, Mr Gimson. I eyed him: what kind of man insists on using his title? This one came with a beautifully cut sports jacket and immaculate brogues it would take Toad several minutes to unlace. And I thought Mr Gimson might expect a little adulation: although he was short, he tried to look down his nose at everyone. Literally and metaphorically. I'd make a point of pouring hot water on his fingers if he came near the urn.

Matt came and stood my me and cleared his throat gently. No one took any notice. He eyed me. ‘How d' you do it?'

Sometimes I think they must brand teachers' foreheads.

‘Call an unruly mob like this to order?' I said. ‘Oh, cough portentously and waggle some papers. That usually works – eventually.'

Red Toenails – Nyree, according to her badge – lounged possessively over to a sofa. All eyes turned to her.

Matt coughed again, more dramatically this time. It had the desired effect.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Eyre House. We want you to have as free and productive time as possible while you're here, but we want to say one or two things that will make the running of the course easier for everyone.

‘First may I say how fortunate we are to have Kate Freeman with us. Philip Doyle has had to drop out –'

A general sigh.

‘Because he's been rushed to hospital. It's quite serious, I'm afraid.'

It would be, wouldn't it? Isn't paraquat irreversible? No. He'd been joking, hadn't he?

‘So Kate has kindly agreed to take his place. You'll recall that Kate was short-listed for the Whitbread last year, and you may have heard her plays or stories on the radio. And there's a television series coming up in the new year – right, Kate?'

Kate blushed in acknowledgement.

Then she started her part of the spiel: ‘We've been asked to remind you of just a couple of rules. No smoking and no high heels in the old part of the house. Sorry.'

Matt pulled a face and ritualistically tapped out his pipe. ‘Food,' he continued, ‘is up to you. Shazia's prepared tonight's supper –'

‘Bloody curry, I dare say,' muttered Mr Gimson.

Matt overrode him: ‘But for the rest of the week you good people will take turns cooking the evening meal for the rest of us. Perhaps you'd divide yourselves into teams during supper.'

‘I assume we're allowed breakfast and lunch?' Gimson again.

‘Only if you forage for them,' Matt replied. ‘Then you can organise your days to suit yourselves. Your time is your own; we only claim it for individual tutorials and for group activities. The first will be after supper, which is now ready. What writers in a more gracious age might have called a cold collation, I believe.'

And he gestured us into the dining room.

The beautifully proportioned room still tried hard to be elegant. Unfortunately much of the decorative plasterwork was blurred by layer upon layer of paint; it would take hours of patience to restore it. Rather sadder, however, because someone had obviously tried so hard to get it right, was the wallpaper, which aspired desperately if anachronistically to Regency stripes and ended up looking like something from a bar parlour or a cheap restaurant. Crimson flock does, especially if decorated with a gold motif and dabs of food.

No one wanted to lead the stampede to the table. Gimson, however, got things moving, taking Kate's elbow, the better to establish her – and himself – at the head of the table. He would clearly have liked Nyree on his other side, but she had already claimed Matt, down at the far end. I hung back because I wanted to put space between me and Toad: there must be more interesting people. Since a little male pulchritude never comes amiss, I fell in beside a young Afro-Caribbean man called Courtney, who grinned at me with a pleasant degree of malice as a loud young woman told anyone willing to listen that she was not here to write but to see how writers worked, since Daddy had got her a job in publishing. I did not intend to become her research material. We sat opposite an elderly man. He had also put his surname on his label: Edward Woodhouse. But there was neither white soup nor Emma in prospect.

Next to him sat a trio of greyish ladies, who had attempted to reinforce summer polyester with winter woollies – and indeed, who could blame them?

‘Those greens with those beige stripes!' whispered Courtney. ‘That old dear looks like a parsnip!'

But then whoever it was on his other side claimed his attention, and I turned to my other neighbour, a young man with John Lennon glasses. I tried to draw him out. I like students and enjoy their company. This one had a premature scholarly stoop. Alas, I shocked him back into catatonia when I confessed that I did not read science fiction. Beyond him were a couple of young girls, one giggling, one morose behind a brace.

Courtney nudged me. ‘If Kate and Matt can make this lot work together, they'll be earning their corn and no mistake.'

We started our first exercises after supper. We were in the lounge again, with all the chairs pushed back against the wall, and we were to work in pairs. We had to stare into our partner's eyes and learn to act in concert with him or her. Whatever our partner did with his hands, we were supposed to do with ours. It was inconceivable that Nyree would want to look into my eyes, and I'd no intention of gazing into Toad's. Mr Gimson had stomped off for a smoke. For a while I mirrored Mr Woodhouse, but not very successfully. Then I linked up with Courtney.

They gazed dutifully, his dark-brown eyes and my blue ones. And our hands tracked one another obediently. Then Courtney spoiled it.

‘I'm glad I got you again,' he said. ‘You're nice and safe.'

‘Gee, thanks. And middle-aged, too, I suppose.' I'm always having this problem with my students – they think you're way past it by the time you're thirty.

‘I didn't say that. You're younger than Nyree, I should think. But at least your hands – I mean, what's a guy s'posed to do when a woman – I mean …'

I shook my head: what had she done?

He dropped his voice to a confidential whisper. ‘Her hand, Sophie. She had her hand straight on my you-know-what. I mean!' For a second his voice was camp: ‘On to a bit of a loser with me, though.'

We grinned at each other. It was nice to have a potential ally.

Then we had to change partners. Soon I was staring into Matt Purvis's eyes. They were grey, within a tangle of crow's-feet. Our hands circled in parallel swirls and dips. We were very good. Until he broke all the rules and looked away.

‘Jesus!' he said. He nodded at Mr Gimson's crotch.

Nyree must have groped him, too. Or perhaps he just wished she had.

‘I know there's a novel in me,' someone was saying earnestly. The girl with the brace, I think.

We'd moved the furniture back and were allowed to sit down and relax. A glass nestled closely in my hand. Nyree had produced a litre bottle of gin, and it seemed the only way we'd prevent her sinking the lot was to discover a little cache of glasses in a top cupboard. Some of us saw it as a positive duty to make up for others' lack of dedication. The result was that not only the names but also the name badges were by now a little hazy.

‘So why are you here, Sophie?'

Blast Matt.

‘I won a prize.'

There were aahs, both appreciative and resentful.

‘In a raffle. The head of English at my college sold me a ticket. He said if I won, he'd come. But he had to change a tyre on the principal's car and now he's having his hernia repaired. So here I am.' After a close encounter with death earlier in the year, I'd resolved to grab every new experience that came my way. So I added, terribly earnest with gin, ‘Now I'm here, I'll try anything.'

‘So will I, darling, so will I.'

‘Ah, Nyree. Why have you joined the course?' Matt succumbed to
force majeure
.

I could have told him the answer to that. It wasn't so very different from the one she gave.

‘Because it's easier than the OU, darling.' She tipped forward to show him more of her left breast.

‘The OU?' repeated Matt, foolishly.

‘Of course. You know, darling: summer schools.'

Yes. That sort of education.

Having silenced him, she continued: ‘Not that I don't mean to write. I've started on my memoirs, darling. Married to a secret agent. And now what does he do? Gets made redundant, and asks for political asylum in Viet-bloody-nam. So I stayed here. To meet a few red-blooded Englishmen. God, I'm sick of fucking pansies!'

Kate caught my eye. We sniggered into our gin.

‘I've got to Chapter Seven, now, darling. Willies I have known. I'll be a very good student – I know how important research is.' She leaned back. Her breasts might have sunk to comparative oblivion but her legs hadn't. In case anyone hadn't noticed, a languorous hand lay halfway along her thigh, weighted down by a ring with more carats than should decently occupy one space.

Matt was clearly unequal to the situation. But Kate wasn't.

‘Thank you, Nyree. I'm sure you'll have a very fruitful time here,' she said, the irony barely audible. But she grinned at me again before she turned to the next victim. ‘Garth?'

So Toad had a name. I peered more closely at his label. Garth Kerwin. The gin and I were trying to work out whether his name suited him when something scuffed at the door.

‘Is the house haunted?' I asked no one in particular.

The ghost jingled.

The door was pushed open, very slowly. Its creak was especially convincing.

‘Sidney! You bad animal!' shouted Kate.

The rat poured himself around the door. He was wearing a tiny leather harness with a bell on the shoulders.

Gimson's face contorted. ‘How dare you!'

‘I'm dreadfully sorry. I really am!' said Kate.

Toad leapt to his feet, white showing around the pale irises. Nyree pressed close to Gimson. One of the older ladies gasped; her lips turned alarmingly blue.

All around, voices were raised. I was on my knees cajoling Sidney with a gin-flavoured finger, which he rightly ignored. The first old lady was fumbling for tablets, another for an asthma spray. Gimson was booming away about social irresponsibility, but was also keen to tell us the difference between
Rattus rattus
and
Rattus norvegicus
. And surely that was Toad's voice: ‘You should be shot! Keeping an animal like that!'

I suppose it was at about this point that I realised that this course and the people on it were not there simply for my amusement. There were real feelings engaged. I must sober up. Rapidly.

Water. If I drank a lot of water it would help. And there'd be plenty of water in the tap in the kitchen.

The corridor to the kitchen was occupied by Matt and Kate, both grim-faced. Kate might have been enduring a bollocking, but Matt seemed more apologetic than anything. Quite clearly they did not want me to join them.

I might as well go back and collect a few glasses from the lounge while I was at it; most of us had left them where we'd been sitting. The lounge wasn't empty, though. Courtney had found a tray and a dishcloth and was systematically gathering and mopping.

He smiled at me as I started to help. ‘Funny old evening it's been,' he said.

‘Some funny old people to make it that way. Jesus, Courtney, can anyone really find Nyree attractive?'

‘You're asking the wrong man here, sweetie,' he said, camp again. ‘But I wouldn't have thought so. Poor Matt looked scared –'

‘– if not rigid,' I concluded.

Courtney's tray and my hands full, we headed back to the kitchen. The corridor was by now quiet.

I ran water and sloshed in washing-up liquid. Courtney found a cleanish tea towel, but he didn't start using it. Quite a backlog had accumulated before he spoke. Then it was merely to ask what I did for a living. I told him about my job at a big inner-city college. He listened in silence. I didn't want to upset him by asking about his job in case he hadn't got one.

He put down the saucer he'd been polishing. I felt him looking at me.

‘I think I can trust you, Soph,' he began. ‘I think I can. You see … Dear me, there's no easy way to say this.'

I waited.

‘I've been there, you see. In the nick, Soph. Nice boy like me in prison.'

There was nothing I could say.

‘And now this. This harassment. That's what it is, you know: harassment.' He pronounced it the American way.

‘Hm?'

‘Her being here like this. That woman.'

‘Which woman?'

‘There was this joke we used to have in the nick. There's someone in your house. Midnight, see. Not a burglar. Not the filth – whoops, pardon my French! And he's turning over your stuff and there's nothing you can do to stop him. Who is it?'

I shook my head. I don't like being called ‘Soph' but didn't want to stop his flow. ‘Not a clue. Who?'