Dying to Write (3 page)

‘Customs and bloody Excise, that's who.'

‘So?'

‘They harass you. They follow you even when you've done your time. Them and the filth.'

I paused in my washing-up. To give myself time I poured away the dirty water and started to run fresh. I try to be broad-minded, always, but words like ‘filth' upset me. The only policeman I know at all well is not at all filth-like. He is eminently civilised in most respects.

‘Even here, for Christ's sake,' he said, quite wildly, now. ‘My probation officer, he managed to get me on this course, you see. There was this tutor I had in Durham: reckoned I could write, see. And I come down here, where no one knows me, and who do I find but her?'

‘Who? You'll have to tell me.'

‘I bet she's told everyone. I bet she's told you. I saw you talking to her.' His voice was shrill with ill-concealed hysteria. ‘Why should she be here? She wasn't supposed to be!'

I knew by now, of course, but I thought I'd do better to ask flatly: ‘Who are you talking about?'

‘The one you were best buddies with when we arrived. That Freeman woman. What's she doing on a course if she's so bloody good? Someone must have told her. Harassment, that's what it is!' His voice still rose alarmingly.

I had to keep calm. ‘Kate's said nothing to me, I promise you. Or to anyone else, as far as I know. Are you sure she even recognises you?'

He stared at me. ‘How d'you mean?'

‘I'm a teacher, right?' I tried to keep my voice as low and calm as I could. ‘And because I see so many students I don't always recognise them when I see them out of college. I'm sure I've offended lots of them because I couldn't quite place them. You may just seem vaguely familiar.'

‘She ought to remember me. She had me sent down for eight years.'

I don't know anything about crime and punishment but eight years suggested he might have done something pretty serious. I tried hard not to react.

‘Eight years. Well, not her personally. But her evidence. So what do I do, Soph? Tell me: what do I do to shut her up?'

‘Nothing,' I said.

‘Come on –'

I didn't like that note in his voice.

‘Honestly, Courtney. Either you can do nothing and trust she says nothing. Or, if you're really worried, you might just try asking her to keep quiet. What d'you think?'

‘I don't know. I just don't know. All I know is if she talks …' And he shouldered his way out of the kitchen.

Then he was back.

‘And don't you fucking say nothing either, Soph,' he said, pointing a hostile forefinger as if it were a gun.

I'd wanted something to sober me up, and I'd certainly got it. In fact, Courtney's transformation from mild young man to raging criminal scared me more than I cared to admit. It had been so unexpected. The question was, what to do next? There seemed to be only one answer. I didn't feel proud of myself, breaking an implicit promise, but clearly I had to say something to Kate, and quickly, too. I left the remaining glasses to drain, and slipped up the staff stairs.

The wooden treads made an embarrassing amount of noise. According to the background blurb in the course prospectus, old Eyre had installed a primitive heating system – the first since the Romans' – ducting hot air under the stairs and along what was now the staff corridor into the principal rooms. The old wood had no doubt dried and now, since the introduction of humidifiers, was expanding again, with considerable protest.

I stood in the shadow at the top of the stairs, wondering what to do next. I didn't know which was Kate's room, of course. Just that it was along here somewhere.

And then I saw Kate. She might be providing an answer to Courtney's question about why she was here. But it was clear she wouldn't want to discuss anything with me at the moment, however serious it might be. Wearing a dressing gown, she was shutting a door quietly behind her and turning down the corridor. She stopped outside another door and scratched gently.

It was opened by Matt. My warning would plainly have to wait until the morning.

The main lights had been switched off throughout both buildings, leaving emergency bulbs to cast lonely pools of light at infrequent intervals. I felt my way through the umbilical corridor, pushing at the door and hearing it sigh shut behind me. The front and rear doors to the outside world sighed in sympathy. It was well after eleven: what time did Shazia lock up, for goodness' sake?

To my rabbit-hutch.

What I hadn't realised in daylight was how deeply recessed each doorway was. The frames must have been inset by a good eighteen inches from the corridor wall, and none was lit. The next day, I resolved, I would buy a torch. Not a ladylike affair just for lighting my way – a good heavy one. An isolated building like this might well attract people other than those whose ambitions for adventure were confined to making the trip to London to pick up the Booker prize.

I didn't like the way my pulse was working after the simple matter of fishing out my key and unlocking the door. Perhaps I was missing the security lights outside my own home. Generally they do no more than irritate me by switching on every time a fox investigates, and for years I'd kept them switched off. But last spring someone had tried to murder me, and there is nothing like a close encounter with a killer for concentrating the mind on the essentials of life – such as being alive. I'd have liked a friendly glimmer now. I sat on the bed and contemplated my next move: gathering up a towel and heading for the bathroom.

After the creakings of the old house, this section was unnervingly quiet, though why on earth they should have bothered with sound insulation in such a patently cheap building as this was beyond me. There were no sounds of people moving round in the rooms to either side of me. No one padding round upstairs. And yet I had a strong feeling that not everyone was quietly reading in bed: if I were Sidney I'd have been sitting with my ears pricked and my whiskers a-quiver. I sensed movement rather than being able to identify it.

On reflection I decided to leave cleanliness till tomorrow, and contented myself with a spirited dash to the loo. When I returned, quite safely, I laughed at myself. Any nocturnal wanderings were probably merely Nyree hunting for a bedmate.

And yet I did not sleep. I missed the noises of my quiet suburban street. I missed the hum of fridge and freezer. If I drifted off for a moment, images of giant toads and long scaly tails clustered and drifted. I wondered what had possessed Kate to buy such a creature. Then I speculated about Toad and his grasp on my feet. His gesture wasn't absurd, but distasteful. More than distasteful: unnerving. And he'd overreacted to Sidney's illicit arrival even more than Gimson and the women had.

Most of all, I suddenly realised, I was missing my duvet. I am not unusually tall – just five foot one, to be honest – and fit most beds and most duvets. Not this one. Whatever position I adopted, I found bits of me sticking out.

I'd pulled my tracksuit back on and was making sure the window was as tightly shut as it seemed when I saw the light spilling from another bedroom window on to a distant bin. Then it went out. Another cold writer, no doubt.

Breakfast. Most of the women were down, but they tended not to sit next to each other. We were all warmly dressed; some of us had already applied make-up to disguise the ravages of what seemed to be a communal attack of insomnia. Then Nyree appeared. Her face was a clear case of the triumph of cosmetics over adversity, but she still wore, not a thermal dressing gown, but a negligee which more than hinted at her admirable figure. Suddenly I wanted her out of the room before Toad appeared.

When she came swanning over and greeted me by grabbing my chin and turning my profile to the window, I wanted her out of the room for another reason.

‘What did you say your name was? Sophie what?' she asked in a particularly carrying voice. ‘Rivers, that's it! You're just like him, aren't you?'

It took a lot of effort not to tear her fingers from my chin, and to sit back calmly.

‘Yes,' I said. ‘But I don't intend to talk about him now.'

I wouldn't walk out. Not with all these people watching me. I couldn't give her that much satisfaction.

‘Our little mouse has a famous cousin,' she continued. ‘Guess who Sophie's cousin is!'

Not all my family are indigent lecturers. Indigent anything, for that matter. There is my cousin Andy.

Andy took to what the family always considered bad ways. He dropped out of grammar school and hitched with his guitar to Spain, Portugal and other warm and Latin countries. Somewhere he must actually have learned to play the thing, because we next heard of him going professional. Then he was having top-ten mega-hits. It was a phase, they all said. Soon he'd see sense. He could always come back and join his dad's plumbing business. People always wanted a good plumber. Then he'd never be hard up.

In the circumstances it was perhaps a generous offer. By now Andy, whom I'd taught to bowl leg-breaks on the back lawn, was headline news in the tabloids for his extramusical activities. He'd long since dried out – campaigns against drink and drugs – but there is always someone after a snippet to sell to some gutter journalist.

I care for Andy a great deal. And I won't talk about him. To anyone.

‘Come on, darlings – guess who Sophie's cousin is!'

But then the door opened to reveal a god. A macho Rudolf Valentino. Tendrils of black hair fell across an olive forehead. Without looking, I knew his eyes would be dark pools of passion. He stood there, tawny brown in a sudden patch of sun.

Nyree lost interest in me.

There was a preoccupied silence.

He stepped inside and closed the door.

I wish that his voice had been deeper, or his words more meaningful. ‘Found 'em, Shaz. Two more setts.'

‘Get those wellies off, Naukez! I'm not having mud all over this floor again. By the way,' Shazia added in a public voice, ‘this is my husband, Naukez. He's in charge of wild life on the Eyre Estate, with particular responsibility for badgers.'

He smiled bashfully, she proudly.

I suddenly felt very lonely; it was a long time since I'd had anyone to smile at like that. And then I knew incontrovertibly that the relationship with a colleague I'd slipped into a couple of weeks before the holiday would have to end. I'd never smile like that at him.

Meanwhile Nyree was trying to insert herself into Naukez' consciousness, and again I saw my relationship in perspective. Perhaps my first piece of creative writing should be a letter ending what I now saw as a grubby little liaison, and returning him giftwrapped, if somewhat shopsoiled, to his wife. I pushed away from the table. In the doorway I nearly ran into Kate; her face was as sober and preoccupied as mine.

‘Are you all right?' we asked each other simultaneously, in voices of equal concern. And we gave matching brave but grim smiles.

Matt, breezing along as if he might actually have slept, stopped to give me a friendly and unexpected hug. But I resolved not even to think of fancying him. One of the great romantic composers – was it Brahms? – had as his motto, ‘Lonely but free'. I suppose I could do worse. I continued on my way whistling – there's a bit of Brahms' Third Symphony which picks up the ‘lonely but free' motto in music. I felt better immediately. Especially when Gimson greeted me with a scowl and the muttered information that a whistling woman and a crowing hen were pleasing to neither God nor men.

As a lecturer I always like observing my colleagues, not just to score points off them, but to pick up new approaches. As I lay on the lounge floor alongside my fellow students I did, however, find myself hard-pressed to imagine a use for this particular exercise. Matt had talked briefly about trying to unlock the creative, as opposed to the critical, part of the brain, then handed over to Kate, who, he explained, was an experienced practitioner of the relaxation techniques involved.

‘One good way to relax,' she was saying, in a low, persuasive voice, ‘is to take yourself on an imaginary journey. A walk. Notice where you're going. Notice the colours, the smells, the sounds … Open up the creative part of your brain –'

‘My good woman,' Gimson said, his everyday voice harsh after Kate's, ‘I've seen more brains than you've had hot dinners, and I've never come across one unlocked by lying on the floor with its head on a pile of paperback books.'

There was a tentative murmur of agreement.

‘You're all paying Kate and Matt a great deal of money to help you to write,' I heard myself saying, ‘so why not let them help you?'

So we were all flat on our backs when we first heard the voices. One was Shazia's; she was speaking quickly, as if remonstrating. The other was more gutteral – heavy, insistent.

Footsteps. Then the lounge door was flung open.

‘Charrotte Brontë!' demanded the gutteral voice. ‘Charrotte Brontë!'

There was a rapid scrabble as we all returned to the vertical.

Kate moved forward quickly, as I would have done, to protect her class. Matt, who'd been on the floor with the rest of us, joined her to confront the intruder. Shazia waited by the door, as if to show him courtesy when he finally left.

‘Charrotte Brontë! Jay Eyre!' the man repeated, more loudly.

There was no reason why he should have been threatening. He was an ordinary Japanese tourist. Five foot two, very thickset, very bad skin; thousands of pounds' worth of cameras round his neck. But there was something about the way he scanned the room that chilled me.

‘Jay Eyre!' he shouted.

The four of them stood there.

God knows why it took me so long to fall in. But when I did, I started to laugh. And I joined the group by the door.

‘I think you're at the wrong place,' I said slowly. ‘You want the Brontë Museum. For
Jane Eyre
.'