The place rose up before me, behind a mist of words, the familiar mixed in with the strange, brae and burn, crag and moor, meadow and brake, heathery hill and mossy dale, ragged grey heath and new-mown field as tidy as tartan. Every scrap of it trodden upon and named, and a net of footpaths and lanes and high roads and low roads flung over for good measure. What lives were lived on the face of this earth, and who could begin to comprehend their outlines?
It came in on me that it would be effrontery to write a story about the other side of the world, the other side of time…it was presumptuous enough to write about the other side of the street. To write anything at all, to make anything up, to set anything down was to act in bad faith. The world was too immense and complicated. A short story! Hoot-toot.
And then Stevenson bobbed up in his velvet jacket and silk tie, with Hazlitt bulging in his breast pocket, and he remonstrated with me, just as he once remonstrated – rather more respectfully, let it be said – with no less a personage than Mr Henry James, for these primitive anxieties about art and reality; and naturally his darts wounded me more deeply, seeing that a century had passed since they were first flung and I ought to have known better, and especially seeing that I am only an aspirant author, with no body of work to shield me, whereas Mr James was padded thickly all over with famous books. I stood in the surf and felt foolish and old-fashioned. Art and reality, said Stevenson, bobbing, are not in competition, you simpleton. Art stands in the same sort of relation to reality as a geometry theorem. And then he cast off the good ship Romance and sailed boldly away, tacking expertly to windward and sounding as he went.
Resolving to make the best of my unhappy situation, I prepared to explore the island. And found myself still bent over my atlas, gazing at Loch Ness. I saw a National Geographic documentary on the Monster once. And here we have the bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond…Lockerbie, upon which an aeroplane fell…Motherwell, whose soccer team was always mentioned on CNN…
* * *
—
When he was writing Kidnapped, Stevenson recalled, the characters grew to be so real that they stepped off the page, turned their backs on him and walked away. From then on they made up the story and he just wrote it down, like a stenographer. How I wish that this might happen to me one day.
* * *
—
My nasty experience with the map of Scotland bothered me for weeks. Stevenson wrote that he found it hard to believe there were people who did not care for maps. Well, I found it hard to believe that I was one of those people! On the contrary, I had always thought of myself as a map lover. Then why had looking in the atlas paralysed my creative faculties? Many another author, and RLS pre-eminently, reported that maps inspired them to write. In the end, I reasoned it out for myself as follows.
The whole story of Treasure Island grew out of a map of the place, which Stevenson and his stepson invented to amuse themselves. As he gazed at the map, the characters began to appear there, peeping out at him (stepping off the page again!). But this was to be expected, because he had invented the island himself. He made it small enough to be traversed in a day and left it uninhabited (Ben Gunn was marooned there for just three years). It was a country of the imagination.
Kidnapped was written with the aid of maps too, but now the romance was spun out of real places. Propped up in bed at Skerryvore, with the maps scattered around him like another land of counterpane, Stevenson set about planning David Balfour’s travels, recalling places he had known as a boy and finding adventures to justify them. This was a country of the memory.
But I proposed neither to invent a place nor to remember one. Perversely, I wished to remember a place I had never been and invent a place that already existed. What path could be more full of pitfalls? The prospect was sure to make one feel ill, especially when confronted with evidence of an irrecoverable, unimaginable world.
To test my theory I opened the atlas again (at Hungary as it happened) and felt dizzy immediately. Bingo.
As an antidote I looked for Nairn, which I had annexed by means of a letter in my own hand, but couldn’t find it. I had to look in the Index. It’s not where I thought it would be, a penny stonecast from Edinburgh, but up in the sticks, or their heathery equivalent. No wonder the entry form is taking forever to reach me.
* * *
—
It occurs to me that a story set closer to home might be just the ticket (it would certainly obviate the need for maps). These DT chaps in Nairn have cast their net in foreign waters; they must expect to land some strange fish. Then again, kidnapping in all its facets is such a big thing down our way, I’m sure to be at an advantage: we’ve got dirty tricks, hijacking of vehicles, stealing of children, muti murders, witchhunts, shanghaiing of illegal aliens, to mention just a few. I almost feel spoilt for choice. The political angle might be worth pursuing, something which stresses those elements of Kidnapped that chime with our recent history – notably an oppressed, dispossessed population and an exiled leadership.
* * *
—
Idea: A Jim Comes to Jo’burg story, being a South African version of Kidnapped, in which each element is an echo of the original. Mid-1980s. Jim, newly orphaned – his father has died unexpectedly of natural causes somewhere in the Midlands – arrives in Egoli to find his Uncle Ebenezer. But Uncle Ebbie is hiding a guilty secret and wants to be rid of the boy. One afternoon he takes him down to the White Horse shebeen, where they meet a taxi-driver called Hosea (the Captain Hoseason of my story). Ebbie strikes a deal with Hosea to pack Jim off to a relative in Lebowa who could do with another pair of hands in the fields. Jim is lured aboard Hosea’s taxi, a Toyota Hi-Lux called Promises, Promises (too much?) and spirited out of the city on the N1. It’s the Easter weekend and the great north road is clogged with pilgrims. In a traffic jam outside Pretoria they are involved in a minor collision with a bakkie. Before they get under way again one of the bakkie’s passengers insinuates himself into the taxi. This is Jabulani, the Alan Breck of the story, not a Jacobite but an ANC activist. Jabu is organizing the passage of recruits across the border. He demands that Hosea set him down in a remote corner of the province; Hosea, who has taken the newcomer’s dandyish appearance as a sign of wealth – it is in fact a shrewd disguise – in turn demands an exorbitant fare, and they argue. The conflict comes to a head in Naboomspruit, where they stop for petrol. Jim overhears Hosea and his conspirators among the other passengers making plans to rob Jabu, and alerts him to the danger. They barricade themselves in the restroom and beat off several attacks. A truce is sealed and Hosea accedes to Jabu’s demands. Jabu and Jim become firm friends. The older man is grateful to the youngster for his brave stand; he also sees him as a potential recruit. Hosea has never been in this part of the country before and they lose their way. Then, on a rocky back-road the vehicle overturns. Jim is thrown clear of the wreck. And so on.
* * *
—
It is thought clever, Stevenson says sarcastically, to write a novel with no story at all, or at least with a very dull one. This new idea of mine avoids that problem: the master himself has thrown me a storyline. Is there sufficient romance in it though? The plot is a thicket of circumstance, which is to the good, and I suppose I might persuade the occasional reader to identify with the hero. But a few essential ingredients are lacking: where is the clean, open-air adventure, for instance? I could probably build it in later, when Jim and Jabulani are on the run – “the flight in the veld,” I’ll call it. But is there romance to be found where the troops of the counter-insurgency unit pursue their quarry through the wastes of a rural slum? Can a Toyota Hi-Lux demand adventure in the same way as a sailing-ship? Will a Shell Ultracity refreshment plaza do for a roadside inn or a Caltex restroom for a fo’c’s’le? I suspect not.
I should look to the past, as Stevenson did.
Idea: My story is set in the mining-camp of Johannesburg, mere mo
nths after the discovery of gold. My hero is a young man newly arrived from Scotland (there is just one woman in the whole of Kidnapped, and “Kidnapped” must conform). In his pocket he is carrying a precious possession: a first edition of Kidnapped (published in July 1886). I haven’t quite got the storyline yet – but surely there is scope for romance here. I could fit in an ostler or two, a band of footpads, a stretch of moonlit road and a hurricane-lamp, buried treasure. Possibly even a potato-bogle.
The temporal symmetry appeals too: Stevenson set his Kidnapped a century or so before his time, and I shall do the same with mine.
* * *
—
The entry form arrived in this afternoon’s post and knocked all my plans agley. I knew I should have waited.
To start with, the envelope contained several annoying enclosures from the chaps in Nairn: advertisements for the International Writers Club and the Writers Book Society – the absence of apostrophes was an added irritation – and enrolment forms from the Home Study Division. They also want me to subscribe to something called Writers News, which they say is full of useful tips and inspiring success stories. I’ll be damned. The whole competition is an exercise in promoting their products. No doubt, if you don’t subscribe to the rag your competition entry will go straight into their waste-paper basket. I shan’t give them the pleasure, I thought, and threw their junk mail into my own.
Retrieved it a bit later, and had a closer look at the rules. It seems I might have been overhasty in my judgement. Rule 2 says there will be two classes of entry – those who subscribe to Writers News and those who don’t – with £500 for the winner in each class. So far so good.
But what about Rule 5: “Entries must be accompanied by the entry fee of £2.50 minimum; £3.50 is the preferred fee while £5 would be welcomed to assist with the work of the DT Charitable Trust.” On this scale, I should think £10 would be the mark of a truly generous nature.
And Rule 6, which states that the entries must be between 1 600 and 1 800 words long. Now that’s a problem. I’m in an expansive mood. None of the ideas I’ve come up with so far could be crammed into five pages. I know what it’s about too: they’re trying to make things easy for the judges.
Then there’s Rule 7, read together with Rule 10: entries must be postmarked by 20 January 1995 and the winners will be announced at a ceremony in London in March 1995. Thinking of dates reminded me that RLS died on 3 December 1894 (which means that the centenary of his death falls on Saturday next). Now I had to ask myself how a competition supposedly celebrating the centenary could ignore this date. It scarcely gave me confidence in the chaps in Nairn. If it had been left to me to make the arrangements I would have seen to it that the prize-giving ceremony was actually held on 3 December 1994. That way it might have been quite moving and meaningful. What luck that it fell on a Saturday too, the day most suited to such an occasion.
If I did win, by any chance, I wonder if they’d fly me to London for the ceremony? I’ll bet the winners have more economically viable addresses. But I shouldn’t even bother myself about it, because, on balance, I think I should forget the whole thing.
* * *
—
Last night (Saturday the 3rd) I organized my own little memorial dinner, the sort of thing I might have writ large for the prizegiving. There was negus with rum and lime-juice to give the flavour of an island night. The main course took its cue from Travels with a Donkey. I thought of chocolate and Bologna sausage, which is what Louis ate for dinner in the birch wood near Fouzilhic, and black bread, which was Modestine’s share – but I settled instead for a leg of mutton and a tomato salad. I made a mayonnaise – that is what Louis was doing when he was struck down. It sounds macabre, but it went off bitter-sweetly. At exactly ten past eight a solemn toast was drunk in burgundy (given longer notice I might have rustled up some kava) and passages from the works were read. By good fortune, something very like a tropical storm blew up, complete with tantrums of lightning and squalls, and so the proceedings were concluded with the two prayers in time of rain.
What with burgundy, negus and brandy abominable to man, I had a restless night, and it tossed up an idea for a story that I’ve a good mind to write. It’s fairly autobiographical, but no one need know.
Idea: The narrator is an aspirant author. For several months he has been trying, without success, to write a story for the Kidnapped Short Story Competition. In the course of researching his story he has grown to feel very close to RLS, to the point of beginning to affect his mannerisms; he has even grown a Stevensonian moustache. The story is set on the evening of the centenary of Stevenson’s death, which the narrator is celebrating in a private ceremony. He is dressed up as the author, in grubby white flannels and a linen shirt; he half imagines, in his cups, that he is the author. An idea for a story finally comes to him: Bournemouth, 1886. The evening after Louis finishes the first draft of Kidnapped. Fanny has spent the day reading the book and dislikes it so much that Louis throws it into the fire. He vows never to think about it again – and indeed he never does. A story that erases Kidnapped from Stevenson’s canon would be perfect for the Kidnapped Short Story Competition…The idea tickles our narrator (three sheets in the wind by now and easily amused) and he decides to put it down on paper. He fetches a notebook and writes “Kidnapped” at the top of the first page. No sooner is that done than his excitement dissipates. He stares for a time at the blank page. Then he uncorks a bottle of burgundy, to get the creative juices flowing again, fills a glass, raises it – and is felled by a stroke.
* * *
—
Spent most of December fleshing out this idea. My intention was to have the first draft down by the end of the year, but what with the disruptions of the holidays I only made a start on New Year’s Day. To my distress I discovered that my plan for the story was 5 000 words long. I could have gone at it with the blue blade, I suppose, but it seemed a pity to give the idea less space than its due, so I decided to keep it in reserve and work on something else.
I took up my plan for a story set in early Johannesburg again. I’d established an appealing interplay there between past and present, memory and experience, Europe and Africa, fiction and fact, and so on, full of potential. But it seemed more like a novella, the sort of work in which the characters might rise up breathing from the page, or chatter away to one another in perfectly natural English, and after giving it more thought I decided to lay that idea down as well in a dark place and produce a stopgap story for the competition. Funnily enough, the idea I came up with on the spur of the moment seems just right. I can feel it in my bones. What I might call its elegant simplicity will appeal to the judges.
Idea: Kidnapped comes to a rather abrupt end. How many readers must have been left wondering what became of David Balfour in after years. Why not carry his adventures further? The story will take the form of an additional chapter at the end of the book and be called “Kidnapped: Chapter XXXI.” It will be exactly 1 800 words long. I haven’t decided what happens yet, but there will be nothing to suggest that the chapter wasn’t penned by RLS himself. It will be the Kidnapped style to a T. (I must dig up my list of phrases and principles, and look again at St. Ives, which Quiller-Couch finished after Stevenson’s death, to see how it’s done.)
My one concern is the timing. The deadline’s hardly a fortnight away.
* * *
—
I’ve been studying the rules again. Rule 10 says that the best entries will be published in Writing Magazine (another venture by the same chaps). It also says that each of the winners and each of the six runners-up in each class will receive six commemorative Robert Louis Stevenson £1 notes.
Rule 11 is more provocative: “Each entrant will receive a Scottish Robert Louis Stevenson commemorative £1 note. This will be sent in the final week of January 1995” (my emphasis).
What exactly is a Robert Louis Stevenson £1 note? It’s
explained on the back of the form. Scottish banks are allowed to issue notes of their own design, and the Royal Bank of Scotland has commissioned one with Stevenson on it for the centenary. The form shows a portrait of RLS in blue, in a little oval cameo frame, but printed all over with useful information. This must be the very image that appears on the money.
I wouldn’t mind laying my hands on one of those notes, for a keepsake.
* * *
—
I’ve been struggling to get “Kidnapped: Chapter XXXI” going. I’ve always been a slow worker, but then I feel that writing a good story is like making a mayonnaise: you have to add the crucial ingredients slowly, drop by drop, being careful not to curdle the whole mixture. Frankly, it’s become clear to me that I’m not going to finish by Friday. The prize money doesn’t bother me – although I like to think I had as much chance of winning as the next chap – but losing the commemorative note is a blow…I’ve got just the frame for that note, made of bamboo and raffia. Some friend brought it back from a holiday in the South Seas. I can see old Tusitala gazing out of it from my study wall, as if he were leaning on the verandah of the house at Vailima.
All I have to do is enter. I could count off a thousand words of one of my plans and post them that, and they’d be obliged to send me my quid. I could post them some bits and pieces from the newspaper. It would hardly be fraudulent either – I’d have to pay £2.50 for the exchange. But somehow it doesn’t seem right.
Flashback Hotel Page 27
