Dying to Write

by Judith Cutler

‘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.’

  He nodded. But he continued to look around the room.

  ‘You’re way off course,’ I continued. ‘You need to head a hundred or more miles northeast.’

  Eventually Shazia took him off to mark Haworth on his road map. But as he left the room he looked round again. And I’m sure the person his eyes sought longest was Nyree.

  Without doubt hers lingered on the door until Kate quite sharply told her to lie down with the rest of us.

  But the moment was destroyed. Soon a querulous voice was saying it had no idea what to write about, and soon we were all sitting up again, bleating our agreement.

  ‘Surely,’ said Matt, bracing and positive, ‘you’ve all had some moment in your life, some feeling –’

  ‘Love, I suppose,’ said Gimson.

  ‘Why not? Or any other feeling. Fear. Hate,’ said Kate.

  ‘I nearly died once,’ said one of the elderly ladies. ‘And I think my main feeling was outrage. Perhaps I could write about that.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Kate said. ‘What better than an experience like that? Now, what we could do is –’

  ‘– have a coffee,’ Matt suggested.

  We started to drift from the room. I hung back to avoid Nyree, and found myself alone with Gimson and Kate. But they obviously didn’t realise I was still there. They were talking in urgent under-voices: I didn’t want to eavesdrop and headed briskly for the door. But I couldn’t avoid hearing some of what they said.

  ‘I nearly died once too,’ she was saying. ‘A pulmonary embolism –’

  ‘Embolus.’

  ‘A pulmonary embolus, then – often is fatal. I might have died. Because of you.’

  I was almost at the door. But I couldn’t miss what Gimson said next: ‘If you try to put it in some book, I promise you I shall take every step possible to silence you.’

  After mid-morning coffee we were allowed free time. I jogged down to the depressed mining village a couple of miles from the estate to buy a torch. I found an old-fashioned hardware shop with exactly the heavy, rubber-covered type I wanted. I could have bought Kilner jars and a jam kettle if I’d wanted, and enough poison to exterminate all the rats and weeds in Birmingham. I restrained myself, and strolled up the main street. There was a new Peugeot 205GTi parked neatly outside the chemist’s. I winced at the thought of the insurance premiums but soon drifted into covet-mode. It was certainly sleeker than my van. George’s van, really. He’d left it to me, half-converted to combine transport and accommodation for the world tour he had planned for when he retired. When I collected it, his tape measure was still half open on top of his toolbag. The tools have gone now, to a charity that specialises in refurbishing them and distributing them to African workers. But I have the van, and I bought a new tape measure for Africa.

  The van itself was a problem.

  I ought to have paid to have the conversion completed. But I didn’t want a motor-caravan. It was a liability in a city like Birmingham. Since it was too big for my garage, I had to tax and insure it, so I did occasionally drive it. But my main mode of transport was a cycle. Hitherto I’d been quite happy to augment that with public transport, but an occasional foray into self-indulgence had given me the taste for something better. A Peugeot like Kate’s, for instance.

  But then, I could never, ever sell George’s van.

  Kate emerged from the chemist’s and opened the car door.

  ‘Hi! Want a lift? I can wait, if you have shopping to do.’

  ‘No, I’ve finished, thanks.’

  ‘Sure? There’s no hurry.’

  I convinced her, got in, and we set off up the long hill to Eyre House.

  She drove well, confident despite the fact that the odometer showed only 998 miles.

  ‘How are you enjoying the teaching?’ I asked, in what I hoped was a supportive voice.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said doubtfully. ‘But I do find it hard to deal with some of the individuals. Like Garth. He insisted on changing his pl
ace on the cooking roster. Has to do it tonight, he says, or his creative juices will evaporate. And he has to make a chocolate pudding. Nothing else will do. He’d already browbeaten the rest of the team by the time I got involved, so I could hardly refuse when he asked me to pick up some of the ingredients. And then he held me up by coming and admiring the car. Sat and told me how he wanted to be famous and buy a Maserati.’ Her voice suggested he wouldn’t achieve fame through his writing.

  ‘I thought Shazia was responsible for stocking up,’ I said, returning to a subject which would soon affect me intimately, since I’d be cooking too.

  ‘She’d left ages before the rest of their order. And I was coming here anyway with a prescription. Though how I’ll be able to face food from the same source as Tampax and toilet rolls I don’t know. God knows why it has to be liquid glucose. Rum I can understand. Continental chocolate. Amaretti biscuits. Double cream. But liquid glucose?’

  I couldn’t help.

  ‘Thank God there’s this wonderful delicatessen down the main street. Goodness knows how they keep open in times like these, but they seemed to be doing a reasonable trade. Ah! Excuse me if I sing “Happy Birthday!”’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  She tapped the odometer: all the figures were rolling round.

  I not only excused her, I joined in. One thousand miles must constitute a car’s birthday, surely. And I certainly hoped it would be happy. I decided to postpone the Courtney business till after lunch.

  Lunchtime didn’t seem especially auspicious, however. Although there was no fixed hour, most of us had gathered in the dining room by one. The talk was general and subdued. Then Gimson strode in, smoking.

  Shazia stared silently at his cigarette.

  He moved it to his side so that it was level with my eyes. I waved the smoke away, not so much elegantly as ostentatiously.

  ‘Let me tell you, my good woman, I shall smoke where and when I like.’

  ‘So long as the where isn’t here and the when isn’t now, that’s fine by me,’ I said.

  ‘I think tobacco makes a man smell masculine,’ Nyree observed.

  ‘Hmph,’ I said, unconvinced.

  ‘My good woman, you’ve obviously no idea that nicotine is addictive.’

  ‘But if you’re a doctor –’ I didn’t want a row, but I wasn’t going to be anyone’s good woman.

  ‘I am Consultant General Surgeon at St Jude’s,’ he said, capital letters much in evidence. ‘The London teaching hospital.’

  I hate people who stress ‘London’ like that. An even nastier, dirtier city than Birmingham, if you ask me. Full of people who smoke at meals, no doubt.

  ‘If you’re a surgeon,’ I corrected myself, ‘you must have seen the likely consequences of your addiction.’

  ‘But if it’s an addiction, darling, you can’t give up. That’s what addiction means.’

  ‘I know what addiction means,’ I snapped. Foolishly.

  ‘Ah, yes, your cousin was an addict, wasn’t he?’ She had her mouth open to tell everyone his name.

  ‘Yes.’ I overrode her. ‘Yes. And he conquered his addiction. Triumphantly.’

  There was a movement behind me. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Gimson, but you seem to have forgotten our rules,’ said Kate in a wonderfully majestic voice.

  Gimson started to protest, but contented himself with an arrogant movement of his upper lip. Then he condescended to open the french door to let his smoke out.

  Someone out there was playing Bach.

  ‘What the hell’s that racket?’ Gimson stepped back in, but left the hand holding the cigarette outside.

  ‘A viola?’ I suggested.

  ‘Must be Garth Kerwin’s,’ said Kate. ‘I saw him unloading yesterday. Everything but the kitchen sink. Three cases, a word processor and a Mafia machinegun case.’

  ‘And the biggest ghettoblaster I’ve seen outside Handsworth,’ I added.

  ‘Kerwin? That idiot who was holding forth about animals? What about humans, for God’s sake?’

  ‘I think he’s rather sweet,’ said Nyree, looking at her feet.

  Sweet! That wasn’t the word that I associated with him. But I was intrigued. Learning any instrument takes the sort of commitment I hadn’t associated with Toad. And bringing it with him to Eyre House confirmed that.

  There are times when I shame myself with my hasty judgements. I would clearly have to overcome my repugnance and get to know him better.

  Chapter Three

  On Monday afternoon we had individual appointments with one of the tutors to help us choose our projects for the course. I was to see Kate at three.

  I thought as a teacher I’d be inured to the nerves others might feel at such a prospect. I’m generally confident in my own abilities. And I seemed to get on well with Kate. But I discovered, as I hovered in the corridor outside her study, that I was quite reluctant to tap the door and go in. Apart from anything else, I had absolutely no idea what I could possibly write about.

  When Kate opened the door, I was greeted by Sidney, who darted backwards and forwards in anxious forays to sniff my feet. Kate knelt on the floor, and he finally retreated to the security of her lap. She stroked him, gathered him up in her arms, and got up to put him in his cage, a procedure not entirely to his satisfaction. She pacified him with a piece of wholemeal biscuit from a packet on her desk. He ate with gusto. When he stood to ask for more, he looked like a cuddly toy, a cone of thick fur from which apparently inadequate hands and feet protruded. Kate let me give him another sliver of biscuit. He took it gently but very firmly, and withdrew to the far corner of the cage. A perfect pet, except for the pong. Despite a litter tray, the room smelled like my grandmother’s house before the council sent in the rodent man. But if Kate didn’t object, why should I?

  She sat at the desk and waved me to the chair beside her. She pushed away the computer notepad and its printer, and a wad of printed pages with blue arrows and scribblings.

  ‘That’s what I ought to be working on,’ she said, as if apologising for any subsequent inadequacies as a tutor. ‘I don’t know why I let Matt talk me into this.’

  ‘But why should you have come as a student? You obviously don’t need any tuition!’

  ‘I wanted to master this in peace,’ she began, patting the computer. ‘It’s time I gave up my quill pen. And it’s also a sort of touching wood. It was Matt who really set me on the way, and I always show him work for criticism and advice. I’m working on a novel now and I know there’s something wrong and I know he’ll sort it out for me.’

  ‘He seems very nice,’ I said neutrally.

  ‘His whole family is. His wife and both their children.’

  Her tone too was carefully neutral. We both knew a question had been asked and answered. What I didn’t know was how truthfully. Nor that it was any of my business anyway. Courtney was my business, though, and I still couldn’t think of a way to broach the topic tactfully.

  ‘Do you know any of the students on the course?’ I asked.

  ‘Two, actually. People from my past. The long arm of coincidence, I suppose.’

  ‘One of them – Kate, this is none of my business but he isn’t very happy to see you. I thought I ought to –’

  ‘Neither of them is.’ Her smile was grim but established her discretion. Not a word would she speak even to her fellow singer. Then, rather to my surprise, she added: ‘Men! At least I knew Sidney was a rat before I bought him.’

  ‘Funny, isn’t it?’ I agreed. ‘The nicest, kindest man I knew got killed. Murdered by mistake. Everyone loved him and yet –’ Appalled, I felt my voice break. ‘George,’ I continued. ‘My friend George …’

  She passed me a tissue. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘And that’s what I want to write about. George.’

  We talked quietly for several minutes about how I might tackle such a mammoth task. We agreed at last that a poem might fit the bill. Long or short. Rhyme or free verse.

  ‘Now all you have
to do is go away and write it,’ said Kate kindly. ‘Look, the sun’s coming out. Get into the fresh air – have a walk. It really does seem to help people think.’

  And the session was over.

  All I could think of was a cup of tea. I headed for the kitchen to find it full of amateur cooks. I got grudging permission to boil the kettle.

  In the lounge I found one of the grey ladies. Agnes, I think. I was to be in her team to cook Wednesday’s supper. She wanted to convene a meeting for the following morning to discuss the menu. I agreed.

  ‘What I’d really like to do,’ she said, ‘is shock the lot of them. Did you ever see such a collection? I’ve been on a course like this every year as long as I can remember, but I’ve never met people harder to get on with. That Mr Woodhouse: do you know how many times he’s nagged that sweet Shazia about damp bedclothes? And that awful Nyree: man-mad. Old enough to know better. And that girl who says she’s going to be a publisher – did you ever see anything like those skirts of hers? With her legs, too. That coloured man – black, I suppose I should say, though of course he isn’t – he’s nice enough, and I’m glad you’ve made friends with him. He’s a bit out of it, isn’t he? But he did talk to me about his project for this week, and it seems very interesting. Have you started anything?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not quite. But I thought I’d like to write about a friend. He – he died, you see.’

  She looked at me hard, then started to talk about a story she was planning. It too was to involve death. In this case her own.

  Apparently she’d had a heart attack after routine surgery. ‘Very irritating it was, too. There I was, expecting to be in and out in two days, and they kept me in three weeks. It meant I missed a test match. The Lord’s test, too!’

  I’m happy to gossip cricket any day – my father played professionally for Durham and coached me for hours as if I’d been a boy – but just at the moment I wanted to hear more about her death.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she chuckled. ‘I died all right. Clinically. But whoever writes the script obviously decided I wasn’t ready for my exit just yet, and so he started my heart again. With a little help from the medics. But there’s nothing unusual about that. What is unusual, perhaps, is that I watched the whole thing happening.’