Hope Nicely's Lessons for Life

by Caroline Day

  Marnie is talking about hurdles and challenges and milestones and triumphs. She is looking at me while she talks. And she’s smiling a lot.

  ‘… only saying this because Hope has asked me to raise it with you, as she feels both she and you will be more relaxed if everybody is aware of the issues she has faced. And, while I’m sure none of you would have been anything but perfectly understanding, I think you’ll all agree that it is testimony to her resilience that …’

  ‘Labels don’t matter.’ I forget to put up my hand in my sudden need to tell everybody this in case they don’t know already. ‘It’s only people that matter, actually. I have a real job. And I can read and write. I’m blue, maybe. Or maybe a little bit indigo. But not red or orange or …’ I try to remember what colour comes next. Something about a battle. But I can’t think which one it is. So instead I say, ‘And I’ve never jumped out of a car or been in prison.’ Because otherwise all these people might not realise that I’m one of the ones who are on the lucky side of the rainbow. And that even if I forget things and have a head that’s a bit of a jumble sale – not a real jumble sale with a yellow teapot or an ice cream maker in the box, of course, but just a brain that’s a bit of a muddle – and even if I sometimes have to shout a little bit, I’m …

  I don’t mean rainbow. That’s just for Mum and me. That’s our word. I mean the other word, of course. I mean … I mean …

  There’s a bit of silence now, because I’m trying to remember my word, except now I’m thinking about the rainbow, and everybody else is looking at me, like they’re waiting, except for one man who has a bit of a cough. He’s not the one with the detective story, or the one from the lift. He’s a different one in a T-shirt that says ‘The Clash’. But I can’t remember the word and Marnie smiles – she’s always doing that – and says, anyway, good for you, Hope Nicely. Now, let’s hear about some more of the group and what you all hope to achieve from these classes and then we’ll do a little exercise.

  For a moment, I think she means an exercise like in school when it was PE and before gymnastics or netball because of needing to be warmed up. And I almost want to shout it out – because that would not be helping us to write a book, not a press-up or touching our toes or running on the spot. But then I do a little laugh, because I’m so silly to think that’s what she’s talking about. She means a writing exercise. Of course. My mum – she’s called Jenny Nicely – has told me that we will probably do some exercises in this class. And I thought the same thing – about touching my toes – and Mum said, no, she meant writing exercises – like making up scenes or people or imagining things – so it really is very silly of me to think it again now. But I don’t laugh very loud so it’s not really interrupting, and I don’t think anybody even notices very much. Or maybe just the man with the knot in his scarf, because he does look at me quite hard.

  He’s not even talking at this moment. That’s Danny Flynn, who is on the seat to his left – finger, thumb, yes, left – who has hair that is light brown but a bit orange and curly and quite long for a man, except on the front of his forehead where there’s not so much hair. He’s told us his name and now he’s talking about his book which is set in a future world where there is not enough clean air left for all the babies that are born, so only the babies of the very rich people are allowed to live in the normal world, that’s called Up-world, and the poor babies have to go into caves where they work collecting water to use for energy, and they also have to make it clean for the Up-world people to drink.

  And Marnie Shale is asking him whether he thinks this book is different enough to all of those other class-based post-apocalyptic novels, and – she’s not being critical, but – if his plot doesn’t feel just a little bit well trodden. That is the word she uses – ‘trodden’ – like he’s writing the book with his feet. Like he’s treading all over his story while he’s writing it. Like all the books that have already been written have been covered in the footprints of their writers. And the man – Danny – takes a moment to reply. My mum always says I’m not always very good at reading people’s faces, but his mouth is quite straight and his cheeks are redder than they were a moment ago, and I wonder if maybe he is counting to three so that he doesn’t shout or bang his head on the table. And I’m thinking how horrible it would be to have to collect water in buckets under the ground all day, and I’m wondering whether having a mum who is a poet and a bookshop seller would give me enough money to be a baby living in Up-world, even if it doesn’t make billions, more’s the pity.

  And Danny is talking now about the dystopian literature canon – this is confusing because of a cannon being a big gun pirates use that shoots out balls, like bowling balls but grey. And I haven’t read any of the books by the writers that he is talking about – ‘influences’: Margaret Atwood and Aldous Huxley and Philip K. Dick. (I sit on my hands when he says that name and press my lips tight together because it’s rude to laugh when someone else is talking, even though I really do want to laugh because dick is another word for penis and I don’t know if Danny Flynn even realises that, so it’s really very funny.) Marnie’s questions are like music rising up and down with her accent. His answers are flatter. I don’t think he has an accent at all, actually.

  Marnie Shale says his book sounds well thought through, but he will have to make a targeted effort to keep it different if anybody is going to actually want to read it. She is saying that he must be careful that his novel doesn’t feel too generic. I don’t know that word, but I don’t put up my hand because I’m busy thinking. There is another word that means having a jumble in your brain or like being in a wheelchair or having lungs that don’t work well, when it’s the way you were made in the mother’s tummy. And it’s when it’s not the mother’s fault at all and there’s nothing they can do about it. It’s only because of things that are already in their body and then go into your body because you’re inside them, and those are the things that they can’t help. Not like the way that my birth mother made me. That wasn’t generic. She did it to me all by herself, with her wine and her beer.

  And now I realise – flip a pancake – that it wouldn’t make any difference to me: even if being a baby whose mother was a poet and a bookshop seller made you rich enough to stay in Up-world and breathe the air and not go down to the caves and spend all your life putting water in buckets. That wouldn’t help me. Because Jenny Nicely wasn’t my mother when I was born. She didn’t even know me then. And my mother when I was born didn’t want me in normal not-up-or-down world, so she definitely wouldn’t have cared about having enough money for me to grow up in the clean air and the sunshine instead of underground. I would have been in the caves. Definitely. And I would never have been adopted by Jenny Nicely at all. It wouldn’t have been all for the best. I’d just have been stuck in Down-world with my bucket. And it would have been dark and wet. And probably cold. And the air would be dirty. That’s where I’d be now.

  I’m humming but now it’s not because I’m trying not to laugh about Mr Dick. It’s because I’m trying not to cry about being a poor baby in a cave who has to collect up the water for all the rich babies whose mummies didn’t throw them away.

  The man with the knot is giving me a look again. I think it’s because I’m humming, and I really want to bang my head but I mustn’t. So I sit on my hands and I count to three, and then I do it again. One-two-three. I’m humming louder and louder and I’m counting so hard I can feel it bulging in my head. But then, just when I think I’m going to have to yell out and the tears are going to come, I have a good idea and take a big, deep breath and I open my notebook – it’s blue and it’s got a hard cover and it opens right to left like a real book, not top to bottom like the ones with wire rings at the top. And it’s quite big. Lots of the other people in the room are writing things in their notebooks, so – I’ve taken my hands out from under my bottom, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to open it, unless I did it with my mouth – I get my special pen and I do some
writing too. My letters are quite neat. Much neater than they used to be. They aren’t joined-up though. I used to do them joined-up, but they weren’t so neat.

  My special pen is really very special, actually. It is gold at the top and black at the bottom, which is like my mum, Jenny Nicely’s, special writing pen. It’s exactly the same, actually, because of her buying it for me, because of being so proud of me. But mine has a special grip, too. It is blue, which matches my notebook. It’s squidgy and plastic and it’s where I hold the pen with my fingers, to make it feel nice.

  Writing Group. I write this at the top and I underline it, and then I put my name. Hope Nicely. And I put the day in – Wednesday – remembering the d, because it sounds like Wensday but that’s the wrong way to write it, although people will still understand maybe but they’ll just think I’m stupid. I want to put in the date, because you’re meant to do that too, but I can’t remember what it is right now, so I leave it out.

  This week is all about introductions, I remembered that! Marnie Shale said it right at the start and I knew it was important – to ourselves and to approaches to writing, which is what Marnie Shale said – so I write Introductions and then the names of the people who have already spoken in our class. The woman who talked about her book first, who is the one with her glasses on a chain, was called Susan. I remember that because I had a teaching assistant called Susan when I was in junior school. And her last name is Ford, and that’s easy as anything to remember because we have a car that’s called Ford too. So I write down both her names. The name of her book is – I’m thinking hard and it works because it comes back into my brain – The Lady and the Lock – so I write that too. Then, on the next line down, I write Malcolm because that’s the name of the man doing the detective story. He has hair which stands up a bit like my hairbrush and a big square ring on his finger, and the watch which is very big and very gold, and he has a face which is a bit of a surprising colour, actually, like the colour of a tangerine or an orange, or maybe a Fanta, except by his ears where it’s more like the colour of my skin. I can’t remember what his last name is – it’s certainly not a car – so I don’t write that. The name of his book is right there, though. Costa Del Death.

  Next, I write my name – because I was the next person to introduce myself and my notes have to be in order. But I haven’t really thought about my book needing a name, and I’m a little bit sad because I should have done that. I just write My Book instead of a real name. And I don’t have time to think about it anymore right now anyway, because I have to write Danny Flynn and Down-World. And I write it very quickly without letting my brain think about the babies in the caves. And there’s no time anyway because we’re already on to the next introduction person.

  Veronica Ptitsky. I don’t have to spell it myself because the woman does that herself – it’s a Russian name, she says. I don’t know if she has an accent – maybe a little bit – but she has very red lipstick and her hair is frizzy and she is making Marnie Shale laugh by telling her about what she’s writing.

  ‘Priceless. So, Jilly Cooper for the LGBT community?’ That’s Marnie saying this.

  The woman with the lips is laughing too. And now I know I must have been right about Lgbt being in Russia, so I put that in brackets (Veronica Ptitsky from Lgbt, Russia).

  ‘Precisely,’ she’s saying – Veronica Ptitsky. ‘Jodhpurs and whips and all. Straw in hair and very mucky mucking out. Different sort of steamy.’ Everybody else is laughing apart from me, because I don’t know much about horses. ‘Hopefully it will make me as much as Fifty Shades. Working title of Champing.’

  I’m starting to write it like Champion because I don’t know the other word, and Champion sounds like a good name for her book, until Marnie Shale says: ‘Well, I’m sure we’re all champing to read your excerpts. Right, who’s next …’

  And now she’s looking towards the man with the neck scarf with the big knot and he’s stretching back in his seat with his arms across his chest. ‘I can’t claim to be one of the worthy under-represented, I’m sorry to say,’ he says, ‘since I have to confess to being twice published already. To some acclaim, actually, if only on a limited scale.’

  He puts his hands behind his head, as if he’s sitting on a deck chair in the sunshine. ‘So. Me? Ludovic Philip Sawyer, PhD. Lecturer in classics and, along with all the normal volumes of academia, I’ve written two books for a wider readership about domestic law-keeping in the Roman and Byzantine Empire. Both still in print. Now embarking on my debut novel, incorporating aspects of the mythical and the thriller into the history of Constantine the First and his assassination of his wife Fausta. Let’s call it Dan Brown meets I, Claudius. My first foray into fiction, hence my enrolment in these classes. I was hoping they might be of benefit.’

  He’s saying this and his eyes are looking at me, but out of the side of his eyes, not straight on, like he doesn’t want to turn his whole head. And there is something about the way he talks that is making the inside of my head buzz like it has wasps inside it. I’m glad when Marnie Shale turns to the next person. And even though my brain is feeling a bit tired, I try to keep my letters neat in my notebook.

  Simon Taylor. Road trip in America. Sort of rock and roll memoir – except called grunge because of the 1990s. Soul Caravan. Working title.

  Simon Taylor is the one who made a funny noise when I was talking about my book. He’s the one with the T-shirt that says ‘The Clash’. And it was him doing a bit more coughing later, too. Probably he has a tickly throat and needs some Tixylix.

  Jamal Ali. Personal trainer who is a vampire. This is the plot. Not real. Jamal is a cook. Real job. Jamal not vampire. Joke. Book called Sharp.

  When he first said his name, I thought it was Jam Al, two different names. Like my mum, Jenny, has a friend who is called Ella Jane. So I thought his whole name was Jam Al Ali. And I thought it was funny to have a first name which was Jam, like strawberry jam, or plum jam. But then Marnie Shale said about Jamal’s book sounding fun, and I realised that – silly me – his name was just one word, actually. Not Jam Al, just Jamal. But his joke was still very funny, the one about not being a real vampire, only a cook. It made me laugh. But I have to stop laughing now, because of having more people to write in my notebook.

  Kelly Perkins. War. Time. Factory. Book is called Belles of the Shells.

  She’s the one with the longest hair ever, down to nearly her bottom.

  Peter Potter. Peter Potter.

  I only notice that I’ve written Peter Potter’s name twice as I’m realising that I’ve forgotten to listen to him talking. I’ve just been thinking how much I like his name. It feels nice in my ears. He’s quite old with white hair and big white eyebrows. And he has an accent that I like because it’s like in Coronation Street. But it’s too late to ask him more about his book, which is lots of short stories, actually, not just one long one like most books are, because now it’s time to exercise.

  2

  ‘OK, guys. What is the number one rule of writing?’ Marnie Shale asks. And she is looking around at all of us. I am already writing: Number 1 rule, because rules are important, like keeping our feet and hands to ourselves and not running into the road in front of the cars, and not rubbing our fanny when there are other people with you. I have a book for writing golden rules in. It’s a very important book. Mostly it was for when I was little and my mum, Jenny Nicely, wrote all the important rules for me to remember, and with little pictures sometimes, too. We’d read it before I went to bed, or when we needed to do a bit of extra remembering. And even though I’m grown up now, and I have a real job, actually, sometimes I do like to look at it still. Because rules are very important.

  So I’m holding my pen and I’m waiting: Number 1 rule … Danny Flynn says: ‘Keep the wifi turned off or you’ll get nothing done,’ and people laugh so I think it’s a joke.

  Veronica Ptitsky says: ‘Show, don’t tell?’ and Marnie Shale says: ‘Bingo.’

  I have been to
the bingo once, with my boss Karen. She said what a fun evening we would have, but in fact I didn’t have a very fun time because the numbers were read out too quickly and I couldn’t keep up, so I didn’t know if I was winning or not. I had a pen called a dabber for putting green spots on the numbers when they were called, but each time I put a spot, there were too many new numbers for me to move my hand or my brain in time, and the nachos were greasy and they smelt like bad breath. And the lights were very bright, and there were lots of colours going flash, flash, flash, and I didn’t like that very much. Karen and her sister drank quite a lot of glasses of wine and it was so noisy that in the end I had to go away, and then I couldn’t find my way home until my mum, that’s Jenny, and Karen told the police to come and find me. I was in the children’s playground, hiding under the slide, and they drove me to my house and it was very late.

  But I don’t think this is a real game of bingo, because there are no numbers and because then Marnie Shale says, ‘Exactly that. The golden rule of all writing.’ And now I’m thinking that bingo was just like her saying, that’s right, or yes, that is the number one rule of writing. And everybody else is noting in their books, so I write it down too. Show. Don’t tell. Even though I don’t really understand. Because books do tell. It’s pictures that show, and this is a writing group not a drawing group. So, I’m worrying that it’s the other way round and that Marnie Shale has got a little bit confused, and that really the first rule of writing is tell, don’t show.

  I don’t really mean to say it but it comes out, maybe a bit loud, and Marnie Shale is looking at me and she’s saying: ‘Yes, Hope, you’re right. Pictures are to show. And that is exactly why this rule is so important – and it’s also true for non-fiction, especially narrative non-fiction like you are writing. Because if you just tell the reader something, then they are passive. There is no investment for them. It brings your story alive no more than a technical manual. But if you can create a picture for them, if you use your words to paint the picture, as Hope says, well, then the reader becomes active, because then they are involved in interpreting this written picture, to unveil …’