Hope Nicely's Lessons for Life

by Caroline Day

  ‘I hope you had the email with this in it?’ Marnie Shale is pushing some printed sheets over the table to me. ‘We’re talking about the opening of Ludovic’s book. Maybe you had a chance to read it at home?’

  I nod my head. And it’s true. I did have the chance to read it. But what happened is that even though I did have the chance, after I’d read the first bit of it, I didn’t read the rest, mostly because of not knowing who these people called Flavius and Flavia and Crispus were and it sounding a bit like flavours of crisps, and everybody being Constantine-something and something-ius and because of lots of the other words being words that I didn’t know, and also because of it being Coronation Street on telly and time for my tea. But I don’t say this because I’m thinking it might be a little bit rude, so I just nod and it’s not a real lie, actually, because of my having the chance to read it even if I only read the tiniest bit. So I’m nodding and it’s not fibbing.

  Marnie Shale is nodding too and saying that’s really good, and just quickly, to recap, when we’re talking about each other’s work, it’s good to be constructive and to offer our honest thoughts and reactions, but can we please also make sure we’re being considerate in our criticism. And she looks back towards Ludovic, the man with the scarf and the knot.

  ‘To come back to Susan’s point, I agree that your voice is engaging and the world feels very real. I like how you’re not overwhelming us with the historical detail and the plot feels timeless. And I can also see how cleverly you are raising the stakes for your characters. It’s a fascinating premise – to take these murders that so little is known about – and did anybody else feel that Flavia …?’

  I am trying very hard to listen not just with my ears but with my brain, but my brain is in one of its moods, like Sallie the whippet but not so fast, where it doesn’t want to be a good dog and walk along with the others. So the words from Susan Ford, which is an easy-peasy name, because it’s Susan just like my teaching assistant at school, and also Ford like my car, with her glasses on a chain, and Danny Flynn and Peter Potter, are there in my head, but just floating, not properly going into my brain, and the bit about Ludovic saying no, actually, the character of Claudius is fictional and in terms of the plot … that’s floating too. In my head, I’m trying hard not to be a dog going away in the woods but the listening thing is a bit difficult. But then the knot-man, Ludovic, says a thing, and I’m not going away anymore, because it is so horrible and so sad, and so shocking. And even if it’s interrupting and rude to shout I can’t help it, because of the shocking thing. And it’s my mouth shouting and my brain shouting too: ‘Horrible, horrible, horrible.’

  And I really do think the look on his face is angry because it’s like a face in an advert in a magazine that my mum, Jenny Nicely, and I looked at when we were practising the thing about expressions. And in the advert, the man is pouring his cereal but his cereal box is empty so no cornflakes are coming out. And in the corner behind him is a woman who is maybe his wife and she has a big bowl and she has a spoon in it. And when I said that the look on the man’s face was angry – because of his eyes being all squeezed and his mouth being in a line and there being wrinkles on his forehead – my mum laughed and said, yes, definitely angry. And Ludovic’s face is a bit like that but only for a little bit and then it is more normal again and he says: ‘Indeed. Boiled alive, poor old Flavia Maxima Fausta. History records how she died, despite the damnatio memoriae issued by her husband. Not a nice way to go. Suffocated in an overheated bath. But the how is not so vital to the plot of my novel, as the why.’

  I’m sitting on my hands, with my lips tight together, because I don’t want to make the knot-man, Ludovic, look angry with more shouting, but I’m counting in my head, too, and it is because I don’t like thinking about death. When Anne Bentley, who was the vicar who found the cardboard box which was me, died, because of being very old and having had a good innings, I had to go away, even though it was still in the church, and the other vicar who was still alive was still talking and people were standing up for singing and Anne Bentley was still there in the box, not the cardboard one the coffin one. But I’m telling myself I can’t do any going away now, because I’ve only just come in, and I’ve done enough interrupting today. So I make myself smile in my mouth, while Ludovic knot-man and Marnie Shale, and some of the others like Peter Potter and Danny Flynn and the man called Malcolm, are talking about the murders and the story still. I think maybe he is even more orange this week, Malcolm is. And he has some sunglasses on his head, even though it isn’t sunny in the room.

  I keep sitting on my hands and counting in my head, counting really loud, like I’m taking big, loud steps inside my brain – one, two, three – one, two, three – until Marnie Shale says thank you and well done to knot-man Ludovic, and he does a little nod, and she says she’ll let us have a quick break in case anybody needs the loo or a glass of water. And then we’ll talk about another one of our openings, and it will be Simon Taylor’s book this time, and if anybody didn’t have a chance to read his extract that she emailed during the week, she has some spare printouts of it here. And even though I had the chance to read this too, I didn’t really read it, because of Coronation Street and then because of forgetting, so I take one of the pieces of paper so that I can read it a bit now.

  Marnie Shale is looking at her phone, not just looking, but touching it because probably she’s reading her emails and her messages and things, and she says, excuse me, I’ll just be a moment, and she goes outside of our room. And most of the rest of the group are in the room and some are talking, like Susan Ford, with her glasses round her neck, and she’s talking to the Ludovic man but with their voices quiet. I can just hear ‘antiquity’ and ‘exhibition’ and ‘divine’. And some people are looking at their mobiles, like Veronica Ptitsky, or at the printouts, like me. Kelly Bell-y Shell-y is reading a printout too. She has her long hair in two plaits and she’s reading it with her mouth moving just a little bit. I don’t think I’m moving my mouth. I’m just reading, with my finger on the words. And Simon Taylor’s novel is easier to read than Ludovic’s was, because of the names being real names, not made-up ones that sound like crisp flavours, and because of it not being about people dying by being boiled in a bath.

  Soul Caravan by Simon Taylor

  Ellie was only nineteen when I met her and to me she shone. Our paths crossed, as was so often the case back then, at a party. I forget whose, but I can still picture the living room: paisley-print throws on the sofas, a striped rag rug on threadbare carpet, one of those round paper lampshades of course, and that poster of the soldier being shot. The Fugees from a two-tape ghetto blaster on the bookshelf in the corner. Sandalwood joss sticks that you could hardly smell beneath the fug of tobacco and weed. I wasn’t meant to be there that night. It was a student thing and I was no longer a student. I had graduated that summer, and was signing on whilst waiting for a job to materialise like a holy apparition. I had never been in love but I was meant to be meeting a girl called Jo there. Only I’d come to this place late, after a club, and there was no sign of Jo. This was before mobile phones. I didn’t know anybody else so I’d decided to call it a day and I’d gone into the room where I’d left my jacket. The bulb had gone so it was pitch-dark apart from a lava lamp on a desk by the wall and I was fumbling, blindly, through a pile of coats on the bed.

  ‘Leaving already?’ The voice was low, female and teasing. It made me jump. I hadn’t realised there was anybody else there.

  I said I didn’t know anyone so there didn’t seem much point staying.

  ‘Do you have a cigarette?’

  I said I did, but I’d lost my lighter.

  And then there was a little flash – just a second – and then a slightly longer one. And I caught a glimpse, behind the flame of a Zippo, of her sitting on the floor, legs crossed. I couldn’t make out very much of her, just two eyes watching me. Big dark eyes. Confident. Smiling.

  I sat on the floor beside her and shook out
two Marlboro Reds from a soft pack. She lit both and passed me one back. For a moment, we sat, silent, apart from the crackle as we inhaled, orange flowers glaring then fading on the tips of our cigarettes. The room smelt of tobacco and patchouli oil and other people’s coats.

  ‘I’m Simon,’ I told her.

  ‘Eliana. Call me Ellie.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Ellie.’

  ‘Nice to meet you too, Simon.’

  We shook hands in the dark. Her fingers were soft and they stayed around mine after we’d finished shaking.

  ‘Well, Eliana, Ellie, since it seems I’m staying a little longer, can I go and find you a drink?’

  ‘I never drink.’

  ‘What, really?’

  Her laughter in the blackness of the room was like warm syrup. And she passed me a bottle.

  Simon Taylor is opposite me – in the writing classroom, at the oval table – and I’m looking at him now because I’m thinking he doesn’t look like a person who sits in the dark talking to women at parties. And he looks towards me, too, but then he moves his eyes away quickly. And I’m thinking that maybe he is writing non-fiction like me, as his name in the book is Simon too. And I’m thinking how funny it is that he looks so old, with hair that is a bit dark and a bit white, and his beard which is a bit of both too, and not even like someone who would go to a party at all. And I’m thinking that I’ve never been to a party like this one, or even really a real party – only things like the Christmas evening in my mum Jenny’s bookshop and, once, a summer party for a group that was for people with the same rainbow which is Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, actually, and the group was called FASD Friends – and also the funeral in the church was a bit like a party because of all the people, but that was when I went away, so that doesn’t really count.

  And it’s really especially funny because the girl in the room in Simon Taylor’s story, which is maybe an autobiography, was called Ellie and, in fact, I know two people already called Ellie, but I think not also called Eliana. And, actually, I don’t really know them anymore, because one was in school, but only until Year Nine because then she was excluded, which means she had to go away to another school. And I think it was because of throwing a chair. Or maybe smoking. And the other Ellie was a social worker, with Julie Clarke, when Julie Clarke was my actual social worker and not only a retired one. But she only came once, the one called Ellie, and she was quite nice, because she brought me a teddy bear that was a monkey, but then she didn’t come anymore after that, only that one time.

  And while I’m thinking this, about the one, two, three Ellies and also about the parties, Marnie Shale comes back into the room and she kneels down and says something very quietly to Danny Flynn and he looks at her and nods and they both look at me. And then Marnie Shale comes to my side of the table and she says: ‘I’ve just spoken to your mum on the phone.’

  ‘My mum?’ That’s me, and I’m saying it because of being a bit surprised, like why would my mum call Marnie Shale and not me. But I’m taking out my phone from my bag – it’s under my knickers but I’m careful not to pull them out – and I see that my mum has been calling me eleven times but I pressed the button to make the noise stop, because of the bell ringing when I was in the library and I’d forgotten about it telling me to go to my class.

  Marnie Shale is smiling, and she puts her hand on my arm and says: ‘Don’t worry. Everything’s fine, Hope. But Jenny’s quite tired after all the blood tests, and she’s going home to have a bit of a sit-down. She said for you to walk home with Danny, if that’s OK.’

  On the other side of the table, the oval one, Danny Flynn is doing a big smile and he’s holding up his thumb, which is like him telling me it’s OK. I say to Marnie Shale: ‘I don’t know Danny Flynn very well.’ And it’s true, because of only seeing him in the writing groups, and it’s only two times, and also going to the pub, which was the White Hart, but I was mostly talking to Veronica Ptitsky and not to him even. And it’s a bad idea to be alone with people when you don’t know them. So I say: ‘I don’t think I should walk with Danny Flynn. I think my mum should come really. I think that would be for the best. Because I’m meant to walk back with her.’

  ‘But it’s OK, isn’t it, because it’s to help your mum and if she says it’s all right?’

  I’m thinking really hard. I only have one hand under my bottom, because of Marnie Shale having her hand on my other arm. But it’s like in my brain I’m being pulled in one way and also in another, because of thinking it’s a rule about waiting for my mum and we talked about it, when we were practising before I started the writing group, that I should wait for her at the end, but it’s confusing because of my mum also being on the phone to Marnie Shale. And I’m looking at Danny Flynn, and I’m thinking about how we walked home last week, or not last week maybe, but the other week before it, and my mum said what a nice young man, so I’m thinking that maybe it is absolutely fine for me to walk back with him, maybe, actually, that is what is for the best, and so now I’m nodding and saying that’s OK then.

  8

  ‘… do find it hard to keep up the momentum. Coming in after work, to then find the energy to sit down and write, when all I want to do is collapse.’

  Collapsing can be bad, like one day Karen, my boss, was at the bus stop and an old man just collapsed. That’s what she told me. He collapsed. Just like that. And he was dead. But I don’t think that is the sort of collapse that Danny Flynn means. I think it is the sort of collapse that my mum wants to do when she’s been on her feet all day long and says she’s so ready to collapse. And it’s also with a cup of tea.

  This is Danny Flynn talking about wanting to collapse, and we are walking past the White Hart. Some of the writing group have gone in but not us. It smells of smoking, because of people being outside, with cigarettes, and the vape ones too that make the big fruity clouds, and beers or other drinks. But then we’re further up the road and it just smells like autumn again.

  ‘It’s establishing the right patterns though, isn’t it? This week, I only managed a couple of thousand words. What about you? How much have you written?’

  I’m not very good at numbers. That’s why it’s best for me to not have all my money inside my purse. But I don’t want to say this to Danny Flynn because he will think I am not very clever. I don’t think he will call me names like Spaz, but I think Danny Flynn is nice, and I don’t want him to even think it, so I say thirty-nine thousand because I’m thinking that is a big number, not a Spaz one. I say it like I know it exactly and like I counted all of those words. And then I add, ‘And twelve.’ I’m not quite sure why.

  ‘Wow. Hope. I’m …’ and he doesn’t finish for a moment. ‘That’s incredible.’

  I’m really happy – with my cheeks feeling warm and my smile there, even without me telling it to be. And even though it’s not the real number – and I don’t know how many words is the real number, but probably not so many because of having a real job and Coronation Street and X Factor and not knowing what to write and mostly just thinking very hard, which is called research – even if my number was a bit of a make-it-up one, I’m very pleased with myself for making Danny Flynn so surprised. And I’m nodding like I’m agreeing with him about it being incredible. And he’s saying it runs in the family then, the talent, and about how he’s been reading some of my mum’s poems, in her book of poems called Life Still, and how powerful and thought-provoking they are.

  ‘My mum wrote a poem about me in it,’ I tell him. And it’s true, because it was a poem called ‘Matching’ and it was about how adopting me was the hardest thing and the best thing she ever did – that’s what she tells me. And it was very hard because of her husband being a bad news bear and then being an ex-husband, and having to tell everybody that it would still be for the best for her to be my mum, even if it was only her and not any husband, actually, and my mum, Jenny, had to persevere a lot to make them see it was true, but in the end she did. I’ve read it thousands of times, m
y mum’s poem, or maybe hundreds, and it makes me feel happy, even though I don’t really understand all the words, because some of them seem like she’s written them a bit muddled, like my hope baby abstract now my mewling, puking, baby mine.

  But I don’t say that to my mum and I don’t say it to Danny Flynn now. I just tell him about adopting me being the best thing ever for her and how she tells me she’s prouder of me than of all her poems put together, and that if she couldn’t have had me, she wouldn’t have wanted any other baby. And then I’m telling Danny Flynn about me wanting a puppy – because of talking about adopting and that’s what I want to do, but with a dog and not a baby, because of nappies – and I’m telling him about what puppy I’d want, maybe one like Tinie Tempah, even though I don’t know what type he is, and not like Sallie because of her going into the trees and because of whippets chasing squirrels, and not a chihuahua because of them being so little and I like bigger dogs. But I’m telling him about how my mum thinks it’s not such a good idea, actually, because of babies creating a lot of chaos whether they’re human ones or dog ones.

  Then it is my house, and I’m a bit tired because of all the talking and I want a wee and my mum, Jenny, is taking a long time to come to the door. When she comes, I run in, but it’s all right because I’m remembering to say thank you to Danny Flynn for walking me back, even as I’m hurrying inside. I can hear my mum saying thank you too, and no, not great, to be honest, but she’s sure she’ll be right as rain again soon, and not to worry about the book, drop it in any time. Honestly, no rush.

  When I come out from my wee, Danny Flynn has gone already and my mum is sitting in the big armchair, which is green and corduroy and has a dip in the seat from our bottoms, and that is where she is sitting instead of standing up and chopping and stirring and being by the cooker, which is where she usually is in the kitchen at teatime. And Mum says, Hope, and I say, yes, and she says how about a takeaway for tea because she’s not sure she’s up to cooking and I say fan-tanty-tastic, because of liking takeaways, especially when they come in boxes like pizzas, or with lids that go click, like Chinese. And especially with prawn crackers. Because those are my favourite. But you can’t have prawn crackers and pizza together, and now I can’t decide which I want the most. And my mum says it’s up to me because she’s not hungry actually, so she’ll only have a little bit. And I say, can she show me the menus, so that I can think about it. And Jenny, my mum, says can’t I please get them and they’re right there in the drawer by the fridge, but I can’t see them because I don’t think it’s the right pizza menu – because I think the picture was different on it last time, which was a long time ago, because of it being a special treat and not being allowed to have it all the time.