Dying to Write Read online

  Courtney nudged me. ‘If Kate and Matt can make this lot work together, they’ll be earning their corn and no mistake.’

  We started our first exercises after supper. We were in the lounge again, with all the chairs pushed back against the wall, and we were to work in pairs. We had to stare into our partner’s eyes and learn to act in concert with him or her. Whatever our partner did with his hands, we were supposed to do with ours. It was inconceivable that Nyree would want to look into my eyes, and I’d no intention of gazing into Toad’s. Mr Gimson had stomped off for a smoke. For a while I mirrored Mr Woodhouse, but not very successfully. Then I linked up with Courtney.

  They gazed dutifully, his dark-brown eyes and my blue ones. And our hands tracked one another obediently. Then Courtney spoiled it.

  ‘I’m glad I got you again,’ he said. ‘You’re nice and safe.’

  ‘Gee, thanks. And middle-aged, too, I suppose.’ I’m always having this problem with my students – they think you’re way past it by the time you’re thirty.

  ‘I didn’t say that. You’re younger than Nyree, I should think. But at least your hands – I mean, what’s a guy s’posed to do when a woman – I mean …’

  I shook my head: what had she done?

  He dropped his voice to a confidential whisper. ‘Her hand, Sophie. She had her hand straight on my you-know-what. I mean!’ For a second his voice was camp: ‘On to a bit of a loser with me, though.’

  We grinned at each other. It was nice to have a potential ally.

  Then we had to change partners. Soon I was staring into Matt Purvis’s eyes. They were grey, within a tangle of crow’s-feet. Our hands circled in parallel swirls and dips. We were very good. Until he broke all the rules and looked away.

  ‘Jesus!’ he said. He nodded at Mr Gimson’s crotch.

  Nyree must have groped him, too. Or perhaps he just wished she had.

  ‘I know there’s a novel in me,’ someone was saying earnestly. The girl with the brace, I think.

  We’d moved the furniture back and were allowed to sit down and relax. A glass nestled closely in my hand. Nyree had produced a litre bottle of gin, and it seemed the only way we’d prevent her sinking the lot was to discover a little cache of glasses in a top cupboard. Some of us saw it as a positive duty to make up for others’ lack of dedication. The result was that not only the names but also the name badges were by now a little hazy.

  ‘So why are you here, Sophie?’

  Blast Matt.

  ‘I won a prize.’

  There were aahs, both appreciative and resentful.

  ‘In a raffle. The head of English at my college sold me a ticket. He said if I won, he’d come. But he had to change a tyre on the principal’s car and now he’s having his hernia repaired. So here I am.’ After a close encounter with death earlier in the year, I’d resolved to grab every new experience that came my way. So I added, terribly earnest with gin, ‘Now I’m here, I’ll try anything.’

  ‘So will I, darling, so will I.’

  ‘Ah, Nyree. Why have you joined the course?’ Matt succumbed to force majeure.

  I could have told him the answer to that. It wasn’t so very different from the one she gave.

  ‘Because it’s easier than the OU, darling.’ She tipped forward to show him more of her left breast.

  ‘The OU?’ repeated Matt, foolishly.

  ‘Of course. You know, darling: summer schools.’

  Yes. That sort of education.

  Having silenced him, she continued: ‘Not that I don’t mean to write. I’ve started on my memoirs, darling. Married to a secret agent. And now what does he do? Gets made redundant, and asks for political asylum in Viet-bloody-nam. So I stayed here. To meet a few red-blooded Englishmen. God, I’m sick of fucking pansies!’

  Kate caught my eye. We sniggered into our gin.

  ‘I’ve got to Chapter Seven, now, darling. Willies I have known. I’ll be a very good student – I know how important research is.’ She leaned back. Her breasts might have sunk to comparative oblivion but her legs hadn’t. In case anyone hadn’t noticed, a languorous hand lay halfway along her thigh, weighted down by a ring with more carats than should decently occupy one space.

  Matt was clearly unequal to the situation. But Kate wasn’t.

  ‘Thank you, Nyree. I’m sure you’ll have a very fruitful time here,’ she said, the irony barely audible. But she grinned at me again before she turned to the next victim. ‘Garth?’

  So Toad had a name. I peered more closely at his label. Garth Kerwin. The gin and I were trying to work out whether his name suited him when something scuffed at the door.

  ‘Is the house haunted?’ I asked no one in particular.

  The ghost jingled.

  The door was pushed open, very slowly. Its creak was especially convincing.

  ‘Sidney! You bad animal!’ shouted Kate.

  The rat poured himself around the door. He was wearing a tiny leather harness with a bell on the shoulders.

  Gimson’s face contorted. ‘How dare you!’

  ‘I’m dreadfully sorry. I really am!’ said Kate.

  Toad leapt to his feet, white showing around the pale irises. Nyree pressed close to Gimson. One of the older ladies gasped; her lips turned alarmingly blue.

  All around, voices were raised. I was on my knees cajoling Sidney with a gin-flavoured finger, which he rightly ignored. The first old lady was fumbling for tablets, another for an asthma spray. Gimson was booming away about social irresponsibility, but was also keen to tell us the difference between Rattus rattus and Rattus norvegicus. And surely that was Toad’s voice: ‘You should be shot! Keeping an animal like that!’

  Chapter Two

  I suppose it was at about this point that I realised that this course and the people on it were not there simply for my amusement. There were real feelings engaged. I must sober up. Rapidly.

  Water. If I drank a lot of water it would help. And there’d be plenty of water in the tap in the kitchen.

  The corridor to the kitchen was occupied by Matt and Kate, both grim-faced. Kate might have been enduring a bollocking, but Matt seemed more apologetic than anything. Quite clearly they did not want me to join them.

  I might as well go back and collect a few glasses from the lounge while I was at it; most of us had left them where we’d been sitting. The lounge wasn’t empty, though. Courtney had found a tray and a dishcloth and was systematically gathering and mopping.

  He smiled at me as I started to help. ‘Funny old evening it’s been,’ he said.

  ‘Some funny old people to make it that way. Jesus, Courtney, can anyone really find Nyree attractive?’

  ‘You’re asking the wrong man here, sweetie,’ he said, camp again. ‘But I wouldn’t have thought so. Poor Matt looked scared –’

  ‘– if not rigid,’ I concluded.

  Courtney’s tray and my hands full, we headed back to the kitchen. The corridor was by now quiet.

  I ran water and sloshed in washing-up liquid. Courtney found a cleanish tea towel, but he didn’t start using it. Quite a backlog had accumulated before he spoke. Then it was merely to ask what I did for a living. I told him about my job at a big inner-city college. He listened in silence. I didn’t want to upset him by asking about his job in case he hadn’t got one.

  He put down the saucer he’d been polishing. I felt him looking at me.

  ‘I think I can trust you, Soph,’ he began. ‘I think I can. You see … Dear me, there’s no easy way to say this.’

  I waited.

  ‘I’ve been there, you see. In the nick, Soph. Nice boy like me in prison.’

  There was nothing I could say.

  ‘And now this. This harassment. That’s what it is, you know: harassment.’ He pronounced it the American way.

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Her being here like this. That woman.’

  ‘Which woman?’

  ‘There was this joke we used to have in the nick. There’s someone in your house
. Midnight, see. Not a burglar. Not the filth – whoops, pardon my French! And he’s turning over your stuff and there’s nothing you can do to stop him. Who is it?’

  I shook my head. I don’t like being called ‘Soph’ but didn’t want to stop his flow. ‘Not a clue. Who?’

  ‘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 t
he 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.’