As I stroll, I think. I find that a walk helps my brain start to work creatively. I didn’t get a lot of strolling, outside, when I was inside, in Feltham. Nor did anyone else. Sure, there was exercise, running around, at allocated times. But you wouldn’t stroll in a relaxed way between sessions. And you wouldn’t be outside – always under a walkway. Always barred. No mental space. It meant our creative writing sessions were rather uncreative. Probably the leader’s fault as much as anything – the premise set was never very imaginative. ‘What things could I be doing if I wasn’t in here?’ was one. Or; ‘What do I think my victim must have felt like?’ I guess someone had told them writing was about moral responsibility, not just craft.
And when they did try to teach it, they were so contradictory. We were told ‘Beware giving a character knowledge of something they cannot possibly know. They cannot know what the other characters are thinking.’ But that is surely nonsense? If it weren’t nonsense, why would they give us that exercise on imagining what our victims felt like? And why would they put The Bible in our rooms? A classic work of fiction, as I knew it was by then, about one character who claims to know everything. I reread it to remind myself how the author, whoever it was, had handled it. Not as convincingly as I thought when I was a child, before I realised how flawed the protagonist was, that it was not he who was my saviour. There are some nice phrases about Adam, though. Made me think I shouldn’t have burnt my copy.
Then, lo! Another contradiction, from our tutors. Despite being asked to write about what our victims felt like, we were told, only weeks later: ‘People do not feel. They do not walk around thinking “I feel sad today.” If you write that, you are doing Bad Writing. Instead, you must say that they stand next to the Grand Canyon precipice and all they can see is the bottom.’ Half the people didn’t know what the Grand Canyon was. If the tutors had used the analogy of ‘They stand on the edge of a bed with the sheet around their necks and all they can see is the jump between them and the floor’ then it might have made more sense. But we didn’t talk about that.
I don’t know why we were taught by unempathetic automatons. Characters clearly know what other characters are thinking. I always know what Adam is thinking, even when he tries to conceal it from me. I know that really he loves me. I knew that even in Feltham, when he spent all his time with some kid called Marco. Then, you see, he loved me so much that he was giving me the opportunity to escape him because he knew he was guilty for getting me implicated in the whole common-room saga. He loved me even more when I tried to take the flack for him. And I also knew that he knew that I had forgiven him, and that I didn’t think that we had to sacrifice our friendship, but that he thought he knew better. He thought we needed to make that ultimate sacrifice, for my sake. All the time he was teasing me, and not defending me, when the others in Marco’s ‘crew’ in our residential unit were pummelling me, verbally and physically, I knew he was thinking that. That was why he had to join in.
And if, and only if, I had moments of doubt, I would think: ‘Why do I feel this way about Adam? Because I know I feel this way. When Adam is not there, I feel sad. I feel sad now. I feel like if there was a precipice, I would jump into it, feeling very sad indeed. Yesterday I felt happy. Today, I don’t. Why is that?’ But even in those moments, I knew there was one constant that I felt: love.
And I know it’s not just me who feels. Because Dad said to me, ‘I feel wrong, son. Everything feels wrong.’ In fact, that was the last thing he said before he went over the edge of the precipice. Perhaps he could see Mum down there.
They failed to teach us the most valid thing about writing: that research is key. When my books find an audience, I will go back to Feltham, if they haven’t knocked it down, and I will teach them about research. I can use, as an example, tonight’s expedition. I may not say it was me who did it. I may say a writer friend, one of my vast circle of literary acquaintances, once went on a research mission to sleep with a woman. They might, I suppose, question why the friend had to research that specially. They might, again, call me names, like they did when I was in there. Graffiti them on walls. And on me. A label. But no matter; I must proselytise The Method. I must tell them there is nothing they cannot research. Then they will not give up and do business administration studies instead, like I did. Just because they told me to.
Apart from death, I suppose. Their own death. That is beyond them, however close they get to the edge of the precipice. They cannot be authentic about that. Although, they could research other people’s deaths. Maybe some of them already have. I could research other people’s deaths, if I needed to. There’s a lot of it around – Helen, my parents. Perhaps one day Nicole. Perhaps even … no. Don’t think it.
I refocus on my surroundings. The gardener’s hut in Soho Square. I am nearly there, at the research subject’s flat. Luke is nearly there. Put death to one side. Instead, think how:
Luke seduced his love. He tied her down so she knew she could be fixed in ecstasy. Luke entered his love. Luke entered His love. Like He had done before.
And make it happen.