‘A Little Fall of Rain’, Les Misérables Original London Cast Recording, 1985, Red
FIRST, SHE ORGANISED the pencils in order of colour, ranging them according to the spectrum, but that didn't take long so she tipped them out of the holder and started again, this time cataloguing them in order of height, from tallest to shortest, but when she laid them out on her desk they formed a ragged line that was patently unsatisfactory, so in search of a neater arrangement she fished out a pencil sharpener and spent the next ten minutes whittling them all to the same length.
It wasn't procrastination, it was preparation. Coloured pencils were for making notes on the paper manuscript; a different hue to track each character. It was a system she'd used to great effect when editing her debut. But that novel and that time felt far away.
She remembered the ease with which she used to write, as if she'd been possessed by her characters, channelling their words through her fingers. All she had to do was get out of their way and let them tell their own story. Not like now. Now she sat here day after day, head in her hands hoping to squeeze out a single word. She gathered up the pencils and jammed them back in the holder. She wouldn't be needing them anytime soon. There was no manuscript to edit. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.
Her eyes flicked to the laptop. The stubbornly empty page was like a mute scream. Silence would have been a blessing, but her misery had a soundtrack. The bullying rattle and clank of Willie's typing filled the room. It wasn't his fault; he couldn't know the anguish he caused her, and anyway, what could he do? He was on a deadline, his screenplay due in a matter of weeks. It wouldn't be fair to ask him to change his routine, especially when it was obviously going so well. Disheartened, she turned to the window and began to count the leaves on the trees outside.
Another sound joined Willie's relentless typing: the tapdance of fingers leaping across a modern keyboard. For a moment Jane imagined that she'd been possessed by one of her characters again. She looked down, hoping to see her hands moving unbidden across the laptop the way they used to. But instead they lay folded in her lap. The sound was coming from the other end of the room.
Darsie sat with her legs elegantly crossed, pencil skirt smoothed to mid-thigh, a neat silver laptop balanced on one knee. Long, tapered fingers worked up and down the keyboard with the practised ease of a concert pianist. Her hair was swept back today in a ponytail, which swung in metronomic time to her typing. A pair of black-rimmed spectacles perched schoolmistressly on her nose. She leaned in; her hands became a blur. Jane recognised the signs—whatever Darsie was writing it was reaching its climax. Sure enough, she performed a final flourish and sat back, hands still frozen in the shape of the last word. She let out a long, low breath and her body relaxed.
Jane snatched the laptop from her knee.
‘Hey!’ Darsie objected. ‘What d'you think you're doing?’
‘I'm supposed to be the writer. You're the character. Remember?’
‘A character without an ending,’ she muttered, folding her arms.
Jane ignored her and turned to the screen. Delicate sentences formed succulent paragraphs stacked one on top of the other, baked together into a firm, crisp page. Jealously, she began to read. Absorbed in the text she walked back to her desk and set the laptop down beside her own.
Darsie hovered at her shoulder, looking from the screen to Jane, eager for praise. ‘So, what do you think?’
‘I think,’ began Jane, ‘that this is the end of Les Misérables.’
Darsie's eager expression didn't alter. ‘Yes. You should write something like that.’
‘Thanks. Great suggestion. Bit French, perhaps? People dying of consumption and all that? I'm a bit more … urban Scotland, Primal Scream, unhappy ‘90s childhood …’
Willie looked up, some part of the conversation having pierced the armour of his typing. ‘Sorry?’
Darsie raised a finger sharply. ‘She wasn't talking to you.’
It took a moment before Jane remembered that Willie couldn't see or hear her. ‘I wasn't talking to you,’ she said apologetically.
‘OK,’ said Willie uncertainly, glancing around the room in case he'd missed the arrival of someone else. Then he loosened his shoulders with a shake and returned to work.
Jane studied him. He was a writer, a kindred spirit. She couldn't imagine that he'd ever suffered from writer's block, but perhaps he could offer some wisdom on the subject. ‘Willie?’
‘Hmm?’
‘Do your characters ever …’ She hesitated. ‘Talk to you?’
Willie broke off and leant towards her, his eyes locking with hers. Oh god, what had she said? She shouldn't have admitted it. She was a madwoman.
‘Sure,’ he said at last. ‘All the time.’
Relief surged through her. She wasn't alone. He understood.
Willie patted his typewriter. ‘That's why I've got this.’ A half smirk. ‘Drowns out the bastards.’ He sniffed. ‘See, when I'm writing, I only want to hear the one voice.’ He angled his hands towards his chest and made a flicking motion. ‘Mine.’ Without another word he went back to work.
‘Charming,’ said Darsie, arching one perfectly plucked eyebrow. ‘Quite the hero.’
Jane considered the man opposite her. She'd come to the conclusion that there were two Willies: one the supportive, caring man who'd held her when her plant died. The other was a bit of a bastard. Not that there was anything wrong with that. Made things interesting in all sorts of ways; from the bedroom to the bay window. With two writers living under the same roof there was bound to be a bit of creative friction—and some healthy competition. Currently, the score was a whitewash. She was getting creamed.
Moreover, she knew that on some level he thrived on her discomfort. The longer she was stuck on Chapter 37, the better he looked, sailing through his screenplay. And the reason she knew with such certainty was her own dirty little secret. Uncomfortable as it was to admit, if the situation were reversed, she'd feel the same way.
There was the ping of the carriage return and Willie tore another finished page from his typewriter. He caught her eye. A flicker of a smile.
‘You still blocked?
She felt her cheeks colour. It was time to face it: no one else was going to help. It was down to her to do something about her damn writer's block.
Mocha Books was that rarest of flowers, a new independent bookshop flourishing in the shade of the national chains and supermarkets. With a gourmet café grafted onto the bookselling side it had quickly established itself as much for its selection of artisan cheeses as its bold selection of literary fiction.
Jane pushed open the door. A bell rang to signal her entrance; more like a temple gong, she thought. She pulled up the collar on her coat, eager not to draw attention to herself.
She hadn't been to Mocha Books before, which was the point of coming here today. Given the delicate nature of the book she planned to purchase she wanted somewhere she was unlikely to be recognised. Not that celebrity was a pressing issue; it was a rare occasion when she was stopped in the street by a fan. And though she'd appeared as a guest on a couple of TV culture shows, they were of the variety broadcast between the hours of midnight and three a.m. on a channel no one had heard of. However, while ardent fans weren't a problem, her local bookstore was. She'd done several signings there and the staff knew her too well. Today she wanted to go incognito. Hence the trip to the north side of town, where the bears lived.
She went inside and made straight for the self-help section. The plan was to get in and out with as little fuss as possible. She'd even remembered to bring cash in order to avoid having to use a card with her name on it. She browsed the bookshelves, running a finger lightly over the spines as she skimmed the titles. Finally, she landed on a likely candidate and, with a glance over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching, scooped it off the shelf.
‘A Hundred and One Ways to Beat Writer's Block?’ said a loud voice.
Jane winced and turned to see a familiar figure. ‘Hello, Darsie.’
Her alter ego had picked up on the undercover vibe and sported a pair of dark glasses and a headscarf. Jane experienced a twinge of envy. Whenever she'd tried to pull off the Grace Kelly headscarf thing she always ended up looking like a nineteenth-century peasant. Darsie wore it with aplomb. Rather unnecessarily she raised the sunglasses to show that it was indeed her beneath.
‘Keep your voice down,’ whispered Jane. ‘Please.’
‘Hey,’ said Darsie, tucking a stray hair under her scarf. ‘I'm not the one drawing attention to myself by muttering into thin air.’
She sashayed along next to the shelf, plucking a series of books, reeling off their titles and loading them into Jane's arms. ‘Beat Your Block to a Pulp. Knock that Block! Lost For Words. What would Jesus Write?’ She screwed up her face at this last one. ‘Seriously?’
Irritated, Jane set aside the books on a nearby table. One would do—she wasn't that blocked. She swiped the top book from the stack. She'd had quite enough of her fictional shadow.
‘So, what's the deal, are you going to stalk me until I finish the novel?’
‘Yes, I believe that's how it works,’ said Darsie matter-of-factly. ‘Now, can we talk about the last chapter?’
‘What about it?’
‘I'm a romantic heroine—I don't want to end up unhappy.’
Jane shrugged. ‘Plenty of heroines don't get happy endings. Anna Karenina, Juliet Capulet, Tess of the d'Urbervilles—’
‘Tess?’ Darsie tutted loudly. ‘Oh come on, Jane. Spoiler alert.’
Jane ignored her. ‘And anyway, I'm not yet sure what happens to you at the end.’
‘But you could make it anything you want,’ Darsie pleaded.
‘That's not how it works.’ There was a rhythm to these things; a rightness that could only be achieved by surrendering utterly to the pull of the story. ‘You don't really get to choose your ending. It has to follow from what comes before, or it doesn't feel true.’
Darsie stopped walking. ‘But that's not fair!’ she wailed. ‘What comes before my ending are four hundred pages of unrelenting Celtic misery.’ She locked eyes with Jane. ‘Tom's right—you can't stop worshipping your pain.’
Jane stared back at her creation. Darsie needed to understand. ‘Life is hard.’
‘OK, yes,’ Darsie nodded, ‘but can it be someone else's life?’ She clutched Jane's hand in hers. ‘Please, I want it all to turn out OK. Jane …’
‘Jane Lockhart?’
Jane turned to see a formidable lady in a twin set, a bale of bubble-wrap in one hand, a copy of Happy Ending in the other, open at the author photo. She looked from the photo to Jane, and beamed.
‘I thought it was you.’ She marched over, tucking the bubble-wrap under one arm in order to offer up a firm handshake. ‘Shona Heywood, proprietor of Mocha Books.’ She gestured grandly to the shop, and then laid a hand lightly on Jane's arm. ‘And may I say it's a pleasure to meet the woman who helped pay for my new kitchen.’ Shona chuckled at her own little joke.
Jane joined in with a polite laugh. Behind her, Darsie threw back her head and guffawed. Jane sighed inwardly; so much for going incognito. This was exactly what she'd hoped to avoid by coming to Mocha Books. She pressed the cover of Beat Your Block To A Pulp against her chest and hoped Shona hadn't noticed.
‘It is. It's her!’ Shona pointed excitedly and suddenly an ambush of excited booksellers and customers materialised from the corners of the shop to surround Jane, cooing praise and hurling questions.
Her head snapped back and forth to keep up with each fresh voice.
‘I just loved Happy Ending … so sad …’
‘Can't wait for your new one …’
‘Come to our book group …’
‘What's it called …?’
‘What's it about …?’
And then from the muddle a clear voice rang out. ‘When's it out?’
She looked round at the expectant faces. Good question. ‘Umm …’
Shona hadn't taken in that Jane was struggling to provide an answer; the bookshop proprietor's mind was on loftier ground. ‘It must be difficult,’ she pondered aloud, ‘having so much to live up to.’ She waved a hand as if trying to trap the thought. ‘Really, how does one follow such a staggering success as Happy Ending?’
By getting stuck on the last chapter of the next book for the rest of your life, thought Jane. She smiled and nodded inanely.
Shona's hand was at it again. This time it performed a graceful swirl like some interpretive dance move. ‘But we're interrupting the Muse,’ she said huskily. ‘I'm sure you're eager to get back to the page.’ And then with a twinkle, ‘And I have my eye on a gorgeous new bathroom.’
She chuckled again. Jane forced another laugh and Darsie mimicked her. But then Shona motioned to the book Jane was clutching guiltily to her chest. For a moment, Jane was sure the game was up.
‘Oh, and you must take the book,’ said Shona generously, ‘with my compliments.’
‘Thank you,’ breathed Jane, relief washing over her. It looked like she'd make it out of here without exposing her secret.
‘I must just run it through the till.’
Before Jane could react, Shona had wrested the book from her grasp.
‘No!’ Jane cried out, her outburst startling the crowd.
But it was too late. Shona's smile slipped as her eye scanned the title. ‘Blocked?’
She sounded so disappointed that Jane felt even worse. The others could see the offending book now too and a whisper went through the gathering.
‘Yes, blocked.’
‘She's blocked.’
They surrounded her in a tight circle. ‘Sorry,’ she heard herself say. ‘I'm really sorry.’ Abandoning the book she pushed her way through the throng, unable to avoid the disillusionment in every face. Flustered, she stumbled to the exit, yanked open the door and hurried out. Behind her the bell tolled.