Denny Neale actually has a teddy bear stuffed down the back of his dungarees. It is his teddy bear (um … morally speaking). It belongs to him (um … ethically speaking). It has been paid for, in advance. It is a teddy bear that he – Denny Neale – commissioned from Charles over eighteen months ago and Charles has refused to part with it, even though Denny Neale has sent him a succession of pleading letters/emails (and some threatening letters/emails), none of which has Charles read because Charles is officially In Hiding From Reality.
The teddy bear in question is dressed like a goth. Its beautiful, little costume has been fashioned (by Charles) from an old, Damned T-shirt and a pair of black German-issue military combats once owned and worn by Denny Neale’s former lover/partner Samson Horny (this was not his given name) who worked for many years as a second-hand CD seller in the thriving coastal town of Abersoch on the Llyn Peninsula.
‘Excuse me,’ Avigail suddenly interrupts.
(As it happens, nobody is currently speaking, since Ying Yue is still hugging Charles – while bouncing – and Charles is still feeling complete astonishment at being hugged –
Yes. Charles is feeling:
Astonished.
Delighted.
Mortified.
Invaded.
Overwhelmed.
Ridiculous.
and Denny Neale isn’t currently speaking either – he is choosing not to answer Charles’s slightly clumsy question about how long he has been blind for, remember? – because he is presently too preoccupied with debating how the heck he is going to get out of this stupidly tiny room which is now stuffed with three other people; and can’t he hear yet another – a fourth person? – talking loudly in Chinese in some distant corner of the house?)
‘Excuse me,’ Avigail repeats, ‘but would you mind telling me what actually became of the oyster shell?’
This question appears to be addressed to Ying Yue.
It would be difficult to know why Avigail has chosen this precise moment to re-open the whole ‘oyster-shell-strike/non-strike farrago’.
Hmm.
What is the story that Avigail is living now about this situation?
Or – perhaps more pertinently – what is the story that we are living now about what Avigail is living now about this situation?
Is it Avigail’s Toxic Super-Ego suddenly declaring war on her newly-blissed-out/faith-infused Adult/Inner Child?
Is Avigail feeling weird (and – quite frankly – inexplicable) pangs of jealousy due to the sudden bond being forged between Ying Yue and Charles? Is her apparent antipathy to Charles actually a subconscious rejection of a surreptitious unconscious attraction to Charles?
Is Avigail simply displacing the social/emotional anxiety (recently generated by Denny Neale suddenly/randomly using the word ‘testicles’) by reverting her attention back to another socially/emotionally contested incident from earlier on in the viewing?
Yes.
All of the above.
No.
None of the above.
Actually, both.
Yes, both. At the same time.
Because people are, by their very nature, contradictory.
Because people are, by their very nature, paradoxical.
Aside from Wang Shu, that is.
Wang Shu is terrifyingly single-minded.
Wang Shu is possessed of an almost supernatural coherence.
But where is the oyster shell?
Huh?
Was there actually an oyster shell?
Huh?
Is Ying Yue currently in possession of said oyster shell?
Huh?
Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo actually researched online (when he was still featured in the novella – although not while ‘on page’, but while ‘off-page’) and discovered that seagulls do habitually drop oysters from great heights to smash them and devour their innards, but very rarely – if ever – do they carry them beyond the confines of the beach to do so. Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo shared this information via Snapchat with a group of his friends, none of whom have had the chance to read the novel I Am Sovereign yet (and none of whom have been invented by The Author yet) because the book is still actually being written (this will be difficult for The Reader to understand, as they hold a perfect copy in their hand, but it makes perfect sense to The Author as she types this sentence, so The Reader will just have to suspend judgement and go with it) and – let’s face it – Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo is a relatively insignificant character in I Am Sovereign who has now been virtually expunged from the narrative by The Author.
Damn him.
Damn Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo and his fatuous interruptions.
Damn Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo and his persistent thrusting for narrative significance/insignificance.
The Author knows FOR A FACT that Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo’s glasses are knock-off Burberry Doodle Square Frame Sunglasses, not Tom Ford Dimitrys, as stated earlier in the text.
The Author has also (only recently) come across the sentence:
‘What are the stories, the fictions, from which you derive your sense of self?’ in Eckhart Tolle’s Stillness Speaks and thinks that this may actually be the original source of Richard Grannon’s sister’s yoga teacher’s phrase.
Unless Eckhart Tolle actually derived this phrase from Richard Grannon’s sister’s yoga teacher, that is.
Who’s to say?
Everything’s up for grabs, here.
The Author is also thinking about re-writing the chapter about Avigail and silence (Chapter 5) because she is now wondering whether stillness is inherently more interesting (conceptually/spiritually) than silence, and more rarely addressed – as a subject – by other writers.
It’s so wearying when everything is being perpetually challenged and contested like this, though, isn’t it?
But shouldn’t fiction strive to echo life (where everything is constantly being challenged and contested)?
Or is fiction merely a soothing balm, a soft breeze, a quiet confirmation, a temporary release?
Why should it be either/or?
Can’t fiction be exquisitely paradoxical?
But then which of us goes to Dreams or IKEA to buy a new mattress and then takes the thing home and carefully peels back the strong, clean fabric that neatly covers it to reveal the springs?
We don’t. We just bounce on to the mattress, stretch out, sigh, and fall blissfully asleep.
The Author suspects that this novella (which is currently in danger of becoming a novel so needs to end quite soon) is either extremely deep or unbelievably trite.
It’s impossible to tell.
The Author (Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo claims) will persist in calling it ‘unbelievably trite’ because she is fundamentally disingenuous.
The Author (The Author claims) will persist in calling it ‘unbelievably trite’ because – at some profound level – it is unbelievably trite.
Nothing of much note happens, really, does it?
Aside from the oyster shell strike?
Everything else is merely filler and back story.
And a certain amount of waffling on about Richard Grannon whose work The Author greatly admires (and who has recently closed down his Instagram account and declared war on the word ‘narcissist’), and Lucy Molloy, who The Author enjoys watching on YouTube. Lucy Molloy gave birth to a baby (Hendrix) a short while ago. This development has filled her life with an immense joy and a renewed purpose, which, to be perfectly honest, is slightly irritating for The Author in terms of the narrative/moral/social commentary The Author is surreptitiously asserting. Or not actually asserting but kind of asserting.
The Author is recently returned from a trip to Normandy, in France, which she undertook with a friend – also called Nicola – who owns a farmhouse there and happens to be one of the world’s leading experts on the vulva. The Author wrote much of Chapter 7 while sitting on the grass in the other Nicola’s paddock under a giant oak tree with acorns falling down all around her. On the final day of her trip, the other Nicola mentioned, in passing, that sitting in long grass may have placed The Author in danger of being attacked by a local burrowing insect which lives in the long grass in that particular region of France. Said insect burrows stealthily into the body’s warm folds and crevices and generates an almost unspeakable level of itching. There is no known treatment for this itching. Although – on a positive note – the parasite can only unleash its itch on a single occasion. After falling prey to its wiles the first time, the victim will then become immune.
The Author naturally asked the other Nicola why she had neglected to tell her this detail (about the burrowing insect hidden in the grass) until the final day of their holiday. The other Nicola confessed that it had slipped her mind (in the midst of a terrifying, ongoing, asiatic hornet infestation). The Author then exfoliated her private parts, vigorously, in the shower.
The two Nicolas also collected a giant haul of quinces from a bush near the motorway services and the scent of these exquisite fruits on the kitchen table has permeated the later stages of I Am Sovereign.
Is The Author truly Sovereign?
Is The Author truly Queen of her own Serenity?
On the drive from the ferry terminal, through Calais, the other Nicola kept pointing to the tall, wire fences and adjacent, green patches of ground and telling The Author how on previous visits the entire area had been inhabited by young (for the most part) African men trying to find any means possible of crossing the Channel to Britain. The Author gazed, impassively, at these blank, empty, liminal spaces as they drove by in the other Nicola’s little silver Audi TT sports car. Can it be any coincidence then, that only a couple of days later The Author began removing Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo from the narrative?
What does this mean?
For The Author?
What does this mean?
For The Reader?
What does this mean?
For Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ego …
No! E-bo! E-bo! E-bo!
The Author wishes The Reader to understand that she has been AT WAR – throughout the entire novella – with auto-correct as a result of the names she has (carefully/blithely) selected for her characters.
Every time The Author writes the name Wang Shu the text is automatically corrected to Wang She. Every time The Author types the name Ying Yue the text is automatically corrected to Ying Due. Every time The Author writes the name Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo, auto-correct instantly tries to alter the surname to Ego. Every time The Author writes the name Avigail, the text is automatically altered to Abigail.
Imagine how The Author has cussed and hissed and growled!
Imagine how The Author has railed against this all-pervasive technological urge to conformity!
The overriding concept for I Am Sovereign is that it should take place, in its entirety, during a twenty-minute house viewing in Llandudno. The Author estimates that she has a minute or two left over to play around with. But The Author is determined that this book will be a novella, and every word that she types is extending the length of the novella and thereby transforming it into something bigger and more significant. The novella, as a form, is marvellously unobtrusive. The novella, as a form, is delightfully slight. The novella, as a form, is not too ambitious. The novella, as a form, is eminently manageable. The novella, as a form, is generally unchallenging. The novella, as a form, is unbearably cute. The Author has been prey to ‘mixed feelings’ about the novel, as a form, ever since completing her last work (H(A)PPY ) which – to all intents and purposes – destroyed the novel (as a form) for The Author.
How can you continue to live inside a thing that you no longer believe in?
That would be like praying to a God who didn’t exist, surely?
No.
No.
I Am Sovereign.
The Author just needs to hope. And she needs to love. And she needs to believe, in spite of.
The Author planned – earlier on in the novella – to end the work with Denny Neale (who was then Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ego) doing a runner with the teddy, and with Ying Due ‘borrowing’ Charles’s late mother’s bike and careering into the town on it in hot pursuit.
But this seems all wrong now. The Author can’t bear the idea of those four people leaving Charles’s tiny work room. They feel so alive to her, all standing there, pushed up, shoved up, close together. There is something so strange, so unlikely, so wonderfully intimate about it all.
It dawns on The Author, as she types this, that the room as she describes it (Charles’s work room) is exactly like the tiny study in which she herself habitually sits to write. So these four characters are actually here, are they not? In The Author’s tiny study, keeping The Author company? The Author has unwittingly brought them here. They are crowding around The Author. Look! They are crashing into her bookshelves, they are poking her with their elbows, they are oppressing her with their demands, they are breathing down her neck. They are bitching and carping and buzzing and rippling and jingling and jangling with their own sweet significance. And The Author loves them all so much, so very dearly, that she cannot bear to say goodbye to them, somehow.