A little bit meta
While I was in France, I wrote a story which I am posting here. I suspect it has a very, very limited target audience but perhaps you will enjoy it even if you don't "get" it. What you choose to read into it is, well, up to you! I shall say nothing about it except that the title is Felicity. The other thing I will say that you may or may not find helpful is that if it were a one-act play (which could work really well) then there are only two actors in the world who could play the roles of "Felicity" and The Author. There is also only one actress who could play the unseen role of The Girl. (Perhaps in the play he could have a framed photograph of her on his desk for the first few scenes?) Who I mean should be pretty obvious - or maybe not! The story works much better if you hear it in their voices...
I'm not sure the story works mainly because I am not entirely sure I get it myself. It is in places moderately clever, always extremely pretentious and quite possibly utterly incomprehensible. It's about the art of writing really, I suppose, but what else it might be about is up to you! Please don't be put off reading it because it's not fanfiction. You might find interest in it all the same!
Exclusively posted here! :)
Disclaimer: J K Rowling owns the quotation from 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'. At least, she'd like you to think she did.
Felicity
He was not very promising when I first saw him - all floppy hair, crisp shirt untucked over jeans, flat in Notting Hill, all that kind of thing. A walking, talking literary cliché of a certain genre, if you like. He had a boring name too, chosen for a saint or a dead king, I forget which now. Such a very English Englishman.
He was very glad to see me, of course. Men are predictable and authors are no different from the rest of the species. His eyes lit up when I arrived in the room and I kissed him (on the cheek, of course) for luck. It seemed like a nice thing to do. Then I perched on the edge of his desk and swung my legs idly.
“Well then, what do you want to write about?” I asked, cutting to the chase. I don't believe in hanging around: if you have something to say, then say it, don't beat around the bush. It's just the kind of girl I am. On the other hand, if you don't have anything to say, you probably shouldn't be in this business in the first place.
He shrugged. “I don't really know. What do you think?”
Like I said, not very promising.
“Me? What has it to do with me?” I acted innocent; it was more fun that way.
“With you? But you're -”
I admit it: he did look quite cute when he was confused. I raised my eyebrows, challenged him. “I'm what?”
He shook his head rather helplessly. “You're in my study!”
“I know! It's not very big, is it?” I cast my eyes disdainfully round the room. It was a pretty decent size actually but complimenting it would have made for very boring dialogue. We would have moved onto the weather in no time after that.
“I manage!” he returned defensively, as if I'd criticized the way he used his fish knife or something ridiculous like that and it actually mattered.
I ignored his wounded pride. “What about love?”
He stared up at me like a deer caught in the headlights (what a bad simile! Has anyone ever actually seen a deer caught in the headlights? I suppose only if they're about to run it over - splat). I've been told I have a very demanding and direct gaze and I fixed it on him now. Then again, I've been told a lot of things, most of them inaccurate.
“Love?” he stuttered. “What about love?”
“Love!” I repeated, jumping down from the desk and circling round him, trailing my hand along his shoulder and forcing him to squirm in his seat to keep me in view. (They pretend not to like it when I tease them but they love it really. It makes them feel important; the artistic temperament, you know.) “Everyone wants to write about love. Either love or violence, that is, and if you're into the latter then I'm definitely the wrong person for you.”
I shuddered at that thought. (Simulated, of course, for I was not worried. His hair was far too nice for him to write nasty books.)
“Haven't you ever been in love?”
“I had someone,” he answered eventually, reluctantly, “but she left me.”
“Ah, she left you or you left her? Are you quite sure who did the leaving? There are always two sides to every story - remember that! Write about that then - you know you want to!”
“Actually, I'd prefer not to. It's very raw still.”
I leaned forwards, very close to him. “Raw is good. Use the rawness. Channel that emotion!”
He swallowed, nervous. (As he should be.) “I'd rather -”
“Oh, in that case, don't!” I danced away from him. “It was only an idea, a vain fancy of mine. Don't feel you need to listen to me!”
He followed my every movement with his eyes now. “I suppose I could try to write something about it...”
I snapped my fingers at him, all smiles. “Yes! That's the spirit! Change her name, make her blonde (she was a brunette, wasn't she? I thought I knew your type - look at me!) but keep the rest! What went wrong? What was the misunderstanding? Why did you leave her?”
“Look here, she left me!”
“Of course you left her! And even if you didn't, who cares about you? You want to write about her.”
“I don't. I want to forget her. I want to move on.”
“Nonsense, you want to write about her. You want to understand her. It's all anyone ever wants to do.”
He was silent now and contemplative, but he did not deny it which was something. I love it when they give in to me. I watched him quietly, taking my cue from him. I was a good girl most of the time. Finally he looked up at me, his expression set but resigned. I raised one eyebrow.
When he spoke it was with greater caution and a lawyer's precision. I was surprised - pleased, surprised - I hadn't thought he had it in him. “If we are going to discuss these - these intimate details of my life, which you seem to know so much about already, then I think we need to establish a few things first.”
I nodded, showing him I was on his side. Of course I was: there was no other side to be on.
“What should I call you?”
“Whatever you like, my darling!” I cried, eyes sparkling. “I am yours after all.”
He hesitated a moment. He thought he was in charge now (how easily deluded men are) and observed me closely. He licked his lips before replying. “You must have a name of your own. Everyone has a name.”
I shrugged. “I've been called many things by many people. Capricious. Flighty. Foolish. Impatient. Also stubborn. Hard. Mulish. Sometimes deserter. Take your pick!”
“My dear girl, those aren't names, they're adjectives, and not very nice ones at that. I don't believe you're like that at all.”
“Don't you? Poor thing!” I turned away with a mocking smile.
“Capricious though, that I can believe,” he returned and though he spoke pensively I could hear a smile in his voice. We were getting to know one another now and he was growing on me. I liked a man who wasn't afraid to play a few games.
“Oh, I'm capricious alright. The essence of caprice!” Nice word, caprice. Good sounds to get your tongue round.
“Can I name you then? It's odd your not having one.”
I had been expecting this. People feel more comfortable with names. Of course, an author can choose not to name a character but they have to have a reason for it and this one seemed too conventional to go down that route, at least for the moment. “Of course. Anything you like. Provided it is deep and very significant!” I grinned.
He leaned back in his chair and observed me some more (it was alright; I like being looked at), subconsciously tapping his notepad with his pen. A doctor faced with an inexplicable patient could not have given the question more serious consideration. Well, I may be inexplicable but I wasn't his patient so I simple leaned back against the window sill and and let him take his time.
“I think I'll call you Felicity. You see,” he added rather breathlessly when I raised my eyebrows, “I think you could make me very happy.”
I blushed, I actually blushed; he was so adorably earnest. It wouldn't last, of course, for an author must always be open to the possibility that he might not be saying what he thought he was saying. I did not let the blush get to me, however, but laughed it off, saying coyly, “We'll see about that. It's a two-way system, you know, and you have to work for your supper!”
*
We met for dinner the next night in one of those lovely and terribly expensive bistros in that area of London. He ordered a bottle of rather good red wine and I lit a cigarette. It seemed that for all his bluster my writer was something of a hedonist. I could get used to that.
Food ordered, I leaned back in my chair. “Tell me about her, this girl of yours.”
He smiled, more relaxed out here being sociable than he had been in his flat. “She was beautiful.” He sounded wistful.
“Go on. Get the clichés out of the way first.”
“Taller than you... sylph like!”
“Please! You callin' me fat?” I adopted a modern attitude and accent. Joke on.
“N- no! Of course not. You're more … voluptuous.”
I blinked, moistened my lips. There was something about the way he said 'voluptuous'...
“Well, go on! She was a tall, skinny beauty. Anything else or was that the limit of her attractions? She sounds deadly dull. Nobody will buy your book!”
“Now you're being hard, Felicity.”
“And a little bit impatient perhaps? Oh, I know!”
His lips twitched. “I'm trying. She was too complex a creature to sum up using normal language.”
I scoffed. “You're no James Joyce - trust me, I met him, boring old sod - so I recommend trying to stick to normal language if you possibly can.”
“Sarcastic too? My my, Felicity!”
I coolly tapped out the ash from my cigarette. “Continue to insult me like this and I'll just leave.”
“Before the food's arrived? Come on, I know you won't do that! You ordered the most expensive item on the menu.”
“I'm an expensive girl to have around.”
“So it seems,” he commented drily and his eyes flickered to the bottle of wine. They narrowed. “I don't do this sort of thing usually. Are you so determined to corrupt me, Felicity?”
“I corrupt you?” I blew a jet of smoke out over his shoulder. “Don't you want to be corrupted then?”
“I suppose I must do at some level.”
“But we were talking of your girl, your beautiful girl. Your muse.” I spoke scornfully and leaned forwards over the table and fixed him with my most direct stare. “What about sex?”
He choked into his wine. “Sex? Felicity, you can't just -”
“Oh, can't I? Come on, you must have done it! Unless...” I opened my eyes very wide. “No... Don't tell me: when you say 'she left you', what you mean is you never had her in the first place!” I began to make as if I was leaving. “You're nothing but a fantasist, that's what you are! Pathetic!”
“Felicity!” He grabbed my wrist across the table and I stilled immediately. “Don't be so foolish - what's wrong with a writer fantasizing? Anyway, of course we had sex - at least, we probably shouldn't have, but we did - several times actually - but I don't think it's relevant. I don't write that sort of thing and, well, I'm not comfortable discussing it, even with you!”
“Even with me? Poor boy, you can have no secrets from me! Whether you write it explicitly or not, sex is never irrelevant. And people like it. They want to read about you and your girl getting it on! If it's not there in some form they might start wondering why - and that'll be pretty awkward for you, won't it?”
“I don't want to have this conversation. Who had sex with whom in the past and why they did it - that's not one of the things that matter in life.”
I threw up my hands and stood up, scraping my chair back on the terrace. “Fine! Do what you like! But you'll never write a good story with that attitude.”
I turned my back on him and walked away. Before the food came. I like to prove them wrong: it keeps them on their toes.
“You're abandoning me!” he wailed at my back.
My lips, my faithless, stubborn, capricious lips curved into a smile.
*
“Are you real?” he asked me later, back in his flat. We were both calmer now and he'd had a chance to think things out.
“It depends what you mean by 'real'.”
“Or are you just in my head?”
I shrugged. “Of course it's happening in your head, but why on earth should that mean it's not real?”
“That's a quote from -”
“I know. But it was mine first.”
“Yours? Was it really?”
I nodded, smug. “One of my more successful partnerships, that.”
He was hesitant but finally he said, “You've had many others, haven't you? Before me, I mean.”
I laughed. “God, you didn't think you were my first, did you? In this day and age?”
“I suppose not. Not really. There's always a part of one that wants to be the first though, I think, however impossible it may turn out to be. Were they all novelists?”
“Oh no! Painters, composers, poets... you name it!”
“You have got around!” He sounded somewhere between miserable and impressed.
“Jealous, are you, darling? I'm not steady, you know, so don't expect me to be!”
I began to hum (subtextually) 'La Donna è mobile'. He didn't get it though so I had to spell it out, lifting one shoulder in an elegant shrug. “The inconstancy of woman! He wrote it for me, you know.”
He stared. “Were you just the same to Verdi as you are to me?”
“Don't be daft! He was old - and Italian! But it was still me.”
“So.” He ran his hand through his hair as he thought, fluffing it even more. “You are a shared consciousness of some kind then. An anthropomorphic manifestation of -”
He broke off as I closed my eyes and made a little noise of appreciation in my throat.
“What?”
“You sounded so sexy when you said 'anthropomorphic manifestation'!”
He blinked and reached desperately for his coffee. “Really?”
“Oh yes, you should say more long words!”
“I'll try... to please you, Felicity.”
I beamed at him over the rim of my cup. “Good boy.”
*
He stayed up all night writing, his study littered with half-drunk cups of coffee and his hair getting wilder and wilder as he ran his hands through it trying to tease out the ideas. I sat quietly on the sofa with my legs curled under me and read one of his many Henry James novels.
Finally, as light began to appear in the east, he swivelled round in his chair and murmured, “Felicity, are you awake? Do you want to read it? I don't think I can do any more tonight...”
I was very tired, ridiculously tired, but I stifled my yawn and jumped up, pretending an energy I didn't possess and padded across the room to look over his shoulder at the document open on his computer screen.
I read the first sentence: She was sat outside on the bench...
“No no no!” I cried, jumping back as if stung.
“What what what!” he echoed.
“Your grammar, darling! Were you asleep at school - daydreaming about girls you couldn't have perhaps? No publisher will take a first sentence like that!”
“Isn't that your job, Felicity, to see that I don't make mistakes?” he replied resentfully.
“God, no! The technique of writing is all yours. If you can't express yourself well, then it's nothing to do with me!”
“What's the problem anyway? I don't see anything wrong.”
I paced back into the centre of the room. Bad grammar has a strong effect on me! Language, words, the placement of them, the choice of vocabulary, their rhythm, melody and harmony - those are the building blocks of writing. Ideas alone cannot a magnum opus make! And in this sphere I am quite unable to help them. I tried all the same, speaking rapidly. “Sit, sat, sat! Intransitive in all respects unless you really mean someone else took her up and physically placed her on the bench and therefore you could say that she was sat! Otherwise you make nonsense of the English language - 'to sit' can never be passive! 'She was sat on the bench' - don't be ridiculous!”
Now he sulked. “People very often say 'was sat'.”
“Doesn't make it correct!”
“Why are you being so stubborn, Felicity, so critical? I thought you'd be pleased I'd written anything at all. This is only the first sentence!”
“It's a bloody awful one and you know it, not just in terms of the grammar. Take 'the bench': what bench? Have you mentioned a bench before? Of course you haven't, it's the first sentence! And who is 'she' anyway, the cat's mother? Give her a name, for God's sake - you're not skilful enough yet to be pretentious and overly stylized!”
“Have you finished?”
I shrugged and smiled pleasantly, flopping back down onto the sofa. “I suppose so.”
He stared at the keyboard, his gaze fixed, his brows knitted together. Maybe he was trying not to cry. I felt sorry for him, really I did, for I liked him; sometimes I felt I liked him too much, but his determination not to be as good as I felt sure he could be and the bad way he took criticism was deeply frustrating. He would never cut it in the wide world of publishing at this rate.
“You are capricious, Felicity,” he said finally, deeply. “Yet somehow I don't mind. You're straight with me and I appreciate that, especially after -.” He passed a hand across his face and sighed. “You do make me miserable though with all your demands and criticism of my methods!”
I crossed back to him and rested my hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. “Ironic, isn't it? I murmured, “considering what you named me.” He tilted his head back and met my gaze. He had very beautiful eyes. “You do understand irony, don't you?”
“Of course.” He smiled up at me, a closed lipped, rueful smile. “I'm a writer, or I try to be: irony is my second name and subtext my third!”
I smiled back, liking the way he said 'subtext'. If writing did not work out for him, perhaps he could consider acting. I could easily see him in one of those BBC period dramas wearing lots of hats and a wet, white shirt and speaking very beautiful RP English.
We looked at each other a long while and then I squeezed his shoulder again. “You should get some sleep now. Everything will seem better afterwards.”
“Yes. What about you? Will you - will you stay?”
“I need sleep too but not here. We're too involved. I don't think we would get much rest if I stayed.”
“But you will be back?” He looked anxious.
I laughed and blew him a kiss. “Don't be silly, darling! I always come back eventually.”
*
I did not, however, return to him and his light, pleasant Notting Hill flat and all those cups of coffee for several days. Instead I paced the streets of London, pondering, analysing, as women are wont to do. I had let him get too close to me, was allowing him under my skin. Not since I was the girl they all called Corinna had I tied myself so strongly to an author. Ah, we had amused ourselves, Publius and I. He had understood me as no-one else ever did and together we had killed an entire genre of poetry. What were the likes of Lesbia, Cynthia and Delia compared to me? Simpler women for simpler poets. How we had laughed! How we had loved!
My novelist would not be like that. For all his appreciation of my levity, he still took himself seriously and he took love seriously. The latter was not necessarily a problem but the former was irretrievable. He had not yet learned his lesson. I made my way to his flat with a reluctant tread.
When I appeared in the doorway he looked almost wild and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Felicity! How - how could you go for so long? I've been imagining all sorts of terrible fates for you!”
I gently detached myself. “Ridiculous boy! What do you think could have happened to me?”
“My editor rang, you know, Felicity. What do you think I had to say to him?”
“I can't imagine.”
“I said I'd written nothing for days, that you, my treacherous girl, had deserted me.”
I laughed, sharp and hard, feigning indifference. “What did he say?”
“He told me to grow a pair!” muttered my author, embarrassed.
“Sensible man, and so you should! Don't rely on me and don't blame me when your creative well runs dry!” I was serious now and stood in front of him. I laid my hand flat on his chest, thrilling at the feel of his heart beat for it was the same as mine. “Here, here is the source of your inspiration. Your ideas are your own and if you have none and cannot write, here is where you must lay the blame.”
He looked down at my hand on his chest and then back into my eyes with such reliance and sweetness. “You would deny your own existence, dearest Felicity?”
“I would have you understand the truth of it all before -”
I broke off because he kissed me, pulling me close to him and pressing his lips keenly to mine. I allowed it for a moment, my eyes fluttering shut in pleasure and the rest of my sentence dissolving into a sigh. It had been a couple of centuries since anyone had dared to kiss me like this. Dared, or been so foolish. I pushed him away; we were both breathing hard.
“We are the same,” I told him between gasps. “I am in no way separate from you. Go - go kiss your beautiful girl and find your inspiration and your happiness with her!”
He shook his head and clutched my hands tightly. “Her? She is nothing! I have banished her from my thoughts! But you - you, Felicity! You make me so miserable and yet I love you! You fascinating, incomprehensible creature! I think of you, not her, every hour of every day! Every moment I long for you and yet you do not come and I wait for you, imagine your arrival, and then you are there and I feel such pain and such pleasure! You are my inspiration now! You are my muse!”
He tried to kiss me again but I pulled away from him, warding him off with my hands, laughing joyously. “My job is done! You suffer eloquently and will write even more so! You have no more need of me.”
“But Felicity, I love you! You are all that matters to me. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, whatever the cost. Who am I to believe in if not you?”
I rolled my eyes. “Believe in yourself! It's what you're already doing if only you'd let yourself see it.”
Any moment now we'd start singing Disney songs and talking about the American dream. I hate this kind of sentimentality but authors seem to need their metaphors and anthropomorphic manifestations and I suppose I have to approve it.
“But you will leave me then. Just like she did. You have the same look she did. I'm a writer: I notice these things, more than you'd imagine.” He looked at me sadly but with a growing sense of pride and self.
I laughed. “So you are. A writer. Here, I'll give you one last idea. We are not so different, are we, your girl and I? Perhaps you might like to think about that for you do seem to go for the same types. Next time you rebound, darling, why not go for someone a bit different? Just a thought!”
He shook his head and smiled faintly. “I don't think it would work, Felicity, but there could be a novel in it all the same.”
“Novels have been written on the basis of much less!”
We said our goodbyes with proper English restraint and a complete inability to say what really needed saying. I had started out brash but he had brought me down to his level. Not that it was truly goodbye anyway for I would never really leave him nor do I ever forget my authors.
At the door I hesitated. Perhaps I simply wanted to give him a final chapter that suggested a sequel or maybe there really was some unresolved subtext between us. Whatever my motivations, I turned around at the last minute, hand on the door frame and looked back at him, part flirtatious, part longing, part stubborn. Capricious to the end, that's me. He met my eyes, his lips slightly parted in wonder (was it right to let me go? Could he return to his old life? Could we be saved? What was it that really mattered?), his hands shoved in his pockets. I held his gaze just a moment too long and then turned away. As for what it all meant and what happened next, your guess is as good as mine.
All comments are of course welcome. By which I mean, all positive comments are welcome. ;)
I'm not sure the story works mainly because I am not entirely sure I get it myself. It is in places moderately clever, always extremely pretentious and quite possibly utterly incomprehensible. It's about the art of writing really, I suppose, but what else it might be about is up to you! Please don't be put off reading it because it's not fanfiction. You might find interest in it all the same!
Exclusively posted here! :)
Disclaimer: J K Rowling owns the quotation from 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'. At least, she'd like you to think she did.
Felicity
He was not very promising when I first saw him - all floppy hair, crisp shirt untucked over jeans, flat in Notting Hill, all that kind of thing. A walking, talking literary cliché of a certain genre, if you like. He had a boring name too, chosen for a saint or a dead king, I forget which now. Such a very English Englishman.
He was very glad to see me, of course. Men are predictable and authors are no different from the rest of the species. His eyes lit up when I arrived in the room and I kissed him (on the cheek, of course) for luck. It seemed like a nice thing to do. Then I perched on the edge of his desk and swung my legs idly.
“Well then, what do you want to write about?” I asked, cutting to the chase. I don't believe in hanging around: if you have something to say, then say it, don't beat around the bush. It's just the kind of girl I am. On the other hand, if you don't have anything to say, you probably shouldn't be in this business in the first place.
He shrugged. “I don't really know. What do you think?”
Like I said, not very promising.
“Me? What has it to do with me?” I acted innocent; it was more fun that way.
“With you? But you're -”
I admit it: he did look quite cute when he was confused. I raised my eyebrows, challenged him. “I'm what?”
He shook his head rather helplessly. “You're in my study!”
“I know! It's not very big, is it?” I cast my eyes disdainfully round the room. It was a pretty decent size actually but complimenting it would have made for very boring dialogue. We would have moved onto the weather in no time after that.
“I manage!” he returned defensively, as if I'd criticized the way he used his fish knife or something ridiculous like that and it actually mattered.
I ignored his wounded pride. “What about love?”
He stared up at me like a deer caught in the headlights (what a bad simile! Has anyone ever actually seen a deer caught in the headlights? I suppose only if they're about to run it over - splat). I've been told I have a very demanding and direct gaze and I fixed it on him now. Then again, I've been told a lot of things, most of them inaccurate.
“Love?” he stuttered. “What about love?”
“Love!” I repeated, jumping down from the desk and circling round him, trailing my hand along his shoulder and forcing him to squirm in his seat to keep me in view. (They pretend not to like it when I tease them but they love it really. It makes them feel important; the artistic temperament, you know.) “Everyone wants to write about love. Either love or violence, that is, and if you're into the latter then I'm definitely the wrong person for you.”
I shuddered at that thought. (Simulated, of course, for I was not worried. His hair was far too nice for him to write nasty books.)
“Haven't you ever been in love?”
“I had someone,” he answered eventually, reluctantly, “but she left me.”
“Ah, she left you or you left her? Are you quite sure who did the leaving? There are always two sides to every story - remember that! Write about that then - you know you want to!”
“Actually, I'd prefer not to. It's very raw still.”
I leaned forwards, very close to him. “Raw is good. Use the rawness. Channel that emotion!”
He swallowed, nervous. (As he should be.) “I'd rather -”
“Oh, in that case, don't!” I danced away from him. “It was only an idea, a vain fancy of mine. Don't feel you need to listen to me!”
He followed my every movement with his eyes now. “I suppose I could try to write something about it...”
I snapped my fingers at him, all smiles. “Yes! That's the spirit! Change her name, make her blonde (she was a brunette, wasn't she? I thought I knew your type - look at me!) but keep the rest! What went wrong? What was the misunderstanding? Why did you leave her?”
“Look here, she left me!”
“Of course you left her! And even if you didn't, who cares about you? You want to write about her.”
“I don't. I want to forget her. I want to move on.”
“Nonsense, you want to write about her. You want to understand her. It's all anyone ever wants to do.”
He was silent now and contemplative, but he did not deny it which was something. I love it when they give in to me. I watched him quietly, taking my cue from him. I was a good girl most of the time. Finally he looked up at me, his expression set but resigned. I raised one eyebrow.
When he spoke it was with greater caution and a lawyer's precision. I was surprised - pleased, surprised - I hadn't thought he had it in him. “If we are going to discuss these - these intimate details of my life, which you seem to know so much about already, then I think we need to establish a few things first.”
I nodded, showing him I was on his side. Of course I was: there was no other side to be on.
“What should I call you?”
“Whatever you like, my darling!” I cried, eyes sparkling. “I am yours after all.”
He hesitated a moment. He thought he was in charge now (how easily deluded men are) and observed me closely. He licked his lips before replying. “You must have a name of your own. Everyone has a name.”
I shrugged. “I've been called many things by many people. Capricious. Flighty. Foolish. Impatient. Also stubborn. Hard. Mulish. Sometimes deserter. Take your pick!”
“My dear girl, those aren't names, they're adjectives, and not very nice ones at that. I don't believe you're like that at all.”
“Don't you? Poor thing!” I turned away with a mocking smile.
“Capricious though, that I can believe,” he returned and though he spoke pensively I could hear a smile in his voice. We were getting to know one another now and he was growing on me. I liked a man who wasn't afraid to play a few games.
“Oh, I'm capricious alright. The essence of caprice!” Nice word, caprice. Good sounds to get your tongue round.
“Can I name you then? It's odd your not having one.”
I had been expecting this. People feel more comfortable with names. Of course, an author can choose not to name a character but they have to have a reason for it and this one seemed too conventional to go down that route, at least for the moment. “Of course. Anything you like. Provided it is deep and very significant!” I grinned.
He leaned back in his chair and observed me some more (it was alright; I like being looked at), subconsciously tapping his notepad with his pen. A doctor faced with an inexplicable patient could not have given the question more serious consideration. Well, I may be inexplicable but I wasn't his patient so I simple leaned back against the window sill and and let him take his time.
“I think I'll call you Felicity. You see,” he added rather breathlessly when I raised my eyebrows, “I think you could make me very happy.”
I blushed, I actually blushed; he was so adorably earnest. It wouldn't last, of course, for an author must always be open to the possibility that he might not be saying what he thought he was saying. I did not let the blush get to me, however, but laughed it off, saying coyly, “We'll see about that. It's a two-way system, you know, and you have to work for your supper!”
*
We met for dinner the next night in one of those lovely and terribly expensive bistros in that area of London. He ordered a bottle of rather good red wine and I lit a cigarette. It seemed that for all his bluster my writer was something of a hedonist. I could get used to that.
Food ordered, I leaned back in my chair. “Tell me about her, this girl of yours.”
He smiled, more relaxed out here being sociable than he had been in his flat. “She was beautiful.” He sounded wistful.
“Go on. Get the clichés out of the way first.”
“Taller than you... sylph like!”
“Please! You callin' me fat?” I adopted a modern attitude and accent. Joke on.
“N- no! Of course not. You're more … voluptuous.”
I blinked, moistened my lips. There was something about the way he said 'voluptuous'...
“Well, go on! She was a tall, skinny beauty. Anything else or was that the limit of her attractions? She sounds deadly dull. Nobody will buy your book!”
“Now you're being hard, Felicity.”
“And a little bit impatient perhaps? Oh, I know!”
His lips twitched. “I'm trying. She was too complex a creature to sum up using normal language.”
I scoffed. “You're no James Joyce - trust me, I met him, boring old sod - so I recommend trying to stick to normal language if you possibly can.”
“Sarcastic too? My my, Felicity!”
I coolly tapped out the ash from my cigarette. “Continue to insult me like this and I'll just leave.”
“Before the food's arrived? Come on, I know you won't do that! You ordered the most expensive item on the menu.”
“I'm an expensive girl to have around.”
“So it seems,” he commented drily and his eyes flickered to the bottle of wine. They narrowed. “I don't do this sort of thing usually. Are you so determined to corrupt me, Felicity?”
“I corrupt you?” I blew a jet of smoke out over his shoulder. “Don't you want to be corrupted then?”
“I suppose I must do at some level.”
“But we were talking of your girl, your beautiful girl. Your muse.” I spoke scornfully and leaned forwards over the table and fixed him with my most direct stare. “What about sex?”
He choked into his wine. “Sex? Felicity, you can't just -”
“Oh, can't I? Come on, you must have done it! Unless...” I opened my eyes very wide. “No... Don't tell me: when you say 'she left you', what you mean is you never had her in the first place!” I began to make as if I was leaving. “You're nothing but a fantasist, that's what you are! Pathetic!”
“Felicity!” He grabbed my wrist across the table and I stilled immediately. “Don't be so foolish - what's wrong with a writer fantasizing? Anyway, of course we had sex - at least, we probably shouldn't have, but we did - several times actually - but I don't think it's relevant. I don't write that sort of thing and, well, I'm not comfortable discussing it, even with you!”
“Even with me? Poor boy, you can have no secrets from me! Whether you write it explicitly or not, sex is never irrelevant. And people like it. They want to read about you and your girl getting it on! If it's not there in some form they might start wondering why - and that'll be pretty awkward for you, won't it?”
“I don't want to have this conversation. Who had sex with whom in the past and why they did it - that's not one of the things that matter in life.”
I threw up my hands and stood up, scraping my chair back on the terrace. “Fine! Do what you like! But you'll never write a good story with that attitude.”
I turned my back on him and walked away. Before the food came. I like to prove them wrong: it keeps them on their toes.
“You're abandoning me!” he wailed at my back.
My lips, my faithless, stubborn, capricious lips curved into a smile.
*
“Are you real?” he asked me later, back in his flat. We were both calmer now and he'd had a chance to think things out.
“It depends what you mean by 'real'.”
“Or are you just in my head?”
I shrugged. “Of course it's happening in your head, but why on earth should that mean it's not real?”
“That's a quote from -”
“I know. But it was mine first.”
“Yours? Was it really?”
I nodded, smug. “One of my more successful partnerships, that.”
He was hesitant but finally he said, “You've had many others, haven't you? Before me, I mean.”
I laughed. “God, you didn't think you were my first, did you? In this day and age?”
“I suppose not. Not really. There's always a part of one that wants to be the first though, I think, however impossible it may turn out to be. Were they all novelists?”
“Oh no! Painters, composers, poets... you name it!”
“You have got around!” He sounded somewhere between miserable and impressed.
“Jealous, are you, darling? I'm not steady, you know, so don't expect me to be!”
I began to hum (subtextually) 'La Donna è mobile'. He didn't get it though so I had to spell it out, lifting one shoulder in an elegant shrug. “The inconstancy of woman! He wrote it for me, you know.”
He stared. “Were you just the same to Verdi as you are to me?”
“Don't be daft! He was old - and Italian! But it was still me.”
“So.” He ran his hand through his hair as he thought, fluffing it even more. “You are a shared consciousness of some kind then. An anthropomorphic manifestation of -”
He broke off as I closed my eyes and made a little noise of appreciation in my throat.
“What?”
“You sounded so sexy when you said 'anthropomorphic manifestation'!”
He blinked and reached desperately for his coffee. “Really?”
“Oh yes, you should say more long words!”
“I'll try... to please you, Felicity.”
I beamed at him over the rim of my cup. “Good boy.”
*
He stayed up all night writing, his study littered with half-drunk cups of coffee and his hair getting wilder and wilder as he ran his hands through it trying to tease out the ideas. I sat quietly on the sofa with my legs curled under me and read one of his many Henry James novels.
Finally, as light began to appear in the east, he swivelled round in his chair and murmured, “Felicity, are you awake? Do you want to read it? I don't think I can do any more tonight...”
I was very tired, ridiculously tired, but I stifled my yawn and jumped up, pretending an energy I didn't possess and padded across the room to look over his shoulder at the document open on his computer screen.
I read the first sentence: She was sat outside on the bench...
“No no no!” I cried, jumping back as if stung.
“What what what!” he echoed.
“Your grammar, darling! Were you asleep at school - daydreaming about girls you couldn't have perhaps? No publisher will take a first sentence like that!”
“Isn't that your job, Felicity, to see that I don't make mistakes?” he replied resentfully.
“God, no! The technique of writing is all yours. If you can't express yourself well, then it's nothing to do with me!”
“What's the problem anyway? I don't see anything wrong.”
I paced back into the centre of the room. Bad grammar has a strong effect on me! Language, words, the placement of them, the choice of vocabulary, their rhythm, melody and harmony - those are the building blocks of writing. Ideas alone cannot a magnum opus make! And in this sphere I am quite unable to help them. I tried all the same, speaking rapidly. “Sit, sat, sat! Intransitive in all respects unless you really mean someone else took her up and physically placed her on the bench and therefore you could say that she was sat! Otherwise you make nonsense of the English language - 'to sit' can never be passive! 'She was sat on the bench' - don't be ridiculous!”
Now he sulked. “People very often say 'was sat'.”
“Doesn't make it correct!”
“Why are you being so stubborn, Felicity, so critical? I thought you'd be pleased I'd written anything at all. This is only the first sentence!”
“It's a bloody awful one and you know it, not just in terms of the grammar. Take 'the bench': what bench? Have you mentioned a bench before? Of course you haven't, it's the first sentence! And who is 'she' anyway, the cat's mother? Give her a name, for God's sake - you're not skilful enough yet to be pretentious and overly stylized!”
“Have you finished?”
I shrugged and smiled pleasantly, flopping back down onto the sofa. “I suppose so.”
He stared at the keyboard, his gaze fixed, his brows knitted together. Maybe he was trying not to cry. I felt sorry for him, really I did, for I liked him; sometimes I felt I liked him too much, but his determination not to be as good as I felt sure he could be and the bad way he took criticism was deeply frustrating. He would never cut it in the wide world of publishing at this rate.
“You are capricious, Felicity,” he said finally, deeply. “Yet somehow I don't mind. You're straight with me and I appreciate that, especially after -.” He passed a hand across his face and sighed. “You do make me miserable though with all your demands and criticism of my methods!”
I crossed back to him and rested my hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. “Ironic, isn't it? I murmured, “considering what you named me.” He tilted his head back and met my gaze. He had very beautiful eyes. “You do understand irony, don't you?”
“Of course.” He smiled up at me, a closed lipped, rueful smile. “I'm a writer, or I try to be: irony is my second name and subtext my third!”
I smiled back, liking the way he said 'subtext'. If writing did not work out for him, perhaps he could consider acting. I could easily see him in one of those BBC period dramas wearing lots of hats and a wet, white shirt and speaking very beautiful RP English.
We looked at each other a long while and then I squeezed his shoulder again. “You should get some sleep now. Everything will seem better afterwards.”
“Yes. What about you? Will you - will you stay?”
“I need sleep too but not here. We're too involved. I don't think we would get much rest if I stayed.”
“But you will be back?” He looked anxious.
I laughed and blew him a kiss. “Don't be silly, darling! I always come back eventually.”
*
I did not, however, return to him and his light, pleasant Notting Hill flat and all those cups of coffee for several days. Instead I paced the streets of London, pondering, analysing, as women are wont to do. I had let him get too close to me, was allowing him under my skin. Not since I was the girl they all called Corinna had I tied myself so strongly to an author. Ah, we had amused ourselves, Publius and I. He had understood me as no-one else ever did and together we had killed an entire genre of poetry. What were the likes of Lesbia, Cynthia and Delia compared to me? Simpler women for simpler poets. How we had laughed! How we had loved!
My novelist would not be like that. For all his appreciation of my levity, he still took himself seriously and he took love seriously. The latter was not necessarily a problem but the former was irretrievable. He had not yet learned his lesson. I made my way to his flat with a reluctant tread.
When I appeared in the doorway he looked almost wild and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Felicity! How - how could you go for so long? I've been imagining all sorts of terrible fates for you!”
I gently detached myself. “Ridiculous boy! What do you think could have happened to me?”
“My editor rang, you know, Felicity. What do you think I had to say to him?”
“I can't imagine.”
“I said I'd written nothing for days, that you, my treacherous girl, had deserted me.”
I laughed, sharp and hard, feigning indifference. “What did he say?”
“He told me to grow a pair!” muttered my author, embarrassed.
“Sensible man, and so you should! Don't rely on me and don't blame me when your creative well runs dry!” I was serious now and stood in front of him. I laid my hand flat on his chest, thrilling at the feel of his heart beat for it was the same as mine. “Here, here is the source of your inspiration. Your ideas are your own and if you have none and cannot write, here is where you must lay the blame.”
He looked down at my hand on his chest and then back into my eyes with such reliance and sweetness. “You would deny your own existence, dearest Felicity?”
“I would have you understand the truth of it all before -”
I broke off because he kissed me, pulling me close to him and pressing his lips keenly to mine. I allowed it for a moment, my eyes fluttering shut in pleasure and the rest of my sentence dissolving into a sigh. It had been a couple of centuries since anyone had dared to kiss me like this. Dared, or been so foolish. I pushed him away; we were both breathing hard.
“We are the same,” I told him between gasps. “I am in no way separate from you. Go - go kiss your beautiful girl and find your inspiration and your happiness with her!”
He shook his head and clutched my hands tightly. “Her? She is nothing! I have banished her from my thoughts! But you - you, Felicity! You make me so miserable and yet I love you! You fascinating, incomprehensible creature! I think of you, not her, every hour of every day! Every moment I long for you and yet you do not come and I wait for you, imagine your arrival, and then you are there and I feel such pain and such pleasure! You are my inspiration now! You are my muse!”
He tried to kiss me again but I pulled away from him, warding him off with my hands, laughing joyously. “My job is done! You suffer eloquently and will write even more so! You have no more need of me.”
“But Felicity, I love you! You are all that matters to me. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, whatever the cost. Who am I to believe in if not you?”
I rolled my eyes. “Believe in yourself! It's what you're already doing if only you'd let yourself see it.”
Any moment now we'd start singing Disney songs and talking about the American dream. I hate this kind of sentimentality but authors seem to need their metaphors and anthropomorphic manifestations and I suppose I have to approve it.
“But you will leave me then. Just like she did. You have the same look she did. I'm a writer: I notice these things, more than you'd imagine.” He looked at me sadly but with a growing sense of pride and self.
I laughed. “So you are. A writer. Here, I'll give you one last idea. We are not so different, are we, your girl and I? Perhaps you might like to think about that for you do seem to go for the same types. Next time you rebound, darling, why not go for someone a bit different? Just a thought!”
He shook his head and smiled faintly. “I don't think it would work, Felicity, but there could be a novel in it all the same.”
“Novels have been written on the basis of much less!”
We said our goodbyes with proper English restraint and a complete inability to say what really needed saying. I had started out brash but he had brought me down to his level. Not that it was truly goodbye anyway for I would never really leave him nor do I ever forget my authors.
At the door I hesitated. Perhaps I simply wanted to give him a final chapter that suggested a sequel or maybe there really was some unresolved subtext between us. Whatever my motivations, I turned around at the last minute, hand on the door frame and looked back at him, part flirtatious, part longing, part stubborn. Capricious to the end, that's me. He met my eyes, his lips slightly parted in wonder (was it right to let me go? Could he return to his old life? Could we be saved? What was it that really mattered?), his hands shoved in his pockets. I held his gaze just a moment too long and then turned away. As for what it all meant and what happened next, your guess is as good as mine.
All comments are of course welcome. By which I mean, all positive comments are welcome. ;)