Nanowrimo Winner

[Total Word Count: 47,221]

“He didn’t read it,” said Katie, looming up suddenly over my shoulder.

“Uh, whah?”

“He didn’t read the spreadsheet with the story in,” she explained, “You were really lucky. Only normally he reads everything. But apparently last night he had a leaking pipe in his roof, and spent hours trying to get it patched up. He only read about half of his papers. I took it out again this morning, so you’re alright.”

Can this be true? Is everything beginning to come up roses? Steely self-control now.

“Oh, that’s great,” I said, temperately, “It would only have annoyed him. Thanks for that.”

“Have you got the proper version?”

“The wha?”

“The proper version, without the story? You said you would dig it out for me.”

“Oh yeah. I think I deleted it, You could just delete the second sheet off the other one, the one with the story.”

“Oh, sorry, I don’t know where I put it. Could you send it to me again?”

“I deleted… Yeah, no, I’ll dig out a proper copy and send it to you. OK?”

“OK then. Cheers!”

“Cheers, Katie.”

I can’t believe the magic of the re-write! As soon as I deleted those fateful words ‘The End’, and added an upbeat epilogue, my real life immediately started going right again. After she’d gone, I solemnly stood up in my little cubicle and began to sing.

“Zip-a-de-doo-dah! Zip-a dee-ay! Mah oh ma-ah, what a wonderful day! Plenny of sunshine, heading mah way…”

“Shut the fuck up.” said Martin next door.

I shut up – I didn’t want anyone taking an interest in why I was so happy. But in my heart, gentle reader, the choir and congregation of Wenham were singing.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread,
Are big with mercy, and shall break,
In blessings on your head.

Oh yeah.

I had a surprising amount of stuff to catch up with that day: it’s amazing what can build up during a day of total inertia. But I worked with a will, and hurried home eagerly. There was time to draft a few extra words.

“What’s going on, Charlie?”

“Wedding, your ladyship. Mrs Botham’s younger girl Mary is getting married. Looks like they’ve just come out of the church.”

“Pull up, and let’s see.” said Lady Jane curiously, “It just shows, you know, we think everything stops when there’s a murder investigation, but actually life goes on, doesn’t it?”

Charlie pulled up discreetly in the lane and they walked back to the old lych-gate. The bride and groom, already covered in confetti, were having their pictures taken against the grey old stone of the looming church.

Mary, the bride, looked genuinely radiant, much prettier than Charlie remembered: she was in a resplendent white dress with a veil caught back over her head. Even the groom looked happy: normally in Wenham, grooms looked pale and uncertain, oppressed and enfeebled by the powerful oestrogenic magic of the occasion, and perhaps by what they had drunk the night before. But for once Joe too looked as if his dignity and happiness were blossoming with the promise of a new and better life ahead.

“God bless!” said Charlie softly, “May all your troubles be little ones!”

“I’m afraid,” said a voice in his ear, “that at least one of them will be. She’s pregnant, and he’s not the father.”

Startled, Charlie turned. Lady Jane had a smile on her face which he didn’t like at all.

“Sorry,” she said, “but that’s what they’re saying in the village. There’s actually more talk about that one prospective birth than all four Fidgett deaths, if you ask me…”

Christ, she may look like Diana Rigg, but that woman really is a cow. She’s got a mind of her own, somehow; I’m almost ashamed to have created her. I deleted the last bit – she can keep her village gossip to herself. I am in charge now, gentle reader, and all shall be sweetness and light, in Wenham as in reality. No further shadows will fall across my manuscript or for that matter, my life. I saved and switched off.

I debated whether I should take flowers to Julie this time. Like I said before, it seems a weak, hackneyed gesture, but I was once told very firmly by Julie that weak and hackneyed gestures are better than none. In the end, I stopped off at the hospital and got some. You can always buy flowers at a hospital.

It seemed as if it were a long time since I had waited in the lift lobby of Julie’s block: I almost felt nostalgic. There was a slightly awkward moment when she opened the door and we both wondered whether I was going to try to kiss her, but we were soon sitting down with a glass of prosecco.

“Damn,” I said, “I could have brought the Nanowrimo bottle of Cristal if I’d thought.

She looked at me quizzically.

“I’m glad you didn’t.” she said.

The place was a tip: two weeks’ worth of newspapers and magazines everywhere and pairs of shoes under every chair. My experienced eye could tell that Julie had had a quick last-minute clean-up, but to most people it would not have been obvious: Julie’s clean-ups usually consisted of arranging the rubbish more artistically. She actually had a stack of banana peels and used coffee filters sitting on the kitchen counter.

Leaving stuff on the floor is the key, gentle reader. If you’re not a tidy person, your desk and table may get a bit out of control from time to time. Your real problems only begin when you start to use the floor as a storage space. It may not seem much to begin with – just leave a few papers on the carpet by the side of the desk until you’ve got space – but more dumps become established, they sprawl and spread, and before you know where you are, you’re having to pick your way across the room, stepping over used take-away containers and dirty plates, unwashed clothes and unemptied carrier bags, in order to reach the only small spot on the sofa which isn’t piled up with tissue boxes and piles of washing.

OK, Julie’s place is not like that, but I’ve seen the early symptoms. As we sat down to dinner, I tactfully shuffled the pair of shoes under my chair to one side. I quite liked the messiness really; it had the sort of endearing quality which women on detergent ads are so struck by when their small sons turn up at the door covered in mud. Know what I mean?

“I’ve never understood this novel-writing business,” Julie confessed, when we had made the first inroads into our whitebait, “Perhaps that’s why I’ve been a bit impatient at times. I mean, not many people feel they could write a great symphony. Not many people feel a frustrated urge to turn out a great painting. Yet half the world seems to think they’re potential Charles Dickenses. What is it about novels?”

“I think they look easy,” I admitted, “We all write. Not many of us draw, and hardly anyone writes music. OK, we don’t write novels, or even fiction, but you know, we write complicated stuff all the time: we feel we have the basic skills in a way we don’t when it comes to painting or music. It’s the same with singing, probably – too many people feel they can do it.”

“There might be something in that,” she granted, “But why do people even want to? Surely people realise that they’re not going to win the Nobel prize?”

“I don’t think so, any more than people realise it’s too late for them to be Elvis. Hope springs eternal. But there are deeper motives, you know, wanting to create something instead of just absorbing, having something you want to express: I don’t know. Why does anybody want to do anything?”

I thought about it for a bit and something else occurred to me.

“The Nanowrimo thing, though, that’s like a game. I mean, it’s like you set out to complete fifty levels of some game; it sort of gets compulsive. You think you’ll just get to the big boss battle at the end of the level, and then you think you’ll just have a little look at the next bit. But above all, once you’ve made some real progress, you can’t bear to throw it away. You’re hooked, until you can see that screen at the end.”

“I don’t really know what you’re talking about,” said Julie, “You mean you’ve become like one of those people who get up and leave a restaurant half-way through a meal, or wake up at two in the morning, in order to go and play, what is it? World of Lovecraft or something? The people who play until their eyes bleed?”

“Not exactly,” I replied, “But I like the sound of World of Lovecraft.”

As the meal wore on – and it was a good one, helped out somewhat by Julie having bought most of it in prepared form from Marks and Spencer, not that she’s really a bad cook – things kind of settled back towards normality and the initial tension drained away.

As we sat on the sofa with brandy, Julie put on a more serious expression.

“This Mouse,” she asked, “It wasn’t serious at all? Please be honest. If you think we should…”

“No, no, really: I was just pissed and depressed. I mean, she’s nice, but… I was stupid. Oh by the way. Why did you sort of laugh when I first told you?”

She blushed.

“Well,” she said, without meeting my eye, “To be honest, it made me think of that book, you know? Los Angeles Without A Map? Where our hero reads about this man who has been arrested for groping one of the characters in Disneyland, and he thinks: surely this is the nadir of sexual desperation, to assault Minnie Mouse? Alright, not fair, but it was what just came to mind. Sorry.”

“That must be one of your books,” I said; actually, I thought I did remember it.

“We’ll need to talk about it all if we’re going to sort things out. But not now. Not while the curse of Nanowrimo is still in the air.”

“Yeah, I was beginning to think of it as a kind of curse,” I confessed.

“By the way, just in case you were wondering, you’re on the sofa tonight. If you’re staying. Sorry.”

I didn’t mind. I took it for granted that there was going to be period of political re-education, a time of penitence. The least I could expect, and probably more than I deserved.

“Would it… would it be OK if I just did a few hundred words?” I asked.

She sort of hesitated, and for a moment I thought I’d made a ghastly false move.

“Yes, of course. I’m going to bed, anyway. Goodnight.” She gave me a chaste peck on the forehead.

I sat down at the little desk, and with a sigh took out the old lap-top. I had very nearly decided to leave the damn thing behind, so as not to muck up the atmosphere of reconciliation, but the trouble is, missing the 50,000 narrowly would be really stupid – far worse than missing by a mile, or never really getting started. I had reached the point where I was actually slightly ahead of target, a really good place to be at this stage of the game, not something to throw away lightly. I found it difficult to concentrate at first, but then I hit on the idea of a passage early on where D.I. Cuffley makes a first appearance, behaves like a pompous idiot, and generally gets off on the wrong foot.

“May I ask, young lady, by what authority you are conducting this investigation? Are you a police officer?”

Lady Jane smiled, “Anyone can ask questions, Detective Inspector. Can’t they?”

“I think you’ll find it advisable to keep away from criminal events of this nature, “ said Cuffley, “And allow the professionals to do their work…”

“Oh no,” interrupted Lady Jane, “That would be career suicide, I’m afraid. I’m a bit of a journalist, you see? I don’t seem to have my card with me, but you could ask the Commissioner if you wanted to, you know, check my bona fides. I had dinner over at his lovely house the other day: his wife was at school with one of my cousins. It is a lovely house, isn’t it? I really think we might do a feature on it.”

Cuffley stood silent for a moment.

“I think that would be much more suitable than what you’re doing, if you don’t mind my saying so.” he said. “ A nice piece about furniture.”

Standard stuff, really, bit of a cliché even, but then those are the easiest to write. After about an hour, I saved and switched off. Julie had switched off most of the lights and cleared the table. Except for the wine bottle. The wine bottle. The wine bottle.

Faletcher’s eyes bugged out of his head as if he was about to undergo explosive decompression in a vacuum. As he sat in the tiny chair, he seemed to age visibly, and to feel the sudden onset of some serious degenerative disease, affecting his co-ordination and his breathing. His face went pale, and then at once went red. With a low moan, he stood up in a twisted, half-hunched posture, staring at the bottle fixedly. Small spasms ran through his frame, and he made a strangled noise like the kind of thing Dr Jekyll might have come out with while trying desperately not to turn into Mr Hyde. He limped towards the table like Quasimodo, and then, suddenly, the conflict seemed to resolve itself. He straightened, paused for a moment as if gathering his breath, picked up his jacket from the peg in the hall, opened the door softly and slid out into the night.