Nanowrimo Winner

[Final Total Word Count: 53,547]

The end is nigh, gentle reader. It’s nearly over. It seems hard to believe, but less than 500 words now stand between us and the summit: Nanowrimo!

It’s been tough along the way, I acknowledge. The rest of my life has taken a number of knocks while I’ve been closeted with the laptop. But I’ve grown, gentle reader, I’ve learned to value my own qualities, and I’ve learnt that I must take charge of my own life. A new life and a better, more mature Faletcher lie ahead.

And you know, I’m actually quite pleased with Wenham, too. It’s going to need a lot of revision, obviously, and probably some expansion. Not to mention some editing. It pains me to think of cutting it back down to about 30,000 words, but it’s going to have to be done before I start adding again. So there’s a long way to go, but let me be quite honest and open; I really don’t see why, at the end of it, there shouldn’t be a half-decent, perhaps even a viable book come out of it. Don’t worry, I’m not back on the Booker prize tack, and I realise it may just be the euphoria of completion that’s speaking here, but at the end of the day, when all’s said and done, taking everything into account… why the hell not?

I rang Julie earlier on and told her that within about an hour, all being well, the thing would be done, and asked her to come over and celebrate. So now, gentle reader, the last little insertion into the text…

…is done. No, I’m not going to give you a sample of it this time. It’s a kind of inverted Hardy passage where I go on soppily about how in spite of the dullness of the landscape round about Wenham, there’s a property in the soil that brings good out of bad, and how the three years of blight fertilise the land for the seven years of plenty that follow. Alright, it might be a bit out of key with some of the other stuff, but I’m determined to put a bit of optimistic uplift in, and not merely because I’ve developed this superstitious fear about the story having some kind of ghastly influence over me. I’m free of it now, anyway.

Right on cue, Julie rang the doorbell – I told her she should use her key – and came in.

“So it’s really finished?” she asked.

“Yes, that’s it. Well, I have to upload the stuff and get it counted officially, but the writing is done.”

“Congratulations!” she said, and kissed me on the cheek. “I’m really impressed with your determination.”

“Have a seat,” I said, “I’ll open the champagne.”

“Wait a minute,” she said solemnly, “Come and sit down. We need a talk first.”

Clearly I had to sign up to a few basic protocols before anything as frivolous as champagne intervened.

“I didn’t want to go through this while you were still doing your writing thing,” she said, “It didn’t seem fair. But now we have to get on the level.”

She took a deep breath.

“First, I slept with Geoff.”

“Geoff? What? Geoff? Geoff Browne? You slept with Geoff?”

“Yes, Geoff. Oh come on, don’t look like that. Is Geoff so awful? He’s supposed to be your friend.”

“Yes, he is, isn’t he? I don’t…Is this… is this sort of in revenge for the Mouse?”

“No – it happened before that.”

“Before? But why didn’t you say… Oh, is this why you didn’t give me much of a hard time? But you were definitely post-Maureen, right?”

“Look, the details don’t matter. If you must know, it was only about three times.”

“About three times… My God, you’re Mercedes, aren’t you? Mercedes, the reliable, comfortable ride…”

“There is no Mercedes, John,” she responded irritably, “That was just some bizarre idea of Geoff’s, supposed to help keep you from noticing anything, or something.. I told him I didn’t like it.”

“You went to the Miramar and had breakfast with him, though, didn’t you?”

“What has breakfast got to do with it?” she exclaimed.

“OK, OK. I don’t care about the breakfasts. I’d rather you admitted to the breakfasts and denied the sex, to be perfectly honest.”

“Look, I’m sorry.”

“Jesus,” I said, “And the reason he wanted me to carry on with Nanowrimo was so I wouldn’t be spending any time with you…”

“No, you’re being totally paranoid.” she said.

“My God,” I said, unable to help myself, “You told me there were heaving bosoms. I just didn’t realise it was yours we were talking about.”

That did not go down very well, gentle reader. So at last I shut up.

“The second thing is,” she said grimly, “you and I are splitting up. Look, I’m not, you know, in a relationship with Geoff. I probably won’t see him any more. That’s not what it was about. The thing with Geoff, well… it was partly, I don’t know how to explain it, just a way of persuading myself that my life needed moving on – can you understand that?”

Yes, I understand that alright. It’s the new double standard. If I play away, it’s a contemptible betrayal and shows my piggish male nature; if you play away, it’s a deeply felt emotional exploration of personal potential, something in fact, which I could learn valuable life lessons from if only I could rise above myself sufficiently to contemplate it with the required reverence. That’s it, isn’t it?

“Yes,” I said, “I think I sort of do. So I’m what you’re moving on from, is that right?”

“I really thought we might salvage it,” she said. “Until the other day. It was that rose in the bottle that did it, made me realise it was basically no good.”

“The rose? But that was meant to be apologetic, a tender gesture, a friendly joke. I meant it to be nice.”

“I’m sorry, but it looked sarcastic to me, and it still does. I can’t help forgetting the bottle, for God’s sake. But you couldn’t lay off the smartarse stuff, could you? You couldn’t just leave it.”

There were tears in my eyes, but I had to think clearly. I knew a lot might depend on what I said. Obviously the situation was not retrievable here and now. Things had to play themselves out, this was not a conversation which could be turned away from its planned destination. If I protested, if I got angry, above all if I said anything else that could possibly, in any way at all, be construed as smartarse stuff, I would just destroy the last remaining long-term chances. Instead, a little late in the day, I had to do my best not to slam any more doors, and leave the way back as open as I could.

“I’ll only say this once,” I said, in a slightly strange voice, I noticed, “But I mean it more than I’ve ever meant anything. This is a mistake. I love you.”

I think it had some impact, possibly left some trace. We sat in silence for a minute.

“Alright, well I’m going now,” she said at last, “We can speak again later if you want to, but you must accept that I’m not going to, you know, have a row about it, or a detailed post mortem, or a shouting match. And of course, there’ll be some things to sort out, stuff to move. See you.”

“Goodbye.” I said.

So here we are, gentle reader. At the end, it’s just you and me after all. We can have a glass of champagne – Geoff’s Cristal in fact, though he never actually paid for it. Or perhaps it’s best to leave the bottle standing there in the middle of the table forever. Like Miss Havisham’s cake. The weird thing is that as I sit here the thought that comes to mind is: Lady Jane Pimsey must be laughing her head off at this one.

Still we made it, didn’t we? The summit of Nanowrimo. Shake hands, gentle reader – maybe a little farewell hug? Thank you. It’s cold up here, and a trifle lonely, but you can see a lot of things you couldn’t see from down there. Was it worth it all? I lost a month of my life; what I would have called my best friend; the chance of promotion; my job, a substantial chunk of my sanity; and finally my girlfriend.

But Nanowrimo came through. It delivered as promised. Because look what I have got. Fifty thousand words of unpublishable crap.