Nanowrimo Winner

[Total Word Count: 40,647]

Things have quietened down at Behemoth following the big excitement of Kevin’s presentation. Kevin himself is away this week. I’ve got three different projects I need to work on, but none of them has a deadline nearer than the end of next week. I think I might be a bit of an adrenaline junkie: I certainly can’t take very seriously a deadline that is over a week away.

Earlier on, John Sopert the Director called me into his office – a proper office, this one, with a full-sized desk and everything. Sopert is one of those immensely dignified people who are frightfully nice even though they are obviously amazingly posh.

“Thanks for coming – nothing to worry about, John,” he said, with an air of affected bonhomie, “This isn’t – ahuh! – a crisis meeting or anything. Perhaps that’s disappointing, actually? We all love a bit of crisis management around here, don’t we? I keep saying to my managers, I want more completer/finishers, er, guys: give me a few completer/finishers. But they never do. Anyway, no; this is just a chat. It’s always been my intention to keep up with our younger execs, but I’m afraid it’s a policy more honoured in the breach than the observance. But you’re my guinea-pig, John. I’m going to try to have quarterly chats with all of you in future.”

“OK,” I said, inanely, bonhomising back at him to the best of my ability.

“How do you feel about last week?” he asked, looking at me keenly.

“Well, I’m quite happy really, I mean obviously it’s frustrating when you can’t convince people,” I began,

“Oh, I wouldn’t say we weren’t convinced,” he interrupted, “I enjoyed the presentation. I thought it was illuminating. And you made a good contribution. Certainly. No, I wouldn’t say we weren’t convinced, John.”

“Well, I mean, it’s a shame we didn’t get the go-ahead on the winter strategy,” I said cautiously, and waited to see whether he would insist that, in a very real sense, we had got the go-ahead. Just not the go-ahead to do anything. But he merely raised his eyebrows in a ‘well-let’s-not–jump-to-conclusions’ style.

“But I enjoyed doing the presentation, and obviously it was a valuable learning opportunity for me.”

“Ahuh,” he agreed, “yes.”, as though I’d put my finger on a rather obscure but tremendously important point. “Yes, indeed.”

“I’m still convinced that my analysis of the seasonality is basically right, “ I said cautiously, “But I’m looking forward to helping to develop the strategy in other ways.”

“Good, good. You’re a promising young man, John,” he confided, “Personally, I think you have some definite potential. But at times, you know, it’s a bit difficult to know what to make of you.”

“Really?”

“Ahuh. At times you seem very reserved, lost in your own thoughts, you know, just going through the motions. I don’t quite know how to put this, but there are times – I hope this doesn’t seem negative – when it almost seems as if you aren’t very interested in what you’re doing.”

“Gosh.”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. And then, on other occasions, you know, you sort of come out with guns blazing.”

“Do I?”

“Oh yes, blazing. Look at that time you made the point about, what was it? De minimis. Quite right, of course. But you see, I wasn’t even there, but I’ve still heard all about how passionate you were.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“We like passion. I’d go so far as to say we need our young execs to be passionate. If you’re not passionate, where’s the future of Behemoth? No, I like the passion. But sometimes too much?. A bit of aggression is good. In this world, John, you won’t get anywhere without a bit of aggression. But you have to know how to moderate it, you see. You have to – what was that phrase? You have to know how to dance the dance, if you follow me.”

Oh bugger.

“I think I do.”

“That said, I do believe, myself…” (…in spite of what everyone else says…) “… that you’ve got real potential. Now John. Kevin has suggested to me that you might be ready for a manager interview. I must ask you – do you think you would like to go in for that? Do you feel ready?” He looked at me intently, as though great matters hung on my response.

“Yes,”, I replied, trying not to show what a stupid question I thought it was, “Yes – I think I am ready.”

“Good. Good. Well, I think you’ve got real potential.” he declared.

He sat back in his chair and looked at me steadily. Time passed. The silence began to get oppressive.

“Er, I…” I said,

“Thanks for dropping in.” he interrupted, sitting forward suddenly. And the chat was over.

Things were quiet back at my desk. Kevin was away for a week, so there was no-one to badger me, and not much real work to do. I found myself waiting impatiently for someone to send me an email. I surfed the net negligently, picking up an interesting site about self-publishing which I nevertheless couldn’t be bothered to read. I copied the address for later. Then I took to fiddling with a copy of a spreadsheet charting advertising spend for six different products.

Twelve o’clock. A bit early for lunch, perhaps, but then it saves queuing. I wandered out, got a Pret sandwich from round the corner, and brought it back to my desk. While eating the sandwich, I ran up a completely meaningless three dimensional chart out of the data from the spreadsheet, and then changed the colours and values so it looked like a model landscape – a flat blue area with yellow sloping up from it, then green, brown, and on top of the solitary sharp peak, a touch of white.

It always annoys me the way people always leave two blank sheets when they use Excel. It’s because the default is three sheets (used to be more, I think) when you start a new file, and most people round here are at best only dimly aware that those tabs lurking at the bottom indicate other sheets which can be deleted, named, selected, copied and all the rest. You could actually stick some text in a big text box on page 2, and no-one would ever read it.

The drawing room at Wenham Hall smelt of mildew, and the furnishings felt cold and unaired. The sunlight streaming in through the two tall windows was full of dust motes, and in one corner an unused vacuum cleaner of ancient pattern leaned abandoned against the panelled wall.

And then, atrociously, he smiled.

OK, gentle reader, I realise writing at work is a stupid risk, but another thousand words is something I can well use at the moment. At 35,000 words, I still have ground to make up, although as ever my main problem isn’t lack of words but lack of plot. With the climactic scene I’ve just made a start on, Wenham is practically complete, with 15,000 still to come. I pasted in the address of the stuff about self-publishing and emailed the spreadsheet to my home email. Just to be on the safe side, I deleted the original copy of the spreadsheet altogether.

[Total Word Count: 38,489]

I went round to see Geoff again. I felt obscurely guilty about deciding to continue with Wenham, as if it were somehow cheating; but I thought it was best to go round and tell him. He looked completely taken aback to see me, almost apprehensive. I was not a welcome visitor, it seemed.

“John? You haven’t come to give me that bloody Cristal again, have you?” he asked.

“Au contraire, Geoffrey.” I replied, “The race is back on. I’m going to finish Nanowrimo.”

“Oh! Well, good! Good! You changed your mind? Well done. I mean, it’s good that you’re trying, though of course I’m still going to win.”

We paused on the step.

“Er, come in.” he said at last, reluctantly I thought.

Geoff led the way upstairs, and once again we settled ourselves. I couldn’t help glancing over at the pile of manuscript. It didn’t seem any bigger, and I could almost swear that there was a thin layer of dust on the top sheet. Was Geoff’s inspiration finally drying up, perhaps?

“Do you want a quick beer?” asked Geoff, “Only I’m going out a bit later.”

“With Mercedes? She’s graduated to the evenings at last?”

“Yes – I mean yes, it is her. Actually, I’ll just go and give her a quick ring if you don’t mind: we didn’t fix up when we were going to meet.”

He hurried downstairs.

An opportunity? Shall I have another little look? At Geoff’s manuscript? No, no, I shouldn’t. I really shouldn’t. What, you think I should? Really? I’m surprised at you, gentle reader – I had you down as a more scrupulous kind of person. Still, if you insist, I suppose I’m powerless to resist…

Draw for you, knave I don’t think I’m not doing that no I’ll call my man to deal with your impertinence I fancy. He said with haughty mien.
Draw or by God I’ll prick you where you stand, poultroon.

Let me 'ow you say introduce maiself monsieur I am Louis Renault Capitaine of Mousketaires. Gentlemen we ave other feesh to fry ave we not? I say this stops ‘ere.

And by golly, gentle reader, it did. The rest of the page was blank. I turned the page: the next one was a completely blank sheet. And the next one. I picked up a big handful of pages and riffled them. All blank. Snowy white virgin sheets. It seemed – I had a quick look back at page one – it seemed that Geoff had in fact completed no more than about four hundred words of utter drivel. A wave of relief, shock, disbelief, and belief swept through me.

He reappeared in the doorway, saw the manuscript in my hand, and froze on the spot. It wasn’t turning out a very tranquil evening for Geoffrey.

“This is a gripping yarn of yours, Geoff.” I remarked.

“It’s all on the computer,” he said, hesitantly, “I didn’t print it out, that’s all. Just thought it would give you a fright if I showed you a big pile of pages, you know.”

“Geoffrey,” I said, “Your pantaloons are aflame, Geoffrey.”

He looked abashed.

“Geoffrey, Geoffrey, Geoffrey.” I remonstrated, “Geoffrey. This is all you’ve written, isn’t it? Come on now. Look me in the eye.”

“Alright,” he said, coming into the room and slumping down on the small sofa, “You win. I can’t do it. I could no more write a novel than ride a woolly mammoth down Lombard Street, as you put it. It’s true. Sorry.”

Did I really say that thing about mammoths? That was a bit unkind, really.

“But Geoff, what was the point? You have to register your words with the ’wrimo people. You can’t hand them a big bundle of blank paper.”

“Well,” he said, wearily, “At first, I just didn’t want to admit that I couldn’t get anywhere. I thought I might catch up. But then I thought so long as I kept up a front, you know, it would encourage you to keep going. That was why I came up with the bet. I thought it would encourage you to focus, you know, help you stay motivated. I would never have taken the champagne off you, at the end of the day. That’s why I wouldn’t take it the other day, and tried to get you to carry on. Successfully, too, it seems. I really only wanted to help, all along.”

“Geoffrey, Geoffrey,” I said, “You big, fat, liar!”

“No, this is the truth” he protested, “ I wanted to encourage you, be a sort of pace-setter, a sort of sparring partner. Is that so bad?”

“Forsooth, thou takest the biscuit, Geoffrey; yea, verily.”

“Come on, I meant well.”

“Draw, Sir!” I said, dancing about in front of him with one arm thrown up and the other clutching an imaginary foil “Draw, I say! Draw, damn you Sir! I say draw, Sir, an you be a gentleman!”

“Oh, shut up!” said Geoff.

“Draw, an you be a gentleman, or I shall spit you where you sit like a spiced apple at Bartholomew Fair, forsooth.”

“Oh God.” said Geoff, helplessly.

“By my halidom! ’Odds bodikins! Gadzookers! God’s pieces, Sir! Ow!” I had forgotten that Geoff’s flat offered little room for swashbuckling, and banged my elbow on the wall.

“You want a quick beer?” offered Geoff, “Come on.”

“Alright then, you lying bloody liar, you sad failing talentless ungifted lying bastard, “ I consented, “You snivelling illiterate faithless incapable liar. We might as well.”

Actually, I felt exultant. My lack of faith in Geoff’s abilities had been triumphantly vindicated, and my own astonishing literary gifts looked all the better by contrast. I felt much better about myself. I felt much better about Wenham. And I felt a whole lot better about Geoff. Now he couldn’t write to save his life, I really liked him again.

We sat and had a friendly glass of frothy warm cat pee: Geoff seemed relieved, too. He offered to pay me for the Cristal (“You don’t really want two, do you?”), but seemed to change his mind when he heard how much it had actually cost me.

On the way back to the Tube station, gentle reader, I was virtually walking on air. I nearly collided, in quick succession, with an old man holding a newspaper, a small boy, and a plump, bad-tempered looking Philippina, who turned and looked at me sharply. But I was immune to all disapproval for the time being.

Back at home I threw myself into Wenham with renewed enthusiasm.

At the back of the house stood a long low barn. A little gate gave direct access to it from the side road, and it was that way that Lady Jane went, with Charlie bringing up the rear. A small door on a simple latch led into the barn: Lady Jane opened it and put her head inside.

“Charlie?” said Lady Jane, “I forgot to tell Mrs Moreton that we’d be in for dinner tonight. Would you mind going back and telling her, please? No need to come back for me – I’ll walk.”

[Total Word Count: 36,343]

“Hello!” says Mouse, opening the door, “Come in. Would you like a coffee?”

What I hadn’t expected somehow was that she would be sharing, and that two of her flatmates would be sitting on their battered old sofa looking at me with undisguised interest.

“You’re John, then?” says one of them, a thin brunette with a wide smile, “I’m Anna. This is Claire. We’ve heard all about you. You must be very clever to write all this stuff.”

“No, you wouldn’t think so if you’d read it,” I reply, perhaps a little too smartly, but they both laugh politely.

Are they students? The place has that kind of a look, with a Klimt poster blu-tacked to the wall. The wallpaper is very faded, and the furniture is old without being really retro – second-hand, I would guess. But it’s all in apple-pie order, and I can see from here that the books on the plank bookshelves are divided into fiction and non-fiction, with the fiction alphabetical by author. I wonder what approach has been used for the non-fiction.

Mouse brings me a mug of coffee, though I had actually said I didn’t want one.

“Are you going to have a big party when you’ve all finished?” asks Anna.

“Well, I think some celebrations are certainly planned,” I say, “But I won’t have anything to celebrate, I’m afraid. Actually, I’ve decided to give up. I can’t finish the thing in time after all.”

This evokes an immediate chorus of protest, especially from Mouse.

“But you’re way ahead of me,” she says, “And I’m not giving up.”

“It’s not that, really” I explain feebly, “There are other reasons. I don’t think me doing it is going to go down well in my office.”

“That’s ridiculous. It’s only a few days more, really. If they don’t like it, why don’t you pull a sickie?” says Claire, “I would. Like a shot.”

“Well the other thing is, I’m a bit stuck with the story. This character who ought to be dead is still alive. You see, she has to be killed off by someone who’s already dead, and it was going to happen because they’d messed up the brakes of her car before they were dead, but she seems to have sort of escaped.”

“I don’t understand,” says Anna.

I find myself sitting down and explaining the whole plot of Wenham. I quite enjoy it, actually: they’re a very appreciative audience and pay careful attention.

“I think,” says Mouse, “you just need to go back and rewrite the earlier bits. Charlie doesn’t get in the car, and she does die. That’s all. You don’t have to do it now, just make a note somewhere and carry on as if you’d revised it already. It doesn’t matter for Nanowrimo if there are gaping inconsistencies in the plot – after the month is over, you can go back and sort them out at leisure.

I think about it. She’s quite right. I’m being too much of a perfectionist. That’s not the true ’wrimo spirit. But…

“The trouble is,” I say, “I sort of promised I’d stop.”

“Who did you promise? Who wanted you to stop?” demands Anna. This is a bit difficult to answer – I don’t really want to blame Julie, or expose to these strangers the kind of difficult discussions we’ve been having. Alright, and I don’t want them to get the idea I’m sort of under her thumb, either.

“Your girlfriend?” asks Claire, “Julie?”

“Oh. Er, you know about Julie? You’ve read my blog, then?” I say, nervously.

“Oh no. But we’ve been told about it.” she replies, archly.

“No offence or anything,” says Anna, “But I think your girlfriend should be backing you up, not trying to get you to stop.”

“Well, you know…” I say.

“Yeah,” says Claire, “She should be supportive, shouldn’t she? It’s not fair on you, is it? Why don’t you carry on? It’s only until the end of the month, anyway. It’s so close. Surely you can carry on just till then.”

“Yeah, we want to read the story,” says Anna, “Will you publish it, in a proper book?”

“Well, it’s not that easy, really…”

“You could self-publish…” suggests Mouse, “Lots of people do that.”

By the time I leave, with my laptop, I have virtually promised to go on with Wenham after all. And why not, really? When I get back to the flat, I plug in the laptop and fire it up to make sure everything is OK. Just a little look at the last chapter?

As the sound of the departing ambulance faded, Lady Jane put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. With an effort he took his eyes off the crushed car lying by the canal below, and looked at her.

Back on track, back on track. But I still have a problem with plot – there’s still not enough of it. I’m approaching 35,000 words now, but the story is rapidly approaching resolution, and I’ve written the ending already. I’ll be surprised if it stretches beyond 40,000 at the rate I’m going.

I wonder whether I could insert yet another member of the family? I think I may have to go back and sort of bulk up the text by inserting flashbacks or something. I could start with a sort of potted biography of the old Earl.

The sixth Earl acceded to the estate at the exceptionally youthful age of 23, when his father suffered a fatal accident while hiking in the Dolomites. Whereas the father had been a man of considerable business ability and careful habits, the young Earl spent well rather than wisely, and did not, as he himself often declared, have the right sort of brains for going over account books.

The Earl could scarcely contemplate the idea of taking on a new servant, and he had a shrewd idea that the number of applicants for such a post would in any case be small. He therefore decided, with some trepidation, to effect a further small economy by looking after himself. This ambitious project went, not well, but better than might have been expected, at first.

I heard Julie’s key rattle in the lock, and started guiltily.

“Hello?” she said, poking her head round the door, “You got it back then?”

“Yes,” I said, “All present and correct.”

Julie paused and her eyes focussed on the screen.

“Are you…?” she asked.

“Yeah, sorry,” I said (don’t apologise, you idiot – what are you apologising for?) “I sort of thought I’d give it one more go.

Julie came into the room with a depressed expression and sat down heavily.

“I thought we’d agreed…” she said.

“Well, yes, but I thought – it’s only another few days really. Why not see it through to the end?”

“Because, because… oh. We need to sort things out, John. You’ve got to understand…” she broke off, irresolutely.

“Isn’t it best to just get this thing out of the way?” I said, “And then I’ll make it up to you in December. I promise. In fact, look, we said we’d celebrate when I got to the half-way mark, and I’m past that now. Why don’t we have a celebration tonight? I’ll take you out for a curry or something.”

She shook her head and sighed. She looked so miserable for a moment that I wanted to go and hug her. But I didn’t.

“No,” she said, “No, I don’t really want to celebrate. Look – if you want to carry on, that’s up to you, but I don’t want to spend the next two weeks sitting here with you just tapping away all the time. Let’s make it an unfriendly month, OK? Then we’ll meet up in December and sort things out.”

There was something about that ‘sort things out’ that I didn’t like the sound of, but I couldn’t really complain.

“Alright,” I said, “But let’s start the unfriendly stuff tomorrow, eh? Look, I won’t do any more of this tonight. Stay tonight.”

“No,” she said, “You carry on. It’s alright. Give me a ring when you’re finished, OK?”

She stood up and marched back out of the door.

Am I doing the right thing, gentle reader? You will have perceived the irony that I only started on this whole thing as a means of helping to persuade Julie she should move in with me, or me with her; but the net result so far seems to have been to move her out for the rest of the month, and perhaps worse.

But isn’t she just a bit unreasonable? Is it so annoying that I should do a bit of typing in the evening? If it was for work, I’m sure she wouldn’t object. And it is only for a month. What’s the big problem about it? She seemed fairly happy about it at first. If I give in now over something so minor, will I have my leisure hours subjected to approval and supervision ever afterwards? What if I want to take up golf one day?

I’m sorry, gentle reader, you know how it is with me – I try to be a philosopher, but cheerfulness keeps breaking in. But don’t think I don’t take this seriously. It’s the most important thing in my life, it really is, and I’m not talking about sodding Nanowrimo.

[Total word count: 34,345]

So, gentle reader, you and I will never complete the journey that is Nanowrimo. I feel sad but free. It’s nice to think I don’t have to churn the words out, but I do feel a sense of something almost like bereavement. Until I decided to stop, I felt fed up with the whole thing, but as soon as I made the decision, I started to regret it. And there is one uncongenial task to be completed as a consequence.

After work, I went round to Geoff’s with a bottle of Cristal. I was fairly confident he would be in, since the new regime, if that was the truth, allowed him his evenings free for browsing Internet porn, or whatever Geoff did when he was alone.

Sure enough, he opened the door, but at the sight of the bottle his face fell.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“You win, Geoffrey,” I said, “I’m giving in.”

“Hey, you can’t do that now… look, come in.”

I followed him upstairs and sat down on his tiny sofa.

“You can’t give up, John,” he said earnestly, “Not yet. It’s not been going so badly, has it?”

“Well, I have a few problems,” I said, “I seem to be stuck with Charlie in the hospital and Fenella still alive… uh, those are two of my characters. But also, I’ve sort of promised Julie I’d give up. And this bloke at work knows I’m doing it, and has warned me I’m getting into trouble.”

“Christ,” said Geoff, “Now hang on. Let’s not be hasty here. Do you want a beer?”

“No thanks,” I said.

Geoff waved his finger in the air which seemed to be an indication that he understood but had thought of something else. He went over to the tiny cabinet and took out a bottle of Glenfiddich.

“Geoff!” I protested.

“No, come on,” he insisted, plonking down two tumblers which, to be quite honest, could have been more perfectly clean, “A shot of this won’t do you any harm.”

He poured two glasses, pulled up a chair, settled himself and looked at me thoughtfully.

“I’m sure Julie doesn’t really want you to give up,” he said, “She may have said so when she was in a bad mood or something, but honestly I’m sure she’ll change her mind. Doesn’t she always tell you off for not finishing things? Like that internet thing you were going to do. What was it? Kick-ass something.”

“Yes, but…” I began, and interrupted myself, “Hang on, though, Geoff – why do you want me to carry on? You should be cock-a-hoop, shouldn’t you? This means you’ve won the bet. That was what you wanted, wasn’t it.”

“Yes, I suppose it was,” he said thoughtfully, taking a sip of whisky, “I suppose it sort of seems different now. And the other thing is, if you don’t carry on, I won’t have any motive for finishing myself. I’ve actually been a bit stuck the last few days, you know. I haven’t really written anything much since you came round here last. Been a bit busy, really. You could probably catch me up if you put in a little effort.”

He gestured at the pile of manuscript, which did look exactly the same as it had before.

“See, that’s a point you ought to consider,” he added, “Who’s to say I’m going to finish? If neither of us finishes, it will be a draw.”

“Sort of,” I agreed, “But I think the terms of the bet were that the first person to give up loses. And I’m the first one, there’s no real argument about it. You won fair and square.

“Mmh. I think you’re wrong. It wasn’t first to give up loses, it was first to 50,000 wins. I’m not there yet. Surely it’s a cheek this bloke from your office telling you that you can’t do it. Is he your boss? Is there a policy that employees shall not be novelists? Is he claiming that copyright will accrue to them under the terms of your contract? I can’t understand it at all. The people where I work are all for it. They keep trying to sponsor me, and I have to keep telling them it’s not for charity. Are you sure this bloke is really speaking for your firm?”

“Oh, I think so. It isn’t really him that’s telling me; he’s just drawing my attention to the fact, which I know quite well for myself, that my having a time-consuming hobby, and one which I might be tempted to pursue in idle moments at work, is not going to go down well. It’s not that they’d sack me or anything, it just might stop me getting my interview so soon, that kind of thing. I know he’s right, really.”

“I don’t think it’s any of their damn business what you do in your own time,” said Geoff, with surprising vehemence. “Think of all the time you’ll have wasted if you stop now. Think of all those words that are never going to be used.”

“Well, probably no-one was ever going to read them anyway,” I pointed out, “And who knows, I might go back to it and finish the thing in the end. I just can’t afford to do it to the Nanowrimo timetable.”

“Why don’t you give yourself a bit of time to think about it? You might feel differently in a day or so. Don’t give up yet. I won’t take this now, you keep it until you’ve really thought about this..”

I shook my head in puzzlement and looked at Geoff.

“You’re a strange bloke,” I said, “How’s Mercedes?”

“Now look, don’t change the subject. Promise me you’ll think about it a bit.”

“Well, I’m happy to keep the bottle for another couple of days if you really insist.”

“Well done. Cheers.” He took another sip from his tumbler, “Mercedes hasn’t been round recently. She seems to be busy a lot at the moment.”

“Problems?” I asked, sympathetically.

“I don’t think so, not really. She has problems, though, things she keeps having to sort out. Don’t ask me, it’s all you know, I said this and then they said that, and so I said and they said. I think perhaps she’d be happier if she could see me in the evenings and at weekends, you know?”

“Is there a problem with that?”

“No, not really. No. It’ll all be fine in the long run.”

“Julie… Julie finds it hard to believe you’ve got this woman coming in every day before breakfast.”

“Well, not every day,” admitted Geoff, “Did I give the impression it was every day? To be honest, John, not that it’s any of your business really, I think we’ve only really done it three times.”

“Only three?”

“Yes, but it’s a pretty serious relationship. She has other commitments at the moment, that’s all.”

“Other commitments? What, you mean another boyfriend?”

Geoff frowned irritably.

“Family commitments,” he said, “Family commitments… sort of thing.”

“I don’t know. No offence, but it seems an unusual kind of relationship”

“It is a bit complicated at times,” said Geoff, darkly “It turns out she’s quite a complicated kind of person. But like I say, we’ll sort things out, I’m sure.”

I was walking down the old track to the river when Charlie appeared from behind a tree, and gave me a small wave of recognition.

“What are you doing here?” I said, “You’re supposed to be in Wenham.”

“Yes,” he said – his voice was deeper than I had imagined it, and he sounded more like a Dorset man than someone from the fenny country of Wenham. “But I thought this would be easier for you, since you know it so well.”

That seemed to make sense. We strolled along companionably towards the river bank.

“Are you getting on any better with Lady Jane?” I asked.

“Yes, things are OK,” he said , “It turns out she’s quite a complicated kind of person.”

“She seems to be sort of jealous of you,” I said, “Which is a bit odd, because I’m sure it wasn’t my idea. It just seems to have got into the text somehow.”

“Yes, that happens,” he agreed, “She seems to think I’m going to get mixed up with Fenella. The other day when Fenella rang up about my laptop, there was a definite look of suspicion there. But I would never be so stupid as that. She ought to realise.”

Charlie bent down and picked up a small flat stone, which he sent skimming across the river. It bounced six times.

“I could never do that,” I admitted, “Never even one bounce.”

“You just need to focus.” he said, and threw another. The river seemed to be much wider than I remembered it being.

“Oh,” I said, “I remember what I was going to ask you. How am I going to get you out of the hospital?”

“I don’t see any problem about that,” said Charlie, seeming slightly surprised, “I could discharge myself if you like. You could say it was because I was eager to get back on to the case. You know. Or if you find that bit difficult, you could just cut to a scene where I’m already out. The one where I find Fenella’s body, say – that’s be good.”

“You’re going to find her body?”

“Well, I presume so. More pathos that way, more drama. But you’re the author, aren’t you?” He grinned. He was actually a rather amiable bloke in the flesh; big, but not such a looming presence as I had imagined he would be.

“You can’t find her body after you come out of hospital. That doesn’t make sense Unless…How does she die?”

“She was in a crash.” he said, shortly and decisively, as though I were being stupid.

I began to feel worried.

“God, I’d forgotten,” I confessed, “This is all no good. I’m not going to write it. I’ve given up.”

Charlie turned to me a face which was filled with incredulity and anger. It was such an angry face it hardly looked like him any more. He turned his back on me and stamped over to where a small kind of brick building stood – just like a park-keeper’s hut or something. He opened the door, but I followed him and grabbed his sleeve.

“Where are you going?” I asked, “You can’t go in there.”

“I am the home-owner,” he said, angrily, and slammed the door behind him.

As I looked around I realised that the reason the river had seemed wider was because it was a different river altogether. I had though that this place was a combination of the fields behind our house when I was at school with a river in Portugal – the Tagus? But it was not – it was somewhere else, somewhere I didn’t know at all. I was lost.

“Help! You’ve got to show me the way back!” I shouted, but the hut door was locked.

With a perceptible jerk, I awoke in my own bed, in the dark. Julie was asleep beside me.

I stared up at the ceiling and began to calm down. There is something distinctly weird about feeling guilt towards an imaginary character of your own creation. I mean, if I wanted, I could put a little postscript on Wenham where Charlie and all the other characters expressed their sincere pleasure over the fact that the story would not be completed. But there was no doubt I did feel strangely guilty, in a way which having imaginary characters traumatised and murdered, something I’d done enough of by now, had never occasioned.

Actually, Charlie would certainly have faced his own fictional demise with much more stoicism and loyalty than he had displayed in the dream. I found myself beginning to wonder whether the dream Charlie was the real Charlie or not. Now that I thought about it, dream Charlie had had black brylcreemed hair, which wasn’t right at all. So which was the real Charlie? Unfortunately that was not a question I could get my mind round in any appreciable sense. That way madness surely lies.

Come to that, this whole dream seemed like a worrying sign of mental turmoil – actually another good reason to stop writing, if that’s what it was going to do to me. Now I couldn’t sleep because my mind was racing, although goodness knows I was tired enough.

I got carefully out of bed and headed to the bathroom. Picture your author, gentle reader, sitting stark naked on the toilet: stark naked but for headphones which he has plugged into the radio behind him in order to listen inaudibly to the World Service, which at the moment is broadcasting The Ticket, an arts review programme which is actually quite interesting and sort of comparable to Radio Four’s Front Row, which I often catch in the evenings. Perhaps one day Wenham will be reviewed on programmes like these, but then I remember yet again that Wenham is never going to be finished. My lost baby!

[Total Word Count 32,162]

Lying in the dark, I stretched my hand gently across the bed to touch Julie’s side.

“I’m awake,” she said.

We had made it up that evening, gentle reader. I had turned up on the door step with a bunch of flowers. I know it’s a bit of a crummy way of doing things, but being a bit crummy is OK sometimes, even essential.

“What are those for?” she demanded.

“A token,” I replied, “Their significance is purely phatic.”

Once inside, I apologised, promised to mend my ways, and generally abased myself. It wasn’t difficult. It seemed that Julie wanted to forget the whole thing as quickly as possible.

Now, lying there in the dark in the small hours, I apologised again.

“I’m sorry about all that bottle stuff.” I said.

Julie sighed.

“It’s OK,” she said, “I’m sorry too.” She paused. “I know you’ve got a thing about tidiness, but I couldn’t understand what the big fuss was.”

“I know,” I said, penitently.

“But what really got me was later on. The anal bit.”

“The anal bit? I don’t remember…”

“Well, you’d wound me up quite a lot by then, and I accused you of being anal, and you said, did I even know what anal meant, and I said it means arsehole, arsehole, and you said no, no, what you’re referring to is Freud’s theory that over-strict parenting causes the child to seek to retain its excreta for fear of making a mess, and that this leads in later life to… et cetera… and that I was accusing you of wanting to retain your shit, but who the hell was it who wanted to retain shitty bottles on the shitty table, and I shouldn’t bloody well use words if I couldn’t be arsed to look up properly what they meant.”

“Oh yeah, that.” I said, blushing invisibly in the dark.

“You really need to cut out this Stephen Fry crap, you know?” she observed. I didn’t answer.

“It’s a very male kind of thing,” she said, “You’re, you know, fairly enlightened for a man, but that is just such a macho thing. Using words to show off with. Listen to me, telling you all this stuff. Watch me win this argument. Look what a clever little boy I am. Women just don’t do that. It’s definitely a gender thing.”

There was a protracted pause.

“You’re not going to tell me that ‘gender’ is a grammatical term, and that while words have gender, people have sex, then?” she asked.

“No.” I said, firmly, just a little nettled.

“It’s your hormones, I suppose I should try to be understanding. But it’s incredibly annoying, sometimes.” she said, taking my hand.

“I’m sorry,” I said, but with just a little less enthusiasm than before. A longer silence followed, while we stared at the ceiling.

“OH. MY.GOD!” I exclaimed, sitting up suddenly.

“What?”

“I left the laptop in the pub. Oh my God! I can actually remember standing up and walking away while it was still down by the side of the chair. Oh my God! Should I ring the pub?”

“The pub? So you went to the pub?”

She turned over unhappily.

“Look, it’s three o’clock,” she pointed out, “You can’t do anything until the morning. Don’t worry, they’ve probably got it behind the bar.”

“All of the Nanowrimo stuff is on it,” I said, “I never backed it up or anything. Oh my God!”

I collapsed on to the bed again.

“Maybe this is a kind of sign from my subconscious that I should give up after all.” I said.

“Another thing Freud had a theory about? Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve been thinking maybe it would be better if you gave up after all. I never see you these days, and when I do, all you’re doing is typing. I know I said you should finish, but, you know, I’m beginning to wonder.”

“Yeah, me too,” I said, a trifle bitterly, “I’ve got problems with it anyway. I can’t seem to get Charlie out of the hospital.”

I must have slept some more that night, but I really don’t remember doing so. Not for the first time, I wished that I could stop uselessly thinking about things I couldn’t do anything about. I had very little time to do anything about the laptop the following morning, either: it was the day of Kevin’s big presentation, with me as bag-carrier, and I needed to be in Behemoth’s dingy halls early. A phone call to the Angel revealed that they had not found a laptop in the bar.

In some ways, my problems were helpful: they stopped me worrying about the presentation. Though it wasn’t the laptop that really preyed on my mind so much as what Julie had said the night before. Kevin, normally a picture of sang-froid, was showing some slightly endearing signs of actual nervousness, shifting from foot to foot as we waited outside the Boardroom. I almost felt sorry for him.

“Break a leg,” I said, as we were ushered in, and he smiled faintly at me.

Julie would certainly have seen this meeting as a male kind of ritual, a gender thing, I reflected, as we settled in. There were the high status males, led by John Sopert, sitting in judgement, and here were two little gangs – Kevin’s and George’s – who were going to shout and shake their spears at each other until one or other side retreated.

What Julie didn’t understand, I thought to myself, was what a precious cultural asset this adversarial business was. In China or India, in any proper civilisation, the King had an army that did what he said. Ideas were approved or not approved by authority, and the only way new ones could get in was if the Chief Vizier just happened to be an original genius. Whereas in the West, we were still a bunch of barbarians quarrelling over the wreckage of Rome. Everything was decided by a fight between two sides. But that meant that in any argument, the two competing authorities cancelled each other out: and that created, for the first time in human history, a window for the truth to get in, for disputes to be swayed by the actual evidence. That’s where all the great achievements of the West came from. And it was a macho kind of thing, but so what?

Kevin had done his opening, tension-dispelling joke, and his settling introduction. Now he was beginning to tell them what he was going to tell them.

You see, I’m not brooding over what Julie said or anything, but you know, you’ve got to dance the dance. It’s a battle. It’s like some grand confrontation; a great decisive battle: the Men of the West versus the filthy Orc bands; and may the best side win…

I suddenly roused from a vague meditation.

“John, you did the figures on this?” said Kevin. “Bill is suggesting there actually is a summer uplift in the distribution figures for last June?”

I looked up and saw he was beset by great Troll warriors on three sides while I let the sword sleep in my hand.

“The June figures? Is that a genuine rise?”

“Perhaps John thinks the rise is diminimus.” offered Bill. They chuckled.

“That’s what they used to call it, Bill,” I said, “But I think you’ll find that what we’re calling it now is ‘Fuck all’.” A bigger laugh, and the gnome fell back.

“I think those are some figure you brought with you, Bill,” I said, “but those are on a different universe. You’ve got packaged Mueslis in one and not the other. In fact, I think if you compare the figures from the same dataset, you’ll find that instead of a rise, you’ve got a fall of 15.76 percentage points. Do your sums agree with that?”

I knew and he knew that I couldn’t work out the figures to two decimal places that quickly: but I banked on him not being able to contradict me. If he could, I was sure the figures would still be in my favour, and the net effect would be even more in my favour, since he’d implicitly be confirming my theory.

“Nuh, OK” he said, after a pause.

The Orc’s ugly head went spinning from his neck: Kevin and I stood shoulder to shoulder, cleaving a path through the filthy spawn of Mordor.

“OK, John, well done,” said Kevin later, when we had retired once more to his tiny office. “You did OK once you woke up.”

“Thanks. A shame they wouldn’t take a decision, though. Nothing’s going to change.”

“Well, not this year, anyway. But we made a good impression. You’ve done yourself no harm, and I’ve enhanced my reputation as a caring mentor.” He must have noticed a slight hint of incredulity in my face, because he went on “Look, I know you think I’m just a slave-driving bastard, but the thing is John, you need to do the work if you’re going to get anywhere. You’ve got great potential, but you need to focus on the job, instead of farting around on the internet all the time. By the way, I get my suits from an old Jewish tailor in the East End – not many of those left now. I’ll give you his card if you’re interested.”

I thought for a moment. I thought hard.

“You… you’ve read my blog?” I deduced.

“Not really – I’ve got better things to do than read about you. But I did Google my own name the other day, and guess what came up? You ought to anonymise that thing if you’re going to keep it – you know what the attitude here is. If I catch you doing that stuff at work, you’re in a bit of trouble, but if John Sopert knew you had it at all, it would be clear-your-desk time, you know that? And another thing – you haven’t got time to write novels, OK? Don’t fuck around with novels. Not if you want to get your manager interview.”

I felt slightly winded.

“I was going to give that up, anyway.” I said.

“Good. You did well today. Just focus, that’s all. Focus.”

He was right, no doubt, but I found it difficult to concentrate for the rest of the day. I sat at my desk, toying with emails and pretending to look at figures. I was confused. I probably shouldn’t be writing this, should I? Kevin’s going to read it. Hi, Kevin! I hope you realise that although there may be some slight resemblances between the account in this blog and my real life, it’s all exaggerated, highly coloured, or even imaginary. It would be totally naïve to equate Kevin Johnson, the fictional construct here, the man of fine suits and unexpected insights, with the Kevin Johnson of real life, equally a man of fine suits and insights though he be, of course.

Oh God.

At last the hours rolled round and I set off for home, still feeling a little unsettled and vulnerable. We had agreed that Julie would come round to my place that evening, and she was already there when I arrived: in fact, she met me at the door.

“Who’s Miss Mouse?” she asked, and once again I felt the metaphorical blow to the stomach which goes with the discovery that people know more about you than you realised.

“Did you read the blog?”

“Blog? She’s in your blog? No. What are you talking about? Who is this person? Minnie Mouse?”

“She’s one of the Nanowrimo people,” I explained, neutrally, “One of the people who go to these writing sessions, and so on. I’ve met her there a couple of times. It’s a nickname. I don’t even know her real name.”

Julie raised her eyebrows just detectably, and handed me a post-it note.

“Well, she rang. She got your number from somebody called Tom. She’s got your laptop. If you give her a ring on this number, you can arrange to pick it up.”

“Ah!” I exclaimed, with genuine relief and not-so-genuine jollity, “She must have noticed I’d left it behind. That’s a relief.

“You’re still giving up on the Nanoo thing, aren’t you?” Julie asked.

“I think I’ve got to. Kevin at work knows about it now. All for the best, probably. I’ll have to buy Geoff his bottle, though.”

“Maybe it’s worth it.”

“Yeah, I’m beginning to think so.”

[Total word count:30,077]

“You’ve done a good job on these, Fletch,” said Kevin Johnson, “The only trouble is, I still don’t understand what the fuck is going on.”

“Kevin,” I replied carefully, “I hope you don’t mind if I mention that I’d rather you didn’t call me ‘Fletch’? I’d prefer to be called John.”

“Sorry,” he replied, raising his eyebrows, “I only meant to be friendly,”

“I know,” I said, “I just don’t like the idea that somewhere in your mind I’m bracketed together with Ronnie Barker and Slade prison.”

Kevin snorted and smiled.

“Fair enough,” he said, “’John’ it is then. But anyway, what’s happening to Pipenta?”

Pipenta, gentle reader is the product whose sales figures I had spent so much fruitless time analysing. We stared at a bar chart.

“See, it’s sort of OK, but there’s nothing happening,” said Kevin, always a man to pinpoint an issue with laser-like clarity.

“The problem is, it’s got winter seasonality.” I said, decisively.

“What?”

“Winter seasonality. Everything else in the market peaks in summer, right? So we’ve always taken that as a given. All our promotional effort happens in April and May. But the thing is, Pipenta naturally peaks in December. We’re promoting at the wrong time of year, and all we succeed in doing is flattening out the natural seasonal peak. Look, compared to everything else, Pipenta shows no seasonality at all.”

“Go on,” said Kevin, paying careful attention.

“If you look at the market overall, we’re getting around a six per cent share by volume – a bit better by value because…”

“…it’s a premium product.” said Kevin, happily.

“Yes. But if you look at December alone for the last three years, Pipenta’s getting 30 per cent. It’s actually the second biggest in the market at that time – we’ve never noticed because the actual sales in December are so small. The thing is, Pipenta is a spicier, hotter product than the rest: I don’t think people perceive it the same way as the others: I reckon it appeals to people more when the weather is cold. What we need to do is switch our main promotional push to October and November: I think if we did that you’d see a massive winter peak, and we’d take a bigger annual share. And think about it. we’d steal a march on the others: instead of competing for shelf space when they’re all fighting it out, we’d leave them to it and hit the retailers when no-one else is really bothering. We could get them to treat it as normal that they clear the other brands off the shelves in September and re-stock with seven flavours of Pipenta instead.”

“Well done, there, Fl… John,” said Kevin, “That makes sense, it makes sense. It all fits, it could be true. Trouble is, we’d have to take a bit of a punt on it, wouldn’t we? I mean, if this is right, it could be an absolute breakthrough. But you can’t really prove it without trying it, can you? What if it turns out that it’s not winter seasonality; what if it turned out that Pipenta is just a bit crap?”

“I think we could make a good case,” I said, “There’s always the option of setting up some supplementary research. But we wouldn’t be spending all that much anyway, would we? There isn’t all that much promotion for Pipenta anyway.”

“No, but see, if you’re right, we want to hit that winter period with everything, first time, as hard as we can. Not just a usual lacklustre half-page in The Grocer. We’d do some television in a target region, ideally. And never mind that, we’d have to gear up production big time in the autumn. That can cost you if you get it wrong.”

“Wow. Do you think we could swing a big push like that?”

“I don’t know, but if you’re right I’d want to. And you’d better be right, I’m telling you?”

“Because…?”

“Because I’m going to take the credit for it if you are,” he replied with a vulpine grin. “I’m going put this one up at the management meeting.”

“Great!” I said, and very largely meant it. I picked up the charts, shuffled them into line and turned to go.

“You’d better run me up a presentation,” said Kevin, “Put a lot of the detailed figures in – I won’t use them, probably, but you never know. I’ll need time to run through it so it’ll have to be ready first thing tomorrow. You weren’t doing anything tonight, were you?”

“No sweat,” I said, calmly. I had foreseen this, gentle reader: I had spent most of the day ‘running up’ the presentation in advance, before I sprung my theory on Kevin. But I wasn’t going to give it to him now – he’d want to change it all round. I’d give it to him at ten o’clock tomorrow morning (me looking hassled and tired) too late for any changes if he wanted to prepare beforehand.

At home alone that evening, I contemplated ringing Julie, but decided to let things lie a bit longer. We had had a truly tremendous row. At first I was on the back foot, taken by surprise over the bottle thing; but then I began to get annoyed all over again, and in the end I left and came back here. This morning, it all seemed pretty stupid, but there’s a sort of a limit to how quickly you can back-pedal from some of these things. I was ready to back-pedal though, gentle reader: I had caved in internally. Although outwardly Faletcher was maintaining a fine show of defiance, inwardly he had already conceded that he was just going to have to become the damned bottle-collector after all. Just not quite yet.

One good thing was that I had a clear evening to forge ahead with Wenham. I took out the old laptop and a strange reluctance sort of welled up and over me. It’s not that I couldn’t think of what to write; it’s not that I’m too tired or distracted. I just do not want to do it. I don’t want to. Do not want. But I must.

As I sat irresolute, the phone rang. Julie?

“Hello?” said a voice, “It’s Tom. You fancy a pint tonight? A few of us are going to get together in the Angel. Just a drink and a bit of mutual support.”

“Thanks,” I said, “A drink and a bit of mutual support sounds pretty good to me, but I’ve really got to catch up a few thousand words more.”

“Bring the laptop with you,” he suggested, “Several people are doing that. There’s wi-fi and everything.”

“Oh, what the hell. OK then.” I conceded. I might as well be unproductive in a pub as unproductive on my own, after all.

The Angel is a nice pub, a sort of modern reinterpretation of an old-fashioned London pub, with wooden panelling and brass all over, but wallpaper and furnishings slightly lighter and jazzier than a genuinely old place would have. Half-a-dozen serious ales on tap, but since we were probably in for something of a session, I wouldn’t be venturing on anything too strong.

The ’wrimo people were not hard to spot: they’d commandeered a sort of alcove at one end. Tom saw me approaching, and waved. I had taken the precaution of getting myself a pint already; the convention of the round did not seem to be much observed on these occasions.

“How are you?” I said as I sat down on a stool, “How’s the word count?”

“Oh, thirty-five thousand,” he said, “But it’s no good.”

“Why not? That sounds pretty good to me.”

“Well, the thing is, it all comes from an intensive burst on the first weekend. I was up to 29,000 by the end of the first week, but really I’ve got nowhere ever since. I really need some new methods of murder for the Monkey to use – you remember?”

“Yes, I remember the gist. You can’t have run out of murder methods, surely?”
Tom wrinkled up his face in distress.

“It’s not that I’ve run out, exactly,” he said, “It’s just that everything I write seems so bloody stupid, do you know what I mean? I wrote out this long screed on the first day, just churning it out, you know, in a kind of fever of creation or whatever, and I thought I was doing really well. But now I read it and it’s just… well. Every sentence I have a character say just seems unreal, not what any live human being could ever possibly say, you know? And now, when I sit down, the same feeling comes over me; all the murders seems like something made up by an eight-year old. I know they’re not meant to be taken seriously, and I know it doesn’t really matter, but it just creates this kind of barrier, you know what I mean?”

He did look really worried. I’d never thought Tom really cared about the writing, except as an excuse for going down the pub – but it seemed he did after all.

“Don’t panic though,” I said, “If you’ve got thirty-five thousand words under your belt, you’re ahead of the game. You can afford to slow down for a while.”

“Yeah…”he said resignedly.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned. It was Miss Mouse.

“I know this is a bit of a cheek,” she said, “But you were so helpful the other time. I’ve been writing the end section of ‘Lady Muck’ – would you mind if I read some of it to you?”

“No, OK.” I said, and Tom raised his hand in a gesture of acquiescence. Mouse pulled up a stool and sat down.

“OK, so my MC is now a rich old lady, and she’s out for a walk, OK?”

As she strolled along the footpath, Mary considered, thought about what her daughter had said. It was true that her daughter was made in her own likeness, was an assertive, successful woman, was well-dressed and well-spoken, had a business empire of her own making. Her son was an artist, was an unsuccessful one too, was a waster of money, was a drinker, was a failure really, did always depend on her for money and help. Yet in her heart of hearts she could not deny, could not gainsay, what her daughter had said, the accusation. She loved both her children, loved them unconditionally, loved them with a burning fire, and yet James was always special, was the apple of her eye, no matter what he might do.

“Come back to my place and have a cup of tea, Jimmy,” she said, “We have a lot to catch up on.”

“Good!” I said, enthusiastically, “I liked the bit about his socialism and her socialising.”

“Is that the end of the story?” asked Tom, “You’ve finished already?”

“No, far from it,” said Mouse, “All I’ve got is about a thousand words of the beginning, five thousand describing her fling with Jimmy, and a thousand words of the end. I’m relying on a real concentrated burst next week. I’m really going to go for it.”

“Amen to that,” said Tom, morosely.

[Total word count: 27,755]

Julie does not believe in Mercedes.

“Just the name, to begin with,” she said, “People who empty the bins in offices aren’t called Mercedes any more – not in this country, anyway. They’re called things like Ifeyinwa or Fowsia – or Kovacs.”

“Kovacs is a surname,” I pointed out, “It means ‘Smith’.”

“Alright, Anya, then. And then think about it from this woman’s point of view. She’s working hard, trying to get her job done, she’s got thirty more offices to do. The supervisor’s one step behind her, her mate is going come in any minute and ask where the plastic sacks are. This bloke in a three-piece suit and overcoat, completely pissed, smelling of stale beer and curry, starts rambling on about how no-one understands him because his uncle Jasper drowned at sea. What, so obviously she drops the bin, goes over just like that, and starts scouring the back of his throat with her tongue? I don’t think so.”

“I don’t think it was quite like that, exactly. He told her about his problems. Then he listened to her problems. Then it was the next night that things kind of kicked off. But I see what you mean. ”

“If you ask me, I think this is just Geoff’s way of trying to hide the fact that he was dumped by Maureen for being too boring.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“No, I haven’t spoken to her, but what’s most likely to have happened?”

“OK, I know, you’ve got a point. I agree, it is sort of hard to believe. Obviously this is Geoff’s version, so I expect it’s sort of slanted quite a bit. But there must be a core of truth in it. He told me I could go along to the Miramar for breakfast if I wanted to meet her.”

“I’m sure she would just happen not to be there that day. Are you actually going to go?”

“No, too embarrassing. Unless you wanted to come along too? That would make it more of a genuine social occasion and less of a suspicious investigation.”

I think she almost agreed.

“I quite like the sound of this regime of early morning screw with bacon and egg to follow,” I added, fatally.

“Oh no. I’m not acting out Geoff’s breakfast fantasies for you,” she said, decisively, “I’m a night person, anyway.”

Regretfully, I retired to the little desk in the corner and took out the old laptop.

“Have you got to work?” she asked, not altogether unsympathetically.

“Well, I am supposed to do an analysis of the latest Nielsen figures for Kevin. But I thought I’d get a thousand words in on Wenham first.”

“Your Nanoonanana thing? I thought we agreed you wouldn’t do that while you were here?”

“Really? I thought you said you hoped we could sort of work on it together?”

She grimaced.

“When I said that I meant more than just being in the same room. But it’s not going to happen, is it? Not now. Now, frankly, I’d rather you just got it out of your system as soon as possible, without me knowing any more about it. Sorry. Carry on, though, it’s OK – I’m not that bothered.”

“No, no.” With a slight sigh I opened up the Nielsen data.

Once again Kevin had landed me with a job that took much longer than I might have expected. A national analysis wasn’t too bad, but repeating the exercise for each region, and trying to draw correspondences between Nielsen regions and Behemoth regions, and Nielsen trips and Behemoth periods: and then repeating that exercise again for Major Multiples, Symbol Independents, and what have you, was a lengthy and completely pointless process. While national figures were fairly reliable, the fine breakdowns had too great a margin for error to be any real use – as I had explained in vain to Kevin.

“OK, well I’m going to bed,” said Julie eventually, and she did.

It took me another half an hour to finish off, and then, after hesitating for a moment, I opened up Wenham for a quick look.

“I’ve brought you some grapes,” said Lady Jane, “Don’t worry, you don’t have to eat them: their value is purely phatic and conventional.”

“Mercedes.” said the nurse with an engaging smile.

No, come on, I’m wasting time now. I save, exit, and switch off, and turn round. At once, my blood boils.

Julie has cleared the table where we ate dinner a few hours before; cleared it of everything, that is, except the empty wine bottle. Rawnsley Estate Cabernet/Merlot, since you ask, weighing in at a hefty 14.5% . I grip the edge of the chair hard and try to stay calm.

You may think, gentle reader, that I am a trifle unreasonable about this bottle thing. Is it such a big deal? No, indeed not, but it is the very triviality of the thing that makes it so maddening. If she can’t see that it is normal, rational behaviour to take the damned bottle off the table; if it doesn’t offend her sense of tidiness and completeness, could she not just do it for me? Just this tiny favour of picking up the bottle along with the plates? Is it that much to ask?

But no. No reason has ever been adduced for the leaving of the bottle, no pretext, no excuse. No defence has been put forward. And yet, she clings to the practice as if it were the central tenet of her religion.

I stand up. What I should like to do is pick up the bottle and throw it violently against the wall. I will not do that, gentle reader, don’t worry: I’m not that much of a nutcase. The thought of clearing up the glass afterwards is enough of a deterrent for me, never mind the explanation; because although I am furious with Julie, although I feel a keen desire to punish her, there is some timidly rational corner of my mind which does not much fancy the task of explaining to her why I smashed the wine bottle against the wall.

However, to relieve my feelings slightly, I pick up the bottle and wave it around like some angry tribesman with his war-club. I mime the action of smashing it on the edge of the table two or three times, emitting small, vole-like sounds of fury.

“What the hell are you doing?” asks Julie coldly, standing in the doorway with folded arms.

[Total word count: 26,185]

Kevin Johnson, it turns out, is a total bastard. Ever since our little chat, he’s been using the prospect of me going in for the Manager interview to extort unreasonable amounts of work out of me. He asked me to do his time-sheet yesterday, which I assumed was a joke, but it became clear that it wasn’t. Unfortunately, I don’t believe he’s lying about the interview: I’ve had some other little hints, including a kind of hint from John Sopert the Director. So I just have to grin and bear it for the moment.

Sitting there running through the figures I suddenly had this brilliant idea: why not use Excel as a literary medium? You see, the whole idea of hypertext to begin with was that people could produce texts that weren’t linear any more, that branched off in all directions: but that never really happened – all we got was links.

But if you put text and pictures into a big Excel spreadsheet, you could make it really three-dimensional. People would read one passage, and then they could scroll down, scroll across, move to the next sheet, follow a link or an instruction, go to a cell reference, whatever. Eventually they would read more or les the same story, but there would be lots of ways of getting it, and different people would read slightly different versions. When you talked to someone about the story, you’d never be sure that you’d actually read the same bits. Some bits could be hidden, like in a game, and you could have progress to other levels for a kind of macroscopic control…

“Alright there, Fletch?” Kevin Johnson asked, breaking in on my train of thought, “Penny for them?”

About six o’clock yesterday he came in and dumped this huge set of proofs on my desk.

“We don’t usually do proof-reading, Kevin,” I reminded him.

“I know, sorry, but this is a real emergency. They’ve got to be cleared tonight.”

“The other thing is, proof –reading is really a two-person job, you know?” I said, hopelessly. “One to read it out, one to correct?”

“Sure,” he replied, “But a man of your cal-aye-ber is worth two ordinary people, aren’t you?” He stopped smiling. “You don’t have to, Fletch,” he said, “But I would be very grateful, if you could.”

I hate proof-reading, and I am no good at it. I begin to read the text instead of checking it: I skip ahead without thinking; I mark the wrong bit and have to correct my corrections.

“Get it couriered over when you’ve finished,” said Kevin, breezily, “Or take it yourself in a taxi if you like. You know where they are. So long as they get it before nine this evening, it should be fine.”

And with that he had dumped the proofs and gone home. It had taken me until half-past eight.
Obviously this kind of thing is making it difficult for me to spend any time on Wenham, and although I’ve progressed a bit in the last few days I’m still lagging behind: not much over 16,000 words when I should by now be well over 20.000.

Last night I took the corrected proofs over myself, and after I’d delivered them, I dropped in on Geoff, whose flat was not far away.

“Come in,” he said, “I’ve got something to show you.”

He has one of those special stands for his PC and printer – I hate those things myself – and up on the shelf was a pile of A4.

“That’s what twenty-five thousand words looks like, mate,” he said, “I though you’d like the chance of seeing it because you’re not likely to get that far yourself, are you?”

“Jeez,” I replied “You’re printing it all out? Whatever for?” But I had a fair idea it was entirely for my benefit. There’s no denying, gentle reader, that it was a little dispiriting to see all those words actually lying there on the shelf. I moved closer and squinted at the top sheet.

“No reading!” said Geoff, “Hands off!”

The top sheet was almost blank anyway – just the title and Geoff’s name and address. The title was ‘Captain Simon’s Rose’ , which was reasonable enough, but seemed strange. It seemed strange that Geoff should actually have been able to come up with a completely original story out of his own head: he’d never betrayed even the slightest signs of creativity or imagination before. But there it was: clear evidence that the manuscript contained actual characters and even a plot of some kind.

“Come on,” I said, “I want to read about all these heaving bosoms. I am right in thinking there are heaving bosoms in it, aren’t I?”

“Oh yes,” said Geoff unexpectedly, “Plenty of those. But you’re not reading about them. You won’t let me read yours, will you?”

“No,” I admitted, “Though if you read my blog, you’ll know how things are going and you can even see a few little extracts.”

“Oh no,” said Geoff, “I’m not sad enough to start reading people’s blogs, least of all one about you. Let’s stick with the no-reading system. By the way…”

“Yes?”

He put on a condescending leer.

“I know you’re a bit behind, what with actually having to work a bit and so on. I feel a bit guilty about putting extra pressure on. I just thought I’d say, if you want to chuck it in now, I’ll let you off the bottle of Cristal. Just so long as we’re absolutely clear that I won, that I am the better writer, and that in spite of all your arty-farty stuff you can’t cut it when the chips are down, of course.”

I thought about it. I wasn’t quite sure what Geoff thought he was doing, but this was clearly some kind of reverse psychology thing. Only if it was, that meant that by offering me a chance to pull out he was trying to make me keep on with Nanowrimo. Which was odd. Or perhaps it was a double bluff. Or maybe he’d just lost track of his inverted psychology.

“Very humorous. Oh, very funny, Sir!” I exclaimed in my Greenstreet voice, though to be honest I wasn’t anything like as sure as I sounded.

“OK,” he said, “It’s fine with me. Have a seat.”

I sat down on the small black leather sofa. Geoff had a small new flat, but he had furnished it rather well by buying up the stuff from the show flat. Somehow, builders of these tiny flats manage to get furniture which looks normal but is 20 to 25 per cent smaller. The rooms all look a good size as a result, until you actually start using them: one ordinary sofa would have filled this room, with no space for anything else. By shrewdly obtaining the stuff from the original show flat, Geoff had saved himself a lot of grief and money and ensured his flat looked good, even if you did still have a noticeable tendency to knock things with your elbows due to there being less room than you expected.

“You know,” said Geoff, “I’m actually enjoying this. Not just the pleasure of winning: I’m surprised to find I actually enjoy the process of writing. It’s a nice way to relax at the end of the day, knowing whatever rubbish you spew onto the paper is going to be OK.”

“You’ve never been very interested in literature before,” I said, “I always had the impression you thought it was a bit gay, to be honest. You don’t read fiction, do you?”

“Oh, not much,” confessed Geoff, “I read that Simon King book a while ago. And someone gave me Kane and Abel for Christmas. Funnily enough, I think it helps, though. If I’d read a lot of books, I’d be thinking, you know, is this as good as Simon King; is it as good as Harry Potter? As it is, I’m not bothered.”

“Maureen reads a bit, doesn’t she? Don’t you ever read hers?”

Geoff looked serious. He sighed gustily and hung his head for a moment.

“Actually, John, Maureen and I have sort of broken up.” he confessed.

“My God, why didn’t you say something? When?”

“Oh, a week or so ago. Actually, do you remember that night when we first talked about the Nanowrimo thing? We’d just had a confrontation. I thought she was sort of going to blurt it all out, but she didn’t in the end. We had one last conversation after that, and that was it.”

“What happened, then?”

“Well,” he looked cagey for a moment, “To be honest, she sort of caught me in flagrante.”

“In flagrante? I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard anybody actually say that. In flagrante delicto. Have you been using a thesaurus? Sorry, carry on.”

“Do you want another beer?” asked Geoff. I paused for a moment, balancing the obvious need for another beer in the circumstances against the terrible gnat’s piss lager which was all Geoff kept in his flat for some peculiar reason.

“OK,” I said, “I’ll just nip down to the loo while you’re getting it.”

When we were settled again, Geoff seemed to have lost the thread.

“So?” I demanded, “You were in flagrante delicto?”

“The truth is, John, I’ve been seeing someone else off and on for about six weeks now. Still am.”

“Anyone I know?”

“No, no. It’s, er, it’s somebody from work.”

“My God,” I said, “You total bastard. It’s a senior partner isn’t it?”

“What?” said Geoff, looking sincerely pained, “A senior partner? There are only about two that are female – and have you seen them? I’d rather screw a horse. Actually, one of them might be a horse. Part horse, anyway. No, for Christ’s sake. She’s a cleaner, actually.”

“A cleaner?”

“Yes. Her name is Mercedes. See, she always used to come in and empty the waste paper basket, and we’d sort of say hello and smile and everything. I noticed her, of course, you know, noticed she was a cut above the dumpy old cow who used to do it, but nothing more than that. Then one lunchtime we had the Crickson’s do.”

“Crickson’s?”

“Yes. They’re the disc people. Look, that doesn’t matter, the point is on one of those dos you get seriously bladdered. It’s a requirement. The afternoon is a write-off. But for some reason I left my briefcase in the office, so instead of wandering down to Waterloo, I had to roll back into the office. It was after seven by then, and as I sat at my desk, still wearing my coat, in comes Mercedes to do the bins. Well, somehow, instead of just saying good evening, all this stuff sort of came out. I started talking about my problems, you know, how life seemed to be flowing past me, about my father, you know, and uncle Eric at sea, all that.”

I had no idea who Uncle Eric might be, and I was surprised to hear that Geoff felt life was flowing past him, but I didn’t want to interrupt at this point, so I kept quiet.

“Well. Somehow this turned into a proper heart-to heart. At some point she started telling me about her life, you know, and I sort of got tired and just sat there listening. So it wasn’t just me ranting on. She explained about the, you know, problems she was having: I nodded and looked concerned and all that. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before, so sudden, you know? Next day, I was back in the office as usual, thinking nothing of it, really: bit of a hangover, but that was OK, you know it was in the line of duty or whatever. I got through the day OK, and around seven, in comes Mercedes again. But something is different. I say hello in the good old style, but she comes in, gently strokes my forehead with a smile, leans down and kisses me. I think the truth is, John, to be honest, sometimes I’m a hell of a lot nicer and a hell of a lot better as a listener when I’m totally pissed. That’s the only way I can explain it. Anyway, things just went on from there, really.”

“What? What? So, every night you’ve been shagging her across the desk?”

“No, no. You’re so crude, sometimes, Faletcher. In the evenings, she has to empty the bins. She’s always busy. No, what gradually became the routine was that she would come round here about six in the morning, and after a post-coital cup of tea, we’d go out to the greasy spoon on the corner for breakfast. It’s kind of the reverse of the usual deal where you have dinner first, you know.”

“My God!” I exclaimed.

“I tell you what, though, John,” said Geoff, earnestly, “I’m sorry, but it’s been marvellous. It makes far more sense this way. I mean usually, you drag around town, drink a load of wine and stuff, and by the time you’re in bed, in the small hours, you’re virtually knackered. This way, you wake up, full of energy and expectation, enjoy an interlude of athletic and intense shagging, quick shower, and off for the full English breakfast. If there’s a better way to set you up for the day, I don’t know what it is. And then you’ve got the evenings to yourself.”

“Except you hadn’t, had you?.”

“Exactly. I was still seeing Maureen. I managed to keep the system in balance somehow for about a fortnight or so, but it couldn’t last. Eventually Maureen came over to give me some shirts one morning, and saw me and Mercedes walking out the door hand in hand. Lucky it worked out that way, really, half an hour earlier and she would have arrived in the middle of the morning session.”

“While you were in flagrante. Flagrante delicto”

“Yes. And I can tell you it is pretty damn flagrante.”

“You’re still seeing – Mercedes, then?”

“Oh yes. Yes indeed.”

I sat back and thought for a moment.

“You know Geoff, in all honesty I have to grudgingly admit that in all sorts of ways I’ve been underestimating you. I have to say I’m looking at you here with considerably increased respect, you total, total bastard.”

A tinny little tune began to play somewhere downstairs.

“God, that’s my phone,” said Geoff, “ I thought I put it on answer. Excuse me.”

He stood up and hurried down the stairs to where his mobile phone was ringing in his coat pocket. He had put it on answer, gentle reader, but I had turned it back off when I went down for a pee, and it was I who had dialled his number from the mobe in my pocket. As soon as he left the room, I leapt on the pile of manuscript by Geoff’s PC.

Now of course, I can’t remember the exact words, but it was pretty much like the following.

Prithee then, Sir, what shall your pleasure be?
My pleasure, young wnech, you would know my pleasure? Well that were a tale indeed.
But prithee, Sir, what would you drink? A firkin of our good ale, perchance?
A firkin, indeed, a good firkin is what was on my mind, in good sooth.
Captain, for shame.
No, not for shame, my buxom poppet, It won’t be a shame if I have my way.
The wench drew back in seeming modesty and yet it seemed not that she was really all that displeased, the way she giggled and everything.

Now I could hear Geoff’s voice sounding faintly through my phone.

“Hello?” he said.

Suddenly Captain Simon stiffened. A man had entered the tavern through the door and he was staring at him as if he were some kind of a ghost. He had a black moustache.
Mordred! exclaimed the Captain.
Hello there my young buck said the stranger and twirled his moustache with a devil-may-care mien.
Captain Simon sprang to his feet and put his hand to the handle of his sword.
He twirled his moustache once more and gently eased his weapon from its sheath at his flank.
Oh Captain, Captain, what is it? cried the wench but he paid her no heed.
Draw, Sir! he said, Draw, I say!
Draw, damn you Sir!
I say draw, Sir, an you be a gentleman!

I grabbed the phone and tried to keep reading at the same time.

“Hello, is that Mr Brownie?” I said, in a strangled falsetto.

“Browne.”

“Hello, Mr Brownie, I have important news for you, but first I must ask: are you the home-owner?”

Draw for you, knave I don't think I’m not doing that no I’ll call my man to deal with your impertinence I fancy. He said with haughty mien.
Draw or by God I’ll prick you where you stand, poultroon.

“Yes,” said Geoff, “Well, leasehold, but it’s like nine hundred years, you know?”

“Mr Brownie,” I said – you know, it’s surprisingly difficult to make up a convincing spiel while reading something completely different at the same time “What would you say if I told you I could save you five hundred pounds every month. Would you want to know how, Mr Brownie?”

Stand still you caitiff rogue.

“No thank you, I’m not interested.” responded Geoff in characteristically dull style. I could hear that he was already coming back upstairs, so with a final glance at the masterpiece of literature, I leapt back to the sofa.

[Total word count: 23,259]

Julie and I decided that, Wenham or no Wenham, we ought to go out for a curry. Eating curries was a big part of our relationship early on: Julie was secretly deeply gratified by the idea that she could eat them hotter than me. To be honest I used to rein in a bit and would rarely go beyond the dopiaza level unless she was attempting the vindaloo, in which case I would sometimes allow myself a deferential jalfrezi, always taking care to fan my mouth a lot.

Anyway, for us a visit to the old Star had a kind of sentimental sweetness to it. The Star was a kind of cliché, with hardboard pointy arches and genuine flock wallpaper. I really believe it was a joke at first, but as the décor got a bit tatty and then was done up slightly blander; as some of the weird pictures got replaced by relatively ordinary ones, there came a point when the owners lost track of their own irony, or perhaps the place changed hands and was taken on by someone who didn’t see anything funny about flock wallpaper.

Julie settled her briefcase on the padded bench beside her and took out her mobe, positioning it just to the left of her fork. This was a gesture that still faintly irritated me – as though she were only here until some more important or interesting business turned up – but I had gradually been worn down to the point where I took it for granted.

“So how’s it going?” she asked, briskly.

At that precise moment, the skeletal waiter who had been standing vacuously by suddenly leapt into action with the pad, and we had to defer further conversation until we had ordered.

“I’ve got two problems.” I said, “The first is this business of escaping from the car.”

“Escaping from the car?”

“Yes. You see, at the moment Charlie does this sort of strange backward leap out of a car that’s just about to plunge into the canal…”

“No, I actually meant, how are things going at work. You have been going to work, haven’t you?”

“Sorry. Yes, of course. Actually, things are going fairly well.”

I told her about the generally encouraging chat I had had with Kevin Johnson. She looked really interested: far more interested, I’m ashamed to say, than I should have been in a comparable titbit from her about prospects in retail management. I expanded a bit on what had been said, and gave her a quick sketch of the diminimus episode. At that, a less friendly but more amused look came into here eye.

“You see, John,” she began, “What you’ve got to remember is…”

“Seekh kebab?” demanded the waiter, once again choosing his moment impeccably. Again it was a few minutes before conversation could resume.

“Nobody loves a smartarse.” observed Julie, “No, not the waiter – I’m talking about you. What you have to remember is that nobody loves a smartarse. Sometimes you get this gleam in your eye, and I just know some piece of smartarsery is coming up. It’s alright with me, I’m used to it, but you really don’t want to go down that road in a work situation.”

“Hell’s bells.” I said, “How many times am I going to have to apologise for correcting some bastard’s spelling?”

“Sorry, I don’t mean to rub it in” she said, with the appearance of sincerity, “But you know what I mean, don’t you?”

The trouble is, Julie thinks I don’t take my career seriously enough. She’s right. In my heart of hearts, I’ve always prided myself on keeping just a little detachment between me and the company’s objectives. I remember being told by one fat old exec when I arrived for some early training that it would be tough and demanding; that they were going to break us down in order to build us up again. My fellow trainees looked serious and determined at this point, and I expect I did too; but what I was thinking was you’re not breaking me down, matey, not unless you’ve got a set of goons and some sort of acid bath in that room behind you. You and your pyramid of desires and your crummy Belbin horoscopes and your Myers-Briggs tea-leaf reading. Where does all this stuff come from? All this stuff that has no academic standing whatever, all this hedge-psychology and washer-woman’s cognitive science that forms a strange sub-culture which executives, those superstitious peasants, revere? Whoever found an Ishikawa chart genuinely useful? Who actually got anything but self-deluded incoherent guff out of neuro-linguistic programming? You know of course, gentle reader, that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire: and the same goes for neuro-linguistic programming.

I mean, I make an honest effort to do my job, and I am committed to success, and I spend a lot of time thinking about what Behemoth really ought to be doing, but the truth is, I should consider myself a lesser person if I could take the business quite as seriously as I am expected to take it; if I couldn’t apply my native common sense to recognising some Geoff-style piece of management theory rubbish when I see it. If that’s the price of promotion, I’m ready to do without it. Almost.

I honestly believe that the slight reserve I maintain in my dedication, that little element of objectivity, actually makes me a more useful employee than some eager, conformist team-player. But I know the bosses won’t see it like that, and I am aware that at times a faint sense of some lack of enthusiasm, some recognisable signs of an inner dialogue in my head which is not being shared with the group, has done my career some small but influential amounts of harm. They think I’m lazy, gentle reader, and conceited: no, I’m sorry, I know it’s hard to believe, but I really think they do.

“Yes,” I said, “I know what you mean.”

“Alright. So what’s the problem with the great novel, then?”

Not the novel, you notice, the great novel. Just a tiny piece of grit in the even running of the conversation.

“Your idea about the extra member of the Fidgett family isn’t quite working out for me.” I said, “I thought it was going to be good, but I wonder if four is too many. And then I have this problem over Charlie and the car.”

“Oh: my idea isn’t working out? Remind me, who is Charlie again?”

“Charlie is the chauffeur. You see, I’m killing off Fenella in a car accident, and she offers Charlie a lift – she’s sort of friendly towards Charlie – so I have to get him out before the crash. But the best I can come up with at the moment is him leaping out backwards as the car goes over into the canal, and it seems sort of stupid.”

“Well,” she said, “If it’s my idea that’s the problem far be it from me to suggest another…”

“Is everything alright?” demanded the waiter.

“Yes, yes. No wait. My slice of lemon is a bit brown on the edge, look? I think it must have been sitting around for a long time.”

“Would you like another slice?”

“Well, not really…”

“So everything is alright?”

“What? Well…Oh, yeah, whatever… fine.” I turned back to Julie. “Far be it from you…?”

“What?”

“You were saying, far be it from you to suggest…”

“Oh, I mean if my other idea has messed you up, I’d better not suggest another one.”

“No, no, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. You were very helpful. It’s not your fault. the idea was great. Please do suggest stuff. Really.”

“You know,” she began, a bit wistfully.

“Are you finished?” asked the waiter. We nodded. He reached across me to take the poppadum basket.

“I thought that since you were spending so much time on this thing we might be able to work together a bit,” she continued, “That was what I had in mind when I tried to help. But you’re sort of keeping it away from me. You do all the writing at home now: I don’t even see you for days on end.”

“I thought it annoyed you when I sat there writing.” I said.

“No! Well… actually it does, sometimes. A bit. But you know, maybe if I’d got involved it would have been more interesting.”

“OK, well I’ll come over with my laptop. Or you can come to me.”

“No, no it’s OK. I think that ship has sailed. Let’s just get the damned thing finished now, OK?”

“The vindaloo?” asked the waiter.

“You know,” I said, once he had delivered the food and gone again, “I really only started doing this for you.”

“For me?”

“Well, yes. It sounds stupid now. But I wanted to show you I could see something through to a conclusion. I thought it would help you trust me. And then you might agree to us moving in properly. In one place.”

She looked a little peeved.

“The reason I don’t want to move in is because it seems like giving in to middle age.” she said, slightly irritably, “It’s the first stage of settling down. I don’t want to settle down. Maybe in a while, one day. Not now. I don’t want to become a family, do you understand? It’s got nothing to do with not trusting you. You’re really weird sometimes, you know?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I think I’m going to ditch the Nanowrimo thing.”

“No, don’t drop it because I made you, for God’s sake,” she said. There was a long pause, but finally she smiled “It’s weird, but I suppose it’s sort of sweet in your own peculiar way. Anyway, you can’t let Geoff win the bet.”

“No, that’s true,” I agreed, “Now there’s someone who’s settled down. I don’t know why he and Maureen aren’t married already.”

“Oh, that doesn’t surprise me. I don’t think he’ll ever marry Maureen. I think he’s saving himself for a female senior partner in his firm.”

“You’re right. In fact, I think he’d consider a male senior partner if he thought the bloke was, you know, a rising star in the wacky world of management consultancy.”

“Poor Maureen.”

OK, so here I am in front of Wenham again. I need to break this block. I’m going to go straight for it and see what comes out.

“Oh, you can’t do that. You’ll wait all day. I’ll give you a lift. Come on!”

As the open-topped car tipped over the brink, Charlie’s cramped legs straightened in a desperate effort to leap free of the falling car: but it was too late. At the crucial moment, it almost seemed that the car had stopped, but it tipped further, right over, and fell upside down on to the tow-path below.

Wow. So that’s the answer. I was thinking that Charlie would feature in most of these stories, but evidently it’s not to be. Or maybe I can re-jig it later so that this isn’t the first one after all.

Anyway, sorry Charlie, but we’re back in business.

[Total word count: 20,915]

A long afternoon in the fourth floor meeting room at Cincinnatus House. It holds eight in theory: there were twelve of us. We’d reviewed the Period 3 reports, we’d heard a long and halting exposition of proposed new statistical software. Now we were hearing a lengthy but fluent exposition of tolerance levels for GM material in food products within the EU. Probably it had something to do with the viability of the new product launch, but my attention was far away by now.

But something was stopping me from drifting fully into dreamland. A word kept coming up that vaguely irritated me. Diminimus. There it was in glowing red Arial on the PowerPoint slide.

“Ah, Bill,” I said, tentatively, “It’s not, er ‘Diminimus’”

Bill, five years older than me but looked at least ten, with his male-pattern baldness and greasy old suit, looked up in surprise and then smiled.

“Oh yes,” he said, “Sorry. That’s a sort of technical term. I should have explained it. Diminimus amounts fall below the prescribed limit, which means that on certain conditions the authorities disregard them. It means the amounts are so small they’re basically OK from a pragmatic point of view. Too small to bother with, in other words. OK, John?”

“Yeah, I understand the idea, Bill,” I said, “Just wanted to point out that the term is not ‘diminimus’. There’s no such word.”

“I think there is now, John. I’m afraid we all have to cope with these new jargon words, however much we dislike them.”

“No, you see, it’s actually two words. The term is ‘de minimis’. D-E, one word, M-I-N-I-M-I-S. It’s not ‘diminimus’. Sorry to interrupt your flow, don’t mean to be pedantic.”

He smiled a little smile.

“I think you’ll find you’re wrong, John,” he said, “I’ve got this from a Ministry leaflet.”

“Then the Ministry is wrong as well.”

“I don’t think that’s likely. With all due respect, John, I think you’ll find the term is ‘diminimus’. Why don’t you look it up afterwards?”

“Look it up? I don’t need to look it up, Bill. The tag is ‘de minimis’, and it’s a shortened version of ‘De minimis non curat lex’, which is Latin, meaning ‘the law is not concerned with trifles’. A Latin tag, but not a classical one – it doesn’t come from any Roman author, at least not in that form. The earliest recorded use of it is by Francis Bacon, in fact, and it seems he was basically varying an older tag which does come from Roman sources, namely ‘de minimis non curat praetor’. Now an interesting thing about this particular phrase, you’ll notice, is how its meaning changes. The Romans meant, top people don’t deal with details: they didn’t necessarily mean some lesser magistrate wouldn’t deal with the minimal issues. When Bacon used it, he meant that the trifling matters can be ignored altogether: although the law may prescribe a certain payment, if the amounts are trivial, it isn’t meant to be imposed rigidly. Nowadays, it’s used by civil servants to mean a provision which lays down explicit minima, beneath which things can be ignored. Note that this is quite different from the actual meaning of the phrase; if the law contains actual provisions about trifling amounts, then it actually does curat them; instead of an implicit principle, we’re dealing with explicit rules. But never mind all that: all I’m saying is, you ought to spell it right. OK?”

“I think you’ll find that it may have been spelled that way once, John,” said Bill, “But this is how we’re spelling it now.”

As we filed out, Kevin Johnson leaned towards me.

“Could we have a quick word, John? In my room?”

His room was a kind of cupboard with a specially reduced desk in it, but it was still a token of greatly enhanced status. Kevin was a gangling, sandy-haired man, but he always wore really good suits. They could actually be Savile Row, perhaps, but they were definitely not off the peg. I’d often thought that I’d like to ask him where he got them, but it just seemed slightly cheeky, and I never got up the nerve.

“What was all that ‘de minimis’ stuff about?” he asked.

“Sorry, it just annoys me. There’s a practical point, too though: if he keeps spelling it wrong he’s going to look stupid. Reputational risk. And it is ‘de minimis’.”

“As far as I’m concerned it’s spelt A-R-S-E-H-O-L-E-S. I mean, fair point about looking stupid, and I’m sure you’re right, but you should have let it go. We all know you’re clever, and we value all that, but then again, there was John H in that meeting: he did Greats at Oxford or something. He’s probably forgotten more about this stuff than both of us have ever known, but he didn’t feel the need to make a fuss about it.”

“Alright,” I said, resignedly.

“The thing is, John,” said Johnson, leaning forward, “You’re doing pretty well here. If you put a bit of effort in, you could be going somewhere. We were thinking of putting you in for your Manager interview. Normally you’d have to wait a couple of years, but we think you’re capable of moving on if you put your mind to it. Don’t quote me about this. But it would be a shame if you did anything to put people off you just now, OK?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. Thanks.”

“OK then. Maybe I can help a bit, if you’ll let me.”

I stood up and edged around the chair.

“Anyway,” he said, “I think you’ll find it wasn’t Bacon who used that minimis phrase, it was a fellow called Verulam.”

“No, no, you see Bacon was… Oh. Yeah. Got you.”

He grinned at me with the twin pleasure of catching me out and demonstrating that he, too, was conversant with the great minds of bygone days. A-R-S-E-H-O-L-E. Still, I had a definite spring in my step on my way back to my humble cubicle. To be put in for the Manager interview at this stage of my career would be a really encouraging sign, not to mention the probable increase in my salary of around 15%. And quite a kick in the teeth for my contemporaries in the marketing function of Behemoth. Especially people like Bill, who’d been around the place for donkey’s years. It is not enough to succeed, gentle reader: others must fail.

But that evening, as I sat down once more to Wenham, there was no triumph in my mood. In fact, and in short gentle reader, I was blocked. The blockage appeared to have a number of causes.

Cause 1. It was just absolutely bloody stupid that Charlie should do a kind of Fosbury Flop out of a car falling into the canal and live to tell the tale. I mean, not just implausible, totally, utterly, bloody stupid.

Cause 2. I was just tired. I believe, gentle reader, that my organ of originality is fecund and productive, but you know, there are limits. I just didn’t want to force myself to start thinking yet again of what was supposed to happen next or what somebody was supposed to say now. It’s not that I don’t want to do it at all: I just need, you know, a rest. But a rest is exactly what bastard Nanowrimo will not allow my sore, over-used creative faculty.

Cause 3. Wenham is shit.

Cause 4. I started this whole thing in order to persuade Julie that we should move in together in the fullest sense. Remember? And yet, if anything, it is driving a wedge between us. I never go out with her in the evening, I keep spending time alone with my laptop (please, no sniggering), she doesn’t understand or appreciate why I’m doing this.

Cause 5. Statistically, everyone gives up. The Mouse, Tom, Richard: everyone I know who is attempting or has attempted Nanowrimo, has failed. The odds are heavily stacked against me. Do I even want to succeed against that background? To all intents and purposes, anyone who succeeds is a freak.

Cause 6. Wenham is shit.

Cause 7. If Kevin Johnson is be trusted, and up to a point I think he is, I really need to put in a bit of extra time burnishing my reputation at work just now, but there are only so many hours in the day.

Cause 8. I don’t like detective stories. I may have given the impression earlier, with my knowledgeable references to Trent’s Last Case and Dame Ngaio Marsh, that I was a bit of a buff. I’m not. I have only ever read three detective stories all the way through, and two of those were Sherlock Holmes, which don’t really count. So if I don’t even like detective stories enough to read them, why in the name of God am I trying to write one? Moreover,

Cause 9. I’m making myself acutely vulnerable here. Normally I spend my life with a protective shield of irony. I just make witty, disparaging remarks about stuff. People can’t really tell how serious I am. But when you publicly write a novel, you’re basically saying, hey, I think these words of mine are good. OK, you can still do all sorts of post-modern distancing stuff, but in the end you’re still saying you think this stuff is good. It might be obvious to everyone else that it’s shit. And in fact,

Cause 10: Wenham is shit.

At the moment, gentle reader, Geoff and his girly bottle of fizz is all that’s keeping me going,. Good old Geoff. I knew you wouldn’t let me down, mate.

I sit here staring at the small comma-shaped dot of magnolia paint on my old white radiator and try to summon the energy to go on regardless, but disgust and fatigue prevent my troubling the array of white pixels before me. I even begin to toy with the idea of an alternative novel. A Western. It would be called The Zoroastrian. ‘Tell the truth and shoot straight, ma’am: that’s my creed right there.’ Too late for that; too late for anything now but the expansion and completion of Wenham, or surrender.

OK, look. There are reasons why I’m writing a detective story. The form has rules and conventions, which support me when raw inspiration dries up. I can also claim to be parodying the constraints and limitations of the genre if I have to, in order to ward off any mockery which might come my way and provide a secure retreat into ironic detachment.

What gives me a real problem is this idea of the fourth sibling. I thought it was my salvation, but the more I think about it, the less I like it. Three is a good number. It’s always three sons in the old fairy tales. Four just looks like milking it. I don’t like the character either, with her pushy ways, her designs on Charlie, and her spaniel eyes. What I really need to do is write her out again and carry on from there, but I just have not got the will or the time to do that.

What I’m going to do is write a long digression. The mad old vicar corners Lady Sarah in the chancel one day and tells her a bit of old folklore: the Legend of Wenham. This will prefigure the recent events in the village and provide a crucial clue.

So, the legend says that when a party of Guthrum’s marauding Danes came to Wenham, they cut the local lord into pieces and fed him to his own dogs. Godraed his son, taking the coward’s way out, fled in the direction of Wales, land of shame for him.

For Vandrad, who had insinuated himself into Othlac’s party only a few days before, now stood revealed as none other than Godraed, crafty son of the slaughtered English lord: far from Wales, he let out a mighty blast on his horn, summoned from their places in hiding battle-hardened veterans of his father’s thegns and the less terrible but more enthusiastic levies of the Fyrd, who together swarmed over the remains of the Danish force, still hard at work consuming itself like the worm Ouroboros, and obliterated it. The arrival of Alfred to contest Guthrum’s advance a few days later protected Wenham from any further incursion and the village lived in peace for the next century.

Hm. Think I’ll take that out again, actually.