It’s Saturday so this must be Stanwich. Mary looked at her diary (smart, leather, a present from Carl last Christmas) and she saw that Stanwich had better be what it was. The diary was really a filofax, an organiser, but she hated all the business connotations of that f-word so she called it a diary anyway. Maybe she did run a business, of sorts, officially, but whatever the truth of it she didn’t want to think of her life in those terms. She looked again to double check. In royal blue she had written “Stanwich 2pm. Interview/audience” and below that a few notes about directions, venue and emergency phone numbers (in case she had to cancel, though she never, ever did). Below that there was “Reading 7pm”, a few more notes about the hotel and a half-made arrangement to meet up with Graham in the bar later on. They might laugh and eat and compare notes on the audiences. It might, easily, be the highlight of the weekend. Time to gird the loins, Mary said to herself sternly, knowing far too well how beginnings made her nervous and how she liked to put them off. She put the diary back in her bag and glancing up saw a tired-looking poet looking back at her in the rear-view mirror. The middle-aged woman had car-journey film over her skin and hair and out of the picture her clothes were creased to match her wrinkles, no doubt. Still, she was smart enough, considering. She could be a sales manager on the road for a firm offering better sanitation services. She could be a busy advertising account manager passed over for promotion a few times in favour of younger colleagues. She could be many things. The entrance to the venue had a sign and a photocopy of an old photograph of the poet, Mary Readman. She’d always liked that set of photos because her friend Andrea had taken them and she had made Mary look that attractive mix of clever, friendly and not totally undesirable. Mary had seen them so often in magazines and books and dimly-lit halls that they no longer looked like photos of her. They were just Mary Readman, hello and welcome to today’s performance. “So great to see you again.” Keen and warm, thank heavens for local arts workers and their big firm hands. “You probably don’t remember me, John Sampson? You did the summer reading day for me two years ago…” Mary did remember and said so and smiled her best away-from-home smile. “That was a great event,” she said generously because it really had been OK and he was an OK bloke. More than OK probably if you were his other half, his seven-year-old or his cat. John Sampson (who had, in fact, a three year old and a pair of ageing budgies) felt himself glowing at this praise from a contemporary literary great. A tall, gently bearded OK bloke in his late thirties, his hands were now hot rather than just warm. He put them in his pockets, nervously, and then realised he looked too casual, rude even, and took them out again. “May I introduce Vic Hill,” he gestured to the woman by his side who was trying to look unimpressed. “She’ll be interviewing you today.” “Hi,” said Mary, arm outstretched, “ I hope you’re going to be kind to me.” She always said that and never knew why – it was some perverse ritual she just couldn’t drop. She didn’t care if interviewers were kind, or cruel or completely indifferent. It was just something to say. “Of course,” said Vic Hill, hoping not to seem as gushing as big soppy John, “I’m a huge fan.” “Vic’s a poet too,” enthused John and Mary pulled out her best but-of-course-you-are-they-always-are expression. She always tried to make it impersonal but, at the same time, encouraging. Meanwhile her mind wandered to the state of the local shopping facilities. Did Stanwich have a Boots and if so was it a decent-sized one with a full children’s toy selection? She had nephews and nieces with birthdays on the horizon. “Nothing published really,” added Vic, her smile pained and tight on her slightly touched-up forty year old face, “just the odd one here and there.” “Everyone’s really looking forward to the event”, put in John on full gush. This was the part of his job that he loved the most - out of the office and into the community centres. Nothing made him happy quite like the ushering in of the great and the good and the overseeing of meetings of minds. He would do this for fun, never mind the local authority and the lottery funding. Once ushered into the meeting room (bare, dim, usual stall of books, usual rows of chairs), Mary sat by the compulsory individual bottle of mineral water and tried to empty her mind of motorways and associated travelling concerns. Did I lock the car? She was sure she had. Should I leave early tomorrow or wait till after rush hour? The rows were filling steadily with Mary’s regular crowd. If there was such a thing as Middle England it usually came to her shows and Mary sometimes longed for a change. She looked for the representatives of the sparkling multi-cultural England she saw on TV and on the streets of some of the places she visited but they never showed up. She read books that featured people of different colours and races - she just very rarely read books to them. Instead she watched the settling bunches of pink ladies of certain ages (some who liked to be ‘ladies’, others that preferred ‘women’, the odd humorous ‘girl’). She spied the earnest young man who would ask lots of questions because he wanted to be part of the show (any show). There were a few younger women, a few loyal friends and partners, no doubt a sprinkling of Vic’s supporters in there somewhere too. “I’ve never done an interview before,” said the local unappreciated artist as she sat down at Mary’s side. “I hope you’ll be kind to me too.” Mary glanced at the pile of scribbled notes and books with post-it-itis that Vic laid primly on the table next to the water. She smiled and let her mouth talk unaided. “Well, it’s filling up nicely,” she said, her automatic pilot up and running nicely. “Oh, there’s a lot of support for literature round here.” Vic prided herself on her inability to talk small but she was, in fact, quite good at it. “There are several really active reading groups and plenty of creative writing. I teach some myself.” No doubt, thought the contemporary great, half of her already in Boots wandering amongst multi-coloured aromatherapy bubble baths. She checked herself, told herself again to get those loins girded and concentrate. People had gone to a lot of trouble for her. She was in demand, popular – she could do much worse things on a Saturday afternoon. After John’s bouncey introduction had quietened the mumbling audience, the event got going in the usual fashion. Vic’s questions were long and not very well formed but Mary knew what to expect and the autopilot was little challenged. She caught herself sounding cynical and bitter a few times and resolutely tried to be more cheery and positive. There was no point being the stereotypical miserable poet – at least not in public. They covered some career, some semi-feminism, very little to do with writing or poems but Mary didn’t mind – it was easier to talk about life than work anyway. If she talked about work she just wanted to go home and do some. Vic felt she was handling this new situation pretty well. She admired the way Readman had forged ahead in the poetry scene and established herself as a classic wordsmith whilst very much still alive and scribbling. Whether Vic actually had any respect for the famous writer was another matter entirely. In truth she found Readman’s work a little pedestrian, a touch personal, more than a tad quirky for her taste. Vic looked through her expensive see-how-serious-I-am glasses at the rather dowdy, uninspired famous poet and she couldn’t help thinking how much wittier she, Vic Hill, poet and essayist, would be in her place. She might glow with greatness (in the right light). She certainly wouldn’t wear court shoes and a beige jumper. Over halfway through the session Vic flicked her texts and started on her section of questions entitled ‘poems’. “The poem ‘Drops’,” she postured in an emerald green cardigan that always had its fans, “is many people’s favourite. May I ask, Mary, is it one of yours?” Mary, half occupied with foot spas and toddler toys, found herself unusually caught off guard. She’d had this question a hundred times before and her autopilot knew the response - "It means a lot to me, it’s very personal, I’m glad if it can help others understand their grief or sadness about losing someone” - but for some reason she just couldn’t locate that particular formation. Her mind flailed about and failed to do its job properly. It was like being the clever clogs on a quiz show and not remembering the capital of Scotland or something. Mary hung her head and tried to collect some thoughts that might be of use. Vic shuffled papers and books and looked every so slightly in John’s direction. ‘Drops’ was a poem about the death of the author’s first husband, she’d read that somewhere. She was sure she’d read a Sunday paper interview where Readman discussed it openly and honestly with that greaser-to-the-stars character, Lucy Mather. What was her bloody problem now, for heaven’s sake? Her eyes half closed, all Mary could see now were words on the move. They rushed by her and under her at such a speed that she felt she was back on the never-ending motorway again, staring stupidly at the dividing white lines. She tried to focus on individual sets of letters but that just made them more blurred and the more she strained the more the words just hurried by. Have a drink of water, she told herself from outside, buy a little time. It was just a small crowd, in a small town. She could handle it, of course she could. At least it wasn’t live TV. Reaching for the reassuring water bottle, Mary had to look up and face Vic. Her inquisitor suddenly bore a disconcerting resemblance to a sadistic music teacher Mary had feared all through primary school. “My throat’s dried up,” she managed to whisper, hoping not to sound too desperate, “ excuse me a moment please.” As Mary fiddled like an 8 year old Vic looked on bemused. Where was the great visionary she had read about in the cluster of press interviews? Where was the “grown-up reader’s Joan of Arc”? “Would you rather I moved on to your later work?” Vic asked, not so quietly, leaning over to her guest. Mary’s eyes caught the open page of Vic’s book. It was marked with a square yellow post-it note bearing a large hand-written number ‘1’. Even upside down she could see the words of ‘Drops’ as clear as they ever were and as she looked at the familiar page she felt her ability to focus returning. It was a short, deeply sad poem, that one on the page before her. It had much less literary merit than many of her others and it certainly wasn’t her favourite. Absolutely not. It was about love and passion and how you feel when a loved one dies. It was really that simple – it was a feeling, nothing more. The thing about ‘Drops’ was that, like many simple poems, it struck a chord with the public. They could understand it, make friends with it, use it to learn to cope with their own grief. Mary was something of an expert on grief too – a cult figure amongst widows and widowers and bereaved parents of a certain age. She had mourned her father (at the age of 5), her mother (at 20) and her first husband and true soul mate (at the grand age of 31). ‘Drops’ had made her role official and sometimes she resented the way she had to deal with Robert’s death in an offhand way week after week because of those few words on a page. That death, that horrible disappearing act had been the worst thing that had ever happened to her. It was the worst thing that lived in her memory. It had happened exactly twenty-one years ago but it had never gone away and never eased with time. There had been new happinesses (though never any children) and she’d tried not to grumble because she knew that, all in all, her life had really gone quite nicely. She was successful in her work and she had a doting second husband who earned good money and took her on relaxing holidays. She never wanted for anything but that didn’t stop the gaping hole always being there. Robert had been the great love you think you’ll never find. And she had found it. She had found him. But then Robert had been desperately unhappy, or desperately ill, or… she really didn’t know what had happened. So much for the great perception, she would reprimand herself late at night, you can’t work out the mysteries that really matter. You can’t explain what’s happened in your own life. Still now she would ask herself - why do physically healthy, gorgeous, lively young people suddenly decide they have to die and that nothing else will do? It was a question that she had to think about, whether she liked it or not – it was just part of her character now. In truth she preferred to do that thinking alone and not in discussion with groups of strangers every Saturday at 2pm and then again at 7 (never mind mid-week bookshop events and school visits) but that was a luxury she did not have the right to. She especially didn’t want to talk about this most precious subject with wannabe poets who wanted her life and not her opinion. “No, I’m fine, thank-you,” said the confused poet who was after all Middle English too. She sipped her water (still, not sparkling) and found at least the beginning of the required response. “It means a lot to me,” she began. But then the autopilot lost its plot again and veered completely off its course. “It’s not my favourite, no,” her voice spoke on its own, “how could it be? It’s about tears and blood and death and misery and not understanding why someone wilfully took themselves away from you when you loved them and that should have been enough. It’s about the last image of a perfect man being a pool of thick clotted blood made up of your own tears.” Mary’s body sat still and tense whilst her voice said its piece and her eyes lost fluid that must have been tears. “I’m never sure how clear it is to the reader but that’s what it’s about,” it concluded, “it’s just sadness.” The devoted and decent audience was divided by this quiet outburst. Some looked nervously at programmes, others were thrilled to see real emotion on display. Some had even produced real tears of their own and a little, stifled sob came out into the open from somewhere in row five. John Sampson was weeping and beaming at the same time. He looked around the room and breathed in the refreshed air. He’d seen and heard Mary Readman a hundred times but never caught this honesty version. He liked it very much. He wanted to rush and hug her so they could both weep together over their dysfunctional families and confused lives. Vic Hill was not crying. She was barely moved. She longed to say “for God’s sake woman, pull yourself together it must have been years ago” but she repressed that urge. Instead she said in her best counsellor’s voice, ”It’s obviously something that still affects you very much”. “You could say that yes.” Mary was gradually regaining control of her voice and her mind’s eye was busy seeing less words and more pictures. It saw her poor Robert saying goodbye for no reason she would ever understand. She didn’t need the poetic imagination to see it – reality had been quite vivid enough and time had not changed the image in her mind. He still looked the same – defeated, dying, soaked through with his own fluids. Vic debated internally how she was coming over to the waiting audience. Was she being sympathetic enough? Should she pat Readman reassuringly on the knee? Should she perhaps share a painful memory of her own? Vic’s parents had nearly divorced once – no blood, sadly, but still quite unpleasant. Vic couldn’t think of an appropriate next question and so looked to John for guidance. It wasn’t admitting defeat so much as being sensitive to the mood, she told herself. John’s tears glistened from row one and he beamed through them at Vic. How marvellous, thought the soft-hearted soul, Vic’s made the great Mary Readman open up more than I’ve ever seen. She was the right choice for the job. Getting no signal bar the beaming, Vic glared at John to stir him on. Again only tears and beams came back. A little exasperated with all the emotion on show Vic intook some breath and stabbed in the dark. “Perhaps this would be a good time to take some audience questions,” she suggested and was relieved to see arms shoot up all over the room. “John, would you like to administrate…” Mary felt exhausted and dislocated but the waving arms looked good from where she sat. Old and not-so-old they were all good healthy arms, keen to ask questions, to share ideas and learn. There was not a sad bleeding slit wrist to be seen and Mary was pleased that this was so. She realised that the moment of revelation had passed and that it had not been a disaster or a national tragedy. The small crowd in the small town had not been put off by a few abrupt emotional phrases and she was still the gracious, charming, grown-up poet. Nothing had really happened here. Nothing at all. She smiled her best appreciative smile and got on with the usual business of meeting her faithful public.
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