Nicholas Royle - First Novel

But I begin. I read an extract from my novel-in-progress. It’s a scene set in a pub. Dialogue between the narrator and two other characters, one more important than the other. While I read, I am aware of my attention wandering. When this happens, I am always surprised by my ability to stick to the script. Like flying by wire. Some back-brain function keeps the reading going while my mind fills up with unrelated thoughts. I look up frequently and at a table near the front I see Elizabeth Baines, her silver-blonde hair cut in a flattering new style, the lights reflected from the disco ball flashing in her spectacle lenses. I think of the barbecue at AJ’s. I briefly picture Lewis. Even that doesn’t put me off my stride.

When I have finished I leave the stage and the organisers call a break. Before I have a chance to sit down, I notice someone walking towards me. A woman, tall and angular, with heavy eye make-up and dark bobbed hair beginning to go grey. She’s familiar, yet I cannot place her. She offers her hand and I take it hesitantly. Her handshake is firm but brief. When she introduces herself I realise I’ve seen her photo on a book jacket. She lectures in creative writing at one of the other universities.

‘Nice reading,’ she says as she touches my arm and smiles from under her hair. ‘I just wanted to give you a heads-up.’

I realise that she is quite drunk. She goes on to say that the scene in the extract I just read — about the brace position and whether it’s intended to save lives or curtail them — had sounded very familiar to her and her friends.

‘Around our table,’ she adds, gesturing vaguely towards the back of the room. ‘We looked at each other and we said, “That’s familiar. That’s Fight Club .”’

I raise my eyebrows. At the same time I become aware of someone, another woman, standing close by, as if she wants to speak to one of us and is waiting for an opportunity.

‘I’m not saying you lifted it, of course. We’re not saying that. But it’s similar. I just, I suppose, I just wanted to let you know, in case, you know…’

‘That’s very thoughtful of you,’ I say.

‘In case, you know, anyone says, anyone else. You’ll know, you know.’

‘Yeah.’

She touches my arm again.

The other woman, whoever she is, will have seen that. I glance towards her, but that hand is still on my arm and I look back at its owner.

‘The book, I mean,’ she continues, ‘not the film. Definitely the book.’

‘Well, that’s good. I haven’t even read the book. I’ve seen the film. Everybody’s seen the film, haven’t they? But I haven’t read the book.’

‘It’s in the book, I’m sure it is. I just thought. We just thought. You should be aware of it. In case.’

‘Thank you,’ I say and I can see that she is finally backing off and as she does so I realise how close to me she had been standing. She smiles as she turns away to face the direction in which she is walking, with exaggerated care.

I look at the other woman properly for the first time. I recognise her, but I don’t know from where. I smile at her. Too late I realise it’s Grace.

‘She was winding you up,’ Grace says.

‘You think?’

‘She was definitely winding you up.’

‘She said she was just letting me know so I could check it out, so I’d know, you know. I’d be prepared should anyone else make a similar remark. I’d have had a chance to figure out what to say. Or I could cut the scene.’

‘Exactly,’ says Grace. ‘She’s playing with you.’

‘Either she is, or she isn’t.’

‘Believe me. She wants you to cut the scene, or to be uneasy about it.’

‘Or spend time and money checking to see if she’s right,’ I say.

‘Exactly. And you will, won’t you?’

‘Either I will, or I won’t.’

I experience a sudden wave of tiredness and glance towards where I’d been sitting. Grace seems to sense my need and nods at the table. I don’t invite her to sit down, but she sits down anyway. I take a long drink from my glass. I wonder how many more readers there will be. I wonder how long the break will last before they start again. I wonder how long Grace will sit there giving me her basilisk stare.

‘What did you think of what I sent you?’ she asks out of the blue.

I have to think before I know what she is talking about.

‘It was good. I liked the setting,’ I say. ‘Very vivid. I’ve never been to Zanzibar — never even been to Africa — but it felt authentic. And the detail about low flying and very low flying. I liked that too.’

‘Was there anything about it you didn’t like?’

‘No, I don’t think so. I think I liked it all.’

‘What about the ending?’

‘OK, the ending. I wasn’t sure about the ending.’

‘Wasn’t sure about the idea or that I’d got it right?’ Grace’s persistence lacked the charm of Helen’s. ‘You can see what I’m trying to do there?’

‘You are suggesting that his head is taken clean off by the undercarriage of the Hercules and you ambitiously have the POV switch to the severed head as it hits the ground and rolls across the beach. You describe what the eyes see as this happens, picking up on an earlier point about consciousness surviving for a certain amount of time after beheading.’

‘Yeah. What’s not to like?’ she says, her eyes glittering in the reflected light from the disco ball.

‘I like it. I like it very much. I applaud the ambition. I’m just not sure the impact of the plane would sever the head.’

‘Isn’t that a little pedantic?’ she sneers.

‘Isn’t it my job to be pedantic?’

‘With punctuation?’

‘Luckily you don’t need that level of hand-holding. Wouldn’t whatever part of the plane strikes the head just deal it a terrible blow, take a chunk out of it?’

‘Well, I don’t know. I can’t very well set up a controlled experiment.’

‘Mmm. A blind experiment.’

‘Is that a joke?’

‘I probably am being a little pedantic,’ I say. ‘You take a leap of the imagination and the momentum of the story, the boldness of the conceit, should take the reader with you.’

‘Yeah, but if that doesn’t happen, it undermines the whole story. That’s what you’re saying.’

‘But that’s the beauty of the form. Of the short story. You can take risks that you wouldn’t in a novel. How much time have you lost writing it? How much time has the reader lost reading it? And if we get it, if our suspension of disbelief is unbroken, it’s all worth it.’

‘Hmm.’ She looks agitated.

It is my job to encourage the talented students, not discourage them. Grace is clearly talented, but there is something about her that makes me uncomfortable.

‘How’s your novel coming along anyway?’ I ask her.

‘The story is part of it,’ she says, her jaws snapping shut like an insect’s.

‘Great. That’ll work.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know; you tell me.’

She laughs a rustling, almost metallic laugh. ‘We’ll see,’ she says, placing one large hand over the other on the tabletop.

I drain my glass.

‘I’m going to head off,’ I say, getting to my feet.

‘Don’t forget to check out Fight Club ,’ she says, a slight jeering tone reminding me either of what she thought of my passivity in dealing with the drunk novelist, or of what she herself thought of the drunk novelist.

Following Flynn’s death on Uroa beach, Ray struggled to carry out his full range of RAF duties. He gave it six weeks and then applied for medical discharge, which was granted. He wondered if it was granted in the hope that it would buy his silence. He had answered all questions put to him in the internal RAF inquiry that took place immediately after the ‘accident’ and he assumed that the two nurses who had been present in the Hercules had answered just as truthfully. He had no idea what Dunstan himself had told the inquiry and he didn’t ask. But he suspected that the outcome of the internal investigation would be either hushed up or massaged into ambiguity if it wasn’t the desired outcome and he knew that normal procedure dictated a full and open inquiry would have to be held at some future point according to the laws of the United Kingdom. He preferred to return to the UK as soon as possible to be ready for that, whatever he might choose to say when the time came.