LenabyFelix CarswellPublished by Anthemion Software Ltd.

Copyright 2010 by Felix Carswellwww.anthemion.co.uk

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.License NotesThis ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.Chapter 1In my job, I mix with some very funny people. They don't know they're funny; and if they did, the realisation might change them; it might make them behave with blandness, or with exaggerated eccentricity. And that would really spoil my other job. When I'm not tending to my eccentrics, I write. No man could have better inspiration than the wonderful people who look to me to assuage their endless thirst for caffeine and their craving for doughnuts. To you, I may be just the gregarious barista chatting up the attractive clientele; I may seem harmless enough at the controls of the cafe's polished and busily hissing machines. But beware: elements of your personality may find their way into my writing. You have no protection against this forced extraction of the essence of your being. I don't ask you to sign a waiver. And maybe one day, I'll even benefit financially from your mannerisms or the argument you're having too loudly with your mistress. I'm sorry, but there's absolutely nothing you can do to protect yourself. The only retaliation is to get out your own notebook.I suppose that's what I love most about writing: the raw material is always around me, totally free, waiting to be fashioned into something new. No-one else can create exactly what I can create. Only I can choose the elements, either from my mind or from the real world, and put them together into just such an order. Then I give this strange, unique thing I made back to the people who helped create it. They won't recognise any of the ingredients, not if I've done my job right. And they'll think, how easy it must be, this writer's life. It all looks so effortless. All you need is paper and pen. If that's how it seems to them, it's OK. It means I smoothed out all the wrinkles and they didn't see signs of construction at all.Anyway, I wanted to tell you about the strangest encounter I've had yet. At the time, I was a bit blocked and stale, but afterwards, my writing started flowing again and I think you'll understand why.Chapter 2It was in January, the most down-trodden month of an Edinburgh winter. An attractive woman came into the cafe, which is nothing remarkable. We get a steady stream of lookers - so much so that you feel a bit spoilt. But this woman had presence. Something about her demanded my close and immediate attention. Her eyes, in particular - extraordinary bright blue eyes nearly hidden by the mass of crinkly brown hair that flopped around her face. She was disentangling herself from a large purple rucksack as she came up to the bar. Somehow, I knew that she wouldn't waste any time thinking about her order. She was in there immediately with "Grande mocha please, no cream, to sit in." She looked directly at me with those bright eyes - there was no way I could avoid her gaze, and she gave as she spoke a disarming smile that requested an extra-special level of service. My automatic banter failed to engage. I could not speak so I nodded, still not taking my eyes off her though I wanted to look away. But that would have seemed disrespectful and whatever it was that she had, it was something that commanded respect. Right then I was happy to be her slave.When I took the drink to her table, she was writing in the last pages of a scruffy notebook."You'll be needing a new one soon," I ventured. She looked up and smiled. It may seem a bit cliched, but my heart really was pounding at this point, and I was puzzled by my own, uncharacteristic, nervousness."That depends on how inspiring this place is," she replied, looking around the cafe, the customers, and back at me, as if they might not live up to her expectations. "Do you reckon Edinburgh is inspiring?"The question was so to the point, it felt like a sharp pencil inserted under my skin."Yeah," I began lamely, when I had recovered slightly. "Yes, very. It's why I'm here. You would be a sad sack if it didn't inspire you." I began to jabber. "I mean you've got the views from the castle, some fantastic hills to walk up, about a hundred places to get coffee, great pubs, zillions of galleries, great buildings and the people, well, they're brilliant too..." I tailed off. How could I really summarise the place in one sentence? In trying to do so, and so poorly, I felt that I had betrayed my city. I began to feel annoyed at this presumptuous stranger - and what was that accent of hers? I just could not place it."So," I countered, "what do you like in a city?"Since it was a quiet morning I pulled out the spare chair at her table a little and leant on it, meaning her to invite me to sit down. She looked at me, considering, and then gestured for me to sit, rather more imperiously than I considered strictly necessary. So, despite feeling like a well-trained Labrador, I turned the chair about and straddled it as carelessly as I could."What do I like in a city?" she repeated his question and took a sip of her mocha. She wiped the foam from her mouth with her index finger in a way that disturbed and excited me. "I like a city that's as far away as possible," she said and smiled again."Far away? From where? From what?" I had to ask though I knew even then she would not give me a straight answer.She pointed at her rucksack, and held up her notebook. "These are my life now.""So you've done a bolt?""I guess you might call it that," she said, looking abstractedly away. She dipped her finger into the mocha foam and licked it."So the writing - what do you write? Is it your journal?""Kind of," she said. "And I'm writing a novel. Maybe a novel.""Excellent," I said. "I'm writing a screenplay you know - a thriller, supposedly.""And it's working?" she said, picking up the edge of anxiety in my voice. I might as well be stark naked, I thought."Well, I'm having trouble with the plot. The characters kind of took over, and before I knew it I'd written ten pages of dialogue with no idea of where the story was going. And now I'm stuck again. It's appalling. I feel I'm rock climbing in the rain. I've got nothing to grab on to. "She nodded, and then with both hands, pushed her thick hair back from her face, a futile gesture since her hair immediately flopped back around her eyes. "I have the opposite problem. Plotting I can do. Plotting is why I'm here. But my characters are all horrible. Maybe it's me making them horrible." There was a note of vulnerability in her voice that made me refuse to believe that. "They say you are what you write, after all," she added."I don't agree with that. The whole thing about writing is you can be someone else. You can escape into being bigger, better, more heroic, or whatever. Or you can be a mass murderer - without getting your hands dirty.""My people are still horrible. Mean or flat. Or mean and flat.""Kind of like dirty old carpet?"She smiled and then said after a moment, "My bad guy's all right though. I think he works. He does the right thing in the end.""Which makes him not a bad guy," I said, and then noticed the impatient queue at the counter. "Unlike me. I've got to go."I was on auto-pilot for the rest of the day, and my journal entry that night was incoherent.Chapter 3It was a few days before I saw her again."So Edinburgh isn't that bad, after all?" I said to her as I passed her table with a tray of dirties."It does me for now," she replied, with a mock-superior expression. "Can I get a mocha?"When I returned with her coffee, she was running a long finger over the blank first page of an expensive-looking leather-bound notebook."I knew it was a mistake buying this," she said. "Now it's inhibiting me. Look at this paper - feel it - it's like having to write on your grandmother's best sheets."Just the thing for a sex scene, then," I suggested with a grin.Again, I slipped into the seat opposite her and she didn't seem to mind."I feel I have to write something good on it," she said, and would have closed the notebook if I hadn't playfully pulled it away from her."Bad idea," I said. "Just write. Tell yourself you're going to write any old rubbish. But the main thing is to write. It doesn't matter if it's a steaming load of -""Do you do that?" she asked."God no, I write pure gold every time."We laughed, and again I found myself looking into her mesmerising eyes considerably longer than was strictly necessary. No-one had the right to have eyes as powerful as those. How could any woman compete, or any man resist?"Why are you here?" I asked quietly.She shrugged and then reached into her purple rucksack and produced the battered old notebook she had been writing in the other day. She flipped through it, found a page and pushed it towards me. I read:"Now she was finally on the run, Lena felt a huge weight lifting from her. The money was beyond her reach, and just as they had promised, 'they' were coming after her. There were no extenuating circumstances to ruthless men like these. If you messed up, you paid for it. They had the power to judge, sentence, execute. But she would find a way to escape those shadows and build a new life."She took back her notebook. I looked up at her, trying to match the words with the person, but I knew I would get no more than that. Besides, she had already given me enough to keep me awake at night."You'd better get back to work," she said, and picked up her pencil.Later, I glanced over through the cloud of espresso steam, and saw her writing in the new notebook, lost in it.Chapter 4When I saw her next, it was not in the cafe, although I had looked for her daily, and had felt an inevitable disappointment when she never appeared. No, this time I saw her on the castle esplanade. She was staring out over the valley where the railway ran, across the long street of shops on Princes Street, out towards the mist-shrouded hills of Fife. I wondered if she was on the verge of moving on, northwards perhaps, to let the coldness freeze out the memories of her past. So I walked quickly over to her, suddenly worried that she would vanish forever. I wanted to unravel just a little more of her.I touched her lightly on the shoulder, and rather gratifyingly she jumped as if my finger were electric."I'm sorry," I said. "I wasn't sure it was you." She grimaced charmingly and turned back towards the view. "On a good day you can see the rail bridge in the distance," I went on. "Like a great rusty dinosaur straddling the river.""I'm glad to see you," she said, rubbing her numb hands together. "I need some advice." "Advice?" I was intrigued and not a little excited. Was she going to ask me for a safe house? Was I about to be drawn into some shady, gangster world that would change my life forever? Was she going to ask me whether she should take the suitcase of cash to the police and turn herself in? Or perhaps she would ask me to do a flit across Europe with her, and then we could lie together in shabby hotels, discussing the meaning of life and literature before having the sort of sex that only ever happened in movies."You know I said I had the plot all worked out?" she began."Sure," I nodded, stuffing down the disappointment and trying to focus. She wanted to talk to me about writing. Well, that was flattering enough."I'm not so sure now. I've been reading this book and..." She sighed heavily and took a shiny paperback from the deep pocket of her coat. "According to this, it just doesn't work. For example, I don't have a mid-point reversal.""A what?" I stuttered."A mid-point reversal. According to this the story won't work without one, but it doesn't fit in my story.""Well, I think you've answered your own question, haven't you?" he replied. "If it doesn't fit your story, you don't need it."Patting the book against her palm, she turned away from me and back to the view. "Not according to this."Emboldened, I took hold of her shoulders and turned her around to face me again. I'd always wanted to do something like that, and it in dramatic terms, it worked like a charm. I waited a couple of beats before launching in."Quit panicking," I said. "I bet your story is fine. And for what it's worth, I've read dozens of these books. Sometimes they're really useful, and I guess some of them work for some people. But mostly they just freak me out. I don't think you can reduce story to a formula. There are no simple blueprints. It's not join the dots. Do this on page forty four and you will have a Hollywood Blockbuster - I mean, that's rubbish - and if you try it, you can get predictable hogwash that isn't worth the paper it's written on. Your judgement is the only thing that really matters. Trust yourself. It's your story - not theirs."She looked relieved and looked down at the book."You're absolutely right," she said, and with a deft flick of her wrist, she tossed it over her shoulder and the wall, into the bushes below. "Come on," she said briskly, "I'm going to buy you a coffee."Finally we could talk properly, without the interruption of my duties. We talked about the frustrations and pleasures of writing; how no-one quite understood what we were about; how worthless we felt when words didn't flow; the excitement of having written a few really good pages. Yet we couldn't bring themselves to show our work to each other. Somehow, this was redundant; or we lacked confidence in half-finished works. And maybe we didn't want to puncture the mystery.Edinburgh was in particularly good form that day, in that cafe. Students talked of foundering relationships, missed lectures and lost toolbars. Solemn academics exchanged publishing anecdotes. A man in an ill-fitting suit loudly described his embarrassing medical condition into a mobile phone. And in a corner by the window, feeling a curious sense of detachment, I observed myself on the charm offensive. I was buoyant and somewhat overconfident, giving her advice on characterisation."I think it helps to have a backstory for your characters. If you give them a history before the start of the book, they have no choice but to come alive by the time the story opens. Make their personalities drive the events in the story: things shouldn't just happen to them out of the blue."Of course the moment I said that, I realised the limitations of this observation. Had she not simply dropped out of nowhere? Life was random. I sank back into my velvet armchair. After all, I didn't even know her name."Well, as a general rule, anyway," I added. "Actually, I'm going to shut up now. I'm probably talking crap."She smiled indulgently. "Maybe I need to chuck you over the castle wall too.""Definitely," I replied."Tell you what," she said, taking one of the free postcards supplied by the cafe. "We'll each put our best writing tip on a card for the other to look at later. Then we'll talk about something else completely. Agreed?""Agreed," I said, wracking my brain for something suitable. I remembered a quotation by Somerset Maugham: "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no-one knows what they are."She scribbled something down, making sure I couldn't read it. She was endearingly secretive, like a child hiding her work on her desk at school."I guarantee you'll write faster if you do what this says," she said as she passed it to me upside down. A phone number, an address was what I really wanted. Just her name would have done.I handed over my card, which she slipped rather teasingly into the inside breast pocket of her plum-coloured velvet jacket. Then I wished I had written something more personal, something of what I really felt for her. But that was not the game she wanted to play.We sat back in our chairs, and passed the remaining time agreeably, speculating about the occupations of the other customers.At last, as darkness began to fall, I had a sense that this scene was playing itself out, and that it was not for me to pick this particular wildflower. When I look back on it, I wonder why I gave in so easily, but at that moment I had the sense to know that the promise of the thing was sweeter than the reality might be.We left the cafe and stood in the cold street making our goodbyes. She kissed me on the cheek. "Thank you!" she said, almost in a whisper. "Good luck with that screenplay!" I whispered some nonsense back, and then she walked purposefully away down the street, heaving her rucksack back onto her shoulders, as if she meant to continue walking to the end of the earth. She did not look back at me, although I stood waiting until she was out of sight, hoping that she might. I told myself I would serve her in the cafe again, but deep down I knew I never would.I pinned the postcard to the corkboard above my desk, amongst the other representatives of the chaos of my life. Written in loopy, impulsive handwriting that made me think of the curls of her hair, it read: "To write faster: Write in pencil on extra shiny paper. Love, L. x"To my surprise, she was right.Chapter 5The following week while playing ice hockey, I was involved in a brutal pile-up and ended up being briefly concussed. After that, it seemed as if my memory was playing tricks on me and the events of the previous month seemed hazy and difficult to pin down. If it hadn't been for the postcard, I would have begun to think I had dreamt the whole thing.I didn't think of her that much, at least not consciously. In the spring I found myself at a private view - a friend of a friend's first big show at one of the smarter Edinburgh contemporary art galleries. Huge sludge-coloured collages filled the rooms, made from just about anything the artist could lay her hands on - old telephones, socks, egg boxes, fuses. I liked them but I could not make much sense of them. Then, as if it were some strange embarrassing dream, I'd found myself being lectured by my draconian old piano teacher, of all people.Swallowing down too much luke-warm sparkling white wine that was certainly not champagne I found myself earnestly nodding, without listening to a word he was saying and then suddenly I saw her: the girl from the cafe.Not in the flesh, but in a photograph stuck in one of the collages. The picture was surrounded by a garland of old circuit boards and monopoly money.I made my excuses and went over to examine the collage properly. The picture had been torn from a newspaper with the headline and a scrap of the story still attached. I devoured the information:"DOT COM DARLING OUSTED IN BOARDROOM COUP. The former golden girl of the city, Lena Hill-Adams MD of fever.com, has been forced to resign from the board of the ailing dotcom after a savage battle with new backers, Pierce Jackson associates. Hill-Adams, whose personal fortune was valued last year at seven million, was unavailable for comment."The rest of the article was artfully torn off, as if the artist was colluding with her love of mystery."She lost the lot, they say," said a woman next to me. I glanced at her - a svelte red-head dressed in business black. She smiled at me. "Imagine that. You have seven mill and then you don't. It must be awful.""Oh I don't know..." I said and found I was grinning stupidly, but not because the red-head was good-looking and apparently willing to talk to me. An inner euphoria bubbled up inside me. I grabbed a glass of wine from a passing waiter and raised it high to her picture."To Lena!" I shouted. "To bloody wonderful Lena and her new career!"The red-head edged away quickly to find safer shores. Not that I cared.I was never invited to a private view again but that didn't bother me, either. For after that, I wrote like I had never written before; and to my astonishment, some of it really was pure gold.