They do not go to bed until after midnight. “Goodnight, Mary. I know you have helped me.”
“Yes, I have helped you. Goodnight, Henman.” Curious how she still couldn’t manage the name. “Vanessa, please.” And Vanessa disappears, smiling an anxious, placating smile.
But Mary Tendo sits downstairs, brooding.
48
Vanessa Henman
I am sitting in my study, too tired to write. I have just had another ghastly day. Sometimes it seems I am surrounded by fools. All day I have felt as if I was hung over, possibly because of yesterday’s argument. It wasn’t my fault, not entirely my fault, I was stressed from Paris, and Mary was — slow…
And yet, one doesn’t like to lose one’s temper. One doesn’t like to raise one’s voice. And Mary is well-meaning. In the end, she helped. I wouldn’t want to jeopardise the very real friendship we were starting to achieve when we went to the village.
Still, I’m sure by now she has forgotten all about it. One can’t be good-tempered all the time. Perhaps I will offer to cook, tomorrow. Though actually, I am too busy to cook.
And today at college was an utter waste of time. I sometimes wish I was teaching something real, nursing, astrophysics, not Creative Writing. I sometimes wish I had learned something real. I always felt superior to my father, and yet he knew real things, he was a farmer, he knew about the fields and the animals, he knew about machinery, like Tigger.
Is it possible that I have underestimated Tigger? He swears that Justin has ‘found his feet’. He says the boy has a wonderful eye, and might have a future as an interior designer, which sounds like a glorified painter and decorator—
But if Justin is happy. Really happy…
Maybe I have always got things wrong.
Derrick came to see me (it’s becoming a habit) and wanted to read his new story out, something he’d written in the reading week, and apparently it couldn’t wait till the class. I particularly wanted to be left alone, because now I am really getting going with my writing, and I do think the stuff about my father might be good. So much so that I’m going to take a risk and send the agent, rather naughtily, another extract by ‘Emily Self. (I think I’ll say she’s ‘quite promising’!) If there were no students, I could finish it by spring. But the young are selfish, and sap one’s energy. They think we only exist to serve them.
I’m afraid Derrick reads in a monotonous voice, stopping every so often to see if one likes it, cocking one of those thick black brows. (At first I found his hairiness appealing. Not any more, not any more.) Also, he does smell strongly of sweat. Perhaps he was nervous, I don’t know, but his manner was — over-confident. Maybe I have given him too much encouragement.
I had to be honest with him in the end and say I found the subject-matter difficult. It was about a red-headed woman who kept hens, and killed them by hacking through their necks with a knife. Very detailed, with too much blood. I said, “I’m not sure of her motivation,” and he said, “She hates birds, and, like, thinks she’s a fox. That’s why I made her a red-head, obviously.”
It wasn’t entirely obvious to me. “I’m not absolutely sure about the chicken motif.”
“You said you loved my metaphors. But you said I was writing too much about pigeons.”
“Well, yes. Perhaps I meant, birds generally.” (I was having to suppress my irritation. How much did he know about this subject? After all, we had a hen-house in our garden. And not a word of Derrick’s story is true.)
“Didn’t you dig the bit where the chicken goes on running and her head is like flying around on its own, like a balloon with the air rushing out, and the woman sucks up the blood from the knife? It’s a metaphor for oral sex, obviously.”
The metaphor had passed me by, thank God.
He looked hard at me, with a small smile. If they find one attractive, it’s because one is a teacher. I said, “I wasn’t entirely persuaded. Most women do not like raw hen’s blood.”
“See, I’m not writing for most women,” he muttered, staring at his knees.
“Surely you are not just writing for men?” It is bracing for the young to meet a feminist.
“No.” There was a pause, while he pulled at his neck as if he was trying to strangle himself. “Thing is, I am writing for you, Dr Henman.” And then he looked me right in the eyes. His eyelashes were thick, and black, but there was something odd about those hot dark eyes. “I have found your comments very inspiring. No one has encouraged me before. Everyone else always thought I was mad!”
There was a long silence. I could not think what to say. Now he was patting himself like a puppy. I wished I had been franker with him.
“It’s just so great that you appreciate me. I’ve never, you know, had that before. Thanks to you, I’m writing, like, all the time, obviously. I just can’t get enough of it. You know, I once showed some stuff to my psychiatrist. He told me it was better ‘not to fixate on it’. Don’t you think that’s amazingly funny? In fact, he suggested I take up football!” He hooted with mockery at this suggestion. “What kind of criticism is that?”
“You have a psychiatrist?”
“Obviously.”
I suggested he go away and write something different.
“Say, from the point of view of the pigeon? That bug-eyed Daisy girl would really go for that!” Something in my expression must have stopped him, because he held up his hand, and mimed shooting his temple. “Sorry, I mean the point of view of the chicken!”
“No birds.”
But I can see it is hopeless.
Despite his long dark lashes, he is just another nutter.
Whereas Beardy — Alex — is really very interesting. I did completely underestimate him. Although I am usually a good judge of character. He brought my novels in for me to sign. I heard him praising them to the other students. When I think about that, it makes me feel better.
I must try to see the funny side of Derrick. Whenever I tell Tigger about my students, he seems to find it hilarious. True, that has always irritated me. In fact Tigger is exactly like my father, who was kind-hearted, but understood nothing.
But what if he understood more than my mother? What if the same were true of Tigger?
And suddenly, I am free to start writing. I start with the chickens. We fed the chickens. Their soft red wrinkly combs, their pink strutting feet, my father’s big hands throwing the corn, the patient way he let me help him, although my mother didn’t want me to get dirty.
After that I write for an hour without stopping, my very first memories of my father, my father in the garden when a bee stung me, my father picking me an apple from the tree. But somehow I know that the chickens are best.
By the time I stop, I am feeling much better. And this is the piece I shall send to the agent, the second submission by ‘Emily Self.
I haven’t seen Mary since our little quarrel, and Justin will be in bed, I suppose. The house is quiet, although I can’t help imagining I hear that thumping which unsettled me so, that regular bumping from Mary’s bedroom, but really I must not imagine things.
In fact, now I have managed some writing, I find I am no longer annoyed with them.
At least no one here is as mad as Derrick. I know I was a trifle sharp with Mary. I would say sorry, but I think she’d be embarrassed. I shan’t forget to tell her I’m grateful.
Yawning, I push open the door to my bedroom. I put on the light, and it is ghastly, awful, absolute horror has come into my bedroom, at first I can’t scream, I just stand there, not breathing.