I realize, of course, that I haven’t delivered the piece I promised, and I’m sure these articles are a million miles away from what you were expecting. But I hope you can find a home for them, nevertheless.
What do you think? Are they printable?
Let me know; and, again, please forgive me for my small deception.
Abby
To: j.b.caborn@ox.ac.uk
From: abbywilliams1847@hotmail.co.uk
Date: Fri, 10 May 2013, 7:01 AM
Subject: Lunch?
Dear Professor Caborn
My name is Abigail Williams and I’m a freelance journalist.
For reasons slightly strange – too strange to explain here – I recently stumbled on your work regarding socio-cognitive limitations in primates. I’d very much like to meet up to talk about ‘Caborn’s number’, with a view to writing an article on the subject.
If you could spare an hour, I’d love to come to Oxford to ask you some questions. Perhaps I could buy you lunch?
Yours expectantly
Abby Williams
To: abbywilliams1847@hotmail.co.uk
From: jessica.pearle@observer.co.uk
Date: Fri, 10 May 2013, 12:03 PM
Subject: RE: MF Interview
Hi Abby
Yes, this is printable (my God is it printable; by the end of the first paragraph, I couldn’t put it down!). But are you sure you want me to print it? I’m saying this as a friend, you understand, not as an editor. It’s very provocative stuff.
A couple of questions to settle my mind:
1) Is it all true? It has the ring of truth, but I need to know for certain – especially with the Miranda Frost interview. It’s not exactly flattering; I need to be sure there’s nothing libellous there! You say it’s a transcript: is this literally the case? (It’s not some weird gonzo experiment?)
2) I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but have you thought this through? Some of the details, in both pieces, are extremely intimate. Presumably this is going to upset a few people. (Your father? Your boyfriend? Will they be okay with this?) Uncompromising honesty makes great reading, but I doubt it’s going to make you very popular. Are you sure there’s nothing you want to change?
Think carefully about these things before you ask me to proceed.
Jess
To: jessica.pearle@observer.co.uk
From: abbywilliams1847@hotmail.co.uk
Date: Fri, 10 May 2013, 1:15 PM
Subject: RE: RE: MF Interview
Jess
1) Attached is the mp3. As you’ll hear, I haven’t changed a word. Everything else – ‘she makes a lousy cup of coffee’, etc. – is just my opinion/interpretation, obviously. There’s nothing libellous there.
2) Thank you for your concern, but either it all goes in or none of it does. I’ve given a completely honest account of Miranda Frost, so I can’t very well cut the bits that are unflattering to me. The intimacy is what makes the articles work, as I’m sure you’ll agree. It has to be 100% candid. Beck will forgive me (there’s nothing that terrible there), and my father doesn’t even pretend to read my articles any more.
Please proceed!
Abby
To: abbywilliams1847@hotmail.co.uk
From: jessica.pearle@observer.co.uk
Date: Fri, 10 May 2013, 4:22 PM
Subject: RE: RE: RE: MF Interview
Abby
I can get you the £500 previously agreed for the MF interview, plus another £500 for the additional piece. We would print both in the magazine – MF next week and ‘Simon’ the following. You can probably see the reason for the time lapse: they’re too long to print side by side, and the MF piece ends on such a natural cliff-hanger.
Let me know if this is all okay with you.
Jess
To: jessica.pearle@observer.co.uk
From: abbywilliams1847@hotmail.co.uk
Date: Fri, 10 May 2013, 4:42 PM
Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: MF Interview
Brilliant – if all my work was this well remunerated, I’d finally be earning a wage that didn’t fill my father with shame.
A
To: abbywilliams1847@hotmail.co.uk
From: j.b.caborn@ox.ac.uk
Date: Mon, 13 May 2013, 11:08 AM
Subject: RE: Lunch?
Dear Abigail
While I must admit to being intrigued by your ‘slightly strange’ story, I’m afraid I must decline. I’m exceptionally busy with my research at the moment, and will be for the foreseeable future. I gave several interviews about my work a few years back, and found that it rather ate away at my time.
I’m sorry that I’m unable to help you with this.
Yours (apologetically)
Joseph Caborn
To: j.b.caborn@ox.ac.uk
From: abbywilliams1847@hotmail.co.uk
Date: Mon, 13 May 2013, 11:59 AM
Subject: The offer includes pudding
Dear Professor Caborn
I can appreciate that you have a busy and demanding job. But scientists, surely, have to eat? One hour is all I’m asking for. Please consider it!
Yours beseechingly
Abby Williams
To: abbywilliams1847@hotmail.co.uk
From: j.b.caborn@ox.ac.uk
Date: Mon, 13 May 2013, 1:44 PM
Subject: There’s no such thing as a free lunch
Dear Abby
I admire your persistence, but my answer remains the same. I may be doing you a terrible disservice, but in my experience, a journalist’s ‘hour’ is rarely the same as a scientist’s.
Yours intransigently
Joseph Caborn
5
DR BARBARA
‘. . . and at that point I wake up. It’s always at that point – when the interviewer asks me if I wouldn’t be more comfortable without my jacket. I don’t know if he realizes I’m naked underneath, and he’s toying with me, or whether it’s genuine concern, since it’s such a hot day. But I guess that doesn’t matter; I never have time to work it out. The dream always ends at that exact moment. I wake up and the bedroom’s hot and stuffy, and I’m wide awake and need to pee. Generally that’s around four in the morning, and I can’t get back to sleep. I just get up and read. Although sometimes it happens the other way round: I can’t fall asleep until the early hours, so I don’t even try. I read or write until I’m exhausted, then manage maybe three or four hours’ sleep – at a push . . . On the plus side, I’m getting through a lot of books. I managed to read Bleak House in two and a half nights.’
Dr Barbara nodded thoughtfully. ‘The sleeplessness is definitely something we should keep an eye on.’
‘Right. And what about the dream?’
‘The dream tells me there’s nothing wrong with your imagination.’
‘Freud would say it’s a classic anxiety dream.’
Dr Barbara smiled and shook her head in a small but resolute motion. As always, she had no interest in playing the dream interpretation game. She was happy enough to listen – to whatever I wanted to tell her – but she wouldn’t indulge me past a certain point.
‘There aren’t any constraints on what we talk about,’ she once told me, not long after our first session. ‘We’ll talk about anything you deem important – anything at all. But this is a dialogue, not a monologue. Sometimes we’ll talk about what you want to talk about, and sometimes we’ll talk about what I want to talk about. There has to be some give and take, as with any worthwhile conversation.’
Freud was one of the subjects Dr Barbara did not want to talk about. She told me that for most psychologists or psychiatrists, those with an ounce of common sense, he was a historical curiosity but little more. There was no point wasting time (her time) and money (my father’s money) talking about Freud.