The Word Cloud

The Remembered

By Dan Stathers

 

The sun had long since set behind the hills. A tide of shadows had filled the town with dark places and a graphite moon squinted through the embers of a smoked mackerel sky. The workers had trudged home and now sat in-front of television screens, sipping tea and thumbing newspapers. Upstairs the children slept on full bellies, dreaming of toppling play-ground bullies and first kisses. 

            On the estuary, the boats snoozed on oily waters, dimly lit by the parade of blue lights along the promenade. The daffodils had shrunk into their ruffs and the tulips rested easy after a day spent pouting and posing. Down in the mud and murk of the estuary bed, claws and tentacles felt their way through the gloom, while the seaweed clung to the old tidal wall, beckoning the dark with gout-ridden fingers.

             The estuary rat stood upright on the bottom of the ferry-boat steps, pawing his twitching pinky nose while hatching his plans for tonight’s moonlit raids. At the end of the slip-way, mother duck slept with one eye open and beak under wing, ruffled only by the mullets as they jumped with mud in their gizzards, sending ripples over the black marbled water.

            The town clock rang out a lonely chime. The landlord had polished the last of his glasses and the laughter about days gone by had long since departed the inn on the end of the harbour. All was quiet. The only things stirring were memories and mice.   

            A vagrant mist had shrouded the estuary like a widow’s veil and as the eerie procession passed, even time appeared to stand still to pay its respects. It was then and only then, that they appeared. Some dressed in their Sunday best, others in uniform. Some walked in stony silence while others consoled their crying eyes with gentle finger tips. All of them had their names remembered on benches and beneath trees and saplings along the promenade.

            ‘Has anyone seen my Jack?’ said the woman in the flat shouldered jacket. ‘I’m running late, but I need to tell him something important, so if you see him, be sure to tell him I’m here, won’t you.’

            Her hair was full of Victoria curls and her face glowed like roses. She seated herself on the bench where Jack sits every Sunday afternoon.

            ‘If I find out he’s in the pub again, I’ll have his guts for garters,’ she said, tapping her wrist watch again before bursting into tears. ‘Oh Jack, please hurry up,’ she whimpered, ‘it’s getting late.’

            Further down the path stood a broad shouldered man with swept back grey hair and a square chin. He wore a brown cardigan over a shirt buttoned to the collar and stood before the weeping branches of a silver birch.  The flowers on his plaque had aged like old newspaper under floor-boards but he saw the petals as though they had never been picked.

            ‘It didn’t quite turn out the way we planned did it my love,’ he said with a throaty gruffness. ‘That boiler still needs looking at, don’t think I’ve forgotten.’

            His widow smiles in her sleep.

            ‘I’ll call someone about it tomorrow,’ she says, ‘I promise.’

            Beneath the statue of hope the fallen ones had gathered to sit, resting on elbows as they talk, sharing cigarettes and playing cards. One of them writes a letter he’ll never finish, while another tunes a gargling wireless for news of home. These were the good old boys who had downed tools and kissed their sweethearts goodbye with a promise of return, while adventure tugged at their cuffs.

            ‘That’s three of a kind,’ said the handsome Tommy through a woodbine cigarette. ‘I told you I was feeling lucky tonight.’ 

            ‘I hope you bring that luck with us tomorrow,’ said his pal. ‘We’ll need it for the big heave-ho.’

            Tonight they rested under the anchor of Saint Philomena in a town they saluted all those years ago.

            The ghostly figures whispered and talked as the mist began to suck and draw, then, in a wink of the night, they were gone. Memories of their departed souls chiseled and etched on wood and in stone; names longing to be spoken aloud once more. The promenade was still again, the only thing to be heard were the aching joints of the old estuary wall as it wobbled and leaned to and fro.

 

 

 

The End

Whatever you do, don't click here!

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Key in your birth date and find where you rank among the current over 7 billion!

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The question in the title was one asked in therapy a long, long time ago; has popped into my mind this evening ~ and I am still not sure I have reached a definitive answer.

Is this an appropriate subject for a blog in a writing community, as we loom towards Valentine's Day?  Who knows?  Who cares?  We shall see, maybe.

 

 

 

If you do keep an eye on my scribbling, you may remember that I had a big sulk at the start of the year about needing research for my book, ‘At night all cats are grey.’ This was mostly the product of soul shattering self-doubt that inflicts us all from time to time, and me once a week, but it’s never a bad thing.

            So, I hit the internet and the library  and netted a few books on a variety of subjects related to the environment in which my book is set – namely New York gang culture, the seventies art and ,music scene and the Russian Mafia. I have to confess my reading list from the libruary caused a few raised eyebrows – Alpha city tales from the heroine infested slums of New York, next to a book on chocolate wedding cakes (although the later is not for my novel as such.)

            Having never really done research about anything, or rather, having never researched for a book before, I wasn’t sure how to start – but the process seemed to break down into a few remarkably easy to follow stages.

 

1)     Read the first few pages of everything. Mood swings from pleasure at finding exactly what you feel you need, and desperation that there is no way you will ever be able to convince in this genre, what the hell were you ever thinking, you don’t know this world and you must look like a tight tit for even trying.

2)     Sulk.

3)     Refuse to give in to sulk, and read some more. Start under lining things in the books you actually own, stick paper tags into the library books. This at least feels like you are doing something, like when you did ‘A’ levels.

4)     Find something, which really climes with your book, which you thought you’d made up, but is apparently exactly how it was – feel elated and a little spooked – because it’s so exactly like you’ve written it must be a sign from some collective unconsciousness your tapping into.

5)     Write five chapters in a hurry retelling the events described in the research material as if you’d thought of them.

6)     Feel smug: feel sure you’re talking like a native.

7)     Read them back. Hate them, feel you sound like a tit.

8)     Edit the five chapters ruthlessly until only one line remains.

9)     Realize that line is crucial, that it gives that elusive hint of reality without over powering your narrative, and that you would never have written it without the five preceding chapters of stuff now languishing in the bin.

10)  Return the books to the library, three of them un-read – and wait until the next cycle of self-doubt sends you back there to check them out again.

 

 

And I presume I should add ‘and repeat’ after that lot.

 

I can say that, after research, my book is shorter but better and I know what happened to all the characters and why, but the reader doesn’t need to. It is very tempting to write footnotes along side every subtle detail – (the reason why character a is wearing a Thai silk shirt is that the Crime boss smuggles conflict diamonds from Africa to Thailand where they are used to buy heroin, which is then brought to America inside consignments of TV’s) but in fact, this is not what the book is about, it’s the foundation the research has allowed me to build the novel on. As it’s not actually about heroin dealing at all, it’s only important to me that I’ve worked it out. Oh, and the character likes the feeling of silk on his skin, but to work that out took a whole lot of other research….

Thanks to you guys with your suggestions I've decided to use No Come Back as the title - it's a play on words both English and Thai and resonates with the music theme of Jimmy Mack.

I have two potential book covers. Please let me know which one ( if either) you prefer.  Thanks.

At this point, when I've done an awful lot of these blog,s I have to check back every now and then to make sure I haven't already talked about someone, especially when it's someone whom it seems like I should have already covered. How To Marry a Millionaire (showing on film4 this Wednesday at 12.55pm) was written by Nunnally Johnson, about whom I have considered writing on several occasions but have always gone with someone else simply because I knew that there would be another chance to write about Johnson. He's one of a handful of writers who seem to have written almost everything during the golden age of cinema. So where to begin? Well a full career overview is out of the question, IMDB lists 72 writing credits and although that includes films based on his earlier scripts that's still a lot to cover. Plus, unlike many writers of his generation, Johnson's career did not seem to peter out as he grew older, his last film credit at the age of 70 was for The Dirty Dozen. He didn't exactly get off to a slow start either, writing the story for the silent film Rough House Rosie in 1927, a Clara Bow vehicle. Despite this start he apparently was not looking for a screenwriting career as he continued as a journalist and short story writer for another 6 years before relocating to Hollywood in 1933. Like most writers of that era Johnson's screenplay is a mix of the good, the bad and the ugly, there are westerns, war films, dramas and comedies, and, of course, there's a lot of uncredited work because that's how it was then. The stand out is The Grapes of Wrath, and when a writer has one script that stands head and shoulders above 70 odd other films it's quite tempting to give credit to the director, especially when that director is John Ford. That's probably fair but does also raise the question; would more of Johnson's films be better known if they had been directed by men of Ford's calibre? Who knows? but I think it's interesting that another of his best films The Three Faces of Eve was one of the rare ones he directed himself. We always remember how directors enhance the screenwriters work and are quick to give credit (quite rightly) to men like John Ford, David Lean, Alfred Hitchcock et al, but we sometimes forget how many great scripts were ruined by incompetent direction. And there's a lot more incompetents than there are John Fords. I think it's fair to call Johnson one of the backbone writers of classic US cinema but, given the paucity of 'classics' (by which I mean films we remember today) he wrote, it might surprise people to learn that he was the highest paid screenwriter of the 1950s. This certainly reflects his reliability and versatility but I think also reflects how few films make the posterity cut. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was one of my favourite films of last year but will it be remembered in 50 years time? If reading about Nunnally Johnson has taught me anything then it's that there are more great films out there than the list of approved 'classics' would have us believe.

This weekend, the one that has just passed, I managed to see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - the movie, sporting a stellar cast of top rate thespians. For dead boring reasons I didn’t get to see it at the cinema. The DVD came out recently, however. For those who enjoy the particular genre this is an excellent book and there was a first rate TV adaptation over six episodes. Radio 4 recently put it out and I listened to them too. All very very good. Told at length with due attention to the character development and laying out the plot logically and completely.

Come the big budget movie. So disappointing. I say this not because I am an such an aficionado of the original or because I’m a Grumpy. These things are true, but not relevant. With such a cast and an experienced director (Swedes are good at telling stories) it should have been a good film. MrsP has neither read, seen or heard any of the other versions and professed that she simply didn’t get it at all. I could see why. The motivation within the characters to do what they were doing simply wasn’t there. They just did their key stuff to make the main events happen. Because I knew the full story I knew why, but the film didn’t present any of this. What it’s doing sporting Oscar nominations is beyond me.  I think it is an un-filmable story. Each of the characters, not just the lead, must be developed so that you can understand what is going on. You just can’t do that in two hours and a bit.  Not with this one.

This set me thinking. Are complex novels such as TTSS ever likely to be successfully filmed? I am writing this on the train on my way to the office and don’t have the facilities or the time to do a lot of research, but a few points from memory:

The English Patient is in my view a very good book and a very good film. But the film is not really of the book. It’s a retelling by Anthony Minghella who I think was a genius, sadly now lost to us.

The Talented Mr Ripley is an atmospheric film and good entertainment. It is based on a novella by Patricia Highsmith. Not a novel. A relatively simple story created in something no more than a long short story form. Again Anthony Minghella did the screenplay.

The Outlaw Josie Wales. OK it’s a Clint Eastwood western, but it bids fair to be one of the best of its genre ever filmed. It’s based in a short story.

Any Charles Dickens: Many many good film versions. All essentially retellings that miss out much detail. But they are all so familiar to us (I contend) that it doesn’t matter any longer. We don’t notice.

Blade Runner: Sci fi is not everyone’s taste but once more this is one of the best of the genre. It is from a short story by Philip K Dick.

Harry Potter - series. It would never have been possible to do a single film, particularly of the later books and make it work. The characters have been developing for years, we have watched them grow up. There seems to be a consensus that the last few films were only for those who had seen and read everything preceding, otherwise unintelligible.

So what’s my point? OK, it’s this:- Many of us would like success and if that is to be considered financial then selling film rights and having a piece of a successful movie is one of the diminishing ways to do this. And it seems to me that short stories on the average make better films than novels. In the space of two hours ish you can’t do much more than tell a short story. Either a novel is traduced into a short story without losing the essense, which takes rare skill or it’s a good short story in the first place.  But no-one wants short stories any longer for their own sake. So what to do?

Miranda came to visit me in Potters Bar. She was due to arrive on Friday, but decided to come early on Thursday  - *Yay!* but *Panic!*

I rushed around, trying to make my flat less minging. I managed to clean the toilet, and excavate the kitchen sink. I also bunged the worst of the floor debris in a big bag, but by the time I had to leave to meet daughter-dude from Victoria, my gaff was still looking like a cross between the Somme and Nora Batty's vagina. Oh well.

So, Miranda arrived and we went to my pub, the Oakmere. Initially, there was a random human sitting in my Inner Sanctum (the snug), so we had to sit elsewhere, but halfway through our first drink, the landlord - Matt - popped his head round the corner and said "Your office is free now, by the way" so we got to sit in my fave spot with a view of the squirrels and ducks in the park. When we got back to my flat, we spent half the night on the Interweb, inflicting our fave musics on each other. She showed me many awesome cool stuffs she's found online, eg this. It was a lot like when Miranda was lickle, and we used to sit together on the sofa, reading kiddie books - I used to extemporise on the stories, adding all sorts of bizarre and surreal details to make the stories last longer. (We had a animal book, where I did the noises, and Miranda copied me. Unfortunately - teehee - this led to Miranda having a tantrum at playschool when the teacher did the same thing with the kiddies. I wasn't good at doing elephant noises, so I'd told her that elephants go "Ping!" When the kindergarten teacher told the kids that elephants go " Eurraaagh!", Miranda wasn't having it. "My Daddy says elephants go 'Ping!' " Oops. Just as well they didn't get around to doing tortoises.)

On Friday, we went to the pub again (pattern emerging here), and decided to play a drawing game. (I used to love lying on the living-room floor doing drawings with my daughter, and Miranda knows that, so she'd suggested bringing pens and paper with us). The game is simply this: you draw a representation of the name of a town - eg: grassy bank with a hole in it, bloke kneeling down with his head in the hole, rabbit sitting nearby looking puzzled. Solution: Edinburgh ( it helps if you have a London accent with that one). This resulted in us laughing like loonies, and shouting out strings of random words as we attempted to guess: "Alien wardrobe artichoke!" etc. The more maniacally we laughed, the more nervous the humans became. "Gusset fungus!" The humans who had invaded the Inner Sanctum went away, but unfortunately they were replaced by a family with kids. Meanwhile, Miranda had drawn a town - Lewes - which involved a extremely badly drawn picture of a toilet. I totally couldn't guess what it was supposed to be.
"Lava lamp?"
*laughter*
"Blender? Mincer?"
*more laughter*
"Is it something you would cook with?"
*hilarity*
"No - gasp - I hope not!"
"Could you make music with it?"
*hysterics*
Miranda drew some additional clues: toilet roll holder and bog brush, which I misinterpreted variously as 'Asthma inhaler' and 'Tampon'. Miranda, barely able to speak, managed to scream "Nooooo!!!" I asked "Are they some form of ammunition? Is it something you could kill people with?" Miranda pretty much fell apart, and the human family decided to sit elsewhere.
On the way home, we stopped in at the 24hour garage to score snout, booze and noms. As we piled up the plunder at the checkout, the git behind the counter gestured us contemptuously aside, and said he was going to serve the bloke behind us first, cos he'd bought petrol. I was pretty much outraged. "No-one has ever done this to me in a shop before! What are we, not good enough or something?" Once the petrol-buying dude was done (he seemed just as surprised as we were, and more than a little embarrassed) the checkout git finally deigned to serve us. "Are you sure there isn't someone else you'd rather serve first?" I sarked. When we got back to my flat, we watched a Cheech and Chong movie ('Nice Dreams') together.

Saturday was almost sensible, until it started to snow. (Yay! Miranda will be stuck here and not able to go back to Worthing on Sunday *does a little dance*). As the snow settled, Miranda cooked me yummy foods - a important first! She videoed me nomming, and posted it here. As the snow built up on the rooftop outside my 3rd floor window, Miranda decided to scoop up handfuls and make snowballs with which to bombard passing humans on the street below. We also watched people trying to enter the petrol station opposite, and failing as their wheels spun helplessly. Some of them looked up while attempting to push their cars, legs windmilling cartoon-style, at the sounds of hysterical laughter from above. They seemed somewhat resentful at our unhelpful 'we're in the warm and entirely taking the piss' attitude. It was better than reality TV, watching the cars slithering around and waiting for them to crash into each other, or at least for a pedestrian to fall and break their ass-bone.

On Sunday, we tried to watch a DVD on my pooter, but somehow managed to disable the speakers (Duh!) so we ended up playing a card game called 'Shithead' which Miranda taught me. We also discussed a huge, squashed, dried-up spider that I'd forgotten to hoover up, and having such a egregious fit of hysterics that we both thought we were going to be sick. I introduced Miranda (who hates country music) to the delights of Waylon Jennings, and she called me a redneck, which is totally true.

On Monday, despite my insistence that it was still snowing ("It's invisible snow - that's the worst kind!") Miranda departed for Worthing. I escorted her to Victoria, where I had to hand her over to Alex, and off she went. I travelled back to Potters Bar with a lump in my throat, trying to think about anything but our wonderful weekend together so as not to burst into embarrassingly public tears - which is so dumb, cos she's gonna be visiting again in  three weeks time. I am such a dweeb!

The film Beetlejuice features a waiting room for the recently deceased. It has all the protocols of a government department.
I'm beginning to wonder whether the rocky road to publication is a bit like that.

You sit in a waiting room, having sent your first draft off to someone who sees the green ink and bins it. And wait. Until you meet someone who tells you that there's a bit more to this writing lark. Better informed, you hone your draft, study, get criticism, target an agent, and go and sit in the next waiting room... and so on.

It's a bit like a hospital appointment: the first waiting room looks quite hopeful. Then you get called forward, only to find another smaller waiting room. You get called forward again, and now you find a row of chairs in the corridor outside the doctor's door.

I've just reached the middle waiting room, with an agent working her socks off to get me onto that row of chairs in the corridor. But I'm still at the back of the waiting room, and can't concentrate enough to pick up one of those old copies of D0-it-yourself Wombat Training that someone has thoughtfully left on the table.

If I lean round the corner, yes, I can see Barry, sitting on one of those chairs awaiting the publication of The Pimlico Kid. I guess one of the skills an author needs is impatient patience.