This is how I realised the dream of becoming a novelist (part four)

The thing about quaint, centuries old cottages in England, is that in the winter they are bloody freezing. The one we rented was, anyway. There was no central heating, something we should probably have realised before we signed the rental agreement, but I had lived too long in New Zealand where nobody has central heating. It didn’t even occur to me to check. It does get cold in New Zealand in winter, especially in the south island, but we were from Auckland where the climate is sub-tropical. Winter is more wet than cold. A decent fire in one room will generally warm the whole house, and I had spotted the fireplace in our cottage. I imagined sitting there in  the evenings in front of the hearth, fire blazing, a solid day’s writing under my belt, maybe after a quick drink at the pub conveniently located fifty yards down the road.

The first snow of the year arrived practically the day we moved in. We didn’t know it then, but that winter of 1996/97 was going to be one of the coldest in recent times. I lit the fire the first night we were there and filled the cottage with thick, choking smoke. Dale had to sit with the baby in the car while I opened all the windows and doors to clear the smoke. I was afraid I’d set the chimney on fire and wondered if we would get our deposit back if I managed to burn the place to the ground. As it turned out there wasn’t a fire, but the chimney was blocked. We went to bed early that night because it was the only place we could keep warm. The bedroom was like an icebox. Our breath appeared in clouds and the windows iced up. The rosy tint on my glasses was fading fast. This was the idyllic country sojourn I had described in such optimistic detail to Dale when I persuaded her we should move to England? A nagging worry began to take root in my mind. What if the other, slightly more crucial part of my dream was similarly flawed – the bit about becoming a published novelist?

Still, there was always the pub. Unfortunately, being very new at the parenting thing, I hadn’t considered where the baby fitted into the cosy vision I had of Dale and I sitting in front of the blazing fire (blazing fires become a bit of an obsession that winter) in the bar. I suppose I thought we’d take the baby with us and he would sleep and gurgle and do whatever babies do, while we chatted over drinks and got to know the locals, who would undoubtedly be friendly. I imagined they would ooh and ah and we’d proudly look on, because nobody else in the world had ever given birth, had they? Actually, though, babies aren’t very welcome in pubs because they tend to cry a lot and nature has designed that sound to achieve maximum attention. It’s something like having a screwdriver driven through your ear. After one disastrous attempt, Dale decided that I would have to have my evening drink at the pub alone. She did try feeding the little sod to quieten him down, but apparently a young, attractive mother whipping out her breast for even that very natural function, was not the norm in England. At least not that part of England. There were only a couple of oldish men in there at the time. They leered in the unsettling manner of a pair of escapees from a Stephen King novel.

I forget the name of that pub, but it did become my habit to nip in for a quick pint after dinner. There were never more than two or three people there, including the landlord. I never did get to know any of them though. It was like one of those films (or novels – Stephen King again) where the newcomer to the creepy village tries valiantly to fit in with locals only to discover that they seem to regard his efforts with vaguely unpleasant amusement. I would open the door and step over the threshold, the wind howling in my wake, shaking the snow off my coat and flapping my arms for warmth as if I’d trudged miles across the moors instead of fifty metres along the road. Glad for the cheery glow of the fire (there was a fire, so that was something) I’d nod in the general direction of the bar and remark on the weather. One of the patrons would mumble an incomprehensible response in a thick west-country accent and nudge his companion in the ribs, producing snickers of amusement which I tried not to interpret as being at my expense, though it clearly was. I’d buy my pint and stand at the bar awkwardly for a bit, before moving to a table closer to the fire, imagining a dark secret lurking at the heart of the community, of which I would only become aware when it was too late.

Perhaps all of this explains why the novel I found myself writing was a horror story, set in a creepy village in the south-west of England. I spent my days in a small, freezing cold room upstairs in the cottage, practically sitting on top of a two-bar electric heater, my fingers flying across the keyboard of my brand-new computer, the first I had ever owned. Actually my fingers didn’t exactly fly. I was a two-fingered typist and I was new at this, so they sort of hovered a lot and occasionally stabbed when I found the letter I was looking for. Progress was slow at first. It was frustrating because the story and characters, all of which I was making up as I went along, were racing far ahead of my ability to record them. Over the ensuing weeks, though, I became more proficient and the word-count began to grow at a satisfying rate. I gave my fellow regulars at the pub, starring roles in the story as silent revenge. I depicted them savagely as dolts and ignorant yokels, and one in particular who I was certain often made snide comments about me to his idiot friends, I had engage in unnatural practices with farm animals.

While I was busily living this strange double life of reality and fiction, the boundaries between which were becoming increasingly blurred, I was completely unaware that the movie it brought to mind now was the one where the writer slowly goes a little bit mad. Now it was The Shining (Stephen King again!). Actually it wasn’t quite that bad, but I was learning that being a novelist means that you spend a lot of time in your own head. Not always a good thing.

As for Dale, she was happy looking after the baby and making expeditions to the nearest town where there was a Tescos. She began watching cooking programmes on TV and experimented with recipes. Every night we sat down to some feast she had prepared, along with a bottle of wine, though maybe she still wasn’t drinking then because she was breast-feeding. We had decided that we wouldn’t be mean with our money when it came to the necessities. I was thrilled. I had married a woman whose idea of dinner prior to this was to heat a bottle of supermarket spaghetti sauce in the microwave before pouring it over badly cooked pasta. To my surprise, and I think Dale’s too, she found that she enjoyed cooking and was actually quite good at it. Life began to settle into a routine. Christmas was approaching and we heard from friends from New Zealand who had been travelling in Europe, who promised to come and visit us. I couldn’t wait to take them to the pub. For once I wouldn’t be outnumbered there.