Pentlands Writers: Lucy Douglas
I have lived in West Linton for twenty years and came to writing from a dramatic point of view, having acted with, and been president of, the local drama club for many years. Setting my hand to comedy sketches for cabaret shows I found that I could make people laugh without even getting on the stage; I then extended my efforts to pantomime and eventually full playscripts, which have been performed locally.
Since joining the Pentlands Writers Group in 2005, I have attempted different genres of writing, including short stories, radio scripts and, more recently, poetry. Having become notorious within the group for a predilection for blood and gore, I am trying valiantly to move away from this. I am particularly enjoying working with the ‘bricks and mortar’ of how to craft my writing, and am gratified to have won a couple of short story competitions.
I have also been invited to read some of my work as an 'emerging Scottish author' at the Edinburgh Book Festival on 17th August 2010.
(Photo: © Susannah Douglas)
Notes Through A Thin Wall (A Ghost Story) - I Spy (Microfiction) – Sunday Shoes (A Poem)
There are eight of us here, although I’ve only actually seen three of the others. I’ve only spoken to two, and then it was just ‘Good morning’, ‘Good evening’, ‘Nice to see the sun’, muttered with eyes downcast as we slid past each other in the draughty hallway. It’s got horrible cold spots, that hallway. I’ve been here six weeks now, but I think Flat 4B has been here over ten years.
We live in a large Victorian house, which was hastily and very shoddily converted into eight little flats, about forty years ago I think. Certainly before anybody thought to enforce such useful things as sound proofing, insulation or bathrooms that you could turn around in without shutting the door first. Apparently there are regulations and guidelines and bylaws nowadays that work out the exact amount of daylight that an individual should have and you won’t get your building warrant or whatever it’s called without that. I don’t know how that works where we live, in Edinburgh, where you sometimes don’t get any real daylight at all for days at a time. Anyway, four of our little flats have one room with only half a window in it, because a dividing wall (un-soundproofed, obviously) was unceremoniously dumped in the middle of the two large ground floor rooms. Not only are we not getting our daylight quota, but the rooms look sadly lopsided. Well, mine does, so I expect the others do too.
My name is Jane. Plain Jane. I am the archetypal Jane and I am a librarian. Honestly. Don’t laugh. A librarian is one of those stereotype jobs that people instantly dismiss because they think they know the person. An estate agent wears Bart Simpson ties (or possibly Roadrunner), crisp coloured shirts with white collar and cuffs and is a pathological liar. A second hand car salesman is big bellied and hearty and wears a sheepskin jacket and is a pathological liar. A librarian is called Jane and has mousy hair and glasses, flat shoes, a tweed skirt and no life at all.
Well, it’s just not true. I am indeed called Jane, and I suppose my hair is a bit mousy, but I wear contact lenses and I pride myself on my sense of colour. If you open my wardrobe you will see that all my clothes are hung according to colour, and that I wear quite a lot of shades of red. I got dragged along to one of those Colour me Beautiful evenings once, and the only thing I could remember afterwards was the woman telling me that red suited me because I was Autumn. And it does, actually. Lady in Red. Librarian in Red.
Which brings me on to the other thing that everybody says about librarians, that they have no life. I do. I obviously love books because I chose to work with them, but my real passion is music. The reason I came to live in Flat 2A, Duntroon Villa, was because there is a piano. It’s an old one, and it needs tuning, but that’s OK because I can’t play it. I’m going to, though. You see, I come from a musical background. My dad played the cello in the City Orchestra, and my mum used to sing in a folk band, and there was always music somewhere in our house, or someone singing. It was always something different, and I grew up loving it all. It’s my sanctuary, it’s where I’m safe, with the people and things I love around me. We never had much money though, and we could never afford a piano, so when I came to see Flat 2A I ignored the half window and the poky bathroom, the howling draughts and the woeful kitchenette. I saw the piano, and knew there and then that I would live here and I would teach myself to play it.
The poky little flat doesn’t worry me at all, because I don’t have that much stuff to put in it. I work quite long hours at the Library, plus it’s two bus rides and there’s always an accident or roadworks or something so I’m not usually back until after seven. A couple of nights a week I go to the cinema or to see my parents, or out for a drink with friends. Look at Jane the mousy librarian, she’s got a life. What I’m getting round to saying is that I haven’t tackled the piano properly yet. I’ve ordered a book from Waterstone’s, but it’s not in yet, and I want to do it properly, learning all the chords and scales and whatnot.
If I had started to play, I maybe wouldn’t have heard the music from 2B, because it was pretty faint. It sounded like piano, but I couldn’t make out if it was someone playing, or a recording, or the radio or whatever. It was a classical piece that I recognized – you’d have recognized it too – but I couldn’t name it. I’m not that good on the names. It was just piano, and it was very slow and sort of liquid. If I was feeling poetic I’d say that the notes were like a gentle shower of rain, with the drops falling one by one off freshly uncurled spring leaves. It was beautiful and it was sad and it was slow, and I had to sit very still and concentrate to hear it, even through the flimsy walls of Duntroon Villa. When it was finished I felt I should shake my hair to and fro like a spaniel’s ears, to clear my head. It was almost like a spell, that music.
God, I wanted to play the piano and make people feel like that.
Waterstone’s phoned and told me my Piano Primer was in, so I made myself a schedule and pinned it beside the piano. I would practice three times a week for at least half an hour, and if I wanted to do more at the weekends I could. I wanted to pace myself because I knew that if I sat down and plinked and plonked for eight hours solid, like a kid with a computer game, the magic would wear off.
I was so good, I really stuck to that schedule. It was much more difficult than I thought it would be, but after a few weeks I thought I was starting to get somewhere. I’d met a couple more of the neighbours by then as well. To an outsider, we must have looked a bit of a sad bunch – all those solitary figures scurrying and scuttling in and out in our scarves and hats and gloves and coats. There were no open doors at Duntroon Villa, friends popping in and out to gossip, bottles of wine being carried up and down, peals of laughter and sighs of pleasure. But we were real people, I think.
You know me now. Then there was a nice man called William in 1A, he must have been about fifty. My mother always said to say someone or something was nice was an insult, it meant that they had nothing positive about them at all. But William was genuinely nice. So shy that he made me feel practically outgoing, but after a while he managed to meet my eye when we passed each other, and we got to the stage when I could ask him to come and help me when my shower wouldn’t work, and we had a glass of wine together and a laugh.
There was Chad (or it might have been Chas), who was American, on an exchange visit. He was very, very serious, but actually very interesting if you got him onto eighteenth century English literature, which he was studying. Of course, as a librarian, I could hold my own – just about – so we got on fine.
There was Maria upstairs. I don’t know what her job was, but she certainly ought to have been called Madame Maria, and been a medium or a fortune teller. She had thick hennaed hair, and lots of smoky eyeshadow and scarves and bangles and layers. She must have smoked about fifty cigarettes a day and you always knew when she’d been along the hallway, but she always had a smile and time for a few words.
Those were the ones I spoke to most, and there were three others that I saw every now and again, grey shadows flitting past the window, a quick tread outside the door. So that’s seven of us. And there were eight flats. Who lived in 2B, next door to me? I heard that beautiful music several more times, and each time it made me feel the same way. Almost drugged, stupefied. A lump in my throat. A sense of yearning. I never heard anything else, though. No dropped saucepans, television gunshots and screams, raised voices. Nothing. I asked William and Chad and Maria if they knew who lived in 2B, but none of them did. None of them had heard the music either, so I supposed I must have a particularly thin dividing wall. One week I seemed to hear it all the time, but maybe that was the aural equivalent of hallucinating because I loved it so much.
I only thought about it when I heard the music. The rest of the time I was busily murdering the Beginner’s Chopin, or out with friends, or belting out light opera in the shower, or stocking up my asthmatic and unhygienic fridge at Tesco’s.
One Saturday I decided I’d conquered Chopin – the beginner’s version, anyway – and I went off to look for a couple of new music books to get my teeth into. My schedule was long gone, and sometimes I’d look at the clock and realize that I’d spent two hours or more at the piano. I came back with three new books, and over the weekend I tried out a few pieces from each one, trying to decide which one I would tackle first. Imagine my delight when I realized that I was slowly picking out the music from 2B. It was by Greig. I was thrilled that I’d found it.
I have to admit, I became rather obsessed with the piece, and although I tried most of the other pieces in that book, I returned more and more often to the Grieg, until it became almost recognizable as the music that I had first heard months before.
I no longer heard any sound from 2B, and one sunny May day came home to find a girl about my age lugging boxes in through the open door. I struck up a conversation with her and gave her a hand with some of her stuff, and she told me that she’d got the flat really cheap because it had been empty so long, since the last girl. That seemed a bit odd to me, because I didn’t think it was that long since I’d heard the music and how did this girl know there used to be a girl in it when I didn’t. I didn’t think much of it, though. Kelly, she was called.
We became good friends, Kelly and me. We’d pop into each other’s flats two or three times a week and hours would fly past. I went to her’s more often, because her flat was warmer. Something to do with the way her windows faced. But she did come to me every now and again. She always brought something with her. Sometimes it would be a little pot of food, something comforting like your mum would make. Hotpot. Lasagne. A couple of times she did a great Thai pork thing with masses of spices in it. She said she came from a big family and she always forgot she was only cooking for one. Sometimes it would be a mysterious herbal concoction…. Some potion or tisane or something that she said was a tonic, although it tasted like wet bonfires. I told her she’d watched Rosemary’s Baby too many times and witches were very passé, and she always laughed and watched me drink it down as she waved her arms around and muttered silly spells.
I rather liked Kelly’s fussing and mothering, because sometimes I did feel pretty tired and sometimes I got really bad headaches. They would last for a couple of days and I couldn’t play the piano at all, I could hardly get through the day at work.
Maria put her hand on my forehead last time I bumped into her and exclaimed at how pale I was.
“Pale and interesting, you know me. Come on, we live in Edinburgh, sunbathing opportunities are few and far between,” I laughed.
I was happy with the life I’d carved out for myself. I enjoyed my job, I supported myself in my own flat and I had friends around me, and things that interested me. Apart from my occasional headaches, life was pretty good. And I was getting really good at the Greig. Sometimes I would just sit and play it over and over again, and I’d realize after a while that there’d be tears running down my cheeks. I don’t know why it was such an emotional piece for me. When I played it, I’d forget everything, including making dinner. That was probably why Kelly kept clucking over me, I suppose I did skip quite a few meals, and I was a bit on the thin side. But you don’t hear many people complain about that, do you?
Anyway, Kelly went off on holiday to Spain with her boyfriend, Jamie, and I lost my mother hen for a couple of weeks. I had all sorts of plans to spring clean the flat (in August), maybe even paint the lopsided sitting room. Pale green would be lovely, although I’m not sure my Colour Me Beautiful red wardrobe would look good with pale green. When it came down to it, I didn’t do it, though. I felt so tired, really drained, so I took a couple of days off work myself. All I did was play my Greig and sleep. I played and played and then I tucked myself up with some hot chocolate, which has always been a weakness.
Goodness knows how long I slept for, the clock had stopped when I came to, and the sun didn’t seem to be in the right place at all. Very confusing. I felt light and empty, sort of cleansed. And my head didn’t hurt at all. Great. I thought I’d better get some food in before Kelly came back to nag me, so I got up and got myself ready. I really had lost quite a bit of weight, I thought. Must look after myself better.
I slung my bag over my shoulder and let myself out the door, and who should be standing there but Kelly, with a fabulous tan and red-rimmed eyes. William was just coming down the stairs.
“Hi, Kelly! When did you get back, your tan’s to die for …”
She didn’t even turn and look at me. She rubbed her arms suddenly, which had gone a bit goosepimply, and looked at William, who came down and put his arms around her. What?
“I’ll help you move the piano into your flat, Kelly. Jane would’ve liked that,” said William quietly.
“I know she would. I can’t stop thinking of that Grieg piece she always played, it was so lovely. I’d like to try and play it, for Jane.” Kelly’s voice sounded raw and kept hitching, a little engine that needed oiling and smoothing out.
“What Grieg piece?” said William, “I never heard any Grieg.”
I SPY
He loves me, he loves me not. I spy with my little eye … something beginning with B. I’m lying in the bath, so you’re thinking it might be Bath, aren’t you? No, far too simple. Try again. It could be Belly Button (two Bs for the price of one, clever). It’s not. It might have been Bubbles, but it’s not a bubble bath, so no go. But you’re right, there’s something in the bath. It’s Blood. There, that’s the B. I won, you didn’t get it. Beautiful Blood, feathering gently around my flesh. I win. Bye Bye.
Written in response to a brief for a story of 100 words or less.
The acrid smell catches my throat
And takes me back
To the glossy tan ranks of Sunday morning childhood.
I see the curve of my father’s back
As he bends to his task,
His rhythmic forearm with rolled sleeve
Bows back and forth,
Orchestrating the conker gleam.
Written in response to a brief about household products from our childhood – my father wielded the Cherry Blossom Shoe Polish every Sunday morning for years.
WORK THAT HAS BEEN PUBLISHED OR PERFORMED:
Jack & The Beanstalk: A Three Act Pantomime in Rhyming Verse, performed in 2004 in West Linton
Whipmanella: A Community Pantomime, performed in 2006 in West Linton
Whose Book Is It Anyway, performed in 2009 in West Linton
Various stories have been published in both text and audio format on www.shortbreadstories.com
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