Dolly's voice is nicotine. "She doesn't see me comin'. I have her by the hair, pull the head straight back, then slit her throat." The woman who put the "dead" in deadpan. "I use a knife, the knife she bought me on our first anniversary. She doesn't even make a noise, the blood just burbles out."
"Burbles?" Ivan glances up from his fingernails. It's Michelle, right at the back. "Burbles, yeah, okay?" says Dolly, her voice caught between embarrassment and threat.
"Let her finish, Michelle," Ivan says, "it's not easy."
Dolly nods curtly at him, then returns her attention to the page. Her fingers follow the words. "The blood just burbles out . . ." She tosses a defiant look back at Michelle. Michelle tosses it back. ". . . and then she collapses in my arms. She's dead. I kiss her once . . ."
There's a chorus of ooooooohs! from the rest of the class. Dolly waits for them to settle again before continuing. "I kiss her once on the lips, then I bury her in her own garden, just where we used to sit in the summer." She nods to herself for a moment, then adds a quiet "The End."
They applaud politely. They enjoyed it, but they're nervous about being asked next.
"Ahm, yes, very, uhm, descriptive, Dolly." Ivan gets off his desk and taps his chalk on the blackboard. "Of course, the title of our essay assignment was actually, What I Will Do On My First Day Home From Prison. I, ahm, wouldn't show that to the parole board."
They laugh. He likes to make them laugh. Dolly gives him a limp-wristed bogoff wave, "Oh Mr Connor," she says, "what would you know about writing fiction?"
Ivan smiles. "Okay, who's next?" Eyes are averted. "Come on, we're all friends here. Eileen?" A shake of the head. "Betty?" Not even a shake, just a stare at the floor. A small, elfin-featured girl slowly raises her hand. "Donna? Okay, off you go."
Donna licks her lips, pushes hair from her brow. "The . . ."
"Stand up so we can see you, Donna."
She gets up. Her voice is soft. "The light of the ark surrounds me, the dark of the night astounds me . . ." "Is that a poem, Donna?" Ivan asks.
"Yes, Mr Connor."
"It was an essay I specifically . . ." He trails off. He glances at his watch. He sighs. "Okay, let's hear it."
"Will I start again?"
"Come on girl!" Michelle shouts. "Get it out!"
"All right, Michelle. Yes, Donna, from the top." She nods slightly. "The . . ." "Shit!"
Donna looks up sharply to see Mr Connor with his foot on a chair, and the broken end of a shoelace held up as evidence of a legitimate excuse. "Sorry, Donna. Please . . . ."
Donna swallows, takes a deep breath. "The . .. ." At that moment the bell rings and class is over. They're up out of their chairs like they're back at school, then they remember they're volunteers for this class, they aren't going anywhere. They slow down. Ivan scoops up his own books and joins the exodus. He doesn't notice Donna, still standing with her poem in her hand.
IVAN is 40 years old, he wears an old raincoat, his hair is long and straggled. He has been teaching this class in the women's prison for eight weeks. It pays reasonably well, enough to tide him over until the new contract is sorted out. He looks at his watch. He's caught in heavy traffic, going nowhere. Ben Elton would get a novel and a million out of it. Ivan's Metro is decrepit. He's listening to Dvorak on a tape. His most recent novel, Chapter & Verse, sits open on the passenger seat. The passages he will shortly read at Waterstone's are highlighted in yellow. Beside the book there's a half-eaten packet of Starburst, although he will call them Opal Fruits until he goes to his grave.
He lifts the book and reads aloud, his voice strong, confident: "But it was not only by playing backgammon with the baronet that the little governess rendered herself agreeable to her employer. She found many different ways of being useful to him. She read over, with indefatigable patience, all those law papers . . ."
He stops because he's aware of being watched. He looks out, and then up, at the cab of a lorry, facing in the other direction, and the bearded driver laughing at him. Ivan closes his book, sets it back on the passenger seat, then grips his steering wheel with both hands. A moment later, music booms out from the truck. Someone with at least a fingernail on the pulse of popular music would recognise it as rap, but to Ivan it is noise. And noise annoys.
Ivan scratches suddenly at his head. He thinks he may have picked up nits in the prison.
Ivan hurries across the busy road, freezing rain slicing into his face. Halfway across, he steps out of the shoe with the broken lace, and before he can go back for it a car drags it along the road for a hundred yards and he has to hop after it. Look at the great author! Stepping off his lofty pedestal to pursue an Oxford brogue along the tarmac! He picks it up and hugs it against his chest.
Campbell is watching him from the Waterstone's doorway. His agent gets 10 per cent of everything he earns. Ivan's coat is ancient, but at least he has one. Campbell is damp and cold. Ivan hurries up, full of apologies.
Ivan isn't nervous until he sets damp foot in the bookshop, but the moment he crosses the threshold, the weight of literature and competition is suddenly upon him. Thousands and thousands and thousands of books. Half of them appear to be about a young boy called Harry Potter. Ivan admires anyone who can make that much money, and hates Her with a vengeance. He wonders if She will ever write Harry Potter and the Provisional IRA, or Harry Potter and the Palestinian Question. He loves corrupting popular titles and idles away many hours of his writing life at this very pursuit. His favourites are Love In the Time of a Really Bad Flu, The Day of the Jack Russell and A Quarter to Three in the Garden of Good and Evil.
As he moves through the shop Ivan becomes aware that the aisles are actually very crowded. This is a good sign. Campbell pushes ahead of him, then comes to a halt at the edge of a seated area; a hundred seats and they are all filled. Butterflies flap in his stomach. This is better than he could ever have hoped. At previous readings he has been lucky to scrape a dozen hardy souls. He glows. Word of mouth. He has never quite been popular enough to be considered a cult, but perhaps this is the beginning of something. He is ready to be acclaimed. He observes the microphone, the small lectern, the table with the bottle of Evian water, the glass, the chair, the pen for signing books afterwards.
The manager of the shop steps up to the microphone and taps it once. "Ladies and gentlemen, sorry to keep you waiting, but our author has at last emerged from the nightmare that is our traffic." They laugh. "Our guest tonight is quite simply an author who needs no introduction. Universally acclaimed, a master of the English language . . ." Ivan swallows nervously, takes a first step forward. "Put your hands together for . . . Francesca Brady!"
Ivan freezes. Applause erupts around him. Posters curl suddenly down from the ceiling. A mile-wide smile, expansive hair, red red lipstick, the cover of a book, but the spitting image of the author now stepping forward from the audience not six feet away from him. His heart is racing . . . His first impulse is to dive on her, force her to the ground, and then batter her to death with a copy of Insanity Fair, her latest "novel". Ivan always makes that little quotation marks sign with his fingers when anyone mentions Insanity Fair, or even Francesca Brady. She writes fat romantic books for fat romantic people. She dresses them up with smart one-liners so that she can appear hip, but she's really ugh! Mills and Boon for the egeneration, and every time he thinks of her he suffers a vowel problem. Francesca Brady takes the stage with a modest wave, pretends to look surprised at the posters.
Ivan jumps as he's tapped on the shoulder. There's a boy of about 12, wearing acne and a Waterstone's identity badge around his neck like a marine with dogtags. And why not? Bookselling is war, and the enemy never stops coming.
"Mr Connor? We've been looking everywhere for you. You're in the basement. Follow me."
Ben, it says on the dogtags. BEN turns and leads Ivan back through the crowds of people still arriving to hear Francesca Brady. She's still milking the applause - "thankyou, thankyou, I keep looking behind me thinking a real author must be standing there" - and they're all bloody laughing as Ivan, Campbell and BEN hurry down the stairs into the basement.
BEN charges ahead. Ivan glances back at Campbell, who shrugs helplessly. Signs for Astrology, Military History, School Texts, Gay & Lesbian, Erotica, flash past like inter-city stations of the cross. Finally they emerge into a small circular area in which there are set about 30 chairs. Ivan quickly calculates that 77 per cent of the chairs are filled. Something salvaged, at least. There is already a small, balding, middle-aged man standing at the microphone, the literary equivalent of a warmup man, a no-hoper, a glorified typist who's stumbled into a book deal because he's slept with someone famous or been held hostage in an obscure country for several years. No problem. There is a lectern. A table with a bottle of Evian water. A chair. A pen. The man is saying: "For me, philately is not so much a passion as a way of . . . " Ivan becomes aware of BEN waving urgently at him from three aisles across, under a sign that says True Crime. Campbell gives him a gentle push and Ivan skirts the outer ring of chairs; BEN turns and hurries away. Ivan passes through Science Fiction, Science Fantasy, Terry Pratchett and then finally emerges in a tiny rectangular area set out with a dozen chairs. Seven of them are filled. There is a lectern. A microphone. A table, chair, bottle of Evian water and a pen for signing copies of his books, which sit in several tremulously high columns on another table.
Ben taps the microphone. He squints at the folded piece of paper he has removed from the back pocket of his black jeans. He glances up at the giant air-conditioning system which whirrs and blows above him, then speaks into the microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen, sorry to keep you waiting, but our author has at last emerged from the nightmare that is our traffic." He pauses for laughter, but it is not forthcoming. "Our guest tonight is quite simply an author who needs no introduction. Universally acclaimed, a master of the English language. Put your hands together for . . . Ian Connor!"
Campbell hisses: "Ivan!"
"Ivan Connor!" BEN shoots back quickly, but he has already stepped away from the microphone. His voice is not drowned out by the applause, which is on the dead side of restrained, but by the air conditioning.
Ivan approaches the stage. He sets the hardback edition of Chapter & Verse down on the table and pours himself a glass of Evian. His heart is racing again. There is no reason for him to be nervous, but he is. He always is. He lifts the glass and sets it down somewhat precariously on the narrow base of the lectern.
"Th-thank you, all, very much for coming," Ivan says into the microphone. "I, ahm, gonna . . . going to . . . read from my new novel." He holds it up for them to admire, but the book slips out of the dust jacket and crashes down onto the glass of water, which immediately cracks. Ivan makes a desperate attempt to retrieve the situation, although it looks to the audience as if he is indulging in some kind of bizarre performance art, juggling broken glass, damp novel and handfuls of water. Meanwhile, the dust jacket floats gently away on the breeze from the air conditioner.
Ivan smiles foolishly while BEN removes the broken glass and soaks up what he can of the water with a Kleenex. Ivan tries to peel apart the damp pages of Chapter & Verse in order to find the section he intends to read. Campbell hides himself in Graphic Novels.
When they are ready to start again, Ivan decides to ignore the water incident. "The, uhm, new novel . . . which is set in England in the 18th century . . . an era which I'm sure you're all . . ." He blinks at them. "Anyway, this is from chapter three." He clears his throat. "He took Rebecca . . ." Do I sound pompous? Slow down. They're here because they want to be ". . . to task once or twice about the propriety of playing backgammon . . ." "Speak up!"
He glances up at a gnarled, elderly man sitting at the back.
"Y-yes, of course. He took Rebecca to task once or twice . . ." "Louder!"
"HE TOOK REBECCA TO TASK ONCE OR . . ."
"Philately!"
Another man, in the second row, is on his feet, waving a finger at him. "I'm sorry!" "Stamps, man! We're here for the stamps!"
BEN bounds up to the microphone. "B2," he says, "the stamps lecture is in B2. Third down on the right."
As the man shuffles along the row of seats Ivan is aghast to see five other members of his audience, including the deaf man, get to their feet and shuffle after him, leaving only an old lady in the front row.
Campbell retreats into Occult.
Ivan waits until some strength returns to his legs, then smiles weakly down at the old lady. "Mother," he says, "I can read to you when I get home."
"You can read to me now, Ivan. I didn't come all this way not to be read to."
He shakes his head. He laughs. He does love her. "Well," he says, reaching up to move the microphone, "at least I won't be needing this . . ." Except the spilled water has soaked into the wires, and the moment he touches it there's a crack and flash and the author of Chapter & Verse is hurled into the air.
He is not seriously injured. His eyebrows are singed and his hair stands on end. The paramedics, nevertheless, insist on taking him to the hospital for a checkup. They also insist that he leaves on a stretcher. Regulations. He feels foolish, once again. His mother holds his hand and tells him he's going to be okay. The paramedics heave and blow as they carry him back through Science Fiction, Science Fantasy, Terry Pratchett, then Astrology, Mili- tary History, School Texts, Gay & Lesbian, and Erotica.
When they reach the ground floor their exit is blocked by a crowd surrounding Francesca Brady, who has called a halt to her signing session, suffering from cramp, and has been pursued to the front door by adoring fans. She notices Ivan on his stretcher and immediately goes to him. She places a hand on his chest and purrs: "I'm so glad you could come." An assistant hands her a copy of Insanity Fair. "Please have this as a gift and I hope you'll be feeling better soon," she says, handing it to Ivan, but making sure the cover is turned towards the camera which takes their picture.
As she strides out of the door, Francesca Brady scratches suddenly at her head.
The hospital wants nothing to do with him. Campbell takes him to a pub and they get very drunk and rail against the state of the world, and publishing. Then he's in a taxi, and he can't remember where Campbell went . . . but here he is, home again, except the key won't fit in the door. He hammers on the wood, he presses the bell. A window slides up high above him and two kids look out.
"Daddy . . . what are you doing here?" Michael calls down.
"I sleep . . . perchance . . . Michael, open the door, there's a good chap."
Michael is pulled away by his mother. She glares down at Ivan.
"Avril . . . darlin' . . ." "Go away. You're drunk."
"And you are ugly, but in the morning I will be sober." He cackles. Avril slams the window down while Ivan struts around in front of the house. "We will . . . fight them . . . on the . . . beaches. Nevuh, evuh, in the . . . field . . . of human conflict. . . AVRIL FOR CHRIST SAKE OPEN THE DOOR."
There is no movement on the door front. Ivan is dizzy and giddy and operating on a high voltage. He bangs on the door again. He staggers back. He sees shadows moving behind curtains. He yells through the letter box.
"I am 40 years old! I have created two widely respected children and eight beautiful novels! My publisher does not care about me! I am represented by an estate agent! I was electric tonight! Nobody cares! AND I THINK I HAVE NITS IN MY HAIR!"
The door opens suddenly and a man he does not recognise punches his lights out.
He is in a bathroom he once decorated, or at least paid a man to decorate. He sits on the toilet seat while Avril, in nightie and dressing gown, sponges the blood from his face. She is saying: "If you apologise again, I'll punch you on the nose."
"Sorry," he says. "He didn't have to hit me."
"Yes he did."
"What sort of a name is Norman anyway? Did he conquer you?"
On cue, Norman calls from the hall. Avril shouts: "No, go to bed, I'll be fine!" He won't go to bed. He'll linger in the hall, trying to hear.
Ivan's nose is fine now, but there's a small gash just above his hairline where he hit his head on the pavement. Avril leans forward to examine it. Ivan puts a hand on her breast.
"Don't," she says, and slaps it away.
He puts his hand back on her breast.
"Stop it," she says. She slaps it away again. "Oh Ivan, when are you ever going to grow up?"
"We must have made love, what, a thousand times? And now you won't let me touch your tit."
"Don't call it that. And we're divorced." He looks wistfully at her. "Oh Avril, where did we go wrong?" "We? I don't think so." "Avril, darling, I'm a writer." "Stop it. I don't want to hear this shit." "Is everything okay in there?" Norman calls from the hall. "Yes! Go to bed!" "A writer has to grow, experience, live . . . inhabit the spirit, create the legend . . ." "It's crap, Ivan. You spend half your life sitting in a little room making up little stories nobody reads, and then you spend the other half of your life FECKING AROUND making everyone else miserable and you have a perfect excuse because it's all in the name of LIT-ER-AT-URE! Well it's all crap, Ivan! Then you come round here to moan at us because your publisher's so crap and you expect us to be interested? Well, why don't you write something that somebody wants to read instead of trying to bore everyone to death?"
He blinks at her for several moments, then gives a childish shrug. "I only wanted to feel your booby."
She rolls her eyes. She comes towards him again and opens her dressing gown. He puts his hand on her breast.
"This Norman, do you love him?"
"He's good and he's straight and he loves me. And yes, I'm starting to love him."
"That's good."
"I do like your books."
"I know."
She smiles down at him, then frowns and leans forward to examine his hair. She pulls her dressing gown across, then hurries to the door and opens it. "NORMAN! THE NIT COMB!"
When the prison officer leads the girls into the classroom, they find Ivan Connor stamping his feet on a newspaper. He has read this headline: "Francesca Brady shortlisted for Booker."
The world is not a just place.
The reading of the previous week's assignments continues. Mairead, AnnMarie, Bethany, some of the Albanian names he cannot pronounce. He stares out of the window and fumes. Francesca Brady. That it should come to this. She has the Holy Trinity: money, fame, and now respect. He seethes.
"The light of the ark surrounds me, the dark of the night astounds me . . ."
He's up out of his chair. "Christ almighty, Donna! What's your problem!? Essay! I said essay! Why's it always poetry?!"
"I like . . . poetry . . ." "Like . . . like . . . it's not about like! Poetry is an art, it's a technical wonder. What the hell could you possibly know about poetry?"
"I just . . . you know . . . like . . ." "And I like opera, but I don't delude myself I'm Pavabloodyrotti. Do you even know the first thing about poetry? Do you even know what a sonnet is? Do you? Or iambic pentameter? Can you tell me about that? Iambic? Anyone? Anyone?" They're looking at the floor, at the ceiling, at their books. "Is it, is it perhaps an Olympic event?"
He moves swiftly up the aisle and makes a grab for Donna' s exercise book.
She tries to hold on to it, but he pulls it free. "Don't be shy now, Donna! Let me read it for you!"
She's on the verge of tears as he begins to read it, but not like a poem, he gives it the rhythm of the rap he has heard spewing out of the radio. "The light of the ark . . . surrounds me . . . the dark of the night . . . astounds me. You make me smile like Jesus and fight like . . ." He closes the book, shakes his head, then slaps it back down on her desk. "This isn't poetry, Donna, these are lyrics."
Donna lowers her eyes. There are tears rolling down her cheeks.
Nicotine Dolly raises her hand. "Mr Connor?"
"Dolly?"
"Can I ask a question, Mr Connor?"
"Yes, Dolly."
"When exactly did you turn into an asshole? 'Cause we got enough assholes in here without having to bring one in from outside."
He looks at her, and he looks at the class, and it seems to be the consensus of opinion that he is, indeed, an asshole.
Later he wonders if he could sell a book about lesbians in prison.