Waverley Writers

One of my kinder Twitter followers (yes, I have Twitter followers, and some of them are kind) has told me that you know you’re really arrived as a writer when you’re invited to teach at a Creative Writing Course.

     In principle, I don’t disagree, and not just because it massages my ego. But I could still wish that it was at a retreat on the Yorkshire Dales founded by a Poet Laureate or on a cruise ship (IN MY DREAMS!) or at least somewhere worthy like a women’s refuge or a prison. Though on reflection, that might give me a virtue-signalling inner glow but would also probably be unpaid, so perhaps not. At least not at the moment.

     Somehow it’s not quite the same when it’s at a guest house (even if a fairly big one that has every right to call itself a hotel) run by my former mother-in-law.

     Now let me get this straight because it sounds like the start of a not very funny joke you tell to prove you’ve not succumbed to political correctness gone mad. About the one decent thing to survive from my brief (not that it seemed brief!) marriage to Lionel was my enduring friendship with his Mum, Trisha. True, sometimes we were walking on eggshells on a tightrope (BEAR IN MIND AS USEFUL EXAMPLE OF A MIXED METAPHOR I told myself!) but for the most part we had reached a tacit agreement that yes, he could be a total pain in the privates and I had an absolute right to think that but yes, he was her lad, and she had an absolute right to think that. We didn’t mention him that often. We didn’t need to. We had so many other things to talk about. 

     Trisha’s seafront guest house, called the Waverly, was still struggling to try to get off its feet (a metaphor that really doesn’t work!) after being closed for months during lockdown, and there were years when she didn’t open in November at all. Though she was devoted to the Waterloo and loved it most of the time, she’d never been one of those landladies who feared the coach would turn back into a pumpkin if her establishment were closed for a few weeks. 

     The idea was entirely her own. “I’ve decided to host a creative writing course, Poppy,” she told me. “And I’d be honoured if you were the chief tutor!”

     Naturally I said I’d be honoured too. I also had few illusions. This was basically to be bed, breakfast, evening meal (that handy word beloved of landladies, even Trisha, who think supper isn’t posh enough and dinner is too ambiguous) with creative writing thrown in. But I was in no position to be picky. As I’ve already intimated, frankly I needed the money. I also had writers’ block and had been one of those who didn’t believe it existed until I was thus afflicted.

     It had all been going so well. My first novel, Willow Way, about the residents of a small housing estate (yes, I was sticking to that write what you know dogma though with the usual disclaimer that everyone knows is a downright lie about nobody being based on a real person!) was hailed as “delicate” and “bittersweet” and even on one occasion “delicious”. Not that it was universally approved of, even if it was one of those famous word of mouth things – though some people spoke rather slowly. I had my critics in online bookgroups and I had expected it. It was described as clichéd and too middle class and also castigated for too much swearing (which was unfair – I didn’t drop one single F-bomb and was sparing with the rest, but I’m sorry, grown-up people having rows simply don’t say oh bother!). It also “didn’t have enough story” and some weren’t happy with my presentation of Lulu, the child with a learning disability. Well, okay, I wasn’t entirely easy with that myself, though my friend Carol, who did have a Downs Syndrome child said it was fine, if adding “perhaps just a tad twee on occasion.” 

     Still, I was actually earning my living from my pen (okay, my laptop, though I did have notebooks of the paper kind) and that was a heady feeling. Even before Willow Way was published I had embarked on Linnets Lane, this time using a rural setting, half-based on the one where my Gran had lived where I was a child, and where I’d visited. But somehow I’d known from the start that my second literary child (I hope that doesn’t sound pretentious) was going to be more problematic. I won’t go so far as to say Willow Way wrote itself, but it flowed easily and yes, though hard work, it was also fun. This wasn’t much fun at all at times, and these times became more frequent. Still, I got it finished, and it was published, but though I had my fans there was a general consensus that it wasn’t nearly as “sparkling” and some of the kindest comments were that people really wanted the further adventures of the inhabitants of Willow Way, not a new set of characters who frankly weren’t as interesting. Well, I had always sworn I would never have serial characters, remembering how many authors who did came to regret it and find it a millstone. But I was beginning to think it might have been no bad idea. 

     So frankly, I was in no position to refuse Trisha’s offer. She’d been quite honest in telling me she couldn’t pay me that much, but I had bed and board, and wasn’t a change of scene (even if the scene changed to was hardly exotic!) famously stimulating for the creative juices? 

     I could have wished she asked before she referred to me as Best Selling Author Poppy Cameron. Even in the heyday of Willow Way I didn’t trouble the bestseller list. 

     In common with most of the people on the course, I arrived in the evening, though the courses wouldn’t start until the next day. Trisha was on the phone when I arrived (she’d reluctantly had to let her receptionist go, though she hoped to re-engage her soon. I couldn’t help thinking she might have been better spending her money on her than me, but there you go!). “Well, it’s not a good start, this hanging around, is it!” exclaimed a rather sharp-faced woman in what might have passed for a power suit in the 80s. 

     “Come on now. You know times can’t have been easy, and it’s not as if the courses start tonight.” I looked gratefully at an elderly gentleman who had sunk into one of the couches on the reception area – which as I knew could be hard to get up from and I hoped he wouldn’t lose his dignity. I say elderly, but it would have been hard to guess his exact age, even, I fancied, for someone who was better than I was at guessing ages. He could have been a prematurely aged man in his sixties or a well-preserved one in his eighties. His jacket had leather patches at the elbow and the collar of his shirt was a bit frayed, but somehow he still looked very well turned-out. He reached out his hand, and had the kind of grip that was firm without crushing his bones. “Good evening. I’m Stanley Brewster.” “Good Evening,” I replied – though he was friendly, somehow he wasn’t the kind of man you said “hi” to, or at least not at a first meeting. “I’m Poppy Cameron.” Briefly, in the heady days of the word of mouth fame of Willow Way I half wished I’d chosen a pen-name and had even toyed with Rose Major, somewhat obviously keeping a flower and a former prime minister! “Our tutor!” Stanley exclaimed, though I suspect he wouldn’t have known if it hadn’t been on the brochure or website he looked at! 

     As I must remind myself never to write in any future prose, I gave a silent sigh. So that was it, at least for the time being. Not the writer but the tutor. 

     “You don’t look much like your picture,” Ms Power Suit said. At least she didn’t say I looked older. She wouldn’t have been lying, though, and not just by the couple of years since it was taken. She didn’t shake my hand and I wondered if it was because she feared for her nails, which were long, immaculate, and painted in alternate shades of sky blue and fuchsia. “I’m Margot Thomas. I’ve read that book of yours.” I noted book in the singular. Oh well, she wasn’t the only one! “Quite a nice little read. But I’m a beautician,” (now that didn’t surprise me) “and let me tell you that Natalia’s Nails bears no resemblance to any establishment I’ve ever known.” “Sorry about that,” I said, meekly. She probably had a point. I had thought (that old write what you know stuff!) that not much research was needed for Willow Way. But a beauty salon deserved to be properly researched as much as a research lab did. I found myself subconsciously hiding my own hands behind my back. My nails weren’t actually bitten, but looked as if they were. 

     “My wife was more the fan of your books,” Stanley said. So that told me, if the wistful look on his face hadn’t, that he had lost his wife, and pretty recently. “But I did read them to her, well, amongst other things, when she couldn’t manage to read for herself, and you tell a good story, my dear.”

     “Thank you,” I said, cocking a tacit snook at those who said there wasn’t enough story in my books! 

     “Always fancied the idea of writing something myself. Well, I suppose a lot of people do. Not fiction, I don’t think, I wouldn’t have the knack. But about the years Susan and I spent living on a houseboat. Happiest time of my life.”

     Trisha had finally finished her phone call and looked flustered, though she gave me an appreciative nod. “I’m in a bit of a situation, to be frank!” I wondered if she should have been spilling the beans quite so much in front of the guests/students but that was how she was. She admitted herself that her tongue ran away with her. She went on. “That phone call was from a lady called Elizabeth Chadwick. She and her daughter Charity were supposed to be coming on the course,” Stanley and Margot exchanged a glance that made it plain that saddling a child with a name like Charity might not be wise and the surname didn’t help. On that they were agreed and I probably was, too. “But her aunt has been taken ill, and she has to look after her. The thing is – Charity isn’t eighteen until next month. And technically we’re not supposed to take unaccompanied minors. Elizabeth assures me she’s a very sensible young lady, and I believe her, but – oh this is such a bloody dilemma!”

     “Well, it’s not my decision,” Margot said, “But I’d been working for more than a year when I was her age!”

     “And I’d already been on holiday with a bunch of mates twice – met Susan on one of them,” Stanley said. 

     “I reckon we’re quite happy to keep our traps shut,” Margot said. He nodded, vigorously. “And you, Poppy?” he asked. I still didn’t want Trisha to get in trouble, but was inclined to agree with them and said. “Fine by me.” “We can keep a bit of an extra eye on her,” Stanley said.

     The Chadwicks didn’t live that far away, and Charity arrived an hour or so later – Trisha went to pick her up at the station. I decided we were right to back her up in “pushing a point”. Charity was a quiet, self-possessed, but very polite young lady, and still feeling guilty about leaving her Mum to care for “Auntie Rita”. 

     “Now come on,” Trisha said, firmly. “Your Mum really wanted you to go on this course, and she said your Auntie would, too. Margot was weighing up her hair – a quite magnificent mop of copper waves, past her waist. “I’m not a hairdresser as such, but I can turn my hand to it” she said. “I could certainly do something with yours!”

     “You’re not the first person to say that,” Charity said, with a smile. “And it translates as cut it. I very much appreciate the offer, but I don’t want it cutting, thank you!”

     For a minute I wondered if I was witnessing the first feud (and I supposed there were bound to be some) of the writers’ course. But just as Charity could be surprisingly assertive, Margot could be surprisingly magnanimous. “You’re right,” she admitted, “I did mean cut it. Not all of it, of course! But I suppose it would be a shame!”

     “I know I will have to some time,” Charity said, “But not until I’ve finished my A-levels or my novel, or both!”

     “May we ask what your novel is about?” asked Stanley in that courteous way of his that had nothing to do with being condescending.

     “A fantasy novel!” she informed us.

     “Oh – one of those werewolves and witches things!”  Margot said.

     “No, there’s neither a werewolf nor a witch in it.” Then she paused. “Come to think of it, there is a werewolf, but he transforms into a sea-horse in Chapter Two.”

     “Blimey,” Margot muttered. 

     I then proceeded to break one of my own rules and asked, “We know about everyone else’s projects, Margot – what about yours? If you want to,” I added hurriedly.

     “Well – if you must know, I wouldn’t mind writing one a bit like yours. Only instead of the folk on an estate, the customers in a beauty salon!”

     Our late arrivals that night, and coming from furthest away were Brian and Bill, an item, and absolute soul mates who frequently finished each others’ sentences, but who had distinctly different literary plans. Brian was working on a collection of haikus in text language, and Bill had embarked on a campus novel in the style of Henry James. 

     “There’s still two to go,” Trisha said, worriedly, “and they said they’d be here tonight.” She smiled ruefully. “I’m a worrier, Poppy, you know that!”

     She determinedly went about her business but was relieved to get a phone call, though as she said, what a nuisance for them. The two absentees, and the two “most distant” students on the course had both got caught up in a massive traffic jam caused by a big pile up on the motorway. Mercifully, there were no serious injuries, but it had created total traffic chaos. “Trisha, knowing you you’ve been up since dawn and you look frazzled,” I said. “You get some kip and I’ll wait up for them.”

     “Bless you,” she said. “I’ll admit I’m out on my feet!”

     So by midnight, all were safely gathered in as Ingrid Cowell and Pete Ronson arrived, looking decidedly frayed at the edges. “This course had better be worth it,” Ingrid said, but the grin playing on her lips belied the edge to her words. 

     “Ignore her, Poppy,” Pete said, “She could whine for England but she’s harmless.”

     As they signed the visitors’ book I found out that they hadn’t known each other before, though they lived in neighbouring towns in Kent, but their cars had been “next door but one” as Pete put it in the tailback. Like most people, they got out for some fresh air and to stretch their legs and fell into conversation, discovering that both of them were headed for the writing course at the Waverley. Ingrid was scathing about Pete’s planned series about a 19^th century mercenary, and Pete no less so about her ongoing Aga Saga. But it was perfectly obvious that there was a spark between them and though I would never use a cliché like “Love at First Sight” (I determinedly told myself!) I certainly believed in chemistry at first sight. Jokingly playing the headmistress I said that given the circumstances, they might be excused that morning’s session. “No way!” Ingrid informed me. “I intend getting my money’s worth.” “I’m supposed to be the one who’s interested in mercenaries,” said Pete. 

     And, indeed, as we gathered in the comfortable lounge they seemed the freshest and most raring to go of everyone there. “Not like us mere mortals who need our 8 hours!” Stanley gently joked.

     “In my case make it 10,” Margot admitted, “I sometimes think I was a cat in a previous incarnation! D’you think there’s a story there, Poppy?”

     “Quite possibly!” Though I couldn’t help thinking she might probably be better sticking to her beauty salon idea. Mind you, there was that Roald Dahl story about the cat who was the reincarnation of Franz Liszt!

     Though I’d done my homework to some extent I still wasn’t quite sure how to start the ball rolling. It came to me in a flash. “What I’d like you to do, and I know some of you might not like it, is to pick someone else’s writing plans or interests and produce a page or so on them in your own voice!”

     The brief hiatus seemed interminable but then I realised it was okay! They were quite taken with it, and text-speak Aga Sagas and fantasy worlds on houseboats began to take shape.

     Oh, and I realised what my next novel would be about! I even gave it a working title. Waverley Writers. Though no, I’d have to change the name. 

     Because you’re not supposed to write about real people!