A few laughs greet Helen’s question; a smile seems to be in order.
‘I suppose I think first novels are important because it’s the first thing the author says about the world. People say they are autobiographical, and many are, but they’re not all. Just as often I would say that they are a mistake, or are viewed as a mistake later in an author’s career, retrospectively, either by readers and critics or by the author himself. Or herself. Sometimes they’re the best thing an author will ever write. They don’t know this at the time, of course, and in some cases maybe they’ll never see it. In others, maybe they think their first was the best and they never manage to surpass it, but in fact they do. And as for my first novel, it was published by a very small press and it went out of print. Simple as that. I haven’t done a Philip Pullman or a John Banville and either disowned or tried to suppress it. Few copies were sold and even fewer remain.’
Helen smiles and nods and then opens her mouth to speak again.
‘Well, in that case,’ she says, ‘I’m even more pleased I managed to find a copy.’
From her lap she produces a trade paperback: orange, black and white on the cover, a stylised photographic image of an Egyptian mummy, a vague geometrical hint of a pyramid in the background. The orange spine with black type: Rites by Paul Taylor.
Her trick produces a reaction from the group. One or two jaws hang down; there are even small gasps. It seems Helen is not the only student who has been looking for a copy, but she is almost certainly alone in having found one.
‘Would you mind signing it?’ she asks, thrusting it forward.
I accept the book and study the cover. The bottom corner has been folded over at some point. The spine is unbroken, but the book looks as if it has been read. It has that slightly loose look about it, the edges of the pages not quite bookshop-sharp. I look at the front cover again, the crease on the corner. A picture enters my mind of my hand returning a copy of the novel to my own bookshelf, back in another life, and doing it too hastily and catching the corner. I open the copy that Helen has handed to me. There’s no second-hand dealer’s price pencilled on the first page. Copies come up for sale extremely rarely, in any case. Not that they’re worth anything. Those that I have located and bought, I’ve tended to pay more for the postage than for the book itself.
I write ‘For Helen, Lumb Bank’, then sign and date it.
Her eyes widen as I hand the book back to her.
‘Right,’ I say, ‘I need a drink.’
Wednesday morning, everyone is seated around the large table in the dining room. I announce that we’re going to do an exercise about place. The importance of place in fiction. I tell them that I want them to imagine a place that’s important to them. It could be somewhere they’ve known since childhood. Equally it could be somewhere they went for the first time only last week. But it must be a place that has a real resonance for them, for whatever reason. I tell them I want them to write a scene set in this place featuring themselves and one other character. It could be based on a real event or entirely fictitious. It’s up to them.
While they’re off working on their submissions, I sit outside looking up the valley, instead of across it. Rising out of the trees are two huge chimneys, evidence of the march of industry up the river valleys of this part of the world in the nineteenth century. I have walked along the wooded paths that go up the valley, but I don’t remember seeing the bases of the chimneys, although I suppose I must have done.
We regather around the large table and Geeta reads first, a haunting and ultimately very effective piece about attraction and jealousy set in Trinidad. Lawrence Duncan — or Duncan Lawrence — reads a short but powerful scene set in a club where he tells us he has DJ’d; the action takes place the morning after a big party and features the DJ and a traumatised clubber suffering from delusions. Helen sticks her hand up next. I stop doodling on the pad in front of me and sit back and fold my arms.
Dave picks me up in his car and we drive around for a bit. He points out this and that and I smile and nod like I think he wants me to. We stop and watch the planes landing, until we’re moved on by the police, who make a big deal of searching Dave’s car, saying, Remember the Yorkshire Ripper, we don’t want to get caught out like that again. We turn into the car park of a fancy restaurant near the airport and I wonder what Dave’s got on his mind. Carpaccio of beef or a roll in the back seat. But we just sit there while Dave’s hand hovers over the gearstick and eventually he selects first gear and we are back out on the road.
It’s a world of chain-link fences and tatty scrub, razor wire and gravel. The leonine roar of aircraft engines and screech of high-pressurised rubber on runway tarmac. A world of epaulettes and wheeled suitcases and aviator sunglasses and pull on the straps to inflate.
Dave’s picturing all this as we drive slowly by, hugging the airport’s perimeter. He’s thinking ahead to the next workshop, formulating exercises. A sense of place. This is Dave’s place. I want him to take me to mine, only I don’t know what mine is. We drive north, away from the airport, pull in to the car park of a supermarket on the A34. Dave backs into a space away from the store, pulls on the handbrake and switches off the engine. The heat rising from the bonnet reminds me of a burning car I once saw in a supermarket car park, maybe this one, yes, it was this one, and it had only just caught fire because it had yet to attract a crowd of gawkers and the fire brigade were not in attendance and no one from the store was standing by speaking urgently into a mobile phone. As I watched the thick orange and yellow flames leaping from the windows of the car, windows that were either open or had blown out, flames that reminded me of graphics in a computer game, I saw an apparition through the heat haze rising from the bonnet of the vehicle. I saw a breakfast TV presenter standing alone on the far side of the flames, the only other person apart from me watching the burning car. I tried to see into the car to see if there was anyone trapped inside it, but the flames danced around too much, and when I looked up again, the TV presenter had gone.
Dave starts the engine and we roll out of the car park, heading north again. Wide roads, traffic, cars parked in driveways, stop lights, takeaways, bridges over dismantled railways lines. Nowhere that’s ever been anywhere. Street lights come on. Night falls. We turn left, go right, turn second right. We stop outside a large semi-detached Victorian house. I see the number 23 on the gatepost. There are trees in the middle of the road, more large houses on the other side. At the end of the road is a park. It’s a road of million-pound houses occupied by music producers, university professors, property developers, celebrity lawyers and TV presenters. I could live in this road, one day in the far future.
Dave puts his hand on my leg, moves it slowly up and down. I turn to look at him.
‘It goes on,’ Helen says, looking up from her notebook, ‘but I don’t want to hog the time. Lots of people have to read.’
There are murmurings of protest.
‘Aw, what’s going to happen?’
‘Come on.’
‘We want to hear all of it.’
‘Great stuff,’ I say, ‘nicely done. But as Helen says, there are lots of people to read and not much time left.’
I silence the persisting grumbles and ask Kieran to share his piece with the group. Kieran opens up his laptop and prepares to read.