Articles & Essays Book Reviews Creative Writing
Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Volume 18 Number 2, August 2017
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The Writer
by
It was the day of my grandfather’s funeral.
I remember it distinctly. The summer had essentially passed, and the leaves were beginning to turn brown; a golden tinge streaking imperceptibly through their emerald veins. I was feeling introspective, as I imagine everybody does on these sombre and bleak occasions. I stood at the graveside while the women cried and the men looked stony-faced and stiff. A thin breeze lifted any loose piece of attire, sighing through the trees and susurrating softly in my ears. The priest droned and murmured, the family sniffed and wept, and all the while I stood there, my face turned to the wind. Eventually, they lowered the casket into the soft, autumnal earth and that was that.
After the funeral, a wake was held in a nearby community centre. Limp sandwiches wilted sadly on ceramic platters, as ashen-faced friends and family made awkward, dishonest small talk. I drifted aimlessly between groups of well-wishers exchanging banalities and wondered why it is that people are so averse to displaying their true emotions on such occasions. Eventually I was cornered by my Aunt Matilda – an iron-curled and bespectacled curmudgeon; the scourge of local school children and a seemingly insatiable hoarder of cats.
“Ah Nicholas, I was hoping to catch you this afternoon.”
I was taken aback by her routine manner, but then Matilda had never been one to allow her emotions to dictate her behaviour. She had also never allowed herself to call me ‘Nick’, although everybody else did, including my parents.
“Good afternoon Matilda,” I responded while gazing at my feet. At thirty-four years old I still felt that awkwardness over whether to address her as Matilda or Aunt Matilda. She had never cared for “Auntie.”
“Have you thought about Ronald’s house?”
I was so taken aback by her bluntness that it took me a moment to process what she was saying.
“His house?”
She sighed impatiently.
“Please don’t parrot things back to me Nicholas. Yes, his house.” She slowed deliberately, with the air of one addressing someone of limited intellect. “Have you been to visit recently?”
I felt a small surge of guilt. I wondered whether this a thinly-veiled criticism of my inattentiveness as a grandson, or simply typical of Mathilda’s directness. Truth be told, I hadn’t visited the old man often in those final years, and had no idea what state his house would be in. An unenviable one would have been my guess.
“Not recently.” I admitted begrudgingly. “In need of a lick of paint is it?”
She laughed mirthlessly. “A lick of paint? Nicholas, the place is an absolute bombsite. I honestly don’t know what Ronald was doing with himself in there, but the place is a disaster. It’s typical of a man; leaving the place in such a state and assuming the family will clear it up afterwards.”
“Mm,” I responded noncommittally. I had a nasty feeling that I knew where this conversation was heading.
“Inconsiderate really,” she continued as if I hadn’t spoken, now cleaning her glasses fussily with a small piece of cloth that had been drawn from one of the many pockets of her cardigan, “occupying that house all by himself and not even getting someone in to sort it out.”
“He was pretty ill toward the end,” I ventured cautiously in an attempt to defend my grandfather. We had never been exactly close, however he had always been kind to me, and he’d never missed a birthday.
Mathilda ploughed on regardless, “I don’t know what to do about it. Your mother and I are so busy at the moment, and of course everyone else has their jobs.”
She laid the emphasis on jobs very gently. Mathilda had never considered writing for a living as a proper job. The pressure built in the silence that followed. I caved first after a few uncomfortable moments.
“Well, I suppose I could look around, just to see what sort of condition the house is in now.”
Mathilda smiled as if the idea had only just occurred to her.
“Oh thank you Nicholas. If you would that would be such a help.”
We made perfunctory small talk for a few minutes and then she handed over the keys and bustled off to terrorise some other attendees of the wake.
My work took me away for a couple of weeks directly after this exchange; my publisher in London had some queries about a novel I was working on and insisted that it was necessary to talk about them face to face. I’m not trying to sound like a bigshot here – I have been fortunate enough to have a small amount of success as a writer of historical fiction – I promise you it is relevant to the narrative. It was therefore some time before I was able to fulfil my obligation and head down to my grandfather’s house in Surrey.
I wandered slowly through the house, marvelling at the stillness of it all. It was filled with the kind of peace that only descends on a house of mourning; as if the building recognises that it’s occupant will not be returning. I walked where he had walked; I smelled the scents that were mostly alien to me, but had been familiar to him; and I missed him. I worked my way through the house, with no particular logic or agenda, until I found myself at the foot of the stairs that led to the attic.
Pushing my way through the door and into the loft, I disturbed a quantity of dust which swirled and danced in the air and made me sneeze. I had always loved this room, although I had not visited his home for a number of years before this visit. As a child I had spent my waking hours exploring every inch of the house and garden, but I had always returned to the attic to treasure my spoils and plot my next adventure. Oak beams arced and speared above my head, while my feet echoed on the hardwood floor. A shaft of sunlight pierced the room, catching the still twirling motes of dust in its pathway and casting light and shadow across the detritus of the scattered space.
As I stepped further into the room however, I noticed something new, or perhaps something that I had never spotted in all my childhood scrambling. Aligned neatly against the wall stood an iron-bound wooden chest, with the name R. P. Mitchell stencilled in white along the side. It looked like the sort of case that apprehensive small boys used to arrive carrying on their first day at boarding school. With barely a second-thought, I strode over to it, turned the key that sat invitingly in the keyhole, and pulled open the lid. Within, nestled three beautiful and ornate caskets, one of gold, one of silver and one of bronze, and all of varying sizes. Having to start somewhere, I opened the largest first. The bronze casket was large, essentially a chest, and I found a sheaf of papers inside. I read the first with some interest:
Dear Mr Mitchell,
Thank you very much for your letter and submission. Unfortunately, we will not be publishing your submission; the editorial team felt that it was not quite right for ‘The Reader.’ We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavours.
It was signed with a squiggle and dated a little earlier in September. His funeral had been held in October.
I felt a little guilty at reading his personal correspondence, however it would all have to be sorted through. Better me than Mathilda, I rationalised. Picking up the next letter from the pile I read that too:
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your submission. Although well-written, we felt that it did not quite match the tone of the magazine, and we will therefore not be publishing it at this time. We hope that you have success finding it a home with another publication.
This one was signed with an even less legible squiggle. It was dated the previous April. I was quickly beginning to recognise these as the form rejection letter that everyone who has ever tried to write anything for publication is depressingly familiar with.
I picked up another. Then another. The chest was full to the brim with rejection letters. Some kind, some supportive, some with helpful feedback; others composed entirely of bland generalities. Most were polite; some were brusque or even rude. One or two unnecessarily so. The top few were all from the current year. The oldest letters, right at the bottom, crinkled and yellowing with age, dated back over forty years. There must have been several hundred of them at least. I leafed through the letters and felt a growing sense of familiarity. I had read the same platitudes myself on my own rejection letters; too numerous to recall and a wry smile stole across my face.
After a few moments however I was struck by an increasingly unpleasant realisation. I searched through the rest of the bronze chest without result. I tried a chest of drawers near the door and then a filing cabinet under the window. As the beam of sunlight marked time along the wall, I searched every inch of that attic room. I looked in vases and bureau, rifled through bundles of documents, dug through drawers and bookcases and even ran my hand under the rim of the long-decommissioned fire place. Nothing. As the shadows lengthened and my joints began to ache I abandoned the search.
I considered hunting through the rest of the house but decided against this. If the object of my search were here at all, then I was certain it would be in this room. It would be illogical for it to be otherwise.
The silver and gold caskets sat in the middle of the floor; unchecked and untouched. I could not quite bring myself to open them. They probably did contain what I was looking for; but I resolved to leave them for now. It was growing late, and I did not want to run the risk of disappointment. I left the house in a sombre and pensive frame of mind. I couldn’t understand how it could be that my grandfather had written for all those years and never once had anything published. Was his writing so awful? Why had he persevered with something in which he had achieved so little? Why continuously lay himself upon to rejection, criticism and sorrow? It was with these unresolved questions playing on my mind that I took my leave of the house, resolving to return in the morning. He had never mentioned this hobby to me, nor to anyone else in the family that I was aware of. Unless he had been successful, and had kept the information to himself?
**************
The sun was shining brightly, against a field of brilliant azure as I made my way back up the driveway on the following day. I did not bother to look through the rest of the house on my return; I made straight for the attic and sat before the two unopened caskets on the hard, wooden floor. For a long time I made no move to examine them. I simply sat in that room, my head full of beautiful, nostalgic memories and reflected. I thought of my grandfather. I considered his life, and realised how little I had really known him. How little I had bothered to find out, and I reproached myself for this.
After a time however, my curiosity overcame my regret, and I pulled the silver casket – smaller than the bronze but much larger than the gold - towards me. It opened smoothly at my touch, the hinges well-oiled and supple. Inside lay, as I had somewhat suspected, another large sheaf of paper. The uppermost was printed, in my grandfather’s small, neat letters, on paper as crisp and fresh as if it had been printed that very day. Just as with the bronze box the day before, the paper at the bottom was old; dried and crackling. Unlike the letters however, the paper in this receptacle contained not rejection and banalities but stories. As I have already mentioned, I have been lucky enough to enjoy some small success as a professional writer – although truth be told I had abandoned writing short stories quite a few years before – and fancy myself as knowing at least a little about the medium. There, in that garret that somehow gave the impression of cosiness and spaciousness simultaneously, I sat on the floor and began to read.
The stories were quite simply the most exquisite things I had ever laid eyes upon. Instantly I felt transported from my dusty perch. I wandered through steaming jungles and frozen ice-scapes; I journeyed across teeming oceans and arid deserts. I adventured with pirates and explorers, and spoke with wise old shamans and grizzled veterans of a thousand campaigns. I must have remained on that dusty floor for hours; entranced and enraptured by the genius of the old man’s story-telling. Beyond my consciousness, day turned into night, and it must have been well into the chilly evening before I was finally torn from the worlds he had created by the knife-sharp pain of cramp in my left calf. Leaning forward, I extended my leg cautiously but was brought up abruptly by a harsh, metallic thud. In my haste, I had pushed over the small gold casket – the only one that remained unopened. Outside the small and dusty window pane, twilight had stolen across the sky, suffusing the darkening firmament with oranges, blues, pink and violet.
As the sky transformed outside I felt conflicting emotions. I was impressed with my grandfather’s secretive skill and his stories had left me feeling refreshed and invigorated. I was also enraged however at the blindness of his publishers. How could they have rejected such exhilarating tales that were so beautifully constructed? If I was entirely honest I was also enraged and ashamed with myself. The stories were better than mine; it was pointless to deny it. Yet I had succeeded were he failed. I was an imposter, I reflected bitterly.
In that dust-bedecked room, with the swirl of colour transfiguring the horizon, I sat with the small golden casket – no bigger than a walnut in my hands. I traced the delicate embellishments with my thumb as my thoughts dwelt upon my grandfather. My index finger gently followed the ornate intricacies that flowed and twirled along the underneath of the capsule. I was desperate to discover what lay within, but simultaneously terrified of receiving this final message from him. Whatever lay inside, I knew, there would be nothing further. Slowly, carefully, my hands trembling with anticipation and anxiety, I unlatched the clasp that held it closed. Cupping it in both hands, I gently prised the two halves apart and looked intently at the contents. For a moment, I felt a jolt of disappointment; as I perceived nothing within. Then, a slightly crinkled piece of paper fell from between my hands and fluttered to the floor. With hands trembling I raised it to my eyes. On it was written in beautifully calligraphic letters:
‘It is better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.’
The quote was unattributed. I wondered whether it was his, or whether he had read it somewhere. I read and re-read this aphorism several times and then I made a decision.
I wish I could tell you that I then put the note back into its box, that I returned all the documents to the casket, walked downstairs and locked that house, never to return. I wish I could tell you that I carried on submitting my grandfather’s stories; that I sent them to friends of mine in publishing and that he finally received, posthumously, the recognition that he deserved to have gained in life. Instead however, I picked up every document that I could find in the room. I gathered them up and carried them down through the silent house and out into the back garden. I then formed them into a pile on the lawn, and burned every scrap of them. I burned them until only ashes and cinders remained. All except for the aphorism I had discovered. That I put inside a small, silver keepsake. Which I carry with me wherever I go.
Lest I forget.