Most writers will have experienced the one that got away; that is, the story that appears at some random moment and disappears just as quickly. They swear they will remember it but when the time comes to write the idea down, they find it is gone forever. Thomas Hardy apparently had such inspiration one day while pruning the roses in his garden. He claims it was the best story he would ever write and inspiration came complete with characters and even lines of dialogue. But because a storm was coming, he decided to complete his job in the garden. Once inside his house, he found that the story and its dialogue and characters had disappeared. The idea never came back but he often wondered what the story was. He was sure that it would have been the best novel he had ever written.
Back in the early 90s, the whole idea of something appearing in the head and then disappearing again fascinated me and inspired the following short story. I read it again recently and found it to be a bit "overwritten" but I still love the idea 26 years later. At the time, I was living and working in Manchester and most weekends I would go with friends either to the Peak District or to the Lake District and this is reflected in the story's setting. The walk described in the story is the well-known "Fairfield Horseshoe" from Ambleside and it really is a beauty. I did this walk in all weathers and I usually had a notebook with me so that I could write down my ideas. The story starts below the pic. I called the story "Lilly."
He decided he had suffered enough. To the townsfolk of Ambleside he was a cantankerous old man and they would not feel his absence. Nor would the family, from whom he had long ago been cast adrift. Those who were old and lonely enough to look in the obituaries for comfort, perhaps they would pause at the insertion: May, Peter suddenly on 27 November 1997, Peter John May, novelist, aged seventy at home, Ambleside.
Perhaps to those people, in search of reassurance at some familiar name they had outlived, perhaps to them these words would have some meaning. But they would merely recall a name that had been associated with promise but which had fallen victim to mediocrity. He therefore decided to go. And he would go with dignity and not, as the doctor had promised, scrambling for life in the last throes of a wasting disease.
The empty phial stood beside the whisky bottle. For Peter May, novelist, only thirty minutes of life remained. It was, he mused, the fading life of a faded writer. The fading life of an individual, who had appeared for an instant, joined a community of thought and feelings, and who was about to disappear again. A faded writer, who had recognised too late that his work was out of time. He had always believed that everything he wrote was preparation for that definitive work for which he would be forever revered. Now, it remained a work which had never been written.
The opportunity to write it had arisen forty years earlier and he had been unable to take it. The memory was a shining and haunting fragment of his past that burned in the semi-darkness of his room. The opportunity had started in that very house, when, one afternoon in 57, Peter had felt the need, familiar to him since childhood, to turn out the cupboards and the wardrobes.
As a boy, and too young to understand the impulse, Peter periodically searched the house and searched in vain for something lost or something yet to be found. As Peter May, the novelist, this restless searching continued and the sense of something lost grew stronger and more compelling. He wondered whether it was death that troubled him or whether there was some riddle he could not decipher or whether it was the person who had posed it for whom he looked. The sadness was, that on that day so long ago, he had held the answer. But, for the lack of a pencil, he had let it slip away; once come, once vanished, and now gone forever.
It had been a November afternoon. The restlessness had been so strong that Peter had taken himself off across the fields to Rydal House, up to Nab Scar and over the fells towards Fairfield. He paused on the summit and with a wind tugging at his rucksack, he ate his sandwiches before setting off towards Ambleside. It was that time after noon when the light mellows and the mountains whisper to those who listen. The browns and greens faded, as colours will in the light of dying day, until the furthest hill weighed low and darkly on the horizon. This vision dampened Peter's spirit. He wanted no barriers; he needed yet more, but how much more stretched beyond the vanishing point of observation he could only guess.
At this time of stillness, when the air of invisible things brushed the tips of the long grass, Peter heard a distant cry. From some place beyond the vanishing point a person called, and touched some long-buried memory of times past. The voice seemed familiar yet troubled. Perhaps it was his own voice, an echo of childhood from which he was running away. But no sooner had it come than it was taken by the wind and carried away into approaching night.
Still restless and now fretful, Peter moved still further down the ridge towards the town. To the right, between the massive gnarled humps, a stream ran chill and cold. Foam-speckled and tumbling, it cut down the beck and it seemed to challenge him and say, "I shall arrive before you." And at some unseen place, as if playing a game of hide-and-seek, the stream merged into the still lake.
Sensing a presence behind him, Peter turned and saw a figure, blurred in the gathering twilight, but taking shape as it neared. Peter frowned. He had not seen anyone on the fells that afternoon. Was it from his imagination this apparition came? The figure came relentlessly on until, just short of him, it stopped. It was a young woman and she stared at Peter as if she were annoyed at finding him there.
"I'm in a hurry," she said.
The impatient tone surprised Peter and he stood rooted to the spot as a gentle breeze picked up and blew between them. There was something about her that matched neither his expectation nor his experience. A black beret perched jauntily upon her head and she appeared to look through him as if he was not really there.
"I have an urgent appointment in the village," she said, "and I mustn't be late."
Peter remained silent. This stranger with no past, no future and from no place was unrelated to everything he knew and yet as he stood there he felt, just for one moment, that he understood everything. He seemed to move out of time. It was indifferent to him whether he looked behind or in front of him, for he was who he had been and who he would become. Such a moment was inspiration. He sensed the vitality of those who had once come and who were now gone. He felt the force of the lines he would write. They ran through him, through this girl, and through their origin to the vanishing point and beyond. The story came uncluttered with logic. He saw the plot, the characters and some of the dialogue and he knew it would be the best of him. Shuffling impatiently from side to side, he fingered his coat for a pen and paper, and the girl continued to stare through him. She took a step sideways and walking past she brushed his elbow. On impulse, Peter put out his hand and gently touched her shoulder.
"Just a minute," he said.
His voice sounded strange to him; familiar yet troubled as if from a restless image while the real he stood aside and watched. He heard himself ask:
"Who is it you must see?"
She turned and stood facing him once again in the fading light. A gust of wind carried her words away but Peter was sure he heard her say:
"Peter May."
By the time he realised the absurdity of it, she had hurried away down the hill to merge again into the place from whence she had come.
Peter scrambled down the hillside. A stream tinkled and scurried beside him until it plunged between some rocks and was gone. He heard it rushing and pouring through the earth at his feet; and the story slipped slowly away. Turning, Peter saw he was alone in the twilight. Of the girl, there was neither sight nor sound. From nowhere she had come and to nowhere she had returned.
He shouted in despair. He shouted and cried out for a pencil and paper but there was nobody to hear him. There was just a stirring in the air of something that had come, passed by and gone. The wind freshened in the tree tops and the leaves at his feet looped crazily in the wind, but the only piece that remained of the best story he would ever write was the title, "Lilly."
Forty years on, this fragment of memory tugged so fiercely that Peter raised himself on one elbow. Familiar excitement momentarily gripped him when he discerned the wardrobes and cupboards, almost invisible now in the blackening room. He fell back with a groan. The contents of the phial were beginning to take effect. There was a pleasant tingling sensation in his chest and, with a heaviness weighing on his limbs, he felt himself sinking. Outside, in the dusk, the wind was driving down urgently from the fells and Peter's breathing slowed to an even regularity.
He thought he heard a shutter banging somewhere in the village but dimly recognising its uncompromising urgency he realised it was someone knocking at his door. There was a sharp click, the door was flung open and a figure rushed into the room.
"Peter May?"
The voice was familiar and muted like the cry from the fells. Half opening his eyes, Peter's gaze fell on a beret perched jauntily on the head.
"Mr May, am I too late?"
Like an angel, the girl passed through the room towards him, and as he reached out to her, he simply slipped still further away, sinking into eternal sleep.
"Lilly," he whispered. And he slumped to the floor.
A super tale, and a new one on me. It (slightly) recalls O.Henry's tale, "Appointment in Samara", also the death of the prince in "Il Gattopardo" but is also quite distinct from either.
Posted by: Christopher Goddard | 02/18/2018 at 07:55 AM
Thanks, Chris. I think it is a bit wordy and if I wrote it again I would probably cut quite a lot. But, since it is a product of its time - 1992ish - I decided to leave it as it is.
Posted by: robert john goddard | 02/18/2018 at 08:15 PM