The Crime Writer by Jill Dawson

Author:Jill Dawson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2016-06-02T06:00:00+00:00

There is a commissionaire at the entrance to the BBC building who greets us. Smythson-Balby is beside me, Frances a couple of steps behind, so I think this is probably a safe moment to peek at the snails in my purse. But, damn it – the clasp opens wide as I try to do this surreptitiously and the commissionaire catches sight of what’s in there. Our eyes meet.

A head of lettuce, and six of my favourite snails, along with many of the babies – which look at the moment just like pieces of grit.

The commissionaire takes his cap off and readjusts it on his bald head. Wrinkles his nose at the fishy smell emanating from the opened purse, the pieces of dark slimed lettuce inside the damp brown paper. I close the purse quickly. I’m conscious of my pulse quickening.

‘Well, I suppose you can take a lettuce into the studio,’ he mumbles, in some sort of London accent.

Smythson-Balby gives him – and me – a bemused look; Frances Balby is a little distance from us, preoccupied with lighting a cigarette – trying to hide the fact that it’s her last, not wanting to feel obliged to offer it to either of us – and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t see. What do I care if she sees, at any rate? Only that it will end up in the interview somehow, be turned into something eccentric rather than a perfectly practical solution to taking care of them when away from home. No doubt it will enter the mythology about me. The Famous Grouse, with the snail obsession, that kind of thing.

I remember little about the interview. It feels like a series of ducks, left hooks and parries. At one point Frances says: ‘Is your prose deliberately, wilfully unlovely? There is rather a relentless quality –’ to which I mumble my reply: ‘A novel isn’t a series of brilliant one-liners.’

She punches back at me: ‘What would you say it is, then?’

I don’t have any idea, I want to say. Why are you asking me? If I knew, do you think I wouldn’t quit, find a better way to spend my time? It’s an unrequited love affair. A letter to a lover who sometimes loves you back. It’s a compulsion; it’s something I have to do; it’s not for you, actually, or anyone at all; I can’t quit; I couldn’t tell you who it’s for or why. Leave me alone, can’t you? They’ll never believe you.

‘I think perhaps writing successful fiction has a supernatural quality,’ I venture, ‘making people think – believe – something that may or may not be true.’

‘A dark art? Or one big con-trick, in fact?’ Frances replies.

The research I’ve been doing for the Plotting book suddenly comes to my rescue and I remember a quote from Ford Madox Ford. I clear my throat and murmur: ‘No. I believe it’s nothing less than “a medium of profoundly serious investigation into the human case”.’

This is more of a poke under Frances’s ribs than a proper hit.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.