a work in progress

Penelope Evans

Author’s introduction to Richard Ortega’s thirteenth novel. (Untitled)

Sometimes  a writer - if he is a true writer -  is compelled to write true. True, that is, to his own experience, to the people and events that have overwhelmed him with the force a tsunami. A personal tsunami, laying waste a personal horizon, destroying everything in its path, leaving only devastation. When such a force of nature strikes, everything may be lost, and a man left with nothing except what he is. A man.

            But how much of a man?

He may, if  strong, be left physically standing - as I am standing. But what else of him is there? What of his humanity, his trust? His ability to have faith? His ability to love?

            These of course are the true qualities of a man, and if they are lost, then he must ask: can he, by his own measure, still  call himself a man?

            There is an answer. A writer’s answer, and it can be found in the words of  The Master. For it was Henry James who said: ‘try to be one of those writers on whom nothing is lost.’ And in this, as in so much else, I intend to follow his lead. This book has been written true to that lead. I have written true. Which means that these pages - though a work of fiction - will be the test of whether the qualities that Make the Man are indeed, even now, to be found.

            Is this writer still a man? The reader must be the judge. Is he a man still able to have  faith in his fellow man? A man able to forgive?  Is he, above all, still able - still willing - to love?

Out of the darkness has he, in truth, brought forth light?

Note to self # 1.

Maybe better to attach the above as introduction to second edition. Although, of course,  before then Publicity (hopefully) will have done its job.  Everyone will know the full history behind the book. Terrible traumas etcetera etcetera. The chance meeting, the hounding that came after, the threats, the stalker who never goes away. The woman who never goes away. No need to dwell, not in the introduction. But v. important to make sure there’s an up note. Goodness prevails and all that.

            No, on second thoughts, attach to first edition. Reader’s got to know there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Don’t want anyone to be put off buying the fucking thing.

Note to self # 2.

‘Tsunami’. Like it. Never really used to hear it much. Tidal wave - that’s the expression we all grew up with. Sounds positively old fashioned now. No, Tsunami’s good. Gets it across better, the damage it can do. Complete destruction.

            Tsunami’s good.

            So where was I?

            Damn. Lost the plot.

Chapter One.

Grace. Gracie when young. By the Grace of God. Disgrace (rarely) Good Grace. (Often)

            Grace had always tried to be good and happy, even when she was a little girl. And shut out bad thoughts.

            But the thought hit her now, the way thoughts so often did hit her. That’s to say with the force of an invisible hand thrust against her chest, stopping her, freezing her to the spot. This time it happened when she was halfway down the stairs with her husband’s shirts in her hands, gathered out of the laundry basket. A week of them, all smelling of him. Familiar. Familiar as her own scent.

            Was it something to be proud of? Knowing she could have divided an entire laundry load of their clothes, with her eyes bound and her hands tied behind her back, just by using her nose. Two piles. His and hers. Is this what it had done for her, being married so long to someone? Given her the talents of … what? A sniffer hound?

            Yet she had never scented anyone else on him, not in all those months.

            It had never occurred to her: that she should have, could have, smelt anyone else lingering on her husband’s shirts. It was only now, in retrospect, when it was all over, that she marvelled at how it was she had never lifted the scent of another woman off her husband’s shirts and translated it as meaning to her brain. She had never smelt anything but him. Yet he had worn nothing else next to his skin. He had never been a vest man. And she had never guessed.

            Now, motionless on the stairs, she knew why. It was because he hadn’t been wearing his shirts. Not when it happened. He hadn’t been wearing anything at all. He had been naked. Completely. With her, the other one. If Grace had been determined to seek the scent of another woman, she would have had to have buried her face in her husband’s skin, not his shirts.

            The invisible hand pressed harder against her chest. She had to tell herself to breathe.

And so she did. Grace took a breath, pushed away the hand and carried on downstairs, through the kitchen, into the utility room, to the washing machine. On the way, she stepped past her son putting an empty bottle of milk back in the fridge, and her daughter frowning over the buttons of her mobile phone. Neither of them seemed to notice her and, still heading for the washing machine as if it were some distant goal, she had the feeling she had simply passed right through them like a cloud of particles through solid bodies.

            Grace. Good Grace. How had it come to this?

            She put the shirts into the washing machine, pushed the buttons and left them to drown.

It was over, that was the point. Simon had stayed with her. If she were to bury her nose in his skin now, she would smell nothing but Simon. Her friends had been gentle when she told them it was finished, and not one of them had said what Grace knew they were thinking. How did she know?

            Well, she did know. Simon had taken weeks to make up his mind, mulled over his decision, weighed up the pros and cons. She had watched him - frowning, considering, comparing. He was an accountant and she had imagined his mind turned into a tally sheet, divided into columns of profit and loss. Her good points versus her bad. Life with Lucy versus life with her.

            And when, almost embarrassed, she had suggested that really such a decision could not be made while they still shared a bed, he had retreated to the loft conversion, to the empty but quite comfortable spaces beneath the eaves. There was a bathroom up there, and a kitchen. Even a small sitting room. All of it prepared for another kind of life, for when the children were grown up, but not quite ready to leave home. An in between place.

All the same, he had seemed surprised that she had put him there. As if it had been one of the children that she had edged towards the outside of the family circle, before they were ready to go. It was that very surprise that had been the clue for her. In his - Simon’s - ideal world, everything would have stayed the same. He wouldn’t have had to make any choices. He could have carried on, safe in the centre, venturing every now and then into the outside like a teenager. In an ideal - no, make that a perfect world - he would even have been able to bring Lucy home to meet her. The way he had brought Grace home to meet his mother.

So that’s what I am, Grace had thought to herself. His mother. And deep down inside her, but still there, sixteen, eighteen, twenty  year old Gracie had giggled with shock.

            But that’s where he went to make up his mind, to the loft, ideal for a man not quite ready to leave. Not quite ready to stay.

            One evening, late at night, he came down and called her name from the door. She had put down the book she was reading (tried to ignore the mental image of his mother putting down her sewing) and waited.