I Am Sovereign

by Nicola Barker

  Cheese in vellum?

  Ridiculous!

  Charles strongly suspects that Avigail is both a fat-head and a perfectionist. He can see – in Avigail – what an insidious and abhorrent trait perfectionism is. Not only insidious and abhorrent but unattractive. Perfectionism is signally unattractive.

  If Charles didn’t dislike/fear Avigail so much he would actually pity her.

  But pity is exhausting and he needs to partner himself right now. He needs to be practising self-compassion.

  I mean why was she hiding behind a wall earlier?

  (Avigail. The wall. Earlier.)

  Is it appropriate for an estate agent to leave a property mid-viewing and then hide behind a wall on an adjacent street?

  Charles despairs for Avigail.

  What am I feeling? Charles asks himself.

  Pity (for Avigail. He can’t help it. Poor thing. He pities her).

  Guilty (for saying he likes cheese when he doesn’t like cheese. Although he doesn’t dislike cheese. He is indifferent to cheese. Surely this is people-pleasing by any other name? Surely this is fawning? Am I flight, freeze, fawn after all? Charles wonders).

  Bemused (cheese in pocket feels awkward and slightly cold against thigh).

  Worried (strange noises coming from direction of living room/work room).

  ‘So I think we’ve probably got the sum of the kitchen by now,’ Avigail says, satisfied that she has offered all the information she currently possesses on the packaging of cheese (although she has plenty more to say on the storage of cheese, in general). ‘Shall we head through to the living room? Uh … yes …? Everyone?’

  Nobody reacts.

  The ‘everyone’ is mainly directed towards Wang Shu. But Wang Shu has no intention of interrupting her important phone call (in Chinese) so turns her back on Avigail and talks MORE LOUDLY THAN EVER into her phone. Wang Shu is now facing the wall which Avigail is pretty sure (in ALL cultures) means ‘screw you’.

  There is a brief pause as Avigail ponders how best to negotiate this situation. During this hiatus there is the sound of something being violently shoved or knocked over in an adjacent room.

  That’s weird!

  What mean could this the hell?

  Charles has been busily trying to ‘feel the feels’ (as Grannon so delightfully and seductively puts it). He has been distracted.

  68.9 per cent distracted.

  Emotions are very time/energy/thought-consuming things.

  But …

  Huh?!

  He snaps to attention.

  Ooh. What story is Charles living now about this situation?

  Bailiff? Feline madness? Earthquake?

  Well, whatever the story Charles is living now about this situation –

  Poltergeist?

  – it is 99.9 per cent unlikely that his story (creative as he undoubtedly is, inventive as he undoubtedly is) involves a fiercely intelligent, immaculately attired, twenty-three-year-old Ethiopian professional carer called Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo riffling furiously though his teddy bear collection.

  Because that’s the story we are living now about this situation.

  Not Charles.

  Because that’s the story.

  But hey.

  *emoji of shrugging person*

  Charles quickly jinks past Ying Yue (who – traumatised by her mother’s rudeness – is displacing her anxiety into holding her breath and inspecting a cracked kitchen floor tile) and charges out of the room towards the kerfuffle.

  Avigail turns to follow Charles.

  There are now approximately 4.12 minutes remaining of this house viewing.

  Morpheus (meanwhile) has sneaked his way into the spare bedroom (someone has left the door open) and is taking an illicit dump in the oversized plant pot of a large, slightly yellowing Calathea Whitestar. He is thinking about cheese, even now. Even as he strains. But then Morpheus is always thinking about cheese, near enough.

  Morpheus is focused.

  Morpheus is calm.

  Morpheus is goal-driven.

  Morpheus is ‘getting shit done’.

  Go, Morpheus.

  We apologise, in advance, for the brief Interruption …

  … but it is necessary at this moment in the novella (henceforth referred to as I Am Sovereign) to warn the reader that Nicola Barker (henceforth referred to as The Author) has been granted absolutely no access to the thoughts and feelings of the character Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo (henceforth referred to as The Subject). At his inception, The Subject seemed not only a willing, but an actively enthusiastic participant in the project, yet after several weeks of engagement became increasingly cynical and uncooperative, to the point of threatening to withdraw from the enterprise altogether if The Author deigned to encroach, unduly, upon his ‘interior life’.

  For this reason, where possible, The Author has attempted (with The Subject’s permission) to side-step his wanton opacity by ‘calmly theorising’ on The Subject’s possible feelings/thoughts/motivations and then transcribing these ideas into the text using an entirely different font (the standard font is Baskerville. The Subject has requested AMERICAN TYPEWRITER as an alternative for the chapters in which he is to be heavily featured. AMERICAN TYPEWRITER was agreed upon after lengthy consultations with The Subject. The Author should make it plain that AMERICAN TYPEWRITER is a font that does not permit the use of italicisation, something that she worries – in the light of her ebullient ‘style’ – may ultimately be inhibiting to the feel and flow of I Am Sovereign. If this is indeed the case, The Author apologises – again – unreservedly).

  It would be difficult – nay foolish – for The Author to speculate at this juncture on the whys and the wherefores of The Subject’s taciturnity. The Author is both saddened and frustrated by The Subject’s seeming unwillingness to place his trust/confidence in her (The Author’s) natural sense of balance and fair play in relation to this/her text(s). The Author has informed The Subject – via telepathy and WhatsApp – that she is merely trying to tell the simple – almost trite – story of a twenty-odd-minute house viewing in Llandudno during which The Subject makes a brief, relatively inconsequential appearance, but The Subject – while accepting that he was conceived of as ‘present’ during said viewing – is determined to remain abstruse, impenetrable and enigmatic. The Subject also disagrees with the idea that his appearance is merely ‘inconsequential’, but rather describes his role as ‘climactic’, even ‘seminal’ (The Author is unconvinced that The Subject understands the real meaning of the word ‘seminal’).

  The Author wishes The Reader to understand that she thought – long and hard – about cutting The Subject from I Am Sovereign altogether, but ultimately felt that to do so would involve a profound compromise of her febrile and unconstrained imagination (The Subject is unconvinced that The Author understands the real meaning of the word ‘febrile’).

  The Author sincerely hopes that The Reader will extend a measure of compassion and understanding towards herself/the text during the following three chapters and do their best to work with The Author in imagining the extraordinary richness and diversity of The Subject’s potential role – as it was originally conceived – in I Am Sovereign.

  (The Subject also sincerely hopes that The Reader will extend a measure of compassion and understanding towards himself/his right to self-determination during the following three chapters and do their best to work with him in imagining the extraordinary richness and diversity of his actual role – as opposed to the role he is to be patronisingly ‘gifted’ by The Author – in I Am Sovereign.)

  The Author wishes to make it clear (and she feels that this actually ‘goes without saying’ – although she is saying it) that it has been necessary to make certain – very subtle – adjustments to I Am Sovereign in order to try and counterbalance the problems engendered by The Subject’s unexpected reticence. Novels are finely honed and delicate organisms. The character of Wang Shu (for example) has been greatly reduced and simplified as a
consequence of these necessary adjustments. In the original version Wang Shu spent only a fraction of her time on the phone talking in Chinese. Several pages in which Wang Shu spoke – most touchingly and evocatively – about her skill in playing the ‘erhu’, a traditional two (‘er’ in Chinese) stringed instrument with its horsetail and bamboo bow and box-like body featuring – among other exotica: python skin – were summarily eradicated. These included the moving story of Wang Shu’s unsuccessful (nay, borderline tragic), audition for the Guangzhou Symphony Youth Orchestra as a teenager, her shows of extraordinary bravery and persistence in bouncing back from this terrible disappointment, and her eventual – joyous/life-affirming – acceptance into the National Youth Orchestra of China.

  In some senses these scenes represented an exquisite (and all the more so for being both utterly unexpected and immensely well-judged) ‘opening up’ of Wang Shu, and The Author sincerely considered them to be among some of the finest work she has ever produced.

  (The Subject would not agree with this particular ‘value-judgement’.)

  The character of Morpheus was added to I Am Sovereign in the final draft. In the earlier version a kitten called Sindy featured, but this kitten was a tortoiseshell longhair and The Subject became irritated by the way her fur kept marking his white jeans and compromising his ‘look’ (even though Charles kindly supplied him with a selection of lint rollers throughout the writing of I Am Sovereign’s first draft).

  (The Subject would like it to be known that The Author insisted on his wearing white jeans when in fact he had preferred to wear grey, moleskin jodhpurs.)

  Finally, it should be noted that in the original version of I Am Sovereign the character of Avigail at no point vacates the property on Ty Isa Road. Due to her high levels of professionalism, the character, Avigail, would never willingly leave clients in the lurch while showing a vendor’s home. To do so would run counter to her very nature.

  (The Subject finds it ‘frankly laughable’ that Avigail’s professionalism should be mentioned in this context. He has no idea what relevance Avigail’s professionalism – or want of professionalism – has to do with the issue at hand.)

  In some senses The Author considers it ‘little short of a tragedy’ that The Subject’s decisions have impacted so heavily on I Am Sovereign as a whole, but strenuously maintains that she respects his choices and – ultimately – bears The Subject no lasting ill will.

  (The Subject calls this final statement by The Author ‘sentimental, sententious poppycock’.)

  7.

  IF YOU BELIEVE IN TELEKINESIS, PLEASE RAISE MY HAND

  While Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo is extremely intelligent, he has no way of knowing that Charles is running scared of the bailiffs. Lucky for Gyasi, though, Charles announces this fact as soon as he discovers Gyasi (up to his knees in kapok and rifling through large piles of teddy-related detritus) in his sewing room.

  Charles all but bellows: ‘This is forced entry! Which creditor are you here for? What have you taken control of? I demand to see documentation!’

  ‘The door was open, my friend,’ Gyasi responds coolly, with a shrug.

  The sewing room is very small – it’s really just a large cupboard which an optimist trying to sell Charles’s house might call ‘an office’. Charles is a tall man but he is extremely good at compressing himself into small spaces when needs must. And Charles is very sensitive to the idea of work/life balance and therefore refuses, on principle, to allow his work to take up too much space (either literally or metaphorically).

  Charles has no intention of becoming a workaholic.

  He’s way too complacent and savvy for that.

  Bear making is ‘just a job’. It’s not ‘a calling’. It’s not ‘a drive’. It’s not ‘a passion’.

  Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo is magnificently slender. He is exactly six feet tall.

  (The Subject is six feet one inch tall.)

  He dresses in an elegantly feminine manner.

  (The Subject finds this analysis ‘patronising in the extreme’.)

  Not as a woman, but as a fine-boned man who enjoys wearing feminine-style clothes (tight, white jeans, pretty, pastel-coloured shirts, a bright yellow mackintosh, cinched at the waist with a little belt).

  (The Subject finds the above description ‘odd – disquieting, even borderline disturbing’.)

  He is a pretty boy.

  (The Subject says, ‘What?! Does she seriously expect to get away with this?!)

  He has knock-off designer sunglasses pushed up on his head.

  (The Subject’s Tom Ford ‘Dimitry’ TF334 [£181.33] sunglasses were purchased at the Cardiff branch of John Lewis – 2-/0-/2018 – with a gift card on the occasion of his birthday. He has all the relevant documentation to prove it.

  The date has been partially obscured to avoid identity theft.

  The Subject wishes it to be known that he laughed – out loud – at the rich irony of the above statement.)

  He is sporting a pair of lemon-coloured loafers. His eyebrows are nothing short of sublime.

  (The Subject insists that he has never groomed or plucked his eyebrows – or managed them in any way – and that the above sentence represents a personal slur ‘cleverly couched in the language of a compliment’.)

  No. No. This is ridiculous. It simply isn’t workable.

  Not only am I incredibly tense re the (possible, future) want of italics and the potential horror of AMERICAN TYPEWRITER undermining the calm fluidity of the text, but Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo’s perpetual interruptions (in smug legalese) and his hectoring, self-righteous tone are completely intolerable. Everything is contested. Everything is contrary.

  And I need full access. I demand it! Why this sudden reticence on Gyasi’s part? What does it mean? Why can’t he just pull his head in and comply – roll up his sleeves and muck in – like everybody else? Wang Shu is grumpy – lumpen – self-determined – hard-boiled – borderline obnoxious – but even she has been a dream to work with by comparison (yes, always on the phone to her Chinese agent complaining about the number of words she and Ying Yue have in the text as a whole, but generally very open – very good-natured).

  It’s the pervasive atmosphere of ill will seeping into every line that I’m really struggling with. And I find myself over-compensating – over-thinking – being excessively complimentary and sycophantic – granting Gyasi favours that none of the other characters get (he has lovely eyebrows, sure, but do I really need to make ‘a thing’ out of them? And this ludicrous middle name ‘Chance’ which he insists upon because it helps to identify his page on Instagram). I’m nervous around him! I’m tentative, which (I firmly believe) is severely deleterious to the free-spirited atmosphere that my unconscious mind/muse/blah demands as a prerequisite to true, unencumbered creativity.

  Enough is enough.

  I am henceforth kicking Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo out of the novella (as I type this I notice – with a slight smirk – how spellcheck repeatedly changes Gyasi’s surname from Ebo to Ego. That can’t be a coincidence, can it?).

  Although … hmm … Although … might it be good for me (for my wayward spirit) to try and be a little bit more considered – a little bit more careful – in general? Doesn’t Richard Grannon often say that the urge to ‘naive innocence’ is a neurotic one? Is my urge to create uninhibitedly a neurotic one, therefore?

  Shouldn’t a person’s Inner Child (cf. I’m OK – You’re OK) be gently curbed by their Inner Adult on the odd occasion?

  When I consider how obliging the other characters have been … I mean Charles has been incredibly helpful. He didn’t turn a hair when I exaggerated his ‘collections’ into wholesale hoarding. He accepted that it worked as a kind of extended metaphor in the text. And he hates the name Charles but accepts that it’s suitably bland and uncontentious with a ‘royal’/‘sovereign’ undertow.

  I am Sovereign.

  I am Sovereign!

  I am Sovereign.

  I am Queen of my own
serenity.

  Yes.

  peaceful entry

  (Sorry – this is just a note I left on the page to remind myself of something else.)

  Abigail (who is now Jewish, and called Avigail, although Charles keeps forgetting this and calling her Abigail, which has my poor copy-editor, Morag, literally pulling her hair out) is tremendously obliging. And this runs counter to her character, which is fractious, at best.

  Ying Yue? Who can tell with Ying Yue? Who knows what Ying Yue will do next? Although there was an interesting sub-plot with her brother – Fei Hung – which she suddenly went cold on and I suspect this was Gyasi’s malign influence. I’m not certain what it entailed, but I think it involved Fei Hung getting a graduate student pregnant during his time studying Business Law at the University of Bangor.

  Huh.

  ‘Golden Child’.

  And Wang Shu is still none the wiser.