And yet the more time passes, the fewer details I can recall and the more dream-like my memories become. Except at night, when my dreams seem more real than my memories.
No, not dreams; nightmares. In my nightmares I re-live every minute of it. I know I do; why else would I wake screaming, my bed sheets knotted and soaking? And yet, come the dawn, those detailed recollections escape me, which is why I must write it all down now, even if I never write anything else ever again.
As I sit at my laptop now, recording my tale for posterity, the events of those autumn months seem even more like a story and less like reality, as if taking on some mythic quality. Just like the legend that lured me there in the first place.
Yes, that’s what it was; it must be. It was the story all along. It’s only ever been about the story.
III
The Coffin had been sub-James Herbert stuff. But now that I was a Proper Writer (capital P, capital W), a Published Novelist (capital P, capital N), the real deal, I wanted to evoke something of the old school chillers, the likes of M R James and Dennis Wheatley. Proper unsettling stuff; not the literary equivalent of a schlock-horror torture porn movie that makes you swear in shock or turn away at the stomach-churning, gross-out nature of it all. The kind of thing that means you’re still awake at 2 a.m., unable to shift those unsettling thoughts going round and round inside your head, a story whose impact will still make you shiver a week later.
Some initial success, the giddy rush of being invited to the Cheltenham Literary Festival and finding myself on panels with authors whose work I had admired for years, soon gave way to the reality of writing novel number two.
The first one had effectively taken me ten years to write. The first draft had taken two years alone, chipping away at it in the evenings after work, during weekends and the long school holidays. Of course, there had been whole weeks when I hadn’t added anything to the word count at all. Having put it away in a drawer for six months I took it out and re-read it, discovering everything that was wrong with it, and so set about writing version two.
Over the course of that decade I rewrote the book repeatedly, but all the effort was worth it. The version I finally plucked up the courage to send out to interested parties won me an agent and a three book deal with a still relatively new publisher; their preferred tag-line: Books so bloody they bleed!
But of course, when you actually make it as a writer, when you become a bona fide author, a Published Novelist, nothing prepares you for what happens next. Not really. Oh, you can read all the blogs about it you like, and listen to your agent witter on about new markets, translation rights, and the rest. But the demons you’ll have to face on a daily basis when you’re sitting at your desk, with only your laptop for company, and a year planner on the wall with ‘Deadline’ written on it somewhere in red pen and double-underlined? Nothing prepares you for that.
You thought writing your first novel was hard: learning the ropes; learning the process through practice; the constant re-writing; the constant rejections. The thought you’d already suffered for your art on the emotional rollercoaster ride that took you from the troughs of utter, abject despair – feeling that no-one would ever love your book enough to publish it – to the peaks of elation and back down again. That’s nothing compared to what happens next.
You give up your day job – the Proper Job, your family call it – and quit the Rat Race, only to find yourself on another treadmill: one without the simple fear of going in to work purely to avoid the sack, to motivate you, sitting in your dressing gown all day, losing hours to Facebook and Twitter and half a dozen pointless, soul-sucking forums.
Is it any wonder I suddenly found myself in the dark cave of despair that is Writers’ Block? Only it wasn’t sudden at all; it was a mind-numbing spiral of procrastination, self-doubt and self-loathing.
The trouble was, I knew what I wanted to write, or at least I thought I did, but I just couldn’t do it. It was as if I had forgotten how to write, as if everything I had done before counted for naught, as if I was back on Page One before I even had anything that could jokingly be called a writing “career”.
IV
I don’t know when Jess decided to leave, or even when the rot set in. Had it been me giving up the day job? Had it been the slough of self-loathing and self-pity I had managed to get myself into? Or had it always been the writing?
I’d had the gall to call myself a Writer – there was definitely a capital W there when I told her during our date at the Italian place on Haven Green, just up from Ealing Broadway station – the first time we met. In reality I was a teacher, but I liked to think that Teacher was just a job title. Writer was a state of being; it was what I was, rather than something I did.
Of course at that stage I’d only had a few short stories published in the burgeoning small press scene. My biggest sale up to that point had been a story to Black Static magazine. But the Novel had always been there, lurking like a malignant entity on my hard drive.
Jess said she thought it was cool. She was a voracious reader, so having a boyfriend who was a budding writer seemed to tick all the right boxes for her. But then she, like me, had no real idea at that stage what it meant to be in a relationship with a writer, when there wasn’t the day job to moan about and keep the writing fresh and exciting.
There’s that thing they say about married men who have affairs, isn’t there, how when the man’s marriage breaks down and he marries his mistress? Marry the mistress and you create a vacancy.
Well, writing’s a bit like that. It was for me, at least. When I gave up the day job, the actual business of sitting down to write all day, every day, started to feel like just as much a chore as marking fifteen sets of exercise books a week. It didn’t excite me like it used to. And I suppose I became less exciting as a result.
Jess had encouraged me back in those formative days of our relationship, helped me prepare submissions, and scoured the Web in the search for an agent. But looking back now, my writing had always been like a third person in our relationship. It stopped us going out together at weekends; I would stay in and write, having caught up on that week’s marking, leaving Jess to fend for herself.
She thought that once I gave up teaching and went full-time it would leave more time for us. But as a wiser man that I once said, there are no holidays for writers. For writers there is only the act of writing, or thinking about writing. Well, that was me all over. Once I was working freelance there was always something else to be doing, either updating my blog or travelling the length and breadth of the country to fulfil promotional appearances my agent had set up.
I thought things would change when we got married. But when children didn’t happen for us, we had to fall back on each other. And while I still found her as attractive and vivacious as ever, albeit increasingly sullen, I suppose I wasn’t the person she thought she had once fallen in love with.
She left me that summer, almost a year to the day since I jacked in the teaching job. Packed her things and left for her sister’s. By the time I headed Oop North for a change of scene – to put all that had happened (or not happened) behind me – I’d only spoken to her twice, over the phone, about tedious things like Council Tax and the phone bill.
There’s no denying it; I was really living the dream now. And I had no one to blame for that but myself.
V
The castle wasn’t as isolated as I thought it would be, but on that sunny afternoon in September, when I turned my car into the drive and caught sight of the house for the first time, I felt a glow blossom inside me, as warm as the late September sun gilding the still-green leaves of the trees lining the drive.
The website had cleverly obscured the fact that it was so close to the motorway, but as I approached the house – for although it goes by the name Lambton Castle, much of its present form actually dates from the nineteenth century – I fooled myself into imagining that I really was in the middle of the rural north, miles from the nearest town, thanks to
some clever eighteenth-century landscaping.
A car – a Morgan, if I remember rightly, although I’m no expert on vintage automobiles – was parked on the tarmac in front of the house.
Though it was neither a true castle – the kind every child dreams of conquering, that seems rooted in the very bedrock of our national identity – nor a romantic ruin, upon seeing those faux battlements and curious towers for the first time in situ – rather than in the form of a jpeg on my laptop screen – I felt my heart lift and the drive-induced weariness ebb away.
I’d discovered the website (whereby those willing to pay for the privilege were able to arrange a stay at the castle, for weekend retreats and the like,) between checking for stubbornly tardy emails and posting pointless updates on Facebook, whilst glibly carrying out some unfocused research online into the Lambton legend.
With Jess gone and the flat feeling too full of the ghosts of happier times, on a whim I had picked up the phone and, credit card in hand, booked my stay there and then.
Playing up the published-author-looking-for-inspiration angle helped, no doubt, the woman on the end of the phone getting very animated when I told her that my latest book (which also happened to be my first, of course) had been optioned by a film production company. I omitted to inform her that the production company in question was more at home making corporate videos for air conditioning manufacturers, but it had the desired effect, getting me a reduced rate and an open-ended booking. Apparently the last of the wedding receptions they were hosting that season would be done by the time I arrived, and they didn’t have anything else on the books until the end of October.
As I pulled into a visitor parking bay, the fading afternoon sunshine bestowed a honeyed cast to the grand façade of the house. Getting out, I stretched and inhaled deeply, feeling a delightful fizzing tingle pass through my entire body, the earthy scents of autumn filling my nostrils with a heady aroma. I turned about, taking in the thick expanse of woodland that smothered much of the estate, and the roller-flat, carefully-manicured lawns.
The River Wear lay at the bottom of a slope of more meticulously-tended grass, shaded by overhanging trees on the bank opposite.
I was surprised by how close the river was to the castle, but I suppose I shouldn’t have been, considering how closely castle and river were connected in the legend of the Lambton Worm. With the light of the sinking sun barely scraping the tops of the trees at the western periphery of the estate, the surface of the river was like an obsidian mirror.
But gazing closer, watching ripples form where fish rose to snatch resting insects from its surface, I saw the mirror distort as the current carried the waters of the Wear ever onward through the changing landscape.
In earlier days the current must have been more ferocious – perhaps when it was in spate – to conjure the final climactic scenes of the Lambton legend from the imagination.
“Quite a view, isn’t it?”
I turned to see a tall man wearing faded red cords and a baggy blue V-neck sweater – the collar of a checked shirt and the Windsor knot of a tie visible beneath – approach from the direction of the house. I’d not heard the soft soles of his leather shoes on the tarmac, so absorbed had I been with the view.
“Yes, it is,” I said.
I guessed he was a little older than me, by ten years at most. His greying hair was caught by the breeze, exposing what was quite clearly the beginning of a comb-over. He took a hand from a trouser pocket and thrust it in my direction as he strode towards me.
“Tristam,” he said as we shook hands, “Tristam Lambton.”
I knew who he was. His beaming smile had greeted me when I visited the Lambton Castle website. He had looked a lot smarter then, in Harris Tweed and brogues, with a gun dog of some kind lying at his feet. The overall impression he gave now was one of shabby aristocracy, which probably summed up the situation for many other gentrified landowners in the early years of the twenty-first century.
“Nathan,” I replied. “Nathan Creed. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lord Lambton.”
“Oh, Tristam, please,” he said, looking almost embarrassed. “How was your journey?”
“Not too bad, thank you.”
“London, wasn’t it? You’re that horror writer chap, am I right?”
“So my agent tells me,” I said with feigned laughter.
“So you’re up here, what… researching your next novel? Looking for inspiration?”
“Both, actually.”
“The legend. Am I right?”
“That’s right.”
“Good. Very good. Well, you know Bram Stoker had a crack at the legend?”
“I do indeed.”
“And then Ken Russell had a crack at that. Features a young Hugh Grant, you know?”
“Yes, I’ve seen it.”
“What did you think?”
I hesitated, not sure what to say. I had my own opinion of the movie, but I didn’t want to offend my host at our first meeting.
Before I could answer, Lord Lambton himself chipped in. “Yes, I think that’s most people’s response to it. Anyway” – he turned back to the house – “I’m sure you’ll be wanting to see where you’ll be staying.”
Lord Lambton waited while I collected my suitcase from the boot of my car and then led the way inside the house, through a grand porticoed entrance. As I crossed the threshold after him he added, as if it was no more than an afterthought, “Welcome to Lambton Castle.”
VI
I like to think that if I had known then what I know now, I would have turned tail and run out of that house – with my suitcase in hand, or without – jumped back in the car and headed home to London without a second’s thought. But the truth is we are as much a product of our experiences as we are our memories, and I would not be the man I am now if it were not for what I experienced during my stay at Lambton Castle in the autumn of 2012.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I remain undecided; hindsight is a wonderful thing but ultimately worthless. So it was that in a state of blissful ignorance I followed Lord Lambton into the house, up a grand staircase, and along the plush carpeted corridors to the guest room where I would be staying for the duration of my visit.
“Dinner is at eight,” my host said, hovering at the door, “breakfast is between seven and nine, and other than that, feel free to explore the grounds and the house to your heart’s content. And seeing as you’re going to be our writer in residence, tomorrow I’ll show you our rather fine library.”
“That would be wonderful.” I was overwhelmed for a moment as I imagined the treasures such a repository of knowledge might hide. “Thank you.”
“Very well, that’s decided. Tonight we dine and tomorrow I’ll show you the library,” Lambton responded, a definite twinkle in his eye. “Now I’m sure you’ll want to freshen up after your drive, so I’ll leave you in peace. And I’ll see you around seven, seven-thirty, for drinks downstairs.”
With that my host turned on his heel and left me to the sudden silence of my room to unpack and make myself at home.
VII
Dinner was just the two of us. I hadn’t been expecting such a formal reception and could have done without it, to be honest, but once again, in that so British way, I played along. After all, I didn’t want to offend.
I put on the smart shirt and jacket I usually reserved for book launches and other public functions, my best jeans, swapped my trainers for shoes, and just after seven, made my way downstairs to the entrance hall of the castle – a space bedecked with portraits of former Lords of Lambton – already feeling the withdrawal symptoms that came from not having checked Facebook since earlier that morning, and wishing I could have just enjoyed a bowl of soup and a crusty roll in my room, in front of my laptop.
As things turned out it was a most enlightening experience; my host was a master conversationalist and when talk turned to the Legend of the Worm, Tristam Lambton had me spellbound, trapped like a butterfly pinned to a cork
.
“I take it you know the legend yourself?” my host asked as we tucked into pan-fried venison, roasted vegetables and rosti potatoes.
“Intimately. My family are actually from this area.”
“So that’s another thing the two of us have in common,” Lord Lambton declared, before taking a hefty swig of merlot from his wineglass.
“Another thing?” I was unsure as to what he could be referring.
“The view,” he replied, taking me back to our meeting only a few hours before. “We both love the view.”
“I’ll drink to that,” I laughed, raising my glass.
We both drank.
Lowering his glass again, my host said, “That’s what brings people back to this spot, again and again; the view or the legend. One or the other.”
“Or perhaps both,” I suggested.
“Or, indeed, perhaps both. Both certainly invoke a very strong sense of place. Is that why you came back here?”
“Oh no, you misunderstand me, I’ve not come back here,” I explained. “This is the first time I’ve ever visited County Durham – the old country, as it were.”
“That’s such a shame. Then you don’t know what you’ve been missing. Well, thank goodness you’re making up for lost time now,” he said, a twinkle in his eye again.
VIII
What with the wine – and later the whiskey – the long drive north and the effort of making polite conversation over dinner, I struggled to keep my eyes open. When the grandfather clock at the bottom of the main staircase chimed eleven, I made my excuses to my host. Half-drunk and half-asleep, I stumbled from the billiard room to which we had retired after dinner, and staggered up the stairs to bed, one hand on the banister to aid my ascent.
Dreaming In Darkness Page 24