LISA TUTTLE
My Death
LISA TUTTLE WAS BORN in Houston, Texas, but has lived in Britain since 1980. She sold her first story in 1971 and won the John W. Campbell Award in 1974 for best new science fiction writer.
Her first book, Windhaven (1981) was a collaboration with George R.R. Martin, since when she has written such novels as Familiar Spirit, Gabriel: A Novel of Reincarnation, Lost Futures, The Pillow Friend and The Mysteries.
Her short fiction has been collected in A Nest of Nightmares, A Spaceship Built of Stone and Other Stories, Memories of the Body: Tales of Desire and Transformation and Ghosts & Other Lovers. The latter volume, plus another collection entitled My Pathology, have been released as e-books.
Turtle’s other works include the Young Adult novels Snake Inside, Panther in Argyll and Love On-Line. She is also the author of the non-fiction guides Encyclopedia of Feminism, Heroines: Women Inspired by Women and Mike Harrison’s Dreamlands, the erotic fantasy Angela’s Rainbow, and she has edited the acclaimed horror anthology by women, Skin of the Soul, and the anthology of erotic ambiguity, Crossing the Border.
“This is the second story I’ve written about the White Goddess,” the author reveals. “The first (‘The Other Mother’) was inspired by Robert Graves’ famous book, whereas this one grew out of my long fascination with Laura Riding, the American poet whom Graves at one time believed to be the living incarnation of the Goddess.
“I read the first biography of Laura Riding – In Extremis by Deborah Baker – when it was published in 1994, and was deeply struck by the description of how Riding’s first sighting of the island of Majorca caused her to exclaim, ‘I’ve seen my death!’. I remember it vividly, because it felt like the seed of a story, possibly connected to another idea I’d had about locating Circe’s magical isle in the Scottish Hebrides.
“Yet when I finally began to write ‘My Death’, I went back to the Baker biography, intending to use that great quote – and couldn’t find it anywhere. Or anything at all like it. Had I imagined it? Did I make the whole thing up?
“I’m still not sure.”
“why must I write?
you would not care for this,
but She draws the veil aside,
unbinds my eyes,
commands,
write, write or die”
—H.D., from Hermetic Definition
“. . . a typical death island where the familiar
Death-goddess sings as she spins.”
—Robert Graves, from The Greek Myths
I
AS I TRAVELLED, I watched the landscape – lochs and hillsides, the trees still winter-bare, etched against a soft, grey sky – and all the time my empty hand moved on my lap, tracing the pattern the branches made, smoothing the lines of the hills.
That drawing could be a way of not thinking and a barrier against feeling I didn’t need a psychotherapist to tell me. Once upon a time I would have whiled away the journey by making up stories but since Allan’s death this escape had failed me.
I had been a writer all my life – professionally, thirty years, but the urge to make up stories went back even further. Whether they were for my own private entertainment, or printed out and hand-bound as presents for family, whether they appeared in fanzines or between hardcovers, one thousand words long or one hundred thousand, sold barely two hundred copies or hovered at the bottom of (one) bestseller list, whether they won glowing reviews or were uniformly ignored, my stories were me, they were what I did. Publishers might fail me, readers lose interest, but that a story itself might let me down was something that had never occurred before.
Strange that I could still take pleasure in sketching, because that was so completely associated with my life with Allan that the reminder ought to have been too painful. He had been a keen amateur artist, a weekend water-colourist, and, following his relaxed example, I’d tried my hand on our first holiday together, and liked the results. It became something we could do together, another shared interest. I had not painted or sketched since childhood, having decided very early in life that I must devote myself to the one thing I was good at in order to succeed. Anything else seemed like a waste of time.
Allan had never seen life in those terms; he came from a different world. He was English, middle-class, ten years older than me. My parents were self-made, first generation Americans who knew and thought very little about what their parents had left behind, whereas his could trace their ancestry back to the Middle Ages, and while they were nothing so vulgar as rich, they had never had to worry about money. Allan had gone to a “progressive” school where the importance of being well-rounded was emphasized, and little attention was given to the practicalities of earning a living. And so he was athletic – he could play cricket and football, swim, shoot and sail – and musical, and artistic, and handy – a good plain cook, he could put up a garden shed or any large item of flat-packed furniture by himself – and prodigiously well-read. But, as he sometimes said with a sigh, his skills were many, useful and entertaining, but not the sort to attract financial reward.
We’d been living modestly but comfortably mainly on his investments, augmented by my erratic writing income, until the collapse of the stock market. Before we’d done more than consider ways we might live even more modestly, Allan had died from a massive heart attack.
I had no debts – even the mortgage was paid off – but my writing income had dried to the merest trickle, and the past year and a half had eaten away at my savings. Something had to change – which was why I was on my way to Edinburgh to meet my agent.
I hadn’t seen Selwyn in several years. At least, not on business – he had come up to Scotland for Allan’s funeral. When he’d sent me an e-mail to say he would be in Edinburgh on business, and was it possible I’d be free for lunch, I’d known it was an opportunity I had to take. I’d written nothing to speak of since Allan’s death, one year and five months ago. I still didn’t know if I would ever want to write again, but I had to make some money, and I wasn’t trained or qualified to do anything else. The prospect of embarking, in my fifties, on a new, low-paid career as a cleaner or carer was too grim to contemplate.
I’d hoped having a deadline would focus my mind, but by the time I arrived at Waverley Station the only thing I felt sure of was that, as stories had failed me, my next book would have to be non-fiction.
I arrived with time to spare and, as it wasn’t raining, and was, for February, remarkably mild, I took a stroll up to the National Gallery. Access to art was one thing I really missed in my remote country home. I had lots of books, but reproductions just weren’t the same as being able to wander around a spacious gallery staring at the original paintings.
It was hard to relax and concentrate on the pictures that day; my mind was jittering around, desperate for an idea. And then all of a sudden, there she was.
There she stood, an imposing female figure in a dark purple robe, crowned with a gold filigreed tiara in her reddish-gold hair, one slim white arm held up commandingly, her pale face stern and angular, not entirely beautiful, but unique, arresting, and as intimately familiar to me as were the fleshy, naked-looking pink and grey swine who scattered and bolted in terror before her. I also knew the pile of stones behind her, and the grove of trees, and, in the middle distance, the sly, crouching figure of her nemesis hiding behind a rock as he watched and waited.
“Circe”, 1928, by W.E. Logan.
It was like coming across an old friend in an unfamiliar place. As a college student, I’d had a poster-print of this same painting hanging on the wall of my dormitory room. Later, it had accompanied me to adorn various apartments in New York, Seattle, New Orleans and Austin, but, despite my affection for it, I’d never bothered to have it framed, and by the time I left for London it was too frayed and torn and stained to move again.
For ten eventful, formative years this picture had been part of my life. I had gazed up at her and Circe had looked down on me through times of h
eartbreak and exultation, in boredom and in ecstasy. I much preferred the powerful enchantress who would turn men into pigs to the dreamier, more passive maidens beloved of my contemporaries. The walls of my friends’ rooms featured reproductions of Pre-Raphaelite beauties: poor, drowned Ophelia, Mariana waiting patiently at her window, Isabella moping over her pot of basil. I preferred Circe’s more angular and determined features, her lively, impatient stare: Cast out that swine! she advised. All men are pigs. You don’t need them. Live alone, like me, and make magic.
I gazed with wonder at the original painting. It was so much more vivid and alive than the rather dull tones of the reproduction. Although I’d visited the National Gallery of Scotland many times before, I could not remember having seen it here before. Now I noticed details in it that I didn’t recall from the reproduction: the distinct shape of oak-leaf, and a scattering of acorns on the ground; a line of alders in the distance – alders, the tree of resurrection and concealment – and above, in a patch of blue sky, hovered a tiny bird, Circe’s namesake, the female falcon.
My fascination with this painting when I was younger was mostly to do with the subject matter: I liked pictures that told a story, and the stories I liked best were from ancient mythology. I had been sadly disappointed by all the other paintings by W.E. Logan which I had managed to track down: they were either landscapes (mostly of the South of France) or dull portraits of middle-class Glaswegians.
“Circe”, which marked a total departure in style and approach, had also been W.E. Logan’s last completed painting. His model was a young art student called Helen Elizabeth Ralston – an American who had gone to Glasgow to study art. Shortly after Logan completed his study of her as the enchantress, she had fallen – or leaped – from the high window of a flat in the west-end of Glasgow. Although badly injured, she survived. Logan had left his wife and children to devote himself to Helen. He paid for her operations and the medical care she needed, and during the long hours he spent sitting at her bedside, he’d made up a story about a little girl who had walked out of a high window and discovered a world of adventure in the clouds high above the city. As he talked, he sketched, creating a sharp-nosed determined little girl menaced and befriended by weird, amorphous cloud-shapes, and then he put the pictures in order, and wrote up the text to create Hermine in Cloud-Land, his first book, and a popular seller in Britain throughout the 1930s.
The real Helen Ralston was not only Logan’s muse and inspiration, but went on to become a successful writer herself. She’d written the cult classic In Troy, that amazing, poetic cry of a book, which throughout my twenties had been practically my bible.
And yet I’d had no idea, when I’d huddled on my bed and lost myself in the mythic story and compelling, almost ritualistic phrases of In Troy, that its author was staring down at me from the wall. I’d only discovered that in the early 1980s, when I was living in London and In Troy was reprinted as one of those green-backed Virago Classics, with a detail from W.E. Logan’s “Circe” on the cover. Angela Carter had written the appreciative introduction to the reprint, and it was there that I had learned of Helen Elizabeth Ralston’s relationship with W.E. (Willy) Logan.
Feeling suddenly much livelier, I left the gallery and went down Princes Street to the big bookshop there. I couldn’t find In Troy or anything else by Helen Ralston in the fiction section. Browsing through the essays and criticism I eventually found a book called A Late Flowering by some American academic which devoted a whole chapter to the books of Helen Ralston. Willy Logan was better represented. Under “L” in the fiction section was a whole row of his novels, the uniform edition from Canongate. The only book I’d read of his was one based on Celtic mythology which had been published, with an amazing George Barr cover, in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line around about 1968. I remembered nothing at all about it now, not even the title.
After a little hesitation I decided to try In Circe’s Snare for its suggestive title, and I also bought Second Chance at Life by Brian Ross, a big fat biography of Logan, recently published. And then I noticed the time, and knew I had to run.
II
Selwyn was waiting for me at the restaurant. He stood up, beaming, and came over to give me a close, warm hug.
“My dear. You’re looking very well.”
I’d been feeling flushed and sweaty, but his appreciative gaze made me feel better. He’d always had the knack of that. Selwyn was an attractive man, even if these days he had to rely on expensive, well-cut clothes to disguise his expanding middle. His hair, no longer long and shaggy, nevertheless was still thick and only slightly sprinkled with grey. When young, he’d worn little round Lennon-type glasses; now, contact lenses made his brown eyes even more liquid, and his eyelashes were as enviably thick and black as I remembered.
“Let’s order quickly, and then we can talk,” he said after I was settled. “I’ve already ordered wine, if white’s all right with you; if not—”
“It’s fine. What do you recommend?”
“Everything is good here; the crab cakes are sensational.”
“That sounds good.” I was relieved not to have to bother with the menu, being a little out of practice with restaurants. “Crab cakes with a green salad.”
Smoothly he summoned the waiter and swiftly sent him away again, and then those brown eyes, gentle yet disconcertingly sharp, were focused on me again. “So. How are you? Really.”
“Fine. I’m fine. I mean – I’m not, not really, but, you know, life goes on. I’m okay.”
“Writing again?”
I took a deep breath and shook my head.
His eyebrows went up. “But – your novel. You were writing a novel.”
He meant a year and a half ago.
“It wasn’t any good.”
“Please. You’re much too close to it. You need another perspective. Send it to me, whatever you’ve got, and I’ll give you my thoughts on it. I’ll be honest, I promise.”
I trusted Selwyn’s opinion more than most, but I’d never liked anyone reading my rough drafts – sometimes I could scarcely bear to read them through myself. This one was permeated by Allan, and the happy, hopeful person who had written it was gone.
“There’s no point,” I said. “I’m not going to finish it. Even if you liked it, even if there’s something good in it – too much has changed. I can’t get back into that frame of mind; I don’t even want to try. I need to get on and write the next book.”
“All right. That sounds good to me. So what might the next book be?”
To my relief, the waiter arrived then with our drinks. When the wine had been poured I raised my glass to his and said, “To the next book!”
“To the next book,” he agreed. We clinked glasses and sipped, and then he waited for me to explain.
Finally I said, “It’s going to be non-fiction.”
My last non-fiction book had been published nearly fifteen years ago, and had been neither a howling success nor a disaster. There had been good reviews, and the first printing had sold out. Unfortunately for me, there was never a second printing, nor the expected paperback sale. The publisher was taken over in mid-process, and my editor was among the many staff members to be “rationalized” and let go. My book got lost in the shuffle, and by the time I’d come up with an idea for another, the fashion had changed, no one was really interested, and my brave new career as an author of popular non-fiction had fizzled out. All that was a very long time ago: I didn’t see why I shouldn’t be allowed to start again.
Selwyn nodded. When he spoke, I could tell that his thoughts had been following the same track as mine. “It was the publisher’s fault that you didn’t do a lot better last time. That was a good book, and it always had the potential to be a steady seller on the backlist. I don’t know why they didn’t stick with it, but it was nothing to do with you – you did a great job with it, and it could have, should have, launched a whole new career for you.” He paused to take a drink of wine and then looked at me inquirin
gly. “What sort of non-fiction?”
“Biography?”
“Perfect. With your understanding of characters, your ability to bring them to life in fiction – yes, you’d do very well, writing a life.”
Even though I knew it was his job to build me up and promote me, I couldn’t help feeling pleased. I responded to his praise like a parched plant to water.
“Really?”
“Absolutely.” He beamed. “There’s always a demand for good biographies, so selling it shouldn’t be tough. I don’t know how much I could get you up-front, that would depend – they can be expensive projects, you know, take a long time to write, and there’s travel, research . . . of course, there are grants, too –” he broke off suddenly and cocked his head at me. “Now, tell me, do you have a particular subject in mind? Because who it is could make a big difference.”
“Helen Ralston.” Until I spoke, I hadn’t really known.
Plenty of well-read people would have responded, quite reasonably, with a blank stare or a puzzled shake of the head. Helen Ralston was hardly a household name, now or ever. Her fame, such as it was, rested entirely on one book. In Troy had been published by a small press in the 1930s and developed a kind of underground reputation, read by few but admired by those discerning readers who made the effort. In the 1960s it was published again – in America for the first time – and there was even a mass-market paperback, which is what I’d read in college. It was revived from obscurity once again by Virago in the 1980s, but, from the results of my bookstore visit before lunch, I was pretty sure it was out of print again.
Selwyn knew all this as well as I did. Not only was he a voracious reader, but before becoming an agent he’d been a book-dealer, twentieth-century first editions his speciality.
“I sold my first edition of In Troy to Carmen Callil,” he said.
I was horrified. “Not to set from?” Reprints like the Virago Classics are photo-offset from other editions, a process that destroys the original book.
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