We’ll see. Reading back on that, I’m sounding like a giddy teenager. I don’t care! The short of it is that there’s hope, now, avenues opening in all directions, where before it seemed there was nothing. I look back on my opening pages now, and think: I began with the utter devastation of a toxic nuclear landscape. How much more obvious can you get? How damaged I was; how scorched and ruined. Yet I didn’t for a second see it at the time. If it was fiction, I doubt I could get away with it. I could change it now, could take it out. I’m about to give my pages to Jake for him to read: he’s been plaguing me ever since we met to let him see what I’ve been working on, and now that we’ll be living together, I’ll have to let him in. I can’t say I’m not nervous – I’m terrified, in fact – but I’m taking consolation from the fact that he’s such a slow reader, it’ll be at least a year before he gets to these pages, and if things haven’t worked out then, I can quietly remove them from the sheaf before he ever realises he was almost part of my story.
But something in me, some small, fizzy, hopeful part, doubts that’ll be necessary.
Who knows? Who, two years ago, at the start of this, would ever have dreamed of any of it?
There’s something I need to do first, though, before I hand over these pages. I have this idea of my mother, on a spring morning in 1972, in an attic room in the house she rents, getting ready to meet her lover. I’ve been thinking of it in unguarded moments, her, there, poised on the edge of everything; young and happy and hopeful. Hopeful that it will all work out somehow, because she’s young and it’s a clear blue day and she’s in love. That should be part of this story, too.
There’s a phrase she used to use, when Alfie or I wanted something we couldn’t have. Beggars can’t be choosers, she’d say. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. It’s an old Yorkshire saying, I think: something her mother used to say to her. It’s coming to mind, now, as I write these last words. As if all my wishes have come true, in ways I could never have expected, let alone dared hope for. Glossy black stallions, their muscles rippling beneath their skin, their manes and tails astream. And riding on each, a tattered-cloaked beggar, wild-eyed and barefoot and exuberant, taking all the fences that once fenced them in with an exhilarating, breakneck, devil-may-care speed.
L.M., London,
February 2013
Appendix: transcripts
INTERVIEW NO. 1
Date: 2.2.10
Time: 4.25 p.m.
Place: Isabel Hospice, Welwyn Garden City
Subject: Jane Moorhouse
Q. OK, so just to recap, I’m turning it on now. OK. It’s . . . twenty-five past four on the afternoon of Tuesday 2nd February. Um . . . OK. We were talking about – do you remember? – on Sunday afternoon. We were talking about – Do you remember the cat he bought us that time?
[Two-second pause]
Q. The white kitten?
J. What is this?
Q. We talked about this. On Sunday, remember? We agreed we were going to do this.
J. I don’t know what you’re bothering me for.
Q. We talked about this.
J. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Stop mitherin’ me. Why are you trying to . . .
[Three-second pause]
J. You’re trying to trap me, aren’t you? Trap me with my own words.
Q. Calm down, Mum, I didn’t mean to—
J. She’s trying to trap me. My own daughter. Well you’re not going to catch me! I’ll tell you that much, Madam, I’ll tell you that much for nowt.
[Six-second pause]
Q. I just wanted to ask you about the white kitten.
[Ten-second pause]
J. You can wait of me all you like.
[Twenty-second pause]
Q. Mum? Are you still awake?
[Recording ends.]
INTERVIEW NO. 2
Date: 5.2.10
Time: 8 p.m.
Place: Isabel Hospice, Welwyn Garden City
Subject: Jane Moorhouse
Q. That’s it on now, so I’ll just leave it there and . . . Hang on . . . Yeah no, it’s on, so . . . Just . . . Leave it there and, while we chat, OK? Oh, wait a minute – it’s eight o’clock p.m., well, just after, on Friday 5th February. So . . .
J. [Incoherent]
Q. What’s that, Mum?
J. [Incoherent; coughing]
Q. Do you want some water? Hang on – here you go. Do you want me to . . .
[Sounds of rustling; pillows being arranged]
Q. Is that enough, there, or do you want – do you want me to – Are you OK, now?
J. Stop mithering me, love, I’m fine.
Q. OK. OK.
[Three-second pause]
Q. So I thought we’d – I mean – I just thought it would be nice to—
J. Why are you recording it?
Q. Why am I recording it? We talked about this, Mum – I just – didn’t we? – thought that, well that – you know, if it was recorded, or, or written down or whatever, because – don’t you? – you forget. And there’s so much that—
J. [Incoherent]
Q. What’s that, Mum?
J. What do you want to know?
Q. What do I want to – well – I guess – Well, what I guess is – what I suppose – I suppose I was just thinking about when you and Dad met, you know, and . . .
[Ten-second pause]
Q. Well, I mean . . .
[Three-second pause]
Q. I mean if you don’t—
J. Thursday 14th September 1971.
Q. Pardon, Mum? What’s that?
J. The day I met him. Thursday 14th September 1971.
Q. Oh right. Really? I mean – you remember the date?
[Two-second pause]
J. Of course I do, love.
Q. OK, right, but . . .
[Six-second pause]
J. I’m tired, Lara.
Q. I know, Mum, of course you are, of course, but – Thursday 14th September 1971?
J. That’s the day. [Coughing]
Q. You’re OK, Mum, you’re OK – here – let me . . .
[The pouring of water, the rustling of pillow and bedclothes]
Q. There you go. Are you OK? You’re OK now.
[Two-second pause]
Q. So if you could just – I mean just if there was anything . . .
[Six-second pause]
Q. OK, how about this. How about – what about this, Mum? – how about I just talk, sort of remember one of my memories, and you – well, you sort of, I don’t know, if there’s anything you want to say, to add or whatever . . .
[Two-second pause]
Q. OK, so does that sound . . .
J. I’m tired, Lara.
Q. I know you are . . . I won’t – tell you what, just five more minutes, OK? Just five minutes – I’ll time it, here, look, I’ll time it here and . . . Right, so, the other day, OK, when I came to see you on Tuesday afternoon, we were talking about the cat. The white kitten, remember? Do you remember it was one of Dad’s Thursday presents? I think I would have been seven or something, six or seven – or actually maybe it was even earlier? Five would you say? No I couldn’t have been five. Six, say. And Alfie, what does that make Alfie, still just a toddler? – and Dad brought home the kitten, in this sort of box, like a shoebox or something, but the cardboard was sort of damp and you made a nest for it out of a cereal box, and we put a jumper in, do you remember? And it was white, with these little tiny eyes and a pink little mouth, and it was the best present ever? What happened to it, because we weren’t allowed pets, were we? It said – something in the lease or something? But he’d just found it in a pile of bin bags on the street, and he’d brought it home?
[Six-second pause]
Q. Do you – I mean you remember that?
J. [Incoherent]
Q. Pardon? I didn’t—
J. I said he sat up all the night long feeding it drops of milk from a, a . . . [Wheezing]
Q. Take it easy.
>
J. A, a, a – a thing. A what-do-you-call-it, a . . .
Q. Syringe?
J. No no no, a . . .
Q. A . . .
J. Pipette. He sat up all night long . . .
Q. Did he? Dad? Are you sure, Mum?
J. [Coughing]
Q. Sorry. I said five minutes, didn’t I? I just . . .
[Ten-second pause]
Q. Well – OK, Mum, here’s a thing, OK, here’s a plan, an idea. I’m going to have to leave you now but if anything occurs to you you can record it, it’s easy to do you just press this here, and the light comes on like it is now, and to finish you just – like this . . .
[Recording ends.]
Author’s note
In creating the (fictional) documentary on Chernobyl that Lara watches at the start of the narrative I drew heavily on issue 172 of The Paris Review, published Winter 2004, which contains Svetlana Alexievich’s lucid, precise and devastating compilation of survivors’ accounts. I read many articles, accounts and eyewitness testimonies of the disaster as I was researching and creating my ‘documentary’, but it was Alexievich’s interviews that I kept coming back to; in particular the story of Lyudmilla Ignatenko, wife of the deceased fireman Vasily Ignatenko, on whom I based my character of Nastasya. If it had been possible, I would have credited Alexievich’s work within the narrative; however, the story demanded that Lara watch a documentary, not read an issue of a literary periodical – and so I would like to take this opportunity to credit it here.
Acknowledgements
The writing of this book was made easier than it might have been by the support of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. I would like to thank all at ACNI, and in particular Damian Smyth, for their wonderful generosity.
My most grateful thanks are also due to the estates of Sylvia Plath and, most of all, Louis MacNeice, who granted me permission to use words and images that seemed woven so deeply into the fabric of my story I couldn’t have reimagined them.
I am extremely fortunate to have worked from an early stage of this book with Angus Cargill, whose thoughts and insights I value most highly. Angus, thank you.
Thank you to Peter Straus, who remains a fearless advocate.
Thank you to Anne Owen and to Merlin Cox, to Becky Pearson and to David Sanger, and to everyone else at Faber who helped with the editing, production and promotion of this book.
Thank you to Paul for the surname, and to Ali for the legal advice, and to Robert for 1970s London. Thank you to Kim for the medical facts and the world of agency carers, and thank you to Donald for the story of a lover in New York. Thank you to Clive for the conversations about poetry and art. Thank you to each and all of my students of the past few years, from whom I’ve learned so much.
Thank you to Leo and thank you to Rowan, for reading, and rereading, my earliest drafts.
Thank you, Tom, for learning when I needed a safety net and when I just needed to be gone.
And thank you, finally, to Mum and to Dad, to whom this book is dedicated, for more than I can begin to articulate.
About the author
Born in Belfast in 1981, Lucy Caldwell is the author of two previous novels, Where They Were Missed (2006) and The Meeting Point (2011), which featured on BBC Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime and was awarded the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her stage plays and radio dramas have won various awards, and in 2011 she was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for her work to date.
By the same author
fiction
Where They Were Missed
The Meeting Point
drama
Leaves
Notes to Future Self
First published in 2013
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2013
All rights reserved
© Lucy Caldwell, 2013
The right of Lucy Caldwell to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
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ISBN 978–0–571–27057–6
All the Beggars Riding Page 20