by Laura Briggs
"Juli, please," said Matt, in the concerned tone he uses when he's afraid I'm about to do something that might become a little too impulsive or dangerous.
"What? I'm wearing sensible shoes," I said. "I'll be fine. And I know you'll be back quick as you can." I ignored Matt's look as I hurried away beneath the grey sky, in the direction of the shacks.
I'm not psychic, clearly, because the drizzle became a downpour before I reached the slick planks of the wharf. Even the concrete was treacherous as the downpour became a steady drum against the ground and my slicker, soaking the legs of my denim jeans. I could see a boat off shore, a vessel with a motor fighting its way against the choppy waters in search of Rowena's overturned one, no doubt.
Wallace Darnley's shack was once a fisherman's shed, converted in the manner of his old fishing vessel into a day cruise operation for tourists wanting to see the coast. His boat was already docked, a light burning in the window of his drab little office when I pushed open the door, now soaked to my skin from the rain.
"What are ye doin' out there?" he demanded. "There's a storm rolling in heavy enough to pound the spring grass back into the ground." Between us, a small, wet figure slipped, darting into a corner on the other side of the lantern — even Rosie's stray wasn't willing to be caught out in the downpour.
"I heard what happened —" I began. I saw Rowena near the boat captain's stove, wrapped in a blanket. She looked fully conscious, completely soaked, and extremely depressed. "Matt's gone for the doctor for her."
"Close the blasted door," ordered Wallace. He stumped to the stove, clattering a metal coffee pot onto it. "I'm tryin' to warm the patient. Fools out on the water, with no boat knowledge — don't need a doctor, unless it’s a psychiatrist."
"I know about boats." Rowena's teeth chattered slightly. "I told you. I simply went out too far and couldn't manage the sail when the wind changed." She pulled the blanket's folds more tightly around herself.
"Matt will be back soon," I said, sitting on an old chair close to the fire. The rain would slow him, I knew, but it wasn't that far to the clinic. "Everything will be fine. I thought I would make sure you were okay in the meantime."
"He's right. I don't need a doctor," said Rowena. "Only a nip of something stronger than coffee." She sounded bitter. "The good captain has my thanks that I haven't need of an undertaker instead."
"Don't mention it." Wallace grunted as he heaved another chunk of firewood into his stove.
"Were you looking for inspiration on the sea, I take it?" I asked. "Fresh air?"
"I rented a boat," said Rowena. "I did it once before in Penzance. It worked then. I wrote the story's first outline, about the hero's innermost fears and hopes, his driving need for a life by the sea. The midpoint of my lighthouse romance...the beginning of everything else."
She sounded as if she was talking to herself, really. Gone was the manic zeal from the other day, replaced by something that seemed ... well ... hopeless. Maybe the cold and the shock were having an effect on Rowena's nerves.
"Lighthouses. Romance from an electric beacon," snorted Wallace. "Sounds like the sort of rot womenfolk read."
"It's my most successful book," said Rowena, whose teeth were chattering less now. "People love lighthouses."
"When I was keeper o' one, didn't see anything so fascinating," said the old fisherman. "Just a creaky old building. Tourists kept showin' up, wanting to take pictures from the tower."
"You were a lighthouse keeper?" said Rowena. She sounded disbelieving ... or disillusioned. "Great. Lovely. Another romance shattered." She groaned and rested her forehead on her hand.
I poured her a cup of coffee, now that the metal pot was rattling. "You've got some good ideas," I said. "Some notes about interesting plot devices. Your book will be fine, Rowena."
She let out a short laugh. "No, it won't," she answered. "Do you want to see my notes, Julianne? The ones soaked in salt water? Be my guest." She pulled her notebook from the pocket of her damp coat, lying crumpled at the base of the stove.
The notebook was indeed soaked through by the sea, its pages wrinkled, with runny blue lines inside. But there wasn't much of anything inside except the bleeding lines. Page after page all blank, except for a few, faint penciled sentences here and there which were now faded to an almost unreadable shade of grey. The past week, Rowena had experienced remarkably little inspiration.
"The sea washed nothing away," said Rowena. "Nothing of value. The truth is, I haven't thought of my story at all. Not even a single idea that I felt sure I would use in my novel. Nothing at all."
I couldn't believe it. "You sounded so excited before," I said. "About this place, and about the romantic lives of everybody you met here. I thought you must have found something that would create your novel." But the crumpled pages and short temper had offered a different opinion on the subject, I knew.
She took a sip from her coffee. "I thought so, too," she said. "Now I think maybe the last book I published was my last one."
"Maybe you just need a change," I suggested. "The formula you use may need some tweaking after all. Or maybe you just need to tell a new kind of story." That had been Matt's theory on Rowena's writer's block, I remembered.
"Tweaking," she echoed, with a laugh. "More like abandoning."
"Don't say that," I soothed. "Not every book can be the best you've ever written, probably. But lots of people still love to read your work, Rowena."
"I'm beginning to think it was all I had left in me, that book the critics found weak," she said. "And it was all I could do to finish it, then. I can't imagine working that hard once more ... I can't even seem to imagine writing anything at all." I heard a deep sigh of frustration from the writer.
In the corner, the dog whimpered slightly — but a pleased one, it would seem. It rolled onto its back beneath an old iron cot frame, one which was piled with old fishing tackle and wet ropes.
"I can't believe he came inside," I said. "He's always seemed afraid of people."
"Even a dog doesn't like cold rain in his bones," said Wallace, who was tuning in a frequency on his marine radio. "Rosie's waif, isn't he? Been trailing 'round in hopes of a sandwich all morning. I seen him eat from old cans. Even old coffee grounds what I tossed outside."
"I remember now," said Rowena. Her soft voice proved she was talking to herself once again. "It was a toy dog. The one I had as a child. A shaggy white one made out of something stiff, so it could stand up on its toy legs," she added. "I wonder what happened to it?"
"Leave alone those traps, hear me?" said Wallace to the dog, which had begun nosing an odd-looking mini crate covered in dried seaweed. "The fish in them was eat long ago, so you're wasting your energy."
"Stories seemed so much bigger then," said Rowena. "That's what I'm missing in them now. The space, the wide world in which I could find any and every possible story. There are no surprises now. Those vast, empty plains have become very small spaces for telling a story." She looked at me, and I realized that this was sort of an apology from author to reader, not self-reflection by the author.
It was beautifully worded, but sounded extremely sad. I felt as if I was watching the writer's career die right here and now, in Wallace Darnley's makeshift office, with its nautical posters and flotation devices on the wall, and a wet dog snuffling the long-ago evidence of a fisherman's life.
"Don't give up," I said to her. "What if all you need is a longer break?"
"I think perhaps I'm taking a very long one," she answered. She set aside her coffee. "Please, if you would, have them cancel the doctor. I'm fine, really. All I want is to get myself in order and go back to the inn." Where, I imagined, Rowena would face her computer's blank screen in utter defeat.
"I'll try," I said, reluctantly, "if that's what you want."
"What about that bump on your head?" demanded Wallace. "Nasty knot that is, where the sea tossed you against that rudder."
"I'll pretend the pixies gave it to me," said Rowena.
From beneath the old cot, the white dog crawled forth, partly tangled in an old fishing net like a shawl. It trailed behind him as he crept close to Rowena, dropping onto her coat with another snuffling sigh. Its runny eyes fixed themselves on the writer, who reached down to scratch his ears. The dog uttered another deep sigh. This time, he didn't run away from the touch of a human hand.
I phoned Matt's mobile. It rang several times before he answered it. "We're on our way," he said.
"Can you turn back?" I asked. "I'm here with her, and she doesn't want to see the doctor. She seems fine ... just a little bruised and shaken up."
"I think she should let him examine her, just to be sure," said Matt. "We should be on the safe side with this one. I've seen very small injuries become very big ones in a matter of hours."
"Okay," I said. I glanced at the writer, who was now staring dismally at Wallace's very small window, where the shapes bobbing on the sea outside proved to be a cruising vessel towing a listing sailboat. At the sound of voices, the dog whined and flattened his ears. He crept back under the cot again, Wallace grumbling as he tried to disentangle the old net from the stray's tail at the same time.
"One more thing, Matt," I said. "Can you stop and pick up Rosie, too? I think we have something that she definitely wants to see."
***
Rowena was cutting her stay in Ceffylgwyn short, it seemed, and packing to leave. I heard the news through Gemma, who, of course, had heard it through the usual village gossip mill. Ceffylgwyn's big literary opportunity had slipped away from us.
"Heard that she's got that thing writers get sometimes," said Dovie. "That pyramid thing. Can't think of a single story to tell." She tsked sadly as she put a cucumber in her market basket.
She meant writer's block, I surmised. "I got the impression she's been having a hard time writing for a few years now," I said. Rowena's words about her shrinking story world didn't seem like ones I should share, so I kept this remark vague. I still hoped the writer had only been feeling a little gloomy at the time, and didn't mean those words at all.
"What a pity. There's lots of them writers who get that way," said Dovie. "That one who wrote the famous romances ... they came on the telly and said they'd never liked writing them at all for the past few years, just did it for the money. Wanted to write them science fiction stories, I heard."
"Maybe they should do both," I suggested. "Or write a science fiction romance."
"Who ever heard of space aliens getting married?" Dovie asked. "That'd be a right laugh for readers, now wouldn't it?" She added two tomatoes to her basket, then moved along to inspect the lettuce.
Gemma was more disappointed than the rest of us, I knew, but she hadn't admitted it, only looking a bit sad and crushed sometimes. I didn't know if she was still writing her own romance novel after the rumors the writer was leaving. Would Gemma's dream survive without its initial inspiration?
It was disappointing to think of how things had turned out, really. It felt bleak, as if this experience was somehow responsible for Rowena quitting, even though it had nothing at all to do with her writer's block. If anything, maybe it helped her, I thought, by letting her face the truth that she had exhausted her capacity for those romantic stories.
My devotion to Ceffylgwyn, to the cliffs, to my life here, hadn't inspired a romance writer, but had simply become the kindling in her meltdown. If I was waiting for the moment to hold physical proof in my hands that this was the place I loved most, as proved by my passionate words, it wasn't going to happen. I felt strangely as if I had disappointed the incredible life that Matt and I shared here — become unworthy of it somehow in the last few months.
That notion felt like rubbish. No two ways about it, really. And I made myself stop thinking it instantly.
Gemma was waiting in the hall outside my office when I returned from running errands. In her arms she clutched the notebook she had been carrying around for close to two weeks. One which, unlike Rowena's, I knew for certain had something written on its pages.
"Hi, Gemma," I said. "Were you looking for me?" I wondered if she had more questions about America ... if it was about Paris, I was afraid she was asking for the wrong opinion, unless she wanted Kitty's address.
"Yeah. I wanted to ask a favor," she said. "I was going to ask the writer to help me ... of course, she's leaving now, I've heard. And Lady A's so busy with the play group for Edwin ... but I thought maybe you might have time for it. I mean, if you're not too busy, too. It's nothing grand, not worth fussing about, really."
All this hedging around, trying to act nonchalant, didn't fool me; I could see Gemma was nervous, and my sixth sense told me why. "I have plenty of time," I said. "At least until this weekend's open house. What can I help with?"
"Then ... could you maybe take a look at my novel?" she asked, hesitantly. "It's nothing grand. I mean, there's only a little bit of it written. I just ... you know ... wanted an opinion."
She held out her notebook. Her face was proof she was a bit nervous about doing this. I imagined how much time she had put into it, writing each morning before work, and during every break. I had even seen her sneaking moments with it during work hours; no doubt her evenings had been spent the same way, too, since poor Andy had told me how little he had seen of her this past week or two.
"I'd be honored," I said. "Really. I'd love to, Gemma." I knew I wasn't her first choice, but I was still flattered to be asked. She could have asked Pippa, I knew — or even found an online group to critique it.
"It's just the beginning of something, like I said," said Gemma. "Rough draft, as they say." She played with a strand of hair as she said this, a telltale gesture of worry. "If you hate it, you can say so. But don't," she added. "But ... I mean ... be honest. But not mean."
"I'll do my best. I promise," I said. I accepted the notebook, seeing it looked very creased and dog-eared. "I'm sure there's a part of it that will be great. Nobody loves romance more than you do, Gemma. Except maybe Pippa." I smiled with this admission.
Gemma exhaled deeply. "I shouldn't be nervous, I suppose," she said, hugging herself. "I kind of had fun, even though it's really hard writing stuff. I never thought it would be this hard, actually. Of course, I was hoping maybe for some more advice from Rowena St. James, but ... well, that won't be happening, really."
I touched the edges of the book, catching a peek at Gemma's handwriting inside. "I'm sure Rowena would be proud to know that she inspired you to try something new," I said. "I think she'd tell you to do it just because it makes you happy. Just to ... find a big enough space for the story you want to tell."
Gemma looked puzzled. "What does that mean?" she asked.
"I don't know, exactly," I admitted. "But it's really important for writers to have it. Rowena would tell you that, if she were the one reading it." I held up the notebook. "And I'll definitely look forward to this."
Gemma's novel was only a few chapters, with lots of gaps in between the character's story. It wasn't about an American in England, or a transplant to France's shores, but took place in a village suspiciously like Ceffylgwyn, I discovered. Her heroine — a beautiful, blue-eyed blonde with a model's physique, apparently — was a girl dreaming of London while living surrounded by people who seemed a little familiar, one curmudgeonly female cook in particular. And a hero who wasn't exactly Andy, but wasn't Donald Price-Parker, either; although he did play a lot of football, I noticed.
"Listen to this," I said, reading aloud part of it to Matt that night, while I was curled up on the rug before our second 'last fire' of spring. "'Elaina wished that things could be different. And that they could be the same, too. There were things she loved, but she wanted a change because, sometimes, her life was just too real, and she needed an escape. Deep inside, however, she wanted to take with her all the things she really loved about it. Her friends, her memories, and the magical things that sometimes happened here.'"
I lowered the notebook. "Not bad, huh?" I said. He looked up from his mi
croscope on our coffee table, where a smear from one of his latest shore samples was undergoing examination.
"Who wrote it?" he asked.
"Gemma," I said. "She wants to be a novelist. She wrote that about her heroine ... and, I think, probably about herself."
"I didn't know Gemma wanted to write," he said. "Is it a complete novel?"
"Mmm...more like parts of one." And some of them were painful to read, since Gemma hadn't quite found herself on the page yet, persistently clinging to certain fantasies or clichés. "It's a pretty rough draft. But I think I see what she's going for."
"Maybe Gemma will be the first one to immortalize Ceffylgwyn in literature after all," said Matt. "If Rowena doesn't find inspiration after her recent brush with Davy Jones's locker, that is."
Normally I might have been tempted to retort with a joke, something about the Monkees, maybe — but I didn't have the heart to do it. Matt's reply only reminded me of Rowena's claim that a new book was beyond her reach. And since there was no word from the writer herself, we were all assuming that was still the case.
The next evening, we had a pint at the Fisherman's Rest with Rosie, who joined us to give us a report on the artful dodger from the shore, who had received his first bath and his first square meal under her care. Rosie had several kennels outside of her shelter's little building, with the cats having the run of the place inside.
"He's a sad little waif," said Rosie. "But plucky. He's not nearly as wild now that he's been caught. I think he just needed to trust someone again. Being dumped on the beach can't be good for one's self confidence, can it? Never was for me, at any rate." She took a sip from her pint.
"Did you give him a name?" I asked.
"No. I call him 'Davy,' but that's just a placeholder, really. It's up to his new owner to name him — whoever they may be."
"Davy?" I echoed.
"Didn't you ever listen to the Monkees?" Rosie asked. I giggled, and nearly snorted my ale from my nose — Matt gave me a perplexed look, since he obviously wasn't in on this joke.