Hope Nicely's Lessons for Life

by Caroline Day

  And I’m a little bit confused but I tell myself to listen hard to what Marnie is saying. And I don’t put my hands under my legs because I need to have my pen ready for writing. Because if it is a rule then it is very important, so I also write down rule again and I underline it twice, so that I remember and don’t forget.

  Marnie is telling our group that show, don’t tell is what will make our writing unique and define the space between writer and reader. She says that if she tells us Bob is angry, then all she has done is impart information. We are no closer to Bob. We do not know anything more about him and whether his anger is of the sad type, or the sinister type, or the murderous or pathetic or catastrophic type. We do not know whether we should like him or pity him or fear him or detest him. And we do not know if Bob is young or old or kind or evil; whether he is a medieval knight or a time-travelling chimpanzee. And what’s more, if the writer continues to do nothing but tell and not show, we won’t care. No relationship is established by just telling. ‘To make the reader care about Bob and what happens to him,’ Marnie is saying, ‘you have to use your craft in the showing. Let’s see Bob snarling. Show us the curl of his lip and the flash of hatred in his eyes. Let’s see his anger in the balling of his fist and the tread of his feet.’

  I write tread, feet, anger, in case it is important. Because I’m remembering Danny Flynn’s book being well trodden. I’m not quite sure why that is showing not telling, but I’m not surprised the babies in the caves are angry with their treading.

  ‘Don’t merely tell me Bob is sad. Let me see the tears that he’s struggling to contain. And not all at once. Tempt me. Show me just enough to engage me in uncovering the whole. Bring me in. Make me care.

  ‘Don’t tell me the underworld is wet and cold. Let me see the water dripping from stalactites and the shivering babies gnawing on raw tree roots.’ She nods at Danny Flynn.

  ‘And I don’t want to read that these women are working their fingers to the bone to fill the weapons they are making. I want to feel the calluses on their hands and smell the sulphur and the gunpowder. I want to hear the bravado hum of gossip above the clatter of metal and the whirr of the factory machines.’ She’s looking at the one with the long hair, who I think is Shelley. No, it’s Kelly, I think, actually. Not Shelley. But she is writing about shells maybe. And bells too. Kelly Shell-y Bell-y.

  Marnie Shale turns to look at Veronica Ptitsky. ‘And when I come to read Champing – which I’m looking forward to very much – I don’t just want to be told Helena and Lucy were having marvellous sex in the hay barn. I want first to glimpse a discarded rider’s hat on the stone floor and, a few feet from that, a crumpled jacket. Make me wait a moment longer before I see the silky underwear, and let me hear indistinct moans and smell the odour of sweat and saddle leather. And I don’t just want to be told about romping on straw bales, I want to feel the prickle of the straw against bare skin, I want to feel the burn of it. I need to be shown all of this, in a cleverly crafted manner of course, and not just told that it’s happening.’

  I’m feeling uncomfortable and a bit confused – in my head – now because part of me wants to laugh about sex in a barn, because it’s a little bit rude and also quite shocking that a teacher would talk about this. But I don’t like anything scratchy, and straw on your bottom would be very, very scratchy. So, part of me wants to laugh and part of me wants to put my hand under my trousers to rub my bottom better and make the itch from the straw go away. I’m relieved when Marnie Shale isn’t talking about naked skin and sweaty leather and barn sex anymore, because she’s handing round printouts to have a look at.

  There are extracts from classic openings, and Marnie Shale is asking us to read and to think about how the author is employing show, not tell from their very first sentences. And the first one is by Charles Dickens, called The Old Curiosity Shop, and it’s about a man who likes to walk but only when it’s dark. But there are words that make my brain do a shrink thing, like roam and seldom. And also it’s making me think about walking, too. And I’m looking at the words on the paper, but in my head I’m forgetting that I’m reading this and instead, in my head, actually, I’m walking as well. Not in a real, definite place – like not in the same woods where I was this morning with Scrappy the bearded collie and Suzie and Sallie who are whippets and Henry the beagle and Tinie Tempah who is an I-don’t-know-what.

  I’m too busy walking in my head and I forget to read the next extracts, the one called Lolita and the one called Norwegian Wood, and I’m not even listening. The voices are in my ears, but not like words that you understand and think about. More like when you’ve forgotten the television is on but it’s like it doesn’t even exist for a little while. But then, flip a pancake, I remember that I have to be listening, because this is very important. Except it’s too late, so I am just going to have to leave a gap in my notebook – and I’m going to try extra hard on my exercise.

  None of us will have to read out what we’ve written. Not unless we want to – but Marnie Shale wants us all to have a go. She wants us to think about where our books start. She wants us to use a scene or a character, something important to our story, and to write an opening where we are only showing and not telling.

  ‘Think about engaging your reader. Give them a part of the picture but not everything. Don’t tell them who or where or when. Show them enough that they just have to read on.’

  She takes off her watch and puts it on the table in front of her. ‘Right, group. Fifteen minutes.’

  I’m not very good at minutes – sometimes I think just a few have gone past but then I realise the whole day has gone away and I’ve forgotten to go to the library, or maybe the whole of Coronation Street has already been on ITV at 7.30 and now I’ll have to watch it on ITV+1 and so now I’m going to have to think about when it’s on now, and now I’ll have to remember to not forget again. But everybody else is writing away – their pens are moving quickly or their fingers are tapping on their laptops (the computers, not the tops of their legs), or else they’re looking in a way like they’re thinking hard, but not like they’re humming or wandering in the woods in their heads. I’m still looking at the lines on my notebook and there are no words on them. I’m thinking now I must put some words on them.

  I count to three and I write: My book by Hope Nicely. And then I write, in brackets: Working Title. And then I write: Opening. And then: Show, don’t tell.

  And now it really is time to be doing the exercise and I try to remember what Marnie said. I know I have to start at the beginning and with my important character. And in my book that is me, because of it being an autobiography.

  So I start writing: My name is Hope Nicely and I was left …

  But I cross that out. That’s telling who I am and what happened to me. So instead I write: I was left on Christmas … Crossing out again.

  This is not easy as anything. Not even a bit easy. Because how can I say what happened without telling it? How can I paint a picture with my words? Marnie Shale said I can’t say when or what or who. I’m thinking about humming but then it comes to me.

  There were Christmas trees in the windows of the houses. I write: because it was Christmas. Then I cross out those last words because you only have Christmas trees at Christmas. So that is how I have shown it. And I’m very pleased with myself. I can feel myself smiling, which is nice. Because I have avoided doing the telling and I have shown the Christmas trees, which is the number one rule of writing. Bingo.

  There were Christmas trees in the windows of the houses. And there was a cardboard box and it was on the doorstep of the church. And when the vicar who was called Anne Bentley came to the church in the morning, she wondered if Father Christmas had brought her a present in the night. Because of the cardboard box.

  I nearly cross out about the vicar being called Anne Bentley, because that’s telling, but I can’t think how I can show a name. So I keep it in for now and I carry on.

  Anne the vicar smiled in a way that look
ed like she might be a bit surprised by the box but happy about Father Christmas leaving presents for her on the doorstep of the church. So she opened the box and in it was a …

  And I stop. Because I mustn’t tell what was in the box. I must show it instead. So I cross out a few words and I think very hard with my brain.

  She started to open the box but before she made it completely open, there was a noise. It was crying. Like a little cat or a …

  Can I write baby or is that telling? How can I show a baby without telling a baby?

  Like a little cat. But in the box was not a baby cat. Not a cat animal at all but a different type. A …

  And I don’t need to think for very long even though the word isn’t right there. But I find it so quickly. Maybe because exercises make us stronger. Because the word – human – is there now. Even bigger bingo.

  A very little human animal with eyes that were brown and hair that was black and skin that was …

  How do you show and not tell skin? When people say they are black or white it doesn’t really show. It’s not a very good showing even when they say it because they’re not really painting a picture with their words. It’s not even very good telling. Because black and white are like words on a page in a book and people don’t really look like that. And some of us don’t know where our skin comes from. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It’s an … I can’t remember the word, it’s an irreli-thing, but it doesn’t matter because we are all unique. That’s what my mum, Jenny, says. And how do I show-not-tell what the baby-me looked like when I don’t know anyway? I’m thinking hard in my brain about what people say when they see babies – like on Coronation Street or Call the Midwife, maybe, or when Pepper the puggle’s owner had a baby who was called Meg and also Meggie-Moo.

  My brain is thinking so hard because it is doing the exercise and it’s important. And the rule is important too. It’s golden. It’s the number one rule.

  A very little human animal with eyes that were brown and hair that was black and skin that was unique, but a bit like the colour of a peach yoghurt. Or maybe more like an apricot one. And she had ten perfect fingers and ten perfect toes. And they were tiny. And she looked like a perfect baby with nothing wrong at all. She was wrapped in a pink blanket and she stopped crying when Anne the vicar picked her up. And the baby from the box fell asleep like just any other baby. She didn’t look like a baby with a brain that was damaged by being filled with vodka and beer and wine in her birth mother’s tummy.

  I’ve stopped writing. Because this is all I know. The vodka and the wine and the beer. But even this is not really knowing. Because maybe it was whisky or rum. Or … or … those drinks that come in funny colours with umbrellas in them and circles of orange. Cocktails. I don’t know much about those drinks. And I don’t know if she was drinking them in glasses or gigantic bottles. Or if it was in a house or a flat or a field or on a railway station bench or in a pub. I don’t know if it was in the morning or late at night, or if she was on her own or with a whole party of people drinking their drinks too. Marnie Shale says you can’t just tell when and who and where. You have to show. But I can’t show it either. I don’t know anything. How can you show if you don’t know?

  And I hear my name and I look up and everyone is looking at me. Staring right at me. And it takes me a moment to realise that I have been humming and banging my head. Not hitting it on the table, thank goodness, but just a little bit. Up and down. And now I should take a deep breath. And I should sit on my hands. And I should count to three. I should be quiet and calm down.

  But I don’t feel like doing that.

  3

  ‘Hope?’

  She knows where I am because she’s bending down and looking at me.

  First she went to the stairs and looked out to see if I was there. I could see her legs and some of her body. And she looked at the lift too. And she checked in the corridor and looked in the women’s loo. But now she’s looking under the desk in the reception and she’s found me because that’s where I am, with my knees under my chin.

  ‘Are you all right under there? I didn’t know where you’d gone.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I’m crying only just a little bit now. ‘I didn’t mean to be interrupting during the exercise. And I didn’t mean to go away without saying excuse me. It was an …’ I’m looking for the word and I nearly say accident but that is not the right word so I don’t say anything.

  Marnie Shale is kneeling down on the floor now, and she’s talking to me with her accent. ‘You don’t have to be sorry, Hope. If the exercises are upsetting, or if they’re too difficult, just tell me. I don’t want to make you do anything—’

  ‘It’s not because of the exercise.’ I’m interrupting a little bit but I’ve put my hand up in front of me like a cue and I don’t think Marnie Shale is cross. I’m not humming or shouting. ‘It’s because of my mother. Not Jenny Nicely. My birth mother. Because I can’t tell her and I can’t show her. In my book. But it’s not my fault that I can’t do it – it’s her fault. For leaving me. Even if it was for the best. I can’t anything her because I don’t know anything.’

  ‘But you’re writing this book about her?’

  ‘About me. But this book will find her. And then she can tell me why. Why she did what she did and made me like I am.’

  ‘You think your birth mother is going to read your book?’

  I’m shrugging now – with my shoulders – because I don’t know exactly quite how. Like I don’t know the name of my book. Yet. Only a working title. But I know my book will help. I don’t know how. I just know that it will. My memory, well, the less said about that … My brain is a big old jumble sale, with all the jumpers and books and saucepans muddled in one huge pile up to the ceiling. So it’s all a bit of a flitty old mess and I can’t explain what this book will do. But it will do something.

  ‘If I write it, it will help me.’

  ‘I get that. A bit of closure at the very least, I should imagine?’

  That’s the word, the one that is like closing time. My brain feels a bit better. And Marnie Shale is holding out a hand. ‘I have to get back to the group. You don’t have to, if you’d rather …’ She’s the one shrugging now, like I could stay here under the desk for the rest of the class. But I take her hand and say I’ll come back.

  At the end of the class, all the other people are taking ages picking up their notebooks and their laptops and putting on their coats, and they’re asking each other if anybody might fancy a drink but a bit quietly and like nobody wants to say it out loud. Somebody asks Marnie Shale and she says unfortunately she can’t. Nobody asks me but that’s good anyway because I don’t like pubs with their noise and their football on the telly and their smelling of beer, and because my mum, Jenny Nicely, is coming to meet me and she made me promise that I wouldn’t forget and go off without her.

  I’m the first person out of the room – and I’m not dawdling because I really need a wee and I don’t want to queue up because there are only two cubicles in the Ladies (I know this because I went before the class) so if all the women wanted a wee at once, some would have to wait. It’s good though because I’m the first one in there and nobody else comes in and, when I come out, the rest of the group are still walking through the reception to where the lift is and I’m a little bit behind them.

  Their voices are all muffled because they’re talking together but not very loud, except for the one voice that I can hear and that is the man with the knot whose name is … I can’t remember right now, but his voice still makes my head buzz a bit. And he’s saying: ‘… have sympathy of course, but seriously, the rest of us have paid good money to be here and is it really appropriate to …’ Then he doesn’t say anything more because Peter Potter with the nice name and white hair and white eyebrows and the Coronation Street accent speaks louder than him and it’s because he’s saying: ‘Hello, Hope, love. Didn’t see you there.’

  I say hello Peter Potter. I don’t say love like he did,
because I don’t know him, and then everybody is a little bit quiet. I don’t like waiting. I’m thinking we won’t all get in even when the lift comes and then maybe I’ll have to stand here and do even more waiting because I’m at the back. I’m at the back for the lift even though I was at the front for the wee in the Ladies because of hurrying. And I know where the stairs are. So I go.

  I’m nearly at the bottom of the first lot of stairs, just before the bend, when he catches up with me. Not Peter Potter, but the cave babies man called Danny Flynn. He says: hey Hope. He says not to worry about any rubbish I heard him say, but I don’t know what him he’s talking about.

  ‘Nothing, forget it,’ Danny Flynn says when I ask him what rubbish I shouldn’t worry about. And he starts saying that he likes the sound of my autobiography. He tells me that his little brother is on the spectrum and I’m a bit excited to hear this, because that is the right word for my rainbow, of course. The one which I couldn’t remember earlier, except for FASD, which is Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, because of course I know that. Rainbow is only for my mum, Jenny Nicely, and me. Like the red and yellow, except that I’m only blue. Or maybe a little bit indigo.

  My mum, Jenny, wrote a poem about a rainbow, actually, and it was very clever because it was a little bit about me, too. In her poem she said about the sun making a rainbow when it’s raining and there are millions and zillions of raindrops in the sky. But most of the drops are just ordinary and the sun goes through them because they are just clear, like glass. It’s only light, with no colour, just like the air. But there are some drops that are not just ordinary. They are the rainbow drops. The sun chooses them because they are the ones that make the colours. Like red and yellow, and blue and indigo. And that is a rainbow. And it’s also a spectrum.