Tinderbox Page 7

  I had boned up on the interviewers before the interview. They were also writers I had never heard of. Though their credentials looked good on the back of their books.

  ‘We’ve got several interviews today, so we are going to do this on a timer. Once the timer ends that will be the end of the interview,’ Michele Roberts told me.†

  Patricia Duncker held the timer.

  I nodded. ‘Okay.’

  The interview was brisk and to the point.

  ‘What writers do you admire?’ Michele asked.

  I launched into what I had liked about their work, desperate to prove I’d done my research.

  ‘That’s nice you’re read our novels,’ Michele cut me off. ‘But which books do you really admire?’

  Time to accelerate.

  ‘Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood, The Diviners by Margaret Laurence, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson.’

  Patricia asked, ‘Do you see yourself as a New Zealand writer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I elaborated on the virtues of New Zealand. I quoted Janet Frame: ‘An underwater moon, dim and secret.’

  More questions, more answers.

  The line of waving trees outside the office window reminded me of an anecdote about Nabokov.

  One day a student told Nabokov, ‘I want to be a writer.’ Nabokov pointed to a tree outside his office window.

  ‘What kind of tree is that?’ he asked the student.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the student.

  ‘Then you’ll never be a writer,’ Nabokov replied.

  Neither Patricia or Michele asked me to name the species of tree outside the office window.

  On Day 23 of NaNoWriMo it seemed imperative that I establish exactly what kind of trees are outside the property that doubled as Montag and Linda’s house in Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451. Anything to help my word count.

  I ended up on an old britmovie.co.uk forum.

  In 2007 Mark O had asked the group for ideas on where Montag and Linda’s ultra-modern looking bungalow was located.

  Someone called Christoph404 had suggested looking around the Alton Estate in Roehampton.

  Then, another contributor called Dan had cruised Edgecombe Park. He thought he spotted the bungalow, or or at least one that looked similar.

  The website was full of men searching for the location of the house.

  It turned out that ‘Phil’ was the one in the know. The bungalow scenes surrounded by silver birches were shot near his house at Edgecombe Park, Crowthorne, Berks.

  Silver Birch trees. I had found my answer quickly. The same could not be said for the contributor ‘Steve’, who wanted the exact address. ‘Even just the road name would help a lot.’

  The conversation thread was now years out of date so there was no point in telling Steve that the property – a Renway Type 60 bungalow on Linkway, Edgecumbe Park – had been privately sold by Bungalow Industries, a company run by a design duo with a passion for midcentury modernism. Bungalow Industries had been based in the Fahrenheit bungalow until they sold it – and had even made a jazzy online catalogue, featuring photos of the house interior from the movie and this quote from New Homes Magazine in 1967:

  How often do we see and hear it advertised? “Houses for modern living” “Houses of advanced design” “Your home for the future” – and yet when a house of sufficiently advanced design was required for Fahrenheit 451 – set some fifty years ahead in time – the design chosen was a Renway home at Edgecumbe Park, Crowthorne. On this development part of this excellent film was shot, and the residents enjoyed the excitement of seeing Julie Christie, Oskar Werner and producer Francois Truffaut on their very doorsteps.

  I bet they did.

  A motley crew of Borders staff assembled on the doorstep of the Holiday Inn in East Anglia. We were in Alan Partridge Country now. The team was prepared for long hours and extra pay. The process involved in opening a new Borders store was known as a ‘sort’ and was scheduled to take two weeks.

  On the first day at the Holiday Inn, I called a number about a flat in Norwich and navigated my way there on foot, using only directions from locals. This strategy never worked in London without an A to Z. But in Norwich, everything came together easily.

  Except for Borders. The store was based in the newly designed Chapelfield Mall. The build was behind schedule. The staff attended a health and safety session run by the building contractors. We had to wear orange high vis safety vests and hard hats on site. All the new shops struggled to get their products up from the shopping centre basement, sharing two dusty overused elevators. The new general manager was ex-HMV staff. Nickname: Noddy. Noddy had a hot wife. James Blunt’s Beautiful lit up his mobile every time she called.

  I began to joke that Chapelfield was built on an Indian burial ground. This was not entirely unreasonable as the mall was situated next to Saint Stephen’s Church and a small cemetery. A cobbled path cut through the cemetery on the Church grounds to the mall. Shoppers had to pass crumbling headstones on their journey towards Chapelfield’s new food court, where they could sample the delights of The Pasty Shop, KFC and McDonalds. The dead at rest amongst the lawlessness of the living.

  On the first day of the sort we drove past the crumbling walls of the city.

  ‘The wall is medieval,’ the manager pointed out, with pride. ‘The bricks are made of flint.’

  I looked at the missing bricks in the wall. ‘When are they going to finish it?’ I asked.

  1985. The waif in my childhood story checked the clock above the station platform. The man standing next to her cracked his paper, reshuffled the pages and stifled a cough. The child shivered, the wind sliced through the holes in her knitted…

  I looked up from my exercise book and sighed. It was the school holidays and I was staying at Dad’s house by the sea.

  ‘Bored?’ he asked.

  I shook my head. The book lay open on the table in front of me. At the top of the page I’d written the title in flowing fancy handwriting: The Forgotten Child. Then I had spent the afternoon drawing the forgotten child. It seemed important to capture what she looked like. Her wispy hair floated to one side, teased away from her face by the wind. A lonely tear dripped from her eye. She waited at the train station. Penniless.

  Dad put his book down and stoked the fire. The log in the fireplace slipped a notch, sending a shiver of violent red sparks rushing towards the chimney and out onto the hearth. The cat half opened its eyes. A furry gargoyle poised on the arm of the couch. The cat was Dad’s full-time companion, as inscrutable as his books.

  ‘If you had to choose between me and the cat who would you choose?’ I asked.

  ‘Why would I have to choose?’

  ‘What if we were in a boat stranded at sea and it was sinking and you had to throw one of us overboard in order to survive.’

  ‘Well,’ Dad was reading a book. He looked up from it, paused to sip his tea. ‘I would keep Tiger on the boat for as long as possible and hope that we would all be rescued.’

  Outside the window, sand tumbled along the driveway. The cat blinked.

  I turned back to my story. The forgotten child tapped the arm of the aloof gentleman, standing on the platform. ‘Please sir, do you have any change?’

  The man turned and looked at the waif. Poor desolate creature. What chance did she have of a good meal let alone a good read?

  He fished in his coat pocket. ‘How far are you going? How many stages?’

  The waif shook her head. Either she was speechless or she just didn’t know.

  He passed her enough for one stage.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ the forgotten child curtseyed.

  Mice danced over the tracks. The mice were as large as erasers; their smoky backs reminded the forgotten child of smudged pencil work. She wondered what it would be like to have whiskers and a tail.

  The digital sign above the station flashed mint green: two mins.

  Two yellow eyes flared in the blackness of
the tunnel. The warm breath of the train blew Allen Lane’s newspaper from his hands. The newspaper scuttled along the tiles, arachnid, alive. The headlines on the front page changed, time lurched forward with the train. Commuters huddled closer to the platform’s edge. The newspaper flew past, and the mice disappeared, replaced by carriages. People bundled behind glass like upset fish in tanks. The waif in my story grew up.

  On the train, she watched the platform slow: ‘Manningtree.’

  From a nearby seat a woman’s seashells mumbled in the snug of her ears.

  ‘MIND THE GAP,’ the electronic voice said.

  The doors parted. ‘Next station: Diss.’ The train grit its teeth. Each stop was another opportunity to deposit and collect cash. The forgotten child folded herself into a corner seat and opened her book. ‘Denham’s Dentifrice…’ She passed her tongue over her own teeth: a dream of missing teeth is a dream about money.

  At Borders Norwich I learned there were two things customers were interested in: Slow Cooking and Keeping Pet Chickens.

  Borders Norwich bestsellers:

  Easy Slow Cooker Cookbook

  Extrordinary Chickens

  Don’ts for Wives

  ‘You must miss your husband,’ a new girlfriend said.

  ‘Yes.’ On Wednesdays and Thursdays, I ate a sausage roll from Bugdens on route to university. In the evenings I lay on the couch in a pair of pink pyjamas eating Ben and Jerry’s and watching America’s Next Top Model. The show was fronted by supermodel Tyra Banks, a hardened extrovert, who possessed an Amazonian physique and the metallic stare of a maniac. Thank God she wasn’t teaching at UEA.

  Each week Tyra put the fledging models on the show through a series of exercises. The makeover was always entertaining. Most of the girls in the model house were still teenagers and when their long hair was cut short they cried. I understood. Each Tuesday our masters group met for a three hour crit session. Three students circulated their work a week in advance and the class gave critical feedback, led by the tutor.

  ‘Why does your lead character hate men so much?’ my tutor asked.

  ‘Tyra Mail!’ The girls in the model house galloped towards the waiting envelope to receive their next challenge.

  At the end of each episode the models were summoned before a panel of industry experts. Tyra called each girl forward individually and the photo of the week was bestowed upon one radiant face. ‘Congratulations you are still in the running to become America’s Next Top Model.’

  One by one the girls stepped forward.

  Until finally, ‘I have two beautiful girls standing before me, but I only have one photograph in my hand.’ Tyra’s eyes were very blue and penetrating, ‘And this photo represents the girl still in the running to become America’s Next Top Model.’ The pair held hands, heads bowed. The clock ticked. Finally, the photograph was revealed.

  Tyra gave the loser a chaste cuddle. The loser was then embraced by her fellow models. Sad music serenaded her exit. The camera focused on the girl as she sat on the floor of the model house packing her suitcase, then a long shot of her reflection through the window of the passenger seat, city lights blushing over the young face no longer in the running to become America’s Next Top Model.

  I had no idea my lead character hated men.

  In the second semester a group of agents took the two hour train journey from London Liverpool Street to Norwich. The agents were a panel of industry experts. They answered our polite questions about publishing. None of the students asked about money; one of the tutors did. I had never heard of the uber-agent Jonny Geller but at the drinks afterwards he was surrounded by a throng of students, their novels rehearsed into tantalising soundbites and passed out like h’orderves. I loitered near the crisps wearing a white pashmina. I wanted to make a good impression, but the sausage roll diet didn’t make for dazzling repartee.

  I glanced at Geller across the room. He was A-list all the way.

  A female agent from Curtis Brown got drunk on the free wine and asked, ‘Why isn’t anyone writing like Daphne du Maurier any more?’

  I had recently read Rebecca for the first time and could empathise. ‘Yes, why?’ I helped myself to another crisp. ‘It’s such a great read.’ The problem for me was quite simple: I rented a room in a grim semi-detached near a greasy spoon. I had never been to Manderley and chances are I wouldn’t be going there anytime soon.

  In Bradbury’s novel Professor Faber, a retired English teacher, describes books as containing pores; his speech helps to fan the flames of Montag’s literary awakening. I had paid little attention to Faber in the book, probably for purely sexist reasons. He’s an old man. However, his metaphor about books containing pores was spot on. Everyone wants to write a novel that breaks out.

  I did too. But while I was working at Borders Norwich I was too busy writing Megan loves Merchandising, a guide to creating in-store displays. The guide was an elastic use of my time and my art school training. It included pictures of a colour wheel and diagrams of book displays (the books represented by squares and rectangles) in an attempt to teach staff the importance of shape, balance and symmetry. I used an image of Magritte’s deeply unsexy reverse mermaid The Collective Invention to illustrate the importance of surprise and Andy Warhol’s infamous Campbell soup cans to show the power of repetition. Stack ’em high, watch ’em fly.

  But the essence of my merchandising guide was summarised in the principle of the ‘lure book’. The lure book is like a beautiful woman. It can be added to the apex of any display and customers will pick it up. The lure book often (but not always) features a beautiful woman on the cover. While I was at Borders Norwich Dita Von Teese’s Burlesque and the Art of the Teese was my go-to lure book. The customer won’t necessarily buy the lure book but it will draw them into the orbit of a display, making an incidental purchase more likely.

  One night at Borders Norwich as I added Dita to a prominent display table I got into a conversation with one of the new Christmas temps, Nate.

  ‘Why are there no good looking women authors,’ Nate asked. His body, like his attitude, was buff.

  ‘What about Jordan?’ I said.

  Glamour model Jordan was big business at the time. So was her alter ego Katie Price. Price was the author of several bestselling autobiographies and novels. I hadn’t read any of her books but I enjoyed accessorising her tanned pink hardbacks with a flashy feather boa from Ann Summers.

  ‘Jordan’s not a real author,’ Nate flexed his wit.

  ‘Okay, what about Zadie Smith?’ I said.

  Case closed. There was a reason Zadie’s author photograph was always on her books and it wasn’t because she was a genius.

  ‘She’s good looking in a geography teacher kind of way,’ Nate conceded.

  Maybe he had a point? I’d never merchandised Zadie’s back catalogue with a feather boa.

  Don’t judge a book by its cover, we say, but that’s easier said than done. Especially when you’re a sales manager. And what about all the great book covers and the great illustrators and designers behind them? Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 has inspired Ralph Steadman’s fiery eye and blazing pen. I was also impressed by Elizabeth Perez’s minimalist concept design for another cover. ‘I wanted to spread the book-burning message to the book itself,’ she said. ‘The book’s spine is screen-printed with a matchbook striking paper surface, so the book itself can be burned.’ On Perez’s white cover the 1 in 451 is a match the reader can remove and use to ignite the spine. Perez’s design went viral. Her website was bombarded with hits, her inbox with emails. Perez shares a link to the one inflammatory email she recieved about her design on her blog. ‘Did you actually ever read the book?’ the anonymous emailer asked. ‘Shame on you!’

  Day 24 and my rewrite of Fahrenheit 451 was careening out of control. Word count: 20,721. In my rush to complete NaNoWriMo I’d started describing the mechanical hound as a cross between a Kindle and a Penguin Donkey. The original Penguin Donkey was commissioned by the publishe
r Penguin and made by an Austrian architect – Egon Riss. In 1939 Riss designed the Penguin Donkey as a portable bookshelf to hold Penguin paperbacks (which had only hit the market four years earlier). The Penguin Donkey is now a modernist classic. I saw one saw in an antique shop on Elm Hill in Norwich. Alas, its price was way out of reach.

  The mechanical hound in my redraft was as a repositry of information just like the Penguin Donkey, except the hound wasn’t made out of bent plywood. He was a bit more high tech and I’d given him an extension cord for a tail too – a nifty detail I stole from a fan’s online sketch. Meanwhile, Mildred aka Linda aka Julie Christie had left Montag and gone to work as a sex slave for Ogle, the largest search engine in the world. And in my book, I’d brought Clarisse back to life. She rode the subway to Knolls View dressed as a fireman, and visited Professor Faber at his house instead of Montag. Her manuscript was velcroed inside her fire retardant suit. Her story was all she had!

  I had furnished Professor Faber with a mechanical cat. Who was also called Faber. Faber and Faber – get it? But the mechanical cat didn’t come with a needle that injected procaine into its victims. Instead, when you pushed its ears and it piped out hot espresso.

  The cat sniffed Clarisse’s manuscript. And spoke.

  ‘Is it shit?’

  Together, Faber and Faber gave Clarisse a quick précis of the merit of her manuscript as the train rushed overhead outside.

  Faber passed her a small tin box.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘A tinderbox.’

  He explained that the tinderbox was a piece of pre-industrial technology that was superseded by the rise of white phosphorus matches, first made in factories by little match girls.