Love Letters (21 page)

‘Hello! Laura? Hi! I’m Margaret Johns, head teacher. I’ll just take you into assembly. The children are all very excited about you coming.’

During the walk to the hall, Laura wondered if she vomited in the playground they’d ring her mother and she’d be allowed to lie down in the staffroom and await collection. Then at last she accepted that she was a grown-up now and she had to just get on with it.

Rows of children sitting cross-legged on the floor confronted her. They were wearing royal blue sweatshirts, and shorts, trousers or grey dresses.

‘Quieten down, children! We have a visitor!’ said Mrs Johns.

There was almost instant calm. Laura had hoped if they took a while to settle, it would use up her time. She had half an hour to fill when she’d have preferred ten minutes, or better, she could have just sent a letter and some forms to each school. But Fenella had pointed out a personal visit would really enthuse the schools and get the community inspired to support the festival.

‘Miss Horsley is going to tell us about a very exciting competition.’ Mrs Johns gestured Laura into centre stage. ‘Miss Horsley!’

Don’t be afraid of silence, Dermot had told her when he’d been coaching her for the visit. Let them just look at you for a couple of minutes. He’d been so helpful, really taking the time to pass on everything he’d learnt about talking to children – which was a surprising amount. Dermot apparently loved going into schools and talking to children. She wanted to be able to tell him it had gone well. She didn’t want to let him down. She surveyed her audience.

‘Hi, guys!’ she said and instantly felt this sounded wrong and went on quickly. ‘How many of you like stories?’

Lots of hands went up. ‘We do!’ they chorused. ‘Me! And Me!’

She raised her own hands to quieten them, which seemed to do the trick. ‘That’s great! And do you know where stories come from?’ Dermot had said he sometimes opened with this question.

‘Books!’ came the reply.

Laura nodded, getting into the spirit of it. ‘Yes they do come from books, but how do the books get them?’

She had liked this image of books marching around on their own capturing stories when Dermot had suggested it and the children seemed to as well.

‘They don’t go around the place listening to stories and snapping them up between the pages like crocodiles, do they?’ She didn’t wait for them to answer this time. ‘No! Well, someone put them there. Someone put the stories in the books. Who could have done that, do you think?’ She looked expectantly at the sea of eager little faces. This time she did want their reaction.

‘Mrs Johns!’ called out a little boy from the front. ‘She’s got stories!’

‘Yes, that’s a good answer. And who else?’ She looked at her audience carefully, to make sure she didn’t overlook a shy child who might have a good idea.

‘Writers?’ This came from one of the older girls at the back.

‘Writers, authors, yes, they make stories. But who else do you think can make them?’

Several rows of children looked at her, transfixed but bemused. ‘You can!’ said Laura triumphantly.

This caused a certain amount of uproar but Laura dampened it down quickly enough. She was beginning to get the hang of this. ‘Yes, you can all make stories. And soon, when your teacher tells you it’s time, you’re all going to write a story. Now you could write a whole story each – that would be quite difficult – or you could make a story up as a class. Your teacher will decide which you should do. Now, have any of you written stories before?’ A forest of hands shot up. ‘Yes! All of you! That’s brilliant! Well, when you’ve all written your stories, and drawn pictures to go with them – can you all draw pictures? Wonderful! So when you’ve written your story you must draw a picture of the people in the story. These are called “characters”. So now, what sort of thing do you think you can write about? Where do stories come from? They come from ideas and ideas are everywhere!’ She looked around to indicate the ubiquitous nature of ideas and the children did likewise, as if half expecting an idea to come popping out from behind a plant pot.

‘But although ideas are everywhere, we have to look for them, to recognise them when we see them! Now . . .’ Laura suddenly realised her mouth had dried up completely and she took a gulp of water from the paper cup Mrs Johns handed to her. At the same time she realised she was really enjoying herself.

‘Has anything good happened to any of you today?’ she asked her enraptured audience.

A little boy almost followed his hand skyward as he fought to get her attention. ‘My dog had puppies!’

‘Oh, that’s a brilliant idea! You could write a story about a puppy. Or a fairy, or a cow. Or even a teacher!’ This caused much amusement. ‘Then, when you’ve written your stories and done lovely illustrations – that means pictures – your teachers are going to send them to me and if they’re very good, they’ll be read out loud to lots of people, including your parents. What about that?’

This notion was very well received.

‘But before you start, a real-life writer, one whose stories are in books you have read, is going to come and talk to you some more about how stories get into books.’

A couple of minutes later she finished her talk to huge applause.

‘That was really good,’ said Mrs Johns. ‘I thought you said you weren’t used to dealing with children.’

‘Well, not with so many children at a time, but I had a lot of help from a friend and then I just pretended it was a storytime, like we used to do at the bookshop, and it seemed to work.’

‘Well done, dear! And you’re making arrangements for a writer to visit? Would that come out of our budget or yours?’

‘Yours if possible, the festival is operating on a shoestring.’

‘I’ll see what we can do,’ said Mrs Johns. ‘The story competition is excellent and it’s an excuse to read more stories in school.’

As she had known it would be, the interview with the local newspaper was easy. They were keen to support the festival and offered to fund an event and to print three of the winning stories in the paper. She found herself chatting away with ease, her answers flowing freely. Somehow it was so much easier when you were talking about something you felt committed to.

Just as she was leaving the journalist said, ‘Could you let us have author biogs and photos as soon as poss? We’d like to do an “appearing at” feature.’

Laura stopped and turned round. ‘Yes, of course. You do know our line-up isn’t finalised? Supposing you did a feature on an author and then they couldn’t come?’

‘Oh dear, that wouldn’t work!’ The journalist, possibly perfectly reasonably, didn’t want to spend a lot of time researching and writing an article about someone who wasn’t going to come within a hundred miles of the county.

Laura considered. ‘Tell you what, you give me a list of the authors you’d most like to feature and I’ll chase them up. If they think there’s a bit of guaranteed publicity it might help them decide to come.’

In the car she made some extra notes and then set off home, quietly excited at the prospect of talking to Dermot.

‘So how did you get on with the kids?’ was the first thing he said when he picked up the phone.

‘Oh, it was great! I took all your ideas and once I’d got going I found I loved it. Perhaps there is a performer in me after all.’

‘There’s something about children though, isn’t there? They don’t let you get away with anything.’

Discovering that Dermot Flynn, who shunned his public, refused to have anything to do with the literary world and worked hard on his image of a hard-drinking, womanising has-been, actually went into his local school regularly as a helper had come as a shock.

‘I don’t tell many people,’ he had explained. ‘It doesn’t go with the image.’

She had taken a moment to feel flattered that he had confided in her. ‘Have you ever thought about writing for children?’ It seemed an obvious thing for him to want to do.

‘No way. Far too hard, and far too much responsibility. If I write a book and someone hates it, that’s OK, they can just toss it aside and pick up another one. If a children’s writer produces a duff book the child who reads it – or who tries to read it – may never read another one.’ He obviously felt very strongly on the subject.

It was after this conversation that Laura had thought he’d be a good person to ask about how to pitch her short-story idea to the local schoolchildren.

Now, after she had received his congratulations and slightly smug ‘I told you you could do it’, she moved on to the competition itself. ‘So all I’ve got to do is line up a suitably keen judge. I’ve got a couple of retired teachers to do the first cut.’ She paused. ‘It’s all right, I’m not asking you. I’ve got a children’s writer in mind. Right,’ she went on briskly, ‘how did you get on with the last batch of scripts I sent you? What about the one set in Greece?’

‘A pile of crap,’ said Dermot.

‘How much did you read?’ Laura was disappointed, it was important he trusted her judgement.

‘Not very much. Why should I?’

‘Read on. It gets better.’ She was firm. Having selected her thirty manuscripts, had them copied, and sent to Dermot a few at a time, she now felt protective of them. They were her babies and she was going to fight for them, even though they had to be whittled down to ten.

Dermot was dismissive. ‘It’s no good it getting better. No one will read that far. I thought you were supposed to know about these things.’

She knew him well enough by now to know when she was being teased. ‘I do. In the editing, we’ll tell her to get rid of the first three chapters and start the book from there.’

‘OK, I’ll read a bit more and ring you back. But it had better improve.’

Laura put the phone down, smiling.

She had done the washing-up, written a few emails on the laptop Rupert had acquired for her courtesy of Jacob Stone, and was making a list of phone calls for the following day when he rang back. ‘Ah,’ he said without preamble. ‘I see what you mean.’

‘So shall I put her on the “maybe” pile?’

‘OK, but if the “maybe” pile gets too huge, I’ll send it back.’

‘But we could do that with a few suggestions, don’t you think? So these writers get help even if they don’t get on the course?’

‘You’re all heart, Laura Horsley. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.’

‘It is a good thing. A few editorial notes could make the whole difference, and they’ve got this far, they deserve some reward. Have you had a look at Gareth Ainsley’s one?’ This was probably more up his street, she thought. It was science fiction, very edgy, but surprisingly readable, even to one to whom sci-fi was a bit of a turn-off.

‘Yes, yes, I did. It’s good, very good. But do you think he’d be a complete pain on the course?’

‘I don’t think you can ban him on those grounds,’ said Laura.

‘Mm. I don’t know. I think he’ll make it anyway. He doesn’t need my help.’

Laura considered for a moment. ‘Don’t tell me you’re jealous of the Young Turks snapping at your heels, Mr Bestselling Novelist?’ She felt safe teasing him over the telephone. How she’d feel if they were face to face, she didn’t know.

‘Young Turks: is that a quaint English expression?’

‘Hm, one I picked up from my old boss, Henry—’

Dermot cut her off. ‘So which are your favourites out of those you’ve sent me?’ Dermot didn’t seem to want to enlarge on the subject of Young Turks and his attitude to them.

‘They all have merit,’ she said carefully, ‘which is why I selected them. But we have to decide who’d benefit most from the course. And you can’t rule out the Young Turks.’

‘You’ll just flirt with them,’ he said.

‘You’re doing the course, not me,’ said Laura.

‘You’re assisting. You’re going to be there. I thought you knew that.’

This came as a bit of a shock. ‘I thought I was only helping with this bit. I didn’t know anything about you needing me actually on the course!’ She sounded quite indignant but her heart was singing at the prospect of spending so much time with Dermot. ‘I don’t know anything about writing itself.’

‘Oh yes you do.’

A shaft of doubt pierced her pleasure. ‘But I’ve never written more than a To Do list in my life!’

Dermot dismissed this. ‘It doesn’t mean you can’t edit. You’ve been doing it, and you’ve read loads more than I have.’

As by this time she knew he read very little modern fiction she had to agree. ‘Oh. Well, I suppose I can do it. Will the university mind?’

‘Of course not. If they want me, they have to have you, too. We’re a team.’

Laura flushed, glad he couldn’t see her. ‘Oh. OK. Now, what about the Samantha Pitville? I know it’s not your thing. It’s chick lit, bubbly, funny, irreverent, but it’s written by a very pretty woman. I sent a photo. It’s attached to the back of the manuscript.’

She waited until he’d found the photo and examined it. ‘Mm. Not my usual type, but if she can write, I’ll give her a go. Why did you send the photo?’

‘Eleanora said that being good-looking helped. It’s such a cut-throat industry that if two writers are of the same standard, it makes sense to take on the one who’ll be good at publicity.’

‘Well, I think that’s extremely sexist—’

‘No you don’t, you don’t care about sexism. Tell me, is she in or out?’

‘I’ll give her a go at the course. Nothing else,’ he added firmly.

Laura was silent. She had sort of assumed that Dermot would be up for dallying with his students if they were attractive and willing. There was a fine old tradition of artists sleeping with their models – there were parallels.

‘Are you surprised at my moral attitude?’

‘A bit. You don’t give the impression of someone who’s led a life of purity and hard work.’

‘No, well, you’re right. But because I misspent my youth, it doesn’t mean I’m keen for others to do it. What’s next?’