Love, Nina (21 page)

MK: Why's everything “a scenario”?

Will: That's just life.

MK: I mean, why's everyone saying “scenario” all the time?

Sam: Cliff Richard's got one.

Will: What?

Sam: Cliff Richard's got a five-seater Scenario. He keeps it in Spain.

Me: You mean his Renault (I'd read the same article in the
Mirror
)—he has it in Portugal. It's half car, half minibus. It's not called a Scenario, it's a Renault, but I'm sure it's not a Scenario.

Sam: What is a scenario then?

Me: A situation.

Sam: Well, when I say it I mean Cliff Richard's five-seater car thing in Spain.

Will: When I say it, I mean a
complicated
situation.

MK: Sounds like you're both right.

Later I thought we should've called the magazine
Scenario
—so much better than
Blurt!

Love, Nina

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

Will's homework was about the weather (rain, sun etc.). I showed him Hardy's poem “Weathers”—it's one of his few good ones (Hardy's) and this started us talking about weather. Weather we like, weather we don't like.

MK—Likes: dry days, preferably hot. Dislikes: drizzle and rain, especially sideways rain.

Sam—Likes: blizzard conditions (if he's at home). Dislikes: hot, muggy days.

Me—Likes: hot, sunny. Dislikes: windy (chaos, things being blown around).

AB—Likes: warm spring day (April or May). Dislikes: too hot, too cold, too windy.

Will—Likes: hot, but only if you're not at school (“any weather but not a school day”). Dislikes: any weather on the way to school.

I've taught Will how to draw a tattoo (Death Before Dishonor) with a dagger going through the skin and the skin being where you can have a name written. He drew one on paper (it being a weekday) and wrote his own name and I said that wasn't advisable. Better to have a girl's name.

Sam: I'm going to get a West Ham tattoo.

Will: You'll get beaten up.

Sam: What are you going to have?

Will: A dagger.

Sam:
You'll
get beaten up.

Will: With a dagger? I doubt it.

Will showed us that if you draw a face on the pad of your thumb it will always look like someone you know. It's uncanny. Will's looked like Brian Clough. Mine: Willie Thorne. Sam's looked like Paddington Bear and MK said she doesn't draw on herself. Will said hers would probably look like Elvis.

Will: You've got something on your hand now.

MK: (
looks
) Oh, that was a thing.

Sam: What is it?

Will: A dagger.

It said “bank.”

These are some of the things I've picked up so far at Thames Polytechnic.

English Literature ignores most of its subject.

It's not important for a thing to
be
true, but to
ring
true.

Women have been ignored but have been their own worst enemy.

You should give Thomas Hardy a chance (P. Widdowson).

They don't
tell
you this stuff; you work it out for yourself. I've learned lots more than that, but I'm just mentioning those for now.

Michael Z, tutor (American, nice, clever), lives in Camden and we sometimes take the same train home from Woolwich Arsenal. The other day he saw my much-used train ticket and said, “Jeez, how long've you had that old ticket?”

So I told him I'd had the same ticket for months and that was the end of our chat. The Americans can be a bit black and white (when it comes to crime).

Stella has got a crush on a lecturer called PB and has been scratching at her teeth with a pin to get the nicotine off the margins. She wants to look her best. I said I wouldn't worry about your teeth, read the texts, that's all he'll care about.

Apparently, according to AB, girl students often develop harmless crushes on male lecturers—it's a thing—and they're used to it (lecturers are) and they just ignore it and get on with the job in hand.

I was honest with Stella: one, you don't really notice her teeth—stained or not—you barely notice them, even when she smiles. And two, lecturers are used to girl students having crushes etc. and just ignore them.

I have to say though, Stella's crush on PB—although harmless/ pointless—is a good thing because she's actually doing some work at long last. It's good for me because her laziness was beginning to annoy me and I was on the verge of moving on to this other friend—the one from Luton with the bra (and the laughing father)—an idiot but at least she reads the texts.

Love, Nina

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

The renovations at 55 are almost complete. It looks great. S&W have got my old rooms and the bathroom has been made smaller but better. S&W's old rooms are now the nanny's quarters, smaller but better with wood floors and new kitchen stuff and a nice dresser thing, new blinds and sweet table. Sam and Will were yabbering about what they're going to have in their rooms and how they're going to nick stuff out of the new nanny's fridge etc. and I felt a great feeling of wishing I could be that nanny.

Not that I'm
not
loving Thames—I
am
loving Thames v. much.

Anyway, I was just thinking that when suddenly Mary-Kay mentioned me moving in.

Me: (
looking around
) It's great.

MK: So do you want to move in, then?

Me: OK.

MK: Do you mean, “Yes, please”?

Me: Yes.

I was a bit astonished after last week's ding-dong. But very pleased.

Sam has found out that he shares his birthday with Les Dawson and Will shares his with Mae West. Will disappointed.

Love, Nina

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

Had another
Autobiography & Fiction
seminar and we spoke autobiographically again. Quite a few students didn't turn up, so those who
were
there felt exposed. I didn't (feel exposed).

The girl from Luton spoke up again and talked about her father laughing at her bra again. This time she added that she'd stuffed it with “copious amounts” of toilet paper and could quite understand why her father might have laughed. I think she was going for laughs this time whereas last week she was presenting it as a tragedy that's affected her whole life.

PH was pleased with her for speaking up and said that was the thing about autobiography—we're forever adjusting our angles and degrees of truth. I think you need to make your mind up and stick to it.

We're all working on “essays” for the course. These aren't like other essays, where you just read a text(s) and write about what you've read, say what you think and what a few others have thought. This is your own story.

My plan is to hand in a bit of my ongoing semiautobiographical novel. I have asked tutor PH if I'm allowed to use a “real ongoing thing” and the answer from tutor PH was “Yes, that would be terrific.”

So, I've been reading it through to myself—a complex domestic situation with moments of high drama—and decided to get a second opinion, so I asked Stella to read the opening paragraphs. I just wanted to see her first impression.

SH: I don't think you should hand that in.

Me: Why?

SH: It's so revealing.

Me: Yes, it's meant to be revealing—remember the seminars.

SH: I wouldn't want to reveal that much at this juncture.

Stella is saying things like “juncture,” “caliber” and “apropos” at the moment. It's all part of her being literary. However, I took on board what she said and will make it slightly less revealing.

Stella's plan is to present a (true, but not very revealing) story about going to the cinema and having a pair of gloves nicked. Then, walking home with cold hands and having to hold hands with a bloke and secretly being pleased about the theft of the gloves.

SH: So that's the basic plot. I don't know how to flesh it out.

Me: Could you say the thief was sitting behind you and cut your plaits off and you leave the cinema with short hair whereas before you had long (childlike) hair and you have a sexual awakening?

SH: (
laughing
) Like the opposite of Samson?

Me: Well, it's more dramatic than the gloves.

SH: It
was
gloves though, in real-life, that's what happened.

Me: It's not much of a story, that's all.

SH: But it's how it was.

Then, I noticed something strange on her shoes.

Me: What's that stuff on your shoes?

SH: Oh, it's muffin paint.

Then a story worth telling came out:

On her way to college someone had dropped a tub of paint (color: muffin) and it had spilled over the pavement. A plank of wood had been laid down for people to walk across but Stella still managed to get paint on the soles of her moccasins. Walking to the bus, she saw she was leaving muffin footprints and it seemed as though the muffin footprints were following her (chasing her). So she ran to get away from them but couldn't obviously (get away from them) and it was like a bad dream. On the bus (top deck), she looked down at the fading footprints on the pavement and felt strange.

I told Stella that it made a better story than the stolen gloves. Stella didn't agree. She just said she was annoyed about the paint on her shoes. So gloves it is.

Back at 55 telling MK about the gloves versus the muffin footprints.

Me: Which do you think is best?

MK: It depends how you tell them.

Me: Well, like I've just told them.

MK: Well, the footprints, because you told it better. The gloves could've been good too, but you made it sound as dull as possible.

So it's the same old “it's how you communicate” thing. You have to wonder why authors even bother trying to make up a good story (chasing whales or living in a hollowed-out old tree) when just losing your gloves is good enough, if you tell it right.

Hope you are well and things are going well.

Love, Nina

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

MK went away for w/e (c. Sussex or Suffolk). She's not good at going away unless it's somewhere decent and not at all cold or miserable. This was someone's holiday cottage in a country village. I had a bad feeling about it as soon as I heard the word (village). You just wouldn't put MK in a village. She's better off in a town or city. God knows why she went. Sometimes she does things she knows she'll hate.

MK: It was good and bad.

AB: Tell us the bad.

MK: The winding lanes weren't great and a trying sweater didn't help.

Me: Trying?

MK: Dotty.

Me: How was the village?

MK: I didn't ask.

AB: And the good?

MK: There's more bad yet.

AB: Go on, then.

MK: It was cold.

AB: And the good?

MK: X made a nice meat loaf.

AB: Is that all?

MK: It was quite peaceful.

AB: Well, that's nice.

MK: Up to a point.

Will: Did you sit by a roaring log fire?

MK: Eventually.

Later in the week, MK re-created the meat loaf they'd had in the Suffolk/Sussex village with minced pork and bread. It reminded me of the meats we used to see at Brooks's—I looked at it and remembered Mrs. Brooks using the machine, and the slices collapsing into her open hand and being laid on paper. And sometimes people just buying one slice and it seeming so sad. I might include that image in my
Auto & Fiction
essay.

I didn't have any (meat loaf).

MK won't hold it against the couple; she'll probably bear a grudge against the county (Suffolk or Sussex, whichever) but stay friends with the couple. And if the couple ask her to go and stay again, MK might say “maybe in the summer” and hope they forget all about it.

Great about Mr. B. We all love to know what other people have for tea. Mary-Kay and me both love to look into other people's trolleys in Sainsbury's. Me, just seeing what they've got. MK to copy their ideas (hence the stuff she buys).

MK has taken on a new nanny who won't live here but will come as and when. MK's really pleased with her because she's very bright and has all the good points of me and the last nanny and none of the bad points. So MK said.

Love, Nina

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

Mary-Kay had made a plan to have people over and had been to West London to fetch a tub of crab pâté to give them as a starter (with a bit of greenery and discs of bread).

Then, on the morning of the actual day, she rang home and I answered. It was the three rings, so it had to be MK (no one else does it now I'm back at 55). I shouldn't have picked up (knowing this supper was looming).

MK: Good, you're there.

Me: (
realizing
) What?

MK: Can you check on the crab pâté?

Me: In what way?

MK: Smell it and see if it's OK. Ring me back.

I smelled it and it smelled OK. A bit crabby, but not rancid or anything. I rang back.

Me: Could I speak to Mary-Kay please?

LRB person: Who is it?

Me: Nina.

LRB person: Hang on (
muffled noises
). She's busy at the moment, can you leave a message?

Me: Um, yes, could you tell her “Yes, it's OK.”

LRB person: So the message is “Yes, it's OK”?

Me: Yes, that's it.

LRB person: OK. Yes, it's OK.

Me: Yes, that's the message.

LRB person: OK.

Me: Tell her re the thing she rang about, it's OK.

LRB person: Re the thing she rang about, it's OK.

Me: Well, you should say “the thing YOU rang
Nina
about is OK.”

LRB person: OK. The thing you rang Nina about is OK.

Me: Yes, the thing she rang me about earlier, just now, is OK.

LRB person: OK. I think I've got it. Bye.