Love, Nina (26 page)

SH: I can't decide.

Me: Which do you like most?

SH: It's not about liking, it's about the likelihood of writing something interesting and engaging.

Me: OK, which is easiest?

SH: Larkin.

She's pretty much decided on Larkin. It'll be a doddle. She'll just rehash some essays from her A-level and say how much she likes him.

It's a long time till we have to hand them in but the important thing is NOT to just leave them and get ourselves in a mad panic come the summer (PB's words). We should plan and read and write a draft, then go and see our supervisors for a progress check and work steadily.

Stella has done a rough plan. The plan includes interviewing AB for extra kudos. I stupidly mentioned that AB had met Philip Larkin and might have exaggerated it a bit.

Annoying. AB will show me up by playing down the relationship (which is already quite nothingy) and Stella will show me up by demonstrating she knows fuck all about Larkin or the true meanings of his poems (which in my opinion are the mardy ramblings of an oddball). And she'll say things like juncture, apropos or caliber or her other words. And AB will say, “Your friend Stella kept saying ‘caliber.'”

She pronounces it cal-eye-ber.

For a while I couldn't decide between J. M. Synge and Carson McCullers. I like both. Nunney was no help, only saying I probably shouldn't choose something I really like. He said, “I don't think you should do something you really like, knowing you, you'll end up hating it.” He's referring to the old notion of familiarity breeding contempt. I'm not worried though. I'm bound to hate whatever I choose and I'd rather hate something I started out liking.

J. M. Synge: I went out into the wet lanes in my pampooties and caught the influence.

Carson McCullers: they found Mrs. Langdon unconscious, she had cut off her nipples with garden shears.

I discussed it at 55. And Sam said I should do a West Ham player called Frank McAvennie.

Me: I can't decide between McCullers and Synge.

MK: McCullers, I should think.

Me: I was thinking Synge.

MK: So you've decided.

Me: No, not really.

MK: (
shrugs
) Synge, then?

Me: Why not McCullers?

MK: Because you had decided Synge.

Sam: You should do Frank McAvennie.

I took that as a sign that I should do McCullers (the names McAvennie and McCullers being so similar).

So that's who I'll do (probably).

Love, Nina

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

Just got back from Rochester, Kent.

Went in a hired minibus with visiting lecturer from San Diego State University called Nick Nichols (American). He wanted to see the five little graves in St. James's churchyard that inspired the opening of
Great Expectations
and other Dickensian stuff. Nick took a few photographs (of the graves) and said how incredible it was to finally see “Pip's graves.”

A mature student called Dorothy (wasn't on the minibus, just turned up) lost a contact lens in a coughing fit by the graves. But Nick Nichols didn't let that spoil the mood for him. He said that's the thing about these bleak spots, the sea mist rolls in and has you at its mercy. Dorothy said it wasn't that, it was a mint imperial gone down the wrong way.

She didn't find the contact lens and had to go carefully after that because she was seeing double due to only having one lens in. Stella suggested she take the other one out but Dorothy explained that wouldn't be a very good solution. In the end she kept one eye closed and I couldn't look at her after that.

Went to a tearoom. Stella said afterward it was called Peggotty's Parlour (I hope it was called that, but I think she's gilding the lily) and our American tutor ordered a BLT. The Americans love that kind of sandwich (BLT, club and steak) that bit more than an actual sandwich.

NN: Could I get a BLT on white?

Tearoom woman: BLT? What's that when it's at home?

NN: BLT—bacon, lettuce, and to-may-doe—sandwich?

Woman: You can have bacon and egg bap, or bacon salad sandwich.

NN: What's in the bacon salad?

Woman: Bacon, lettuce, tomato, and cucumber.

NN: That sounds good. Can you hold the cucumber?

Woman: What for (
holding cucumber
)?

Nick Nichols thought the woman was being humorous. She wasn't. He also loved that she'd said, “What's that
when it's at home?
”

We went home via some murals Nick wanted to see in South London, but he scraped the minibus badly (both sides) squeezing it between two posts, which were there to prevent vehicular access. So we didn't pay much attention to the murals and drove quickly on.

Nick Nichols adores London and wants to see absolutely everything Londony and Dickensian. His wife (Lee) and son (Scott) are here too. They're staying in my tutor's house (my tutor is staying at their house in San Diego).

A group of us in Nick's tutor group went round to the Nichols's for pizza and to watch a video of
Great Expectations
(in prep for the Rochester grave visit). They put us onto folded pizza. A sort of pizza pasty.

Stella got drunk on the Valpolicella on offer and made a show of herself—interrupting the movie to ask to borrow their lawn mower.

Me: What did you ask to borrow their lawn mower for?

Stella: The garden needs mowing.

Me: I need new shoes, but I didn't bring that up.

Stella: I saw their neat lawn and felt a pang.

Me: Can't your boyfriend do your lawn?

Stella: He's a postman.

Everyone knows he's a postman. Some of us have met him. Stella uses his postman status as an excuse. Brings it up to explain everything. I said she should stop using her boyfriend's postman status as a crutch. I meant to say excuse, but I said “crutch” and it sounded appropriate.

Anyway. It's very nice having Nick Nichols from SDU around. Just when you think everything's shit, he says how great everything is in his American accent and it's convincing.

Love, Nina

PS Didn't think much to Kent.

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

Picked up my photographs from Edwards on Parkway. Funny little man. Misty will not take her films to him. One, he's expensive compared with Boots, and two, she always imagines he looks at her photos and wanks. I said she has a high opinion of her photos if she imagines people wanking over them.

Me: He must be sick to the back teeth of looking at photos of unknown people and dogs. I bet he doesn't even look.

Misty: Of course he does. You would.

Me: Not in a wanking way.

Misty: He must get bored in there all day and that's when they do it.

Got home, looked at my photos. A few nice ones of Pip's graves and Nick Nichols's BLT and a blurred one of MK's hoover (from an attempt at the secret photography thing, where you don't hold the camera up). Tried to imagine what Edwards of Parkway might have thought of them (esp. the hoover).

Showed MK.

Me: Look, another accidental photograph.

MK: What is it?

Me: It was meant to be you and Russell Harty but I got the hoover.

MK: I didn't know you two were acquainted.

Meaning me and the hoover.

By the way, you shouldn't use anti-dandruff shampoo unless you actually have dandruff. If you use it and don't have dandruff already, you will get dandruff. That's how it works. It removes dandruff unless you don't have it. In which case it causes it.

Told MK about Pippa wearing a headband (or “bandana”).

Me: Pippa has started wearing a headband.

MK: Alice or Rambo?

Me: Halfway between the two.

MK: Nice.

Skipped breakfast. Not that I'm skipping breakfast but because I didn't have any. Told Misty I was hungry because I'd skipped breakfast.

Me: I forgot to have breakfast (
I put it like that
).

Misty: That's dangerous.

Me: How?

Misty: Your metabolism will slow right down.

Will: She means your body clock will go wrong.

Sam: What's your body clock?

Will: It's the clock inside you that makes you do things.

Sam: Like what?

Will: Get up, shit, eat crisps.

Love, Nina

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

Mary-Kay has a good memory for certain things—things you wish she'd forget such as the first things you did/said on Day One etc. (saying, “I love books, especially the classics such as Dickens and Heriot”).

You can't get away with anything. You can't change your mind about a thing, otherwise it's “I thought you said you hated daffodils” type thing.

She's always very careful about what she says and never just blurts things out without thinking apart from the time she blurted out that she thought Jez was handsome. But to be fair she only blurted it out because Mary Hope had said Tom was (handsome) and it was a comparative thing.

Me: Tom's gone home.

MK: Tom who?

Me: Tom Stibbe.

MK: Oh.

Me: Mary says he's handsome.

MK: (
quicker than usual response
) Who?

Me: Tom.

MK: Jez is more so.

MK remembers stuff I tell her about you and the others. She always says, “How are the others?” because she's picked up that I call you lot “the others.”

She's quick to pick up quirky things, but not the key things about a person (or doesn't notice). Or, her key things are different to my key things. Maybe the quirky things are the key things (for her).

A woman came round to 55 the other day (to do with Sam) and I noticed that the woman said “prer-haps” (instead of perhaps) and she kept saying it. Prer-haps.

MK noticed she kept saying “to be honest with you.” I didn't notice that (I think I say “to be honest with you” sometimes, hence my not noticing it).

MK noticed (and liked) that she sat cross-legged, even in a dining chair, and I noticed (and disliked) that her bangle kept hitting the table with a thud.

Stella's friend Ruth (the clever hippie with periodontal gum disease) says that bangles are symbolic of slavery and, more recently, of women being “owned” by men. She wears an ironic fake handcuff.

Hope all's well with you.

Love, Nina

PS Stella has sold her flute for £50.

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

Loved the story of Mr. Benson. How funny. You should write a novel about all the goings-on there. In fact, you really should (I'm not just saying that). I thought the other day that AJA should write a novel about his early life. He's got such a way with words and so many funny rural memories—it'd be like
All Creatures Great and Small,
only not a vet, a kid.

The dissertation subjects are all decided now and my plan is submitted to PH. My plan is to show, via my wide reading, that Carson McCullers was a brave young writer who had the guts to illuminate a less glossy side of USA life in her stories about deaf people, poor people, kids who can't write and isolated people.

I'll say that although the critics were unkind and the public was resentful, she continued to write about an underrepresented type of people. Her motivation being that she herself was isolated and reclusive due to having suffered strokes at a young age and accidentally marrying a homosexual who gallivanted with other isolated intellectuals in the Deep South.

I will show how her determination to write about isolated/ not-very-attractive people, even though the critics were angry at her portrayals, influenced a whole new breed of writers (those who wanted to write about not-very-nice things) and that she ultimately deserves her place in the great Southern tradition. Blah, blah.

God. I wish I'd done J. M. Synge.

Changing the subject, Stella wants someone to work one of her evenings at Plumstead snooker club and I've said I might try it out.

You just turn up at 6 and serve drinks and frozen microwaveable snacks to the snooker-playing punters.

There are major perks. You can drink as many non-alcoholic beverages and eat as many microwaveable snacks as you want. You can read texts while on duty. Apparently the punters like the staff to be ensconced in a book and just let them get on with playing snooker—they find it relaxing and it means they can make cash bets.

Stella says the only drawback is the toilets and the fact that the microwaveable snacks smell like sweat.

It's generous pay considering you don't actually do anything useful, except for looking away and microwaving.

Love, Nina

PS I meant it about you writing a novel or a diary or something. It would be very popular.

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

Mary-Kay went out to supper. Mysterious. Then, the next morning, there was a tiny bunch of violets in a tiny cup by the kitchen sink. I had a close look at the violets and they were really beautiful (five petals and little yellow blobs and heart-shaped leaves on a curved stem).

Just before they went over, I pressed some of them (between pages of heavy books). Asked MK if she was interested in having the pressed violets when they were done and she said not really.

Just when the violets were ready (for Amanda's birthday card/ picture) Amanda said, “I hate dried flowers.” So I stuck them in the margins of a letter to Nunney, so as not to waste them.

Then when Nunney was over this w/e:

N: What were the dead things in the letter?

Me: Violets. I pressed them.

N: Oh.

Me: Didn't you like them?

N: Well, not really, they were dead.

Then later, had a sword fight with pool cues at the Edinburgh Castle (me and Nunney). I started it out of boredom, and we got chucked out. N was absolutely furious.

Went back to 55 mardy and told MK.