Journey to the postbox

PREPARING FOR THE JOURNEY TO THE POSTBOX

Alice is nervous, she has rung Cathy and asked her to read her latest poems if she's not too busy, and Cathy sounded impatient and put upon but she did say she'd drop in. She has dropped in, made it plain it's a flying visit, asked abruptly for the poems and removed herself upstairs to read them in peace, ie away from Alice. Alice sparks up a cigarette, knowing this was a bad idea and Cathy is resentful. Cathy has looked at her work before, congratulated Alice on her powerful imagery, but said she wasn't sure what it's about, or what Alice is getting at. Alice was struck by shame and the humiliating realisation that she'd written garbles which, however powerfully felt and projected, hadn't been intelligible. Now it's worse, she's forced Cathy to come round and read her latest stuff, and Cathy might say anything! Alice has read lots of poetry and analysed it exhaustively, learned about metrical patterns, rhyme schemes and see how published poets achieve their effects, which are intelligible, beautiful and arresting in their sheer power. This is the closest Alice has come to God, if you like, through the incredible beauty and sense of patterns of words, and through the euphony of the words themselves. This she has trusted, ungraspable as it is but she has taken that heart stopping risk of plunging boldly into what she wants to say, then painstakingly revising and adding, erasing, trying new images, until her anxious graspings at the unknown have seemed to make sense. Seemed to make sense, but has she really made her work intelligible? Cathy was reluctant to come round, suppose on top of that humiliation there's the worse humiliation of not having made sense? Alice hears the door squeak upstairs, then Cathy's footsteps descending the stairs, now she's for it and it was bad enough realising how false a position she'd put herself in, let alone an assessment of her work depending on just that. Cathy comes into the room looking hunted, Alice knots her hands until the knuckle are white and bloodless, Cathy takes a seat and pushes her specs up the bridge of her nose. These poems have moved her despite herself, Alice has gone beyond magical hierophantic uses of words like dark, she has assumed control. Cathy struggles with herself and her annoyance, looking inwards, she takes a grip and looks up:

Cathy: “I liked these, I think they're good though I'm not sure about this one... ah, The Pedant. I wasn't sure what you were getting at, why “Heartfelt/Imaginary applause rewards the pedant”?”

Alice cringes to hear her work read aloud, sure Cathy is hating this and hating her for insisting on this masquerade of friendship. She takes a deep breath; “I meant myself, for poring pedantically over things. I wrote about myself writing.”

Cathy: “But why imaginary? I mean it's strong, but I don't get it.”

Alice: “That's what I was afraid of, so the praise is imaginary, the pedant has to imagine it because it isn't forthcoming.”

Cathy shoots her a look, Alice has very neatly outwitted her with the Pedant poem. I'm not stupid, thinks Cathy in annoyance at finding that the schizophrenic she was doing a favour has shrewd, pithy wits of her own. She resumes, feeling completely wrongfooted: “Ah, me being stupid, I get it now. No, I liked these, they're good. Are you going to send them off?”

Alice feels swept off her feet by Cathy's brusqueness, but this is a compliment. Even if Cathy hates her, she's conceded the work is up to standard for being sent to little magazines. Could she approach an editor? Feeling rather as if she has stepped outside naked on a winter's day, all bare and unprotected, Alice essays: “I think I might... it's a big step but why not?”

Cathy: “I think you should. Seriously – go on, I dare you!”

Cathy's abrupt challenge recalls happier times when she liked Alice, Alice responds to this semblance of warmth, remembering being given the Reader. She smiles, but Cathy isn't looking at her, she has gone back broodingly to the sheaf of typed poems and her face in repose is hard and cold. Alice tries to make things better:

Alice: ”I've read up how to go about it in the Writer's Handbook, and bought stamps and envelopes. You have to send return postage, most of these outfits manage on a shoe string budget, they're in it for the love of the thing.”

Cathy, meanwhile, isn't listening very closely, she is thinking that Alice is not her pet schizophrenic, she's outclassed her on purpose with that Pedant poem so she can bloody well manage on her own, ungrateful little git biting the hand that feeds her! She says robustly, rising to her feet and picking her coat up: “Well, you won't see any of these editors so it doesn't matter what they say, does it. I've no idea how they'll respond, I'm not an expert. Good Lord, is that the time? I must get to the bank before it shuts.”

Cathy is tugging her arms into her coat sleeves, her eyes glittering with urgent purpose. Alice sees her out then returns to the table where her list of addresses, stamps and envelopes await her. Cathy didn't say anything about seeing her again. Alice was wrong to ask her to come round, but there is nobody else, what is she to do now? Cathy isn't like a nurse, thinks Alice, people aren't, they are whimsical and do as they please, what pleases them is to have nothing to do with Alice. Cathy had seemed to like her and to take her part, but now she's acting like all the rest, it must be something wrong with Alice that always has this effect on other people. Well I can't help that, thinks Alice angrily, pulling out a chair and sitting down with a thump. It's not my fault I'm ill, but my illness makes me Typhoid Mary when it comes to trying to make friends. She pulls the stack of envelopes towards her and picks up her pen.