Each of us wades in the swamp of everyone
else’s actions and intentions.
Tim Winton. Havoc: a Life in Accidents
To Family and Friends
It took me three years to complete this novel and then I sent it to a number of publishers. I did not receive an offer from a publisher to publish my manuscript, that is, if you discount two overseas offers to engage in a contribution based agreement, what some would call vanity publishing. I declined the offers. So what you hold in your hand is a self published book. There could be more than one reason why no one is interested in publishing LUCKY YOU but the most obvious reason could be that it is not good enough
In this situation one has a choice. You can find some other pastime to help fill your day or you can try again and tell yourself it will happen next time or that you write not because you are a gifted writer or even that you are good at it, but because you get enjoyment from writing. And for me there is a lot of truth in that.
There IS enjoyment in writing. However, there are a number of reasons why at times, writing, trying to write a novel, is not enjoyable but indeed an excruciating experience. Those who know you are writing a novel might show no interest in your quest and worse still send a subliminal message to you that you would be better off doing something that might lead to success.
After hours round shouldered over your computer, it is time to go to bed and you choose to have a short read to make you drowsy. Maybe Marilynne Robinson or Tim Winton or Charles Dickens and then you are overwhelmed by a sinking feeling that comes from knowing exactly where you are as a writer. Later the lights are out but the cerebral whirrings are not because you can’t help constructing the chapter that you are going to write tomorrow even though what you need is sleep.
In my opinion there is not enough enjoyment in writing a novel to make it worthwhile in itself. So I have found another reason to write. Simply put, it is about telling a story, your story. Writing fiction comes from our knowledge of the world, our knowledge of the human condition. From life experience and experience fired imagination. So what I write is really part of my story, part of my life’s journey. To take this idea further, the words of Salman Rushdie;
“Those who do not have the power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to re-tell it, re-think it, deconstruct it, joke about it and change it as times change, truly are powerless because they cannot think new thoughts.”
When you hold this book in your hands I hope you decide to read it from first to last page and if you do I know that there will be, on some page, something for you.
When you hold this book in your hand I hope that you will have given me $25 which I promise to send to Health Management: Bangladesh Foundation (Rohinhya Refugees).
I would like to thank Anne Barclay and Joe Blake who gave up their time to read the manuscript, to all those who gave me support by showing genuine interest in what I was doing and of course to Alexa with whom I have been lucky enough to share much of my life story.
JOHN
LUCKY YOU
1.
Eliot suddenly sat bolt upright in bed , he was wet all over. He could still hear the sound of his voice in his head, anxious and afraid. Sweat covered his body. He rolled onto his side and glanced to his right but of course there was no mountain silhouette of her body beside him, nothing to reach out to touch. The bedside clock told him that it was 3.47 am. His hair tie lay on the bedside table and he needed to get his hair away from his glistening neck. He pulled his hair back, tied it up into a ponytail and then his feet felt the coolness of the floorboards. A wave of hoplessness crept through him and his chest was heaving because he thought that he could never do it alone. He knew that he could never do it alone? How had he ever thought that he could? With all his weaknesses, those that were known and those he kept to himself. Without Marion. Why had he said yes without really thinking it through? He knew that some people were never lonely because they were too important to themselves, were able to give life meaning without others. But that wasn’t him.
In the passageway his cat brushed against his wet leg. Not now, he murmured as his breathing began to come under his control. In the kitchen he turned on the heater and filled the kettle of half a lifetime and set it on the gas flame. He needed to take his mind off his dream but he was too agitated to think clearly and go back to the day’s soduku. He reached for the remote control and he surfed the channels until he settled on Harrison Ford interfering with an IRA plot to assassinate a member of the British royal family. Soon it was just changing light and background noise and Marion overwhelmed his thoughts. It was over a year since he had become alone.
Always in his mind’s eye, Marion lay, the centrepiece of tubes and flashing monitors, her elongated fingers tapping erratically on the white sheet, her skin like parchment stretched over a frame of bones, glowing from within like a human lampshade. She said she could see rabbits, their skins on metal frames and her father was digging a shallow hole and laying a trap and then she was quiet and her eyes pierced the ceiling and then they closed. Some noises that seemed to come from her heart. Her eyes opened momentarily and she spoke and he knew that he had heard right, that she loved him and then her mouth became fixed and her teeth stared at him. At last the suffering was all over. Forty years of being together over too.
He poured himself an English Breakfast. A decision had to be made. Could he do this alone? Was this a risk that he was too old to take? The thought of which, now had him sitting awake in his living room in the middle of the night. India was an edgy place. How would he go on without her he had said. She wrote him a letter, so you can remind yourself whenever you need to. The letter said you should get on with your life Eliot, make the best of the rest of your life without me. What good is hiding alone in our apartment?
Before, years ago they had visited Varanasi together and he could still remember what she had been wearing as she stepped down the ghat to the water, her thick wavy hair and the face of trust and optimism and her brown arms and now in the moments until he sat upright in bed in a sweat, in the time that it took to have a dream, they were worshipping the goddess Ganga, there to bathe in the sacred water and improve their karma. In the heat of the morning sun they stepped down from the Ghat, wearing only an orange kashaya, into the murk and they spread their arms in front of them, stroking and floating until they reached the moorings of a colourful boat and then they clung on. In the distance smoke from the funeral pyres rose into the blue sky. They turned their heads and the steps were crowded and men spilled into the water edge and the men cupped the water in their hands, lifting it and letting it fall back into the river. Flowers and rose petal and clay dishes carrying little flames of wishes and hopes floated past.
And this morning in Varanasi, long ago in the days when they consumed each other, came to him again in his dream . Two men who were treading water close by, close enough so that Eliot could see that their eyes were deep in their skulls so that they seemed like black holes and the black holes looked at Marion who was so beautiful and because of that, vulnerable and something bad was about to happen he was sure. Marion floated on her back, tranquil, unknowing and they were coming for her, grinnning as they came closer and he shouted out to Marion but she was in her own world. Eliot turned and looked up to the steps of the ghat and shouted please help someone. In the night, in his bedroom, he heard himself shouting out. Please help someone
The cat had curled up beside him on the couch, the warmth of her fur against his boxer shorts and a soft purring began.
Sorry Elvie, don’t get too comfortable. I’m going back to bed to try again.
When
