Tales from the Tower, Volume 2 by Isobelle Carmody Page B
Authors: Isobelle Carmody
Tags: Young Adult Fiction
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her situation. She could not do that. She could not bear a single evening in the empty house. So instead she revved herself up into top gear and drove her new project forward. First she upped the offer on the Bloomsbury premises to a level that she was sure would be accepted. Then she promoted the manager of the first No Sandwiches, who knew the business inside out, to a new position of overall supervisor for the whole chain. Freed from that responsibility, she browbeat estate agents and solicitors to close the Bloomsbury deal and push it through at top speed, engaged a top firm of architects to draw up plans, and bribed a reputable firm of builders with cash incentives to be ready to move in and start work the moment contracts were exchanged. Then she began to head-hunt. She wanted the best chefs and managers and kitchen and waiting staff, and she didnât care where she got them or how much she had to pay them. Inside a fortnight, she had a full complement of staff lined up and waiting for the word to come on board.
In the evenings, no matter how exhausted she was, she put on her face and her party clothes and went out. She went to everything that was worth going to, invited or not. Sometimes she went to two, or even three parties in one night. She used her years of experience to her advantage, knowing which names to drop and precisely when, never initiating a conversation about her project but waiting until she was asked what she was doing. Then she spoke about it casually, and made sure to leave the impression that the new dining club was incredibly exclusive and desirable, and not at all easy to join. And of course, as she had known they would, they signed up in their droves.
{2 0 }
Before the breakout he had been increasingly tempted to believe that he wasnât writing because he wasnât drinking. He had been a fairly heavy drinker since he was in college, and whereas he knew that trying to write poetry tanked up on drink produced disappointing results, a certain blood- alcohol level had constituted his steady state throughout his adult life. It was in its dips that he had generally written his best poems, when financial embarrassment or ill health prevented him from going out to the pub and he was confined to lonely rooms in accommodation that was invariably sub-standard. He remembers those restless, teeth-grinding hours and days. He paced and scribbled, so deep in thought that he reached the thin membrane where conscious and unconscious minds meet, and peered through it, and entered a creative euphoria which is better than anything that alcohol or drugs can manufacture. In those cold, damp rooms he left his body, with all its hungers and discomforts, behind him, and came to a place where his soul was truly at home.
He knows it is an absurd vanity, but he believes that writing poetry is what he was put on this earth to do. Only when he is writing, entering into that deep creative passion, does he feel whole. Nothing else completes him; not the warm and comfortable home he inhabits in Islington, with its expensive hand-printed throws and its beds that masquerade as sofas; not the admiration of others; not the physical satisfactions of good food or good sex. But he can no longer find that perfect state of being within himself. It is the only thing lacking in an otherwise perfect life, but it is essential for him to find it if he is ever going to regain his self-respect.
Which is not the same thing as confidence, not at all. Confidence he has in abundance; in his relationship and in his dealings with the outer world. It is a thing he lacked as a child, throughout his adolescence and well into his adult life. He does not deny that she has been largely responsible for helping him to attain it, and he is grateful to her for that. Confidence is important in life, but it is no substitute for self-respect.
He didnât find his soulâs home in the Dublin bars or in the village pub or in the naggin of
In the evenings, no matter how exhausted she was, she put on her face and her party clothes and went out. She went to everything that was worth going to, invited or not. Sometimes she went to two, or even three parties in one night. She used her years of experience to her advantage, knowing which names to drop and precisely when, never initiating a conversation about her project but waiting until she was asked what she was doing. Then she spoke about it casually, and made sure to leave the impression that the new dining club was incredibly exclusive and desirable, and not at all easy to join. And of course, as she had known they would, they signed up in their droves.
{2 0 }
Before the breakout he had been increasingly tempted to believe that he wasnât writing because he wasnât drinking. He had been a fairly heavy drinker since he was in college, and whereas he knew that trying to write poetry tanked up on drink produced disappointing results, a certain blood- alcohol level had constituted his steady state throughout his adult life. It was in its dips that he had generally written his best poems, when financial embarrassment or ill health prevented him from going out to the pub and he was confined to lonely rooms in accommodation that was invariably sub-standard. He remembers those restless, teeth-grinding hours and days. He paced and scribbled, so deep in thought that he reached the thin membrane where conscious and unconscious minds meet, and peered through it, and entered a creative euphoria which is better than anything that alcohol or drugs can manufacture. In those cold, damp rooms he left his body, with all its hungers and discomforts, behind him, and came to a place where his soul was truly at home.
He knows it is an absurd vanity, but he believes that writing poetry is what he was put on this earth to do. Only when he is writing, entering into that deep creative passion, does he feel whole. Nothing else completes him; not the warm and comfortable home he inhabits in Islington, with its expensive hand-printed throws and its beds that masquerade as sofas; not the admiration of others; not the physical satisfactions of good food or good sex. But he can no longer find that perfect state of being within himself. It is the only thing lacking in an otherwise perfect life, but it is essential for him to find it if he is ever going to regain his self-respect.
Which is not the same thing as confidence, not at all. Confidence he has in abundance; in his relationship and in his dealings with the outer world. It is a thing he lacked as a child, throughout his adolescence and well into his adult life. He does not deny that she has been largely responsible for helping him to attain it, and he is grateful to her for that. Confidence is important in life, but it is no substitute for self-respect.
He didnât find his soulâs home in the Dublin bars or in the village pub or in the naggin of
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