The Editor's Wife by Clare Chambers Page A

pay you to sit around all day and write, you know.’
    â€˜I’m already halfway through a novel,’ I said, feeling bound to support my admission with some evidence of industry.
    â€˜Do you hear that, Derek?’ said Mum. ‘Christopher’s writing a novel.’ She turned back to me, a puzzled look on her face. ‘I don’t remember you being any good at English at school.’
    I refused to acknowledge this comment.
    â€˜You won’t have time to be writing when you’ve got a proper job,’ Dad observed, almost wistfully. ‘All those sorts of plans fall by the wayside when you start working.’ He addressed this remark to Mum rather than me. It was meant to reassure her, and me I suppose, that all would be well without her nagging. Time and natural progress would see me safely and comfortably aboard the treadmill. No need for any hectoring.
    Mum bundled the suit back into its plastic bag, muttering about having the trousers taken up for Gerald.
    Dad’s intention to pacify me had the reverse effect, and I left university the next day without completing my degree.
    All the way back on the train, I’d been considering the implications of his remark about ‘plans falling by the wayside’. It had such menacingly biblical overtones of loss and waste, and precious seeds coming to nothing. I could see the truth of what he said. If I became an accountant, or a banker, I would be busy, industrious, keen to impress. I would be in competition with other eager graduates and all my energy and creativity would be siphoned out of me in the cause of advancing my career. Once I had a salary, of course, I would quickly become used to it, and my tastesand expectations would inflate accordingly, until that monthly income would only just cover the expenses of living, and there would be no escape.
    I didn’t go to see my tutor. He was quite a persuasive man and there was every chance he would succeed in talking me round, so I sent him a cowardly note instead.
    I am leaving for personal and health reasons,
I wrote – a phrase which struck me then as rather clumsy for an aspiring prose stylist. Then, since my rent was paid until the end of term, I hunkered down in my room like a fugitive, and waited for the rest of my life to begin.

12
    OVER THE NEXT two years I wrote six opening chapters of six different novels.
Ask Your Mother to Pass the Salt
had come to a standstill after I made the mistake of showing it to a girl I was trying to impress. She had hung onto it for three weeks and when I finally pressed her for a verdict, said that it was nice, but a bit bleak, and then admitted she hadn’t finished it.
    During this period I moved back to London, to a rented room in Brixton, and got a job as a fish-delivery man, thinking that manual work would leave my mind free to soar. I had to drive an antiquated van full of crates of fish packed in ice, from a cold store in Bermondsey to restaurants all over the West End. There was so much play in the steering wheel it was almost impossible to hold a straight course. Clipping parked cars, dodging trafficwardens and carrying crates down to steaming basement kitchens in Soho, where half a dozen Chinese boys would be gutting sharks, or flaying vegetables, all in the same tight space, while cockroaches scurried over the floor: none of this turned out to be conducive to creative flights. I was so worn out in the evenings that I seldom picked up a pen. By the time I’d had a bath to scrub away the smell, a couple of beers to chase away depression, and made myself a frugal supper, I was too tired and fuddled to write.
    There was one positive development from this period: an improvement in relations with Mum and Dad, who had taken my decision to drop out as a personal affront. It was an unusual situation, and a reversal of the normal family dynamics, since Gerald was established in a steady job, processing windscreen claims for an