Video of a Novel: Revision 1c
Here is the revised first chapter of the book I'm currently working on...
Well, here we are. I guess we never know what a week can bring, and this one brought a fair amount of sadness and uncertainty for us and those we love, which I’m sure I’ll write more about in the coming weeks. But for now, I want to share this with you:
if you somehow missed it, I’m now in the revision process of my novel and am sharing this process with anyone who cares to see it. You can find the rough draft of chapter one HERE, a video and list outlining my revision strategy HERE, and the revised first chapter at the bottom of this email.
This story that I’m writing is actually based on one of my favorite characters from one of my favorite books of all time…so if you read it and have any guesses, let me know in the comments below!
If you’d like to continue following along on my revision journey, or if you’d simply like to keep reading each new chapter I submit every Friday, you’ll need to become a paying subscriber ($7 / month) by clicking the subscribe button below.
Alan sat on the front porch of his ramshackle cottage, a steaming mug of black coffee in his weathered hands. Small spiderweb cracks spread under the glaze, and there was a tooth-sized chip in the lip opposite the side he drank from. His teak rocking chair had once been well-oiled, a cinnamon brown, but in recent years it had faded to a granite gray. It creaked as he rocked.
Alan braced his elbows on the arms of the old chair and held the mug up in front of his face, so that the rising steam clouded his bushy beard and gray-blue eyes, much like the mist that rose over the morning fields in front of him. His favorite smell. His favorite view. The valley stretched out under a swift sunrise, the still fields lined with groves of trees and the neighbors’ distant bright white horse fences.
Behind him, on the opposite side of his cottage, the entire estate stretched up the hillside: first, the barns and sheds, crumbling and fading in a beautiful and orderly fashion; next, the immense mapped out gardens with their paths, hedgerows, fountains, and the labyrinth he had walked a thousand times; beyond that, towards the top of the hill, Lion’s Head, the manor house, all stone and ivy, glinting glass and iron mullions; last of all, cresting the hill above Lion’s Head, the wild forest, stretching on for miles.
When Alan, only a teenager, had first moved into the cottage, he had wondered why the designer had built the front porch facing away from the manor, but he soon recognized their wisdom: how nice it was at the end of a long day to sit on the porch and stare out over the valley, facing away from his daily concerns.
For there were many concerns on the mind of a gardener such as Alan: the lambs and ewes, the trimming and replanting, the cleaning and repairing. There was minor work to be done on the older cars, ordering and reordering of the barns and garages, and clearing the fallen trees that he eventually split into firewood. There was always touch-up paint needed on the doors and frames, filling in potholes on the long lane, and repairing the fences that kept the livestock in. There was the maintenance of the walking paths through the woods, the elimination of pests, and restoring the old stone wall that lined the far north of the property, deep in the woods.
He had never, in all his years there, unearthed the end of his to-do list, a list that would never expire, at least not until he did. But on that morning, as the western sky took on a light blue and the sun threatened to rise above the tree-lined lane behind his cottage, there was only one thought at the forefront of Alan’s mind.
This day has finally arrived.
That particular morning, June 18th, 2015, had always been arriving. Some would argue the long and meandering chain of events that led to that moment, with Alan drinking his steaming mug of coffee on the front porch of his small cottage, had begun when the Old Woman of the manor had been born on the other side of the Atlantic, back in 1928, before the war. Others who knew the situation would say, no, it had all truly sprung to life in 1940, when she was shipped off to the countryside, or perhaps in 1949, when she lost her family. Or perhaps in 1955, when she married Charles. Or thirty-five years later, in 1990, when her daughter Lucy died giving birth to the Old Woman’s granddaughter Jaida.
What makes up a beginning?
He took a deep breath and stood, his old muscles and bones creaking and popping, and he walked back through the open door, into the kitchen, where he deliberately washed out his mug and placed it upside down in the drying rack. He took another moment to stare westward through the kitchen window, out over the valley, and while he could not see the rising sun on the other side of the house, he knew it was there by the way the grass in the fields slowly changed shades, from purple to lilac to gray to green. The far grove of trees caught the light, and the clouds took on a pinkish hue.
Those were thunderclouds, off in the distance. Towering, like a distant army. There would be no beautiful sunset. A storm was coming, and by the looks of it would arrive later that morning.
Alan walked back outside, around the house, and down the stone lane, the morning growing warmer, sweat gathering under his buttoned-down work shirt. He had never worn a t-shirt a day in his life, not on the job, not even on scorching August days when the shirt clung to his shoulder blades and stuck to the flesh at his sides. And never shorts—always tan work pants that reached down to the ankles of his hiking boots, trousers that could shed thorns or poison ivy or burrs, discouraging even ticks and wasps.
The hedgerows lining that section of the drive rose high on either side of him, higher than a man could see over, but just beyond them to the left, up the hill a bit, he could hear the lambs bleating and playing and stumbling. Beyond the hedgerow, he slipped into the dark sheep barn and stood there for a time, his hands on the smooth top of the gate, looking at the sheep as they began eating, their jaws rotating, lambs butting their heads up under their mothers’ bellies, pumping their heads, short tails spinning at light speed.
The morning eased further into light. Nearing 6 a.m., he left the barn and continued on further down the lane to where two cottages sat side by side, small houses that had not been occupied by renters in at least nine years, since Charles had died. The Old Woman’s husband. He had always seen to things like that, or, more likely, put other men in charge of seeing to those things—renting and charging and collecting. The Old Woman had no interest in such things, and so after Charles was gone, she stopped renting out the cottages, perhaps even forgetting the two small buildings existed. But Alan maintained the old places of the estate, including #1 and #2 Lion’s Head.
Where the barns ended and the cottages began there was a small entry, barely wide enough for a car to drive through, and it led into a courtyard surrounded by more barns, mostly for storage. Alan entered the courtyard, simply making his regular morning rounds, when he heard something that stopped him in place. It was a sound. Not a normal sound at that time of the morning.
It was the sound of a car coming down the stone lane towards the cottages.
Alan slipped quietly into the darkness of one of the shed doors, and he waited. A white Mercedes rolled into the courtyard and stopped. A beautiful young woman stood up out of the sleek car and stretched, taking some minutes to look around, but not closely enough to notice the old man standing in the dark doorway.
Miss Jaida, Alan whispered, shaking his head. This was unexpected.
She was glossy and bronzed, her dark hair shining, and she removed her oversized sunglasses and took in the scene. Alan couldn’t remember her being at Lion’s Head since her falling out with the Old Woman. Her grandmother. And when was the last time she’d been there at the bottom of the hill, among the barns, so close to the animals and the cottages? She had come down often, when she was a child on adventures with grass stains on her knees and leaves tangled in her hair. But as a teen, a girl growing up, finding her way, she had abandoned the quiet edges of the estate.
Jaida popped the trunk and stared inside. Alan could see the red suitcase shining against the black interior, but she decided against taking it out, closed the trunk, trying to do so covertly. She looked around again, this time with the air of someone who was somewhere they were not supposed to be. Or at least not expected to be.
“Jaida,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t expecting you today.”
He had tried to enter into her morning gently, but she still spun around and let out a muffled scream.
“Alan!” she said, exasperated yet with a deep fondness. Her voice reminded him of so many firsts: giving her a lamb to hold; showing her the robin’s nest in the nook above his front door; sitting up in the tree branches and watching a doe and fawn move silently below them.
“Jaida,” he said her name again. “Why are you here?”
She looked confused. “Why am I here?”
He sighed. “I guess you heard?”
She shrugged. “Grandfather may be dead, but his network of spies is alive and well.” She laughed.
“Does everyone know?”
She waved her hand at Alan, as if she could dismiss his concerns so easily. “Only those who matter.”
The two of them stood there in the early morning. The smell of the animals, the sound of birds, the light gathering around them and gently tucking the shadows away. Finally she spoke again, this time timid, unlike herself, almost shy.
“Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“She’s…dying?”
Alan cleared his throat and looked down at the cobblestone, kicking absently. “She’s not well.”
“How long…” She didn’t seem able to finish the sentence.
“Any day.” Alan looked up discreetly, wondering how she would take it. She made a small sound, like a hiccup. It could have been a sob or a tiny laugh.
“I heard it was bad. That’s why I came.”
“Because it’s bad?”
“Because…I still have questions. It’s been a long time.”
“When was it? The last time you were here?” He tried not to sound vindictive or judgmental, but there really was no other way of asking.
Her mouth flattened. “Twelve years. Or so.”
“We’ve missed you,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets, his eyes finding hers. Her face softened.
“I missed you, Alan. And grandmother. I really have.”
“Why didn’t you come back sooner?”
She paused. “You know how we left it. She said horrible things, Alan.”
“And you?”
She sighed. “Yes. I said things I regret.”
The sound of lambs bleating mingled with another gust of wind in the trees.
“Should I walk you up to the house? It’s early. She’s probably still asleep.”
Jaida paused. “That’s okay. I’d like to wander around a bit.”
Alan nodded, but made no move to go.
“Do you think she’ll be happy to see me?”
“Of course,” he said, unconvincingly. “Of course she will. Won’t want you to know it, though.”
She smiled, a smile that turned into a laugh, and it was that laugh that opened him up. Maybe it was good she had come back in time. Who could tell? Maybe her being there would help bring everything back around to how it had always been meant to be.
Still. He’d need to keep an eye on her.
“Do you remember all those stories she used to tell me, Alan? The ones about her childhood?”
Here question caught even him off guard. He nodded.
“I believed them for a long time. I believed they were real.” Jaida’s voice trailed off. A breeze blew through the courtyard, and the tree branches around them swished together, and the hedgerow rustled.
“Yes?” Alan asked. Where was she going with this? In her eyes he could see the little girl who used to run Lion’s Head, back when there were more people on staff, when there were parties. She would sneak from her room, still in her purple pajamas, and Alan would find her and take her to the kitchen for a midnight snack. And how many times had he stumbled on the Old Woman telling Jaida a story in the gardens, the little girl’s eyes alive with whimsy and the longing for fantastical things?
She put her sunglasses back on. “Well, we all grow up, don’t we.” Her voice had a hard edge to it, and Alan wondered where it had come from. He wished she hadn’t come home. She shouldn’t be there. He knew this, in that moment.
“I can walk you up, if you like,” he offered again, but she shook her head, a series of quick jerks.
“I’m okay. I’d like to wander.”
Jaida walked up to Alan, paused, and for a moment he wondered if she was going to reach for his hand or lean in to hug him, but then she shuffled her feet awkwardly and kept walking, left her car in the courtyard and headed in the direction of Alan’s cottage. But beyond the barns, before she got to his place at the very end, she turned right and went up the hill towards Lion’s Head. He followed to the corner of the barn and watched her move in and out of view, behind hedges and along pathways, stopping a few times to take in the flowers. Maybe she had changed. Maybe she noticed things now, things outside of herself.
He watched her all the way to the manor, all those hundreds of feet up the hill until she was a tiny figure against the great gray stone of the house and the dark backdrop of the forest above it. He could just about feel her breathlessness, both at the long uphill walk and also at finding herself at the base of that three-story, stone manor, suddenly so small. Or maybe it was in the proximity she found herself to the Old Woman. That could also leave one feeling breathless and uncertain.
He sighed and went back to his cottage, stopping at the corner and drawing a small, narrow pruner from his pocket. He squatted down beside a tiny rose bush, a solitary plant growing alone in an unfinished bed that lined the side of his house. There were thirty-seven rose bushes in the gardens on the hillside, the official Lion’s Head gardens, and when they were all in bloom, especially after Charles died, the Old Woman would stand at the back patio doors and take them in.
But of all the rose bushes on Lion’s Head, it was this lonesome plant bearing one unopened rose bud that captured Alan’s attention, his devotion. He whispered the Old Woman’s name to himself, almost like a prayer, then reached forward and clipped off a bit of dead, brown stem rising close to the ground. With his calloused index finger, he gently felt one of the thorns.
“Ubi amor, ibi dolor,” he whispered to himself. Where there is love, there is pain.