mns  2005-11-07 21:55   

October 2005.

It was not my favourite month. In the words of the song, ‘the leaves that were green turned to brown' – and that’s a bit how it felt. There were the good things like completing my next book – The Lost Garden of Esme Waters. That’s work that I always enjoy. It’s a bit like putting the final pieces in a difficult jigsaw puzzle and there is a sense of accomplishment that is fulfilling, but also a sense of sadness as the book finally leaves my hands and I say goodbye to a character I have come to know so well, that I fit her skin and she is in me. And so I started the next book…

A few days later, I was walking along Essex Road and turned to go up in the direction of Upper Street when a white van coming slowly down the road towards me pulled up. For one moment the driver’s eyes and mine met and in that instant I knew that something terrible was about to happen. And then I saw the gun…
No, this wasn’t real – this was me looking at the world through the eyes of the main character in my next book. Maybe all authors do this, I don’t know. But what I do is, I start to look at life as though I am someone else. Of course the white van that slowed down took off again, there was no gun, there was just me being someone else. BUT as I turned onto Upper Street there was (and still is) a billboard for the Islington Gazette and it said, ‘Gunman in raid on Essex Road.’
Life imitating art, or art life, I wondered.
Either way, as a result, the unfolding plot of my next book took a different direction.

October was also the month that I was to fly back to Dublin to see one of my old schools for the last time. Pembroke School was finally closing down and I wanted to be there, to walk the stairs once more, to see if it was still painted in a colour of green that I have hated all my life, to know if the statues of St Anthony and the Little King were still adorning the mantelpieces, and if the ancient piano was still in the room known, in fact, as Little King’s. The flights were booked. Lunch was arranged in Dublin, everything was planned. A friend of mine had even arranged to fly back to London on the same plane as me, although I didn’t know that. On the Friday, the day before I was to go, I finally went to the doctor and was told categorically that I couldn’t fly. For some reason, having fought illness all that week, I then caved in. From having walked relatively confidently down to the surgery, I now found I could hardly make the trip home and so I went into my local supermarket to break the journey, and to prop myself up on a trolley even though I could, quite clearly, hardly carry more than one or two items.
And then the following happened – and I still haven’t recovered. I was taking my time in the supermarket using it as a respite from the homeward walk, and postponing climbing the stairs before crawling into bed. In my trolley on that little inward hook I had my handbag hanging, and on top of that a shopping bag which was virtually concealing my bag. AND I had my hand over both. The trolley was otherwise empty. As I reached the freezer counters someone bumped into me, quite hard in fact, and I looked up to see a black woman dressed in very stylish and expensive clothing smiling at me. For a moment I thought she knew me – it was that kind of look, and then I realised that she didn’t because I certainly didn’t know her. I nodded in that way one does, half-apologising for being bumped into! (Is that an Irish thing to do? Or is it just good manners? Or where does it come from?) And then I forgot about her. As I came to the end of the next isle I reached for a jar from a shelf, and for one tiny moment my hand was off the bags. As I turned back I saw the shopping bag was now lying flat in the bottom of my trolley, and my handbag was opened, gaping wide, hanging by one handle from the hook – and the black woman’s hand was in it.
Now, I don’t know whether it was because I was ill, or whether it was because I didn’t believe that someone would rob me, but either way I thought first that maybe she thought it was her trolley and she was putting something in it. And then I thought, no, maybe she was putting something in my bag - but why would she be doing that? And then I thought no no, something is really wrong, but I couldn’t really work out what it was. All these thoughts were happening very fast but I couldn’t assess what was going on.
In the meantime – and this had all taken mere seconds – her eyes and mine met, she slipped her hand back out of my bag and started to walk towards the door. I looked in the bag – and my wallet, which is positively bulky as I’m inclined to fill it with photos and receipts and it’s so stuffed that even I have a problem getting it out my bag, was still there. I couldn’t think what was happening but I decided to follow her, and then she looked back and saw me pushing my trolley in her direction and she started to run. I still didn’t know if she had actually taken anything and all I could do was speed up a bit – with a roaring temperature and no voice so I couldn’t even yell. The security man saw us both and he instinctively knew something was wrong and he moved forwards, but she pushed past him and ran out on to Essex Road (yes, all stories seem to evolve around Essex Road this month).
He didn’t catch her. Nothing was taken – although they had caught the whole incident on CCTV, and there was nothing to be done except that now they will be watching out for her.
This event disturbed me far more than it probably should have done. It was days before I crawled out of bed and days more before I was well enough to go out, but when I did, I kept thinking that she was out there and that if it wasn’t me she was about to rob, it would be some other unsuspecting person.
The whole business left me feeling shocked, and even now, a couple of weeks later, I find I’m uneasy if I’m in a shop. I feel vulnerable and exposed and uncertain of my abilities to care for either my handbag or myself.

And so I missed the closing of my old school, but several friends sent me the photo that subsequently appeared in the Irish Times, and there they were dozens of smiling and laughing faces from the past - some immediately identifiable, others not. But I found myself transported back and suddenly lovely memories emerged of mischief and laughter and feelings of optimism - memories I had forgotten and am glad to have re-emerge. Whatever my personal feelings about the school are, it is a fact that it was unique - the only Catholic lay school for girls at that time; very small with possibly the average class having just ten pupils in it. Despite the lack of facilities and the smallness of the back yard where we are ran wild at breaktime (God, I've suddenly remembered the amount of times I fell on the gravel there and had to have stones picked out of my knees and hands - and oh, the sting of the merchurochrome as it was dabbed on the open cuts!) there was goodwill there and singular opportunities. And seeing the laughing faces of Diana, Denise, Jean, Ann (all the Anns in fact - and all the Mary's), Drusilla, Lucy, Patricia and many others, I found myself smiling.