Back to the future?
Here's the opening of a novel I managed to get around 32,000 words into until I shelved it. The rest is planned out - and I'm thinking of picking it up again...
“I don’t believe in making decisions based on words written on pieces of A4 paper,” Eleanor says, glancing down at the two sheets stapled together and resting on the desk in front of her. “Anyone could have written this. No offence.”
No matter what she may say, the evidence that she has read the CV is indisputable. Here and there his original document is annotated in a somewhat exaggerated cursive script, and in one or two places the odd question mark stands alone in the margin. Unable to read her handwriting upside down, inevitably the question marks are what Theo focusses on, attempting to decipher to which sentence in his relatively slim professional history they might apply. He recognises that in some cases it may be hard to provide plausible clarification.
“Quite,” he says. “You don’t employ a CV do you?”
He wants to strike the right kind of tone in his response, a light blend of wisdom and experience allied with something vaguely conspiratorial, as if doing so will demonstrate he is on her side.
Successful or not, she lets his comment pass.
“Still, if we must…” Accompanied by a clearly insincere smile, she lifts the thin document from the table with her left hand. It is a hand adorned with rings on three of its four fingers — though not the third. Even if doing so tells you very little these days, it is the ring-finger at which men look first, as if doing so is an undeniable part of their genetic make-up, an attribute of the male chromosome.
Theo shifts in his chair. Convention dictates that she will either ask him to walk her through what she has in front of her — an opportunity for him to replay this history verbally, semi-spontaneously — or she will plunge straight in with her questions. He’d once been interviewed by a man who’d spent the entire hour lauding his own background, resulting in Theo leaving the building thinking he knew more about his erstwhile interviewer than he did about himself.
“What does the ‘J’ stand for?”
It is an unexpected beginning. Theo wonders if this might be a mark of the woman. Could he work for someone who went off-script so early in proceedings? He’d been impressed enough to this point. Eleanor was sharply dressed, in her mid-forties, slightly over made-up for his taste, but confident enough in how she looks to know she could pass for younger. Perhaps self-confidence was her defining characteristic.
She flashes a more genuine smile, and Theo can only assume that she has already attempted to guess his middle name. Had he been inclined to be unconventional himself he might have asked her to spin the bottle: “I’ll give you three guesses…”
“Jarrow, believe it or not.” He registers the surprise on her face. Such a reaction is not uncommon. “It was where my parents met.”
“Good job it hadn’t been Welwyn Garden City.” She laughs at her own joke.
As did he, though more from a sense of duty than genuine amusement. He has heard them all before. His own favourites were ‘Gala’, ‘Hawick’, and ‘Royal Leamington Spa’. The first two hinted at a somewhat nomadic Celtic history; the latter — arrived at during a drunken night out with friends — suggesting parents with a wild sense of humour who knew they would end up hating their only son and so wanted to get their revenge in early. ‘Theodore Royal Leamington Spa Baskind’. The name he eventually ended up with has always seemed the lesser of so many other evils.
“Theodore Jarrow,” Eleanor says aloud. “Unusual. Probably unique. Almost refined.”
Even if he has never considered his name refined, her use of the word ‘almost’ unravels the prospect somewhat. Not that he is unduly perturbed by her statement; he has been ‘almost’ lots of things in his life thus far. Theo inclines his head in such a way as to convey the message that the subject has run its course.
“I can see why you’ve settled on ‘Theo J.’.” Eleanor returns her gaze to the CV. “So Theo J., take me back to school.”
Determined to follow her lead, he attempts to relax into his life history. Throughout an only child’s vanilla upbringing he had shown hints of artistic ability, though when prodded and poked at school the skill he possessed proved to be the thinnest of veneers layered upon a merely average boy. Although disappointingly fragile, nevertheless it had proven sufficient disguise to see him accepted onto an Art A-level class, and later — via clearing — onto a combined English and Art History degree.
“Why clearing”, Eleanor demands. “There can be several reasons of course, though few of them favourable.” It sounds mid-way between threat and challenge.
“I aimed too high,” he said, not wanting to be dismissed so easily, and attempting to push himself off from the back foot onto which her question had forced him.
“In what way?”
“I wanted to study English as a single subject and only applied to Russell Group universities.”
“So no ‘insurance choice’ then — which is, I think, what they call it?”
Theo shakes his head, unable to deny the potential ‘black mark’.
“When my results came in it turned out they wouldn’t have been good enough for any of my five choices.”
“And why was that? Not bright enough? Didn’t apply yourself? Bad luck?”
The way she has articulated the latter choice warns Theo not to seek sanctuary there.
“I did poorly in the poetry paper — I never could get to grips with the Romantics. And there was this girl…”
“Ah.” Theo sees a flash of recognition cross Eleanor’s eyes before her smile returns. “Undone by the romantic on two fronts then?”
It is a joke which warrants a smile rather than a laugh.
“I enjoyed the university course as it turned out — not the Romantics though! — and did well enough in the end. Afterwards, I fell into teaching. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life and so taking a PGCE to teach English seemed a way to keep the momentum up.”
Eleanor’s index finger travels slowly down the sheet in front of her, a deliberate action designed to ensure she has Theo’s attention. She taps first one then another of her question marks.
“So teaching wasn’t for you then? I see you had just one year in the profession before leaving.”
“Yes, that’s right.” He juggles some pre-prepared phrases in his head. “You only really know about a job — especially a vocational one like teaching — once you’ve given it a go, don’t you think? While the PGCE year was okay, once into the real thing it didn’t take me long to know that teaching wasn’t for me; not for the long haul. In the staff room you could differentiate between those who were born for it, and those who’d merely settled for it. I was determined not to become one of the latter.”
“Hmmm.” Her pensive hum is somewhat exaggerated as she contemplates his CV once again. “Then you went to work in a museum for, what, six years; and then became an Assistant Manager in a Theatre. Not exactly the same field. Were you still searching for your vocation?”
“Partly, I suppose.” Having successfully crossed the minefield of his year’s teaching, Theo relaxes into honesty. “I discovered that I wanted to work in the arts somewhere. Although I hadn’t been an academic mega-star I enjoyed Art and English, and through my teaching experience found out I wasn’t too shabby in terms of interacting with people. Working at the museum ticked a lot of boxes; in a way it was like continuing my education and being paid for it at the same time.”
“And the theatre?”
“Perhaps a misplaced belief that I needed to get into ‘management’. I’d just turned thirty; I assumed I needed to show some ambition.”
“And?”
“It was going well enough,” Theo tries to strike a tone to suggest that, although he could have carried on doing the job had the theatre not closed, it hadn’t been perfect for him. He is well aware that the post Eleanor has on offer is not a management one, and so doesn’t want to put her off by giving her the notion that he has ideas above his station. And in any event, he has a trump card. “And then Covid hit. We all know what happened to theatres over the last two years or so. Ours capitulated quite quickly.”
“That one I will allow you to claim as bad luck!” Eleanor smiles again, glances back to his CV, then turns it face down in front of her. “Let me tell you what I’m looking for here…”
Thirty-five minutes later he is on the pavement outside the Kingfisher Gallery getting his bearings. It is not a part of town he knows particularly well. He had made sure he visited the Kingfisher in the week running up to his interview — though whether or not this has stood him in good stead he will only find out when Eleanor rings him to deliver her verdict. The gallery is housed in a small unassuming Edwardian square not that far from the railway station but on the wrong side of the tracks from Theo’s perspective. His modest semi is about a mile in the other direction, the theatre between it and the main shopping streets. This is a run-of-the-mill provincial town always striving to punch above its weight but lacking the ‘killer attraction’ which might elevate it above its nearest neighbours. Turning the Kingfisher Gallery into such a venue had been part of Eleanor’s pitch, of trying to sell the job to him once he had finished trying to sell himself to her.
Feeling suddenly parched, Theo acknowledges the need for a coffee, something to accompany him on his walk back across town. Near the theatre his choice of café was plentiful enough, even if the establishments available were merely cookie-cutter instances of national chains. Not that he has anything against Starbuck’s, Nero’s or Costa; at least you know what you are going to get when you place your order. If he were to think further on the same theme, he might make a similar observation about the entire High Street: incarnations of national brands with their all too familiar signage, layout, even smell. He read somewhere that some stores deliberately percolate their premises with their ‘brand perfume’ so that, as soon as you walk through the door, knowing where you are is confirmed by your nose.
Turning a corner, any further rumination on the subject is halted by the sudden appearance of a small bistro-style independent café, ‘The Extra Shot’. Standing back from the road a little, it has made the most of the pavement space available by having three sets of tables and chairs set outside, the whole fenced off by a set of small purple-and-yellow barriers and shaded by a striped awning of the same pattern. Drawn as much by his thirst as the café’s branding, Theo walks between the tables (one of which is occupied by two men, both around his age) and enters. Pausing for a moment inside the door, he sniffs the air. He registers nothing but coffee — which is as good a first impression as it is possible for ‘The Extra Shot’ to make.
Thanks for the feedback! Much appreciated.
Written in present tense. Unusual but seems to work.