More Denis

Yes, I know: this is rambling and directionless. But that's how I find novel-writing works for me; I find something, and follow it, and it wanders in a certain direction until it reaches what feels like an end-point. My writing isn't driven by tight plotting (not this time, anyway...), and these digressions and meanders are part of my 'finding the story' - I have a broad framework for the story and the characters, but I find that these parallel streams take on a life of their own, and I have to follow them until I find out where they are going. Even if they go nowhere useful, writing them out is, I think, all a part of finding the 'truth' of the characters and the story, a kind of background research that gives me a sense of where these people are from, and what's important - both about them and about the part they play in the story. So...it's going to be quite an edit. :-)



I put my finger in my mouth, between the bottom lip and my teeth, and then took it out again to see if there was any blood; to see where the blood-taste was coming from – but there didn’t seem to be any source. My lip felt very fat, though. I wondered if pappi could see how fat it was – whether he suspected that I had fallen over.

Pappi had just said, “Would you like to come to work with me?”, and of course I had said ‘yes’. I hadn’t thought about what we would do when we were there, or about how we would fill up the day. At first, it was just like when I went with mummy to the store: I wandered along a couple of paces behind her, trying to look as if I knew where I was going, and trying to seem as if I was on my own. Whenever she stopped to talk to a friend or a storekeeper (which was often), I would try and hide myself behind her coat so that the person she was talking to couldn’t see me – just like I had done on the bus with pappi. Always, though, it seemed that she wanted to introduce me to her friend, even if they’d seen me many times before. She’d half turn and shoo me round in front of her so that her friend could make the usual kind of comments about my age and size, and ask me questions that seemed stupid or which I thought were trying to catch me out and make me give a stupid answer. So I would mumble my stupid, monosyllabic replies and look bashful, stepping from foot to foot and trying to get back round behind mummy again as soon as possible.
Pappi made his slow progress around the [edge/terminus??] of the tram terminus, and I followed him reluctantly, like I followed mummy. Just like on the tram, there was lots of laughing and handshaking and, as I’d feared, I had to be stared at and smiled at by lots of the big men, some of whom wanted to pat me on the head, or pinch my cheeks, or ruffle my hair with their big, meaty hands. Some of them were quite rough, and hurt my scalp, and most of them smelt of tobacco or of last night’s beer.

After half an hour of this, and the men all talking about incomprehensible things, I was bored and a bit annoyed. I wanted to have something to eat, and I wanted to sit down somewhere or play with some toys or just be somewhere where I could be on my own. But pappi shows no sign of stopping his wandering and talking, and I wonder why he brought me here with him. The next time we’re on our own as we move between the different groups of men, I start tugging at his overall pocket and saying, “Pappi? Pappi?”

“Hmm?” He looks round at me, as if he’d forgotten that I was there with him.
“Can I go home now please, pappi?”
“Go home?”
“Mm.”
“Why do you want to go home? We’ve only been here for five minutes. Hm?”
“I’m tired.”
“Tired? Don’t whine, Denis. Come on – you can play on the trams while I talk to the boys.”

He grabs me by the elbow and we head off towards the men standing by the big block of trams in the centre of the terminus.
Once pappi let me get onto one of the silent, still trams, I was happier.