When you can’t remember the plot of your own book… by Elizabeth Kay

How embarrassing. I was interviewed for a podcast in the US recently, and it quickly became apparent that my interviewer knew my books better than I did. Admittedly, the last book in the Divide trilogy was written twenty years ago, but nevertheless… I had to re-read all three books, to find out what happened to whom, and why. It was actually rather interesting, because it was like reading something someone else had written. I used to tell my students always to put something lengthy to one side and write something else before they went back and re-read what they’d written, as the time-lapse gave the reader some objectivity. I’m not sure I ever suggested leaving something for twenty years though! I had forgotten on whom I had based some of my characters. Some of the original inspirations had grown up, and become very different people. Others had died. Yet more rang no bells at all, and I had no idea what person inspired them – if anyone. Most people don’t recognise themselves, and it’s often just as well. I had one acquaintance who was a bit of a know-all, and he said how much he liked one of my characters (well, an intelligent insect actually) who was really irritating because he always interrupted people to put them right. He had no idea it was based on him. My favourite example is the one-eye (cyclops) in Back to the Divide.

 The fire had a spit above it, but the only thing hanging from it was a metal cooking pot, which was filled with steaming water. A piece of wood was propped against a rock, with the word “Turpsik” burnt into it…

… He peered into the cave-mouth, and realised he could see a shape moving in the gloom. “Hello?” he called. “Anyone at home?”

“It’s not ready,” came the reply. “Try again tomorrow.”

Felix wondered what exactly wasn’t ready. “I haven’t ordered anything,” he said.

“Not taking any new commissions at the moment,” returned the voice. “Goodbye.”

“Can’t I just talk to you for a minute?”

“Far too busy,” said the voice briskly. “Waterfall’s flooded the office. Lost five days work.”

“I could help you clear up.”

There was a moment of silence. Then the shape became larger and more distinct, and the owner of the voice finally emerged from the cave.

Felix tried not to laugh. He’d met a lot of mythical creatures the previous summer, but he hadn’t encountered one like this. It was taller than a man, but not ridiculously so. Its legs were goaty, like a faun’s, and it only had one eye, situated in the middle of its forehead. However, it was wearing a dress. The dress was a faded coral pink, stretched tightly across an ample bosom that proclaimed the owner female, and there was a lace frill round the hem that had come unstitched in a couple of places. The unnaturally red hair was scraped back in a bun, and there was a pearly pink pin holding it in position.

“You’re a cyclops,” said Felix.

“I’m a poet,” said the cyclops indignantly. “Turpsik. Won the Creative Cursing Competition last year. Surely you’ve heard of me?”

Felix shook his head.

Turpsik, an abbreviation of Terpsichore, the muse of dance, was based on the extraordinary Vera Rich. She used to perform a wonderful and very funny song about a professor’s daughter who is left destitute when her father dies, and decides to earn her living with ‘her gift of dance and song’.

So now I’m a learned kissogram

An intellectual blissogram
A hit and not a missogram
In the groves of academe.
 
Where I woo them with quotation,
And wow them with citation
I am the culmination
Of every scholar’s dream

 And she lists all the different disciplines she can provide: Avionics, hydrostatics, Neucleonics, mathematics… and so on. She used to perform this with a little dance, but being over seventy, overweight, and with no dress sense, the performance was hysterically funny, and intentionally so. Vera didn’t care what she looked like in the slightest. It didn’t matter, she was very highly regarded in Eastern Europe, spoke many languages and was an ace poetry translator. She ran a poetry magazine called Manifold, and she reviewed Back to the Divide in it. The review went as follows:

 …I, for one, would recommend it highly -  a splendid storyline… and some delightful humour, with at least one ‘in-joke’ from the Manifold family. In addition to the many fantasy characters and beasts from the earlier book there are some remarkable newcomers – including a female cyclops poet…

We never once discussed the fact that Turpsik was based on her. And she is the only person who has ever recognised themselves!

Re-reading this and the reference to the creative cursing competition really amused me, as recently I had a winner in one of The Spectator Magazine’s competitions. The topic was to write ‘The Curse of King Thut’, in response to the discovery of the tomb of Thutmose II. My entry went as follows:

You who come to disturb my rest, beware! Do not take even a pebble from my tomb, let alone my intestines from Qebehsenuef’s canopic jar. May you be miserable for eternity, but whilst you live that upstart Jehovah has given me a few ideas. The water in your well will turn to blood, there will be frogs in your bed, lice in your pubic hair, maggots in your crocodile kebabs. Your goats will be infected with something nasty, hailstones will smash your grapes, locusts will devour your millet, and you will be covered with boils the size of particularly large scarabs. After that darkness will envelope the world for three days, and your children will turn pale and weedy. If you steal my shabti figures, which are there to serve me in the afterlife, may your own servants contract rabies, and bite you. Death will follow on swift wings.

I really enjoyed writing that, so maybe I was a sorceror in a previous life…

Me on the right, a long time ago in Egypt!