Lexington : Anatomy of a Novel Chapters 5, 6 and 7

 

Chapter 5

Ely, England

February 1773

 

JAMES HOLLOWAY PULLED an armful of faggots from the shed behind his family bakery. He estimated they had enough for another week before needing to forage for more in the woods outside Ely.

Too bad it was so time consuming, but broken branches on the ground from winter storms were free. If they bought wood from Jonathan Herrick, it would rob them of some of their profits. When the damned rain stopped for more than a couple of hours, they would go to the woods and restock before they ran out.

No, not they. Him. His older brother William gave James the chores he himself didn’t want to do.

His brother hated leaving the bread baking to James, claiming he never added the right amount of salt or flour. He didn’t knead it long enough. The loaves weren’t quite regular. The oven cooled too quickly. According to William, only he and sometimes his wife Alice could turn out the quality bread that made their bakery successful. It didn’t hurt that theirs was the only bakery in Ely.

From under the shed roof, James stared at the second-floor window that peeked out between the half timbers where he lived over the bakery.

In his imagination he could still hear the screams of his late wife Bess bringing their daughter into the world. The baby had not lived long enough to scream even once.

Rain pelted down. Tiny rivers filled the ruts between the shed and house. The Fens hadn’t flooded this year, but if rain continued it would happen. Again.

James wished he had the courage to throw himself in the River Ouse. He had gone so far as gathering rocks for his pocket to guarantee that he would sink.

With Bess gone, he had little to live for.

People said men die in battle. Women die in childbirth. Three other neighborhood women had not survived the births of their fifth, second and eighth child, respectively in the last year.

He’d felt sad when they died. They had been neighbors since he was a little boy starting his apprenticeship under his parents’ instructions. The women rested forever in the Cathedral burial ground along with his Bess. All had died before her.

He never thought it would happen to her. She had been too strong. Why he thought that his wife would be different from all the other women who died in childbirth, he didn’t know. Had she lived she would have been 22 next month, the same age as he was now.

He often dreamed of Bess’s last moments. He’d been called into the room where she lay on blood-soaked sheets. All she said was, “I’m sorry.”

At least his brother wouldn’t mock him for the tears running down his face. Rain would mingle with them.

He found the cloth that they kept in the shed for days like this and wrapped it around the faggots before dashing across the yard.

In the bakery his brother William paused from scooping foam from the beer before pouring it into a wooden trough where the bread would be mixed. Not only did the beer give their bread a special taste it helped it rise.

“It took you long enough,” William said.

“Can you help me get this bag of flour down?” Alice, William’s wife, pointed to the sack on one of the upper shelves over the mixing trough. She was forever diffusing tension between the brothers.

William was two years older than James. The other three surviving children of the ten his mother had given birth to had been girls. They were married into other local families where they now worked. One was married to the shoemaker. One had become a farmer’s wife and the third had married the baker in Little Thetford, three miles away.

The rest of the morning the two men worked without speaking: mixing flour into beer foam, kneading the dough, letting it rise, punching it down, heating the brick oven with the faggots and then cleaning out the ash. They shaped the dough into round loaves.

James didn’t need to think. He worked automatically as his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had done. Maybe even longer than his great-grandparents. He didn’t know any other life or even if any other life was possible. As a small boy of seven, he, like William before him, had begun to work in the bakery before and after school.

They had gone to the village school to learn to read, write and handle the math necessary to run the bakery. James had loved school: his parents had allowed him to go three years longer than William, who had declared being in the classroom was a waste of time.

After school, James would be sent into the village with the loaves still warm in a twig basket. Most villagers were their customers. Three times a week he went into the countryside where there were no bakeries, and the farmers were far too busy to bake their own bread most of the year.

Today was one of the days he would visit villagers. Considering the weather, he was not looking forward to being drenched to the skin. If he suggested to William that he not go or that William take his place, his brother would have a tantrum and throw things.

James noticed when William did throw things, he was careful not to break anything. 

 

Chapter 6

Ely, England

Feb. 1773

  

“YOU SHOULDN’T DO that,” James took money from the raggedy pouch the old woman handed him.” She had bought his last loaf of bread. “Someone could steal your money.”

“You won’t cheat me, Jamie.” Her unseeing eyes twinkled. “You were always an honest little boy.”

She smiled. He smiled, feeling her warmth. That was about the only warmth that day. The drizzle had stopped, leaving everything damp, including himself.

He looked inside the cottage. It was dark and dank without a fire. “Could I help you rebuild your fire?”

“Oh Jamie, that would be lovely.” The old woman stepped aside, allowing him into the room with its table, two chairs and a bed. The fireplace was large enough for a short person to stand inside. He noticed she had only one log to the right of the blackened hearth.

From the times he had played there as a boy with her late son, he knew wood was stored under the overhang outside of the house. “I’ll get you some more wood.”

As soon as he turned the corner outside the cottage, he stepped in a mud puddle with his left foot. There was a sucking sound as he pulled his foot out. Do a good deed and get paid in bad coin, he thought.

A log, more like a branchless tree, was stored under the overhang. No smaller pieces. He picked up the axe and hacked enough wood for that nights and tomorrow’s fires. I’m a baker, not a caretaker, he thought, but tonight before I fall asleep, I don’t want to think of her cold and unable to cook.

After he had the fire going, he said goodbye.

James knew he should head back to the bakery. Since his brother was always accusing James of being lazy and of taking too long to do anything, he might as well justify the attack.

William would want him to prepare for the next day’s baking. His wife would want to count the coins from the day’s sales. She would have cooked a simple supper. Most of the root vegetables remaining from last year’s harvest would be dried and tasteless. Potatoes might be seasoned with bacon if he were lucky.

Alice did her best. It would be a while before this year’s crops were on his dinner plate. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. The garden behind the bakery needed planting, but there was no point until the rains stopped. It was like this each spring. The inevitability made him wonder if when he was an old man would it be exactly as it was now: get up, make the fire, mix bread, let the bread rise, punch bread, shape bread, bake bread, sell bread, see customers, get supplies, hope that the annual floods would not come as far as the bakery.

Bess created a change. She’d worked in the bakery but laughed at silly things annoying his brother. Sometimes they went to the Noisy Rooster to drink a beer, listen to music and walk home holding hands before making love. He could tell her anything, his hurts, his pleasures.

Instead of going home, he walked toward the River Ouse. His footsteps made a slurping sound when he found it impossible to avoid puddles.

Although the drizzle had stopped, the air felt wet.

He passed the small houses where the eel farmers lived. The cylinder traps, made either of thin strips of wood or rope, were stacked outside the doors.

The river was not wide. In summer, on a rare hot day, he could swim across, not that he did it often. There was too much work producing and selling bread. He was lucky, he supposed, that his brother didn’t like walking through Ely to hawk their wares. It gave him a chance to talk to people and to find out village news. Even when people came into the bakery, William tended to be gruff with them. Alice was good at talking people into buying a bit more. Bess had been even better.

James had not wanted to be a baker. He had not wanted not to be a baker. It was what was. In his family as far back as anyone could remember and beyond his family baked bread. James remembered his gran ruling the process after his grandfather died, although James never knew his grandfather.

Bess wasn’t from a baking family although once they were married, she had learned.

He’d known Bess from when his father bought flour from her family’s mill. She wasn’t like a lot of giggly girls. Instead, she challenged him constantly.

The first time was when they were about eight. His father and her father were loading the sacks of flour into his father’s wagon.

Two apple trees were behind the mill. “I bet I climb up faster than you can!” she’d taunted him.

“You can’t. You’re a girl.”

She did.

“You have the easier tree,” he said.

“Change trees.”

She beat him the second time.

He didn’t quite beat her swimming across the river. That usually ended in a tie. He should have been selling the bread, not leaving it on the ground while he swam. Somehow his father had always found out.

Their marriage was something everyone expected.

Her death came as a shock. Bess had seemed indestructible — only she wasn’t. She had screamed for two days before their daughter came into the world with a cord wrapped around her neck. She didn’t, couldn’t, take a single breath.

If someone had asked James if he’d loved his wife, he probably would have said, “Of course.” She had been part of his life for almost forever. It wasn’t just the sex, which had been one of the best parts of their marriage. Now, nights, in their bed, the same bed he’d slept in as a child, he’d reach for her in his sleep only to wake to find himself alone.

He wanted to tell her how much he missed her, like he had told her everything else. William used to tease him about how much the couple chatted. Alice had said it wouldn’t hurt William to do a little more talking to her.

Customers had expressed their sympathies, saying he’d find someone else. James thought they were probably right even if it seemed unimaginable now.

Watching the water in the dwindling light, James thought once again how easy it would be to put some rocks in his pocket and walk into the river.

There had to be more to life than this. If not, why go on?

 

Chapter 7

Geneva, Switzerland

Argelès-sur-Mer, France

November

 

RANGER JIM AT the Minute Man National Park created a series of videos responding to questions about the period in general and the events around the April 1775 battle in particular. Dressed the way he would had he lived in the time, he responded to my questions as well as others, although I tried not to hog the session.

For each session I arranged myself on my couch, the computer on my lap, Sherlock, my dog is by my side. I take notes.

Over the next few months, I will watch videos and podcasts, not just sponsored by the national park, but by different historians and authors. From their information, I was able to buy books that gave me enough information that on more than one night, I was so saturated with the history of the time and place that I would dream I was living in Boston in 1774.

My fear that I will not learn enough about the period to create an accurate depiction of the era is disappearing, but I must be careful not to get too cocky.

Note: Tomorrow in Chapter 8, we learn more about Daphne and begin to see the cracks in the marriage. In Chapter 9, we are back in Ely and begin to understand why James loved his late wife and why he misses her so.

 

 

 

Free Write - Gray Gloves

 

This week the three writers are in two countries, France and Switzerland, communication over the internet. This does not stop them from their Tuesday mornings 10 minute Free Write, something they consider almost sacred. 

D-L's Prompt

"I can't find my gray gloves," Peter said.

Maeve and the three kids, Emily 9, Johnathan 7 and Nathan 3 were by the door in their hats and coats. Maeve held an apple pie that she'd baked to take to her parents.

She wondered if he were delaying going, because he hated going to her parents.

"Let's have a glove safari," she said to the kids as she put down the pie. They fanned out checking under, over and around.

Nathan found Peter's black gloves.

"No, I want the gray," Peter said.

Maeve picked up the pie. "I'm going. You can come or not later." She'd learned how to circumvent Peter's behavior big time.

She would take Peter's car which was behind hers in the driveway.

On the driver's side seat were the gray gloves.

She settled Emily and Johnathan in the back. Nathan, a squirmer, took longer to be fixed in his car seat. 

As she snapped the seat belt, a piece of birthday paper wrapping caught her eye. A card was attached. She read the message:

Love you, Peter

Hope on your 

next birthday 

we'll be together

forever.

M

Mary drove to her parents. Tomorrow she would call her lawyer.

Julia's Free Write

Ah, it almost felt like Spring. After the gray that seemed to last forever – although that couldn’t have possibly been true as there was only rain a few times with heavy snows in the mountains perhaps three times throughout the whole winter.

They were so happy when it was sunny and unseasonable warm. They would probably regret that as well when it rained all summer as sometimes happened.  Never mind that the weather these past few years had become totally unpredictable.

Still, she who had left California all those years ago because she was tired of seeing the sun everyday was now more than happy to bask in its’ Spring rays.

Yes, she would complain this summer when it got too hot – she hated the heat – for now it was welcome.

Hey, even the weather forecaster had said that meteorological Spring had sprung.

So, although she loved her wall-worn leather winter gloves, exchanging them for gardening gloves would be welcome.

Rick's Free Write

It had been a long drive. Too many trucks. Nasty weather. Deviations. It took hours longer than usual.

After they had arrived home, their second home, and unloaded the luggage, food sacks and meds, Roger basically slumped on the couch in front of the TV. Within minutes he lolled his head back and was asleep. The dog crawled up next to him.

He would eventually change positions from the couch to the bed and slept for about 12 hours total.

His dreams were of 18-wheelers and trying to pass them at 130 kph, highly aware when their giant tires slipped across the line into his lane, hoping the edge of the shoulder was not ragged or potholed.

Shoulda travelled on Sunday, he told himself, even in his sleep. The trucks were restricted on Sunday in Europe. But the weather forecast had been for rain and ice on Sunday so they did the trip two days early.

The 632-kilometers were getting harder. He’d soon have to get a medical to keep his license. If he couldn’t drive, there was always the train.

The dog has never been on a train. They have a carrier for him, which they use as a grocery cart.

Won’t need driving gloves on the train.

 

Lexington-Chapters 3 and 4

 

 

Chapter 3

Boston, Massachusetts

April

  

“I THINK IT’S bloody hypocritical.” Daphne Andrews looked in the closet for her jacket. She’d only lived in the apartment for the 48 hours. Between movers and staff, everything they had brought from London had been put somewhere, location yet to be determined.

They hadn’t been installed at the British Consulate General’s home, where they should be living. A fire, two weeks before they had arrived for the assignment, had made the place inhabitable. Repairs were estimated to take at least three months. If American workmen were like British, Daphne wasn't counting on their time estimate.

The Consulate had scurried around to find this Commonwealth Avenue, four-bedroom flat in a brick building located in the neighborhood Bostonians called Back Bay. In the 1600s it had been underwater or, so she had been told at the briefing for her and her husband.

The flat, like the official residence, had come furnished with everything imaginable, including four pizza cutters. Who needed four pizza cutters?

The flat covered the second floor of the building. Each room was larger than her basement studio in Edinburgh where she’d lived before marrying Gareth two months ago. While waiting for their transfer, she’d moved to London. The little she’d seen of Boston, she thought she’d enjoy their time there.

This apartment was four times larger than Gareth’s London flat in a modern building with square, uninteresting rooms. These rooms had character with high ceilings, moldings and bay windows bathing the rooms in light. A fireplace with a marble mantlepiece might take the chill off the room on a cool April evening. Whoever readied the apartment for them had prepared logs and kindling for a fire. All they needed was a match from the box to the right of the basket containing more logs.

Looking through the floor-to-ceiling windows she saw three- and four-story brick apartment buildings from converted mansions. The trees on the center grass strip dividing the street had not begun to unfurl. Why should they? It was still bloody cold for April.

Boston reminded her a bit of some sections of Edinburgh, which she missed. If Gareth hadn’t been appointed Consulate General after the last one dropped dead of a heart attack, they might still be there waiting for his next overseas assignment, and they would have continued with their commuting relationship rather than marry. Training from London to Edinburgh or vice versa on weekends had been the norm in their nine-month relationship.

He thought he would be assigned to some African country or even the boondocks in the United States. Daphne knew if she married a diplomat she would need to get used to many different places and cultures. Moving periodically to God-knows-where would be the norm in her marriage. Part of her was thrilled at the challenge and adventure; part of her worried she would miss the rich cultural life offered by places like London or Edinburgh. For the first assignment as a couple, she wasn’t worried about finding culture in Massachusetts. Boston had theaters, museums and 43 universities.

Some of her friends thought it was fabulous, adventurous, amazing. Others wondered how she would be able to create a stable family life. So did Daphne.

Nine months ago, she hadn’t even known Gareth. They had met by accident, literally. He had bumped into her on Princes Street, literally knocking her over. He apologized, claiming he’d been looking at the bagpiper, dressed in a kilt and playing “Amazing Grace.” Gareth offered to buy her coffee and a scone.

He’d been in Edinburgh on a government errand. She was drawn to him in a way that she’d never been drawn to any other man.

She had expected that eventually she would find someone, maybe another historian like herself, and end up living near her parents in the same section of Edinburgh where she’d grown up. She wasn’t panicking as she approached 30 that she wasn’t married, engaged or living with someone. It would happen someday … or not. Except it had happened, and here she was in Boston with a challenging new role as the wife of the head of the British Consulate. There would be many events where she would be hostess or required to appear. Today wasn’t one of them.

“You’re going to a ceremony that celebrates our loss of thirteen colonies. What you should say is good riddance.”

Gareth frowned. “I thought you loved history?”

“I do, but I’m not sure I want to see a lot of fake British soldiers get beaten by the rag-tag rebels.” She half smiled. “It might be fun if this year the rebels lost and we Brits won.

Gareth frowned. “Daphne, as my wife, you have to watch your tongue.”

Daphne found her jacket. “Go. I’m going to watch the Boston Marathon.”

 

Chapter 4

Geneva, Switzerland

November

 

 I’VE FOUND MY British soldier. At first, I named him James Hathaway. Then I watched the British television series, Lewis where James Hathaway was a detective. I wanted to keep the name James because it was my father’s. I changed my James’s last name to Holloway.

Matching a character’s name to time and place can be a challenge. I couldn’t have any early American woman named Madison or Mackenzie, for example. I find names in graveyards, telephone books, lists such as those giving favorite names for any given year.

There are also national considerations. Simon might be common in England, but not in America. Hamish definitely has a Scottish flavor. I decided on Gareth for one character because I know a number of Brits about the age of my character with that name.

For this book, the Mayflower passenger list was a help for Boston names in 1774.

I’ve wanted to use my grandmother’s name Florence for a French character. Flow-Rence would be the pronunciation the French way. I don’t yet know the part Florence or Flow-Rence will play. Maybe it will come to me some sleepless night.

Youtube has some great historical documentaries. I watched a series on bread making at different times throughout history including in Medieval and Victorian times. There were other documentaries about bread making with the Romans, Vikings, peasants, as well more scientific ones about the chemistry of bread making.

Watching them made my mouth water for freshly made bread. When we’re in Argelès, we can wander around the corner for bread still warm from the oven. In Geneva there’s an excellent bakery about a five-minute drive from the studio.

I’ve begun to create James Holloway’s life.

Where should he come from? With the pandemic, I can’t visit the UK. One friend suggested Richmond. Then I thought of Ely where I researched Murder in Ely. The members of the historical society helped me with that. I toured Oliver Cromwell’s house and spent hours in the local museum. A known setting is a definite timesaver.

In the case of Ely, I have to be aware 245-plus years can make massive changes in a place. Also, my artist friend Pauline, who still lives there, can verify certain facts if I can’t locate the answers elsewhere.

Some writers have their characters completely worked out. I have a form that I give in writing seminars for aspiring writers to help them develop a character. I’ve used it, but with James, I just write, creating his life as I go. He will reveal himself.

Note: In the next chapter we meet James Holloway in Ely where he is frustrated with his brother

 

 

Confessions

I'm not confessing to murder, fraud, illicit sex or anything like that. Sorry - what I'm confessing is far more boring.

Confession1: For years, I turned the upper corner of a book's page to keep my place. Worse, I even did it to library books.

In my family all books were sacred. My grandfather, who was a grouch except with me, with a new book would open it page by page by running his finger down the inside spine. 

Confession 2: Once when angry with my grandfather, I tore a page from one of his books, tore it in tiny pieces then hid them. I lived in terror that he would find out, but he never did. 

Fast forward several decades. My husband and I were at the Montreux Christmas marché. Montreux is on the lake with Alps in the background. The stands sell a bit of everything including packets of Canadian Poutine gravy mix that Rick loves. Making it in Europe is cheaper than traveling to Montreal.

The back of one the stands looked like a library, filled with diffèrent colored leather books, but they weren't for sale. The vendors made bookmarks, not any bookmarks, but beautiful golden metal ones. Designs included animals, flowers, but the one that caught my eye had a book on a feather.

In the past, when I tried to use paper bookmarks they often fell out or went missing. I would then go back to my corner-folding evil ways. 

However, if I paid 35 Swiss Francs ($45) for this bookmark, I was sure I would take care of it. 

Three years later, I still find a pleasure, when I'm reading in bed and almost asleep and even if I want to read one more chapter, I reach for that bookmark and get a shiver or pleasure for the memories of the marché.

Lexington: Anatomy of a Novel 1&2

Here are the first two chapters of Lexington: Anatomy of a Novel. Chapters will be published daily. The first two chapters are the story behind the story. 

To Jim Hollister and all the Park Rangers who make history come alive.  

Chapter 1

Lexington, Massachusetts

September 2017

 

 THE SEPTEMBER DAY was sweater-wearing cool when we arrived at the Minute Man National Park parking lot in Lexington, Massachusetts. The trees, dressed in red and yellow, held on to most of their leaves. A few had drifted to the ground making tiny patterns of color, reminding me of my childhood autumns.

My husband Rick and I had travelled from Europe where we live part time in Southern France and part time in Geneva, Switzerland.

Despite being senior citizens, we’re relatively new newlyweds. This was our memory tour. He had shown me where he had grown up in upstate New York. It was my turn to show him my childhood Boston and its surrounding area. I wanted him to see the battlefield where the first battle of the American Revolution had been fought.

Bruce Davidson, an artist friend living nearby, joined us. He was a second-generation friend. His father and I had been lunch buddies for years. My love for Bruce only grew that night in Geneva when he called to tell me his dad had died.

At the end of the call, I said, “I’m sorry you lost your dad.” His reply was, “I’m sorry you lost your friend.” His empathy when he was suffering reaffirmed what a kind man he is. Time with Bruce, whether in France or New England, is always a gift.

A tour bus pulled in and spit out a flock of men and woman in our age group. One woman looked at the green grass through the battlefield leading to the Visitor’s Center and said in a strong southern accent, “I’m not walking that. There’s nothing to see.” I wanted to tell her, “This is where men died so you could have your American country,” but I didn’t.

Like other battlefields I’ve visited, including Bull Run and Normandy Beach, Lexington, is peaceful now. The horror of what happened 245 years before has disappeared. To me, the ghosts of those who sacrificed their lives for a cause are still present. There’s everything to see: peace at a price.

Rick, Bruce and I walked toward the battlefield. I’d been there several times. When I lived in the area it was a good place to take visiting friends.

As always, I stopped at the gravestone of two unknown British soldiers. As always it bothered me. I wondered who they were. Why had they joined the British army? Did their families, if they had any in Britain, know they had died? What was their life like in the army? Were they really devoted to their King?

I’d done half-hearted research to find out more about these unknown men thinking maybe I could create a novel about them. It had never passed the thinking stage.

I had learned the general history of the founding of the United States in school from the American point of view. At university, in an English history class with Professor Peter Blewett, a British native, I was given the other side. It was an awakening. However, his two lectures on the subject several decades ago were not enough to create a novel.

Chapter 2

Geneva, Switzerland

September

 

 BACK IN SWITZERLAND, I decided not to put off writing a novel about an unknown British soldier who died in that first battle any longer. He would be fictious out of necessity. The events would be accurate.

Time to start research using blogs, internet, websites, books and podcasts. I would need to reach out to historians to help me create characters and situations within the context of reality.

September always seemed to be more of the start of a new year than January 1st. Probably all those years beginning school, my daughter doing the same in September. When I worked corporate the best time for launching something new was when people were back from summer holidays.

When I first moved to Switzerland, everyone told me how beautiful the autumns were. September arrived and the leaves turned — to yellow not red. Pretty yes, but a letdown in comparison to New England’s vivid reds.

Living in Switzerland is like living in a postcard. When we leave our Geneva studio, we see the Jura mountains. Turn around, the Alps are visible. It’s a five-minute meander to Lac Léman. The lake’s colors can be anything from a light to navy blue to green. If the Bise blows, the high waves churn the water to a surly brown.

Autumn wasn’t totally a new writing start. I was doing a final polish of Day Care Moms, strengthening my verbs, doing a global search for ‘ly’ to eliminate as many adverbs as possible, rearranging paragraphs and checking for continuity. When one spends a year plus on a book, it is possible to have a person that was six feet four in chapter two shrink to five foot nine in chapter 48.

My Day Care Mom characters Ashley, Sally, Brenda, Sally-Marie and Maura were packing their bags and moving out of my brain where they had lived for the past 16 months. They were being replaced by one of the two unknown British soldiers under that gravestone in Lexington. For some reason that I don’t understand, I only wanted to feature one. The idea of creating a plausible life for a British soldier that would be killed at Lexington grew into an obsession.

My knowledge of early American history was rusty. When I was researching Murder in Caleb’s Landing, I had bought The Complete Works of the Mayflower Pilgrims by Caleb Johnson, which included every document from the early colonists. The book is almost three inches thick.

Reviewing it for information for my potential novel revealed two major problems. My novel was to be from the point of view of the British not Americans; the British wanted to suppress the uprising. The second was that the documentation in Johnson’s book stopped long before the Revolution.

I e-mailed Minute Man National Park asking about the British soldiers who had died. Within a day, Ranger Jim Hollister wrote back saying that they didn’t know. He told me that each year the British Consul General based in Boston laid flowers at the gravestone. That so fascinated me, it triggered a second plot for the novel, a modern aspect. Little did I know how Ranger Jim and I would send lots of e-mails back and forth. I would see him in videos that would provide so many details that I wanted to hug him, which between distance and a pandemic was impossible.

He told me about a blog by J.J. Bell, www.boston1775.blogspot.com, with so much information about what Boston was like prior to the start of hostilities I felt as if I were living there. It was then I made a commitment to write the novel not just think about it.

Unlike my other novels, when I had a good idea of the plot before I started, there was still so much I didn’t know. I wanted to be as historically accurate as possible without losing the tension. I joked to my husband I couldn’t have General Gage, Governor of Massachusetts in 1775, communicate with his London superiors via the internet. I could, however, make sure he responded in the novel to the communiques he received via a slow ship.

I needed to create a British soldier.

I am a restless sleeper and often wake around two in the morning and stay awake for a couple of hours. Often my best ideas come at that time. I don’t need a notebook to jot them down. Even if I did, I might have trouble reading my writing.

A woman kept jumping into my head. It was as if she were sitting on my bed saying, “Use me, use me.” She wouldn’t go away. My Third Culture Kid novels combine the past and present, but I wasn’t planning to do this for Lexington. I gave up and invited her in.

I named her Daphne after a British friend whom I’d been e-mailing before going to sleep. Maybe I could play with the Daphne character while I was trying to find my British soldier and doing my research. I wanted to align the character with the past but had no idea how to do it.

I did know she needed to be British. I decided to make her a new arrival to Boston as the wife of the British Consul General. She would be a newlywed.

I tried to contact the British Consulate in Boston. They did not respond to e-mails and their phone system was one with multiple numbers to choose from, and as I worked my way through the menu I was timed out. Good thing my international calls are part of my telecom package. Google images were a limited help.

I decided to write around what I didn’t know, and have the British Consul General in Boston housed temporarily on Commonwealth Avenue because of repairs to the normal house used by the embassy.

To be continued tomorrow.

 

Simplify Simplify

 

Rick wears a red jersey that says "'Simplify, simplify,' Henry David Thoreau." We bought it at Walden Pond while on our Memory Tour, where we showed each other the places we grew up.

It was a perfect autumn day neither too warm or too cool. Some of the leaves were edged in red. Others were at full color and enough had fallen so we heard crunching under our feet.

We seemed to be guarded by the chipmunks following us as we headed to the spot where Thoreau had built his cabin, although the building is long gone. I'd been there several times, but this was Rick's first wander through this wood. 

Walden Pond has been a National Historic Site since 1962, which stopped its 61 acres being covered in apartment buildings and shopping malls. Thoreau's cabin is reconstructed near the street, a simple one-room with a bed, table desk, three chairs and a fireplace.

Thoreau, as much as he wanted to live a simple life, he did cheat a bit and walked into the village to eat with friends. 

One of my favorite Thoreau stories is when he was dying, his sister asked, "Davie, have you made your peace with God?" He replied, "I didn't know we were fighting."

I take Thoreau's message "simplify, simplify" to heart, but not to the same degree. Keeping possessions to the minimum is one way. Why have three of something if you only need two? Or one? No need to dust what you don't own. 

I have no desire for a house requiring upkeep and any number of people to maintain it. Wasted costs, energy and time.

Trying to keep up with the latest (fill in the brand) also takes energy that can be better expended elsewhere.

Maybe I'm lazy. I can live with that.   

My first attempt at simplifying was a studio on the third (European ) fourth (American) floor in a small French village. At one time it was the grenier, attic, and probably filled with hay.

The building was about 400 years old with beams and a new fireplace. One wardrobe held the few clothes I needed and loved. The kitchen area had a mini frigo (fridge). If I missed a dishwasher, my washing machine made clean clothes easy.

Because I could walk to everything I need I could buy fresh fruits, veggies just as I was ready to cook - no storage problems. There's delight of baking bread smells from a local boulangerie or roasting chicken from the marché stand, again within walking distance. The owner only works half a day twice a week selling his chicken, ham, potatoes gratin. 

He is always smiling, probably because he isn't run ragged with working. What his financial situation is, I have no idea. 

I didn't need a car. I didn't have one from 1993 to 2013 because of excellent public train and bus transportation. I could even take a train to anywhere in France and Europe. Thoreau, to my knowledge, walked everywhere.

I could work on my laptop and watch a cat who spent a lot of time on the roof across the street. I have no idea how he got there, but I also saw him on the street.

Adequate cleaning (and I'm neurotically neat) took minutes daily and thorough cleaning maybe an hour a week.

I considered the internet and laptop a necessity. Even if they existed in Thoreau's lifetime, I doubt he would want them. I suspect he wouldn't have wanted a mobile phone either.

My marriage put an end to living in my Nest, although we keep it as a guest room. We moved into a two-bedroom flat around the corner. I now have a dishwasher. I battle to keep possessions to three things:

• We love whatever it is.
• It's useful.
• There's a memory involved.

Although Thoreau was fed by friends, I wouldn't want to give up cooking with all the fresh and seasonal food in walking distance. 

Thoreau probably couldn't afford to eat at the Wayside Inn, still a restaurant in nearby Sudbury. It was founded in 1702. He was born in 1817. When I lived in the area, I ate at the inn many times.

After buying the red jersey, which was useful and a memory. If not beautiful a lovely color, Rick and I ate at the Wayside Inn, making it a great stop on our Memory Tour.