"Despite its lovely people and its excellent festival, what Nelson needed was more people in turbans."
Charlotte Grimshaw
New Zealand-born writer Charlotte Grimshaw tours her new book, stalks the Prime Minister and reclaims 'Infidelity'.
Saturday
I flew to the Nelson book festival, taking my husband Paul. We bounced and roared south on a small propeller plane. It got us there; it even had a single, stern air hostess on board, who was wearing earplugs, forbidding all communication. In Nelson we were driven to a vineyard, with stone buildings and monumental iron sculptures and giant-sized wooden doors, and an auditorium where we listened to a Belgian singer, Micheline van Hautem, who sang renditions of Jacques Brel. She was accompanied by a wild haired guitarist, Erwin van Ligten. She was blonde, glamorous, highly dramatic. They were terrific performers.
A Nelson woman said to me, 'I went to Auckland recently, and wanted to ask directions, but I could only see people wearing turbans.' There was a short silence. I said, 'They probably could have helped, you know.' It occurred to me, that despite its lovely people and its excellent festival, what Nelson needed was more people in turbans.
After a session reading from my book Singularity, and a panel with poet Brian Turner, I discussed dreams with writer Elizabeth Knox. One of her most successful ideas came to her when she was in a fever; out of delirium came her novel The Vintner's Luck, which has just been made into a film by director Niki Caro. The film has apparently been savaged by critics. Elizabeth said it was because they'd taken out the gay sex between the angel and the vintner, which meant the point of the story was lost. Quite a difficult story to make a film out of, I would have thought, without the whole thing turning to farce, gay sex or not.
Sunday
Paul is very taken with the singer Micheline, who's staying in the hotel room under ours. He keeps strolling casually past her door. Last night in the car park, after a long session in a Nelson bar, I restrained him from standing outside her window and singing a song.
This morning he is limping. I ask him why; he says he thinks he's developing a club foot. I say, 'You're born with those, they don't develop.' We go out for coffee.
Last night we went to Micheline's second concert, having told various people she was brilliant. But this time she left out Jacques Brel and sang her own songs, which weren't as good. I could tell it was all going to go wrong when she climbed onto a playground-style swing on the stage, then sat on a man's knee and sang a song about chocolate: from the sublime to the distinctly schmaltzy. Afterwards, Paul and I were looking for a cab, and a man told us he owned a local backpackers' lodge, and would give us a lift. He had a guest with him, a German woman backpacker. He drove us to a bar, and the woman and I had a long conversation about the Stasi, while our host stared at us intently. I was beginning to find him slightly odd, and when he went out for a cigarette the backpacker decided to make her escape. He returned and a dark look crossed his face. 'She's gone,' he said, and left in hot pursuit. I insisted the man was sinister; Paul said he thought he was completely normal. If the German goes missing, I will suggest they dig up the floors at the Backpackers'.
Monday
Paul and I flew to Wellington to watch the Prime Minister's literary prizes. We queued in a taxi outside Premier House, the PM's Wellington residence, while a policeman had a furious altercation with the taxi driver ahead. It seemed the cop might drag the driver out and shoot him, and the driver became alarmed, and backed his car into a flowerbed. Inside, I cruised about the ground floor, but policemen blocked my path, and there would be no sneaking upstairs to inspect our leader's digs.
To accompany his Castro-length acceptance speech (allocated time three minutes) one of the award recipients, Dr Ranginui Walker, had assembled a Maori choir, which burst into beautiful song at intervals, sending the well-trained bureaucrats scrambling to join in, as is the culturally correct way. Dr Walker took the opportunity to berate his benefactors for failings in relation to Maori art, and the bureaucrats listened with bowed heads, before crowding forward for the next song. So, Wellington was a model of cultural sensitivity, only marred by some local wretch's comment afterwards: 'The good thing about Wellington is that it's not full of Asians.' At which point I realised what Wellington needs: a larger and more varied population - more Asians.
Tuesday
Paul reports that his club foot is 'up and down.'
I have to write my column for Metro magazine. It's hard to turn out something original for a monthly magazine, since weekly columns deal with current events. I manage to write one that includes the Prime Minister's Awards, turbans, racism, the Nelson book festival, dreams, and finishes with a quote from a poem by Craig Raine that begins, 'I will grant you the world that is taken for granted, the turban in a tangerine.' I also managed to weave in a reference to the Finance Minister's socks, because I'd seen the Finance Minister jogging in Wellington wearing an ancient T shirt, battered shoes and poignant, bulging business socks. (It all makes sense in the column, I think.)
I'm reading the new John Banville novel, The Infinities. The prose is as brilliant as ever, but the characters are ghostlier than those in, say, The Untouchable, my favourite Banville.
Wednesday
The Prime Minister's Auckland mansion is just around the corner from our house. I feel it would be lazy and negligent not to stalk him regularly, and there is the fact that one of the characters in the novel I'm working on is a New Zealand Prime Minister. So I say to Paul, 'Don't forget to drive past his house.' Paul asks, 'What are we looking for?' I say, 'We want to be there in case something happens.' I say, 'You've got to be committed. You can't be a casual stalker - that's an oxymoron.' So far we've seen his wife crossing the courtyard carrying a large pot plant, and the leader himself being interviewed on the pavement outside. This is as interesting as it's got. We did see him browsing in a local suitcase shop, accompanied by two bodyguards. His insistence on permanent bodyguards makes him the butt of jokes here. Perhaps this is a bit unfair. But our last leader, Helen Clark, was made of sterner stuff, and was the type who would pop down to the mall by herself, no doubt on the premise that if someone attacked her, the violence would be low-tech, and everyone else would intervene. This is New Zealand, where taking your bodyguards shopping is regarded as a bit ostentatious.
Thursday
I did a reading for the Women's Bookshop, to a full theatre audience made up entirely of women. The Women's Bookshop used to be a bastion of hard core feminism, and to refuse to sell books by men, but they've relaxed that stern rule now. It was odd to have no men in the audience, but I decided I didn't mind in the end; they were such a receptive and enthusiastic audience. The writers had to sit on stage throughout, and the event began to run over time when a poet read what seemed like an entire volume of poems about her daughter's mental illness. I was descending into madness myself by the time I shot out of there, having sat for hours under the stage lights looking calm and judicious, and not fidgeting.
Friday
I receive word that someone wants to publish a book here with the same title as that of the novel I'm working on. But I've already published a short story with the same name and it's appeared in anthologies. I feel the title is mine. It occurs to me that this same person who wants to steal my title recently reviewed an anthology in which a story of mine appeared, and in the review she called my story 'Infidelity.' But I have never written a story called 'Infidelity' in my life! And there's no such story in the collection! What is this person playing at?
I email my editor saying that the title is mine, and refer darkly to the 'Infidelity' review. My editor replies soothingly, saying I have first choice of the title, and that she hasn't seen this review in which my non-existent story 'Infidelity' is discussed. Perhaps she thinks I'm making it up. I try to find the review, and can't. It exists, I know it. But it isn't online, or anywhere. I begin to think out the plot of a short story, in which a writer steals another's title. The title will not present a problem, of course. It could only be called 'Infidelity.'
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Charlotte Grimshaw's new collection of short stories, Singularity, is published by Jonathan Cape.
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Thursday, 19 November, 2009
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