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I can understand how this man feels, but I also remember that the coxswain turned away some of those who did make it to the lifeboat station. Who’s to say he might not have been one of them?
If you want to experience the full admiration for the courage of those men, you need to watch that BBC film and listen to Russell Smith’s eyewitness account of the Solomon Browne’s rescue attempts. I guarantee it’ll raise the hairs on the back of your neck.
The BBC documentary gives the false impression (without actually saying so) that the moment that transmission broke off was the end of the Solomon Browne. That makes for an emotional moment in the programme, but was not the case, since it was seen afterwards. For what it’s worth, I believe that it suffered another violent impact with the Union Star, an impact that destroyed its radio aerials and quite likely caused other damage. Then, trying to make it back to base, it somehow succumbed to the storm. That may have been because it had suffered disabling damage from its impacts with the coaster. It may have simply been overwhelmed by a huge wave and capsized. What seems certain is that it somehow got onto the rocks.
The Watson type was the almost universal type of lifeboat when I was young. At Whitby, where I was on holiday recently, there is still a retired Watson lifeboat, the Mary Ann Summers, slightly older and smaller than the Solomon Browne, now privately owned but still in RNLI colours. It has had wooden benches bolted to its open deck, and for £3 you can have a half-hour ride out to sea and back. It’s an interesting experience, as I can personally testify.
Jane, you are welcome to read it. I’m in the throes of revising it after laying it aside for three years, so a fresh perspective will be useful.
By the way, you might like to know that Rosalind doesn’t lose the baby. She’s only a month or two into her pregnancy.
Okay, Jane, here is my violent passage. I’ve left in a bit on the front to put it in context. Two words in your ear:
1) Just to explain any weirdness, this is a ghost story.
2) In addition to the violence, contains sex and a little naughty language.Okay, here we go.
Smiling down into his face, she began to pump her hips. Joey came to meet her, adding his rhythm to hers until their flesh was slapping together and they were gasping and crying out in unison. Surrounded by her flying hair, Rosalind was lost to the world, oblivious to everything beyond their striving bodies.
Until, from outside, the cry came.
She knew at once that no animal or bird, nothing in nature, could have uttered that cry: a cold, inhuman wail that yet carried human emotion, a burden of grief and despair that banished all the heat of passion and froze her movements on the instant.
Dumbstruck, blinded by her hair, for the space of a few heartbeats Rosalind knew nothing beyond the crawling of her skin and the cold knot of fear in her belly, the pounding of her heart and the panting of her breath. Just as she was about to toss her hair out of the way, it was pulled with such brutal ferocity that her scalp burned and she cried out with the pain of it. Forced to stare at the ceiling as her head was yanked back, she saw from the periphery of her vision that Joey had sat up.
A voice spoke, Joey’s yet not Joey’s: a growl heavy with menace and simmering with latent violence. ‘Well,’ it said, ‘what are you waiting for, whore?’
His hold on her hair had slackened just enough for her to lower her head and look at him. Still astride his legs, she stared in numb horror at the man to whom she’d just been making love.
‘I can’t… Not now…’ Undone by shock, fear and dismay, she could no more have carried on than she could have flown. Even speaking was an effort.
‘What’s the use of a whore if she won’t fuck? You did it with your fancy man. You’ll do it with me.’
‘I have, I did…’
‘You’ll do it again. Finish what you started. Now.’
‘Please, Joey, no…’
A bellow: ‘Do it, whore!’
His face contorting into an unrecognisable mask of fury. His arm swinging. He’s going to hit me again he is it’s coming can’t dodge he’s got my hair oh God the baby…
The flat of his hand on her bruised left cheek her head jerking around pulling on her scalp lights dancing in her eyes a singing in her ears atrocious pain exploding through her face a scream wrenched from her throat…
Again the back of his hand on her other cheek and again his fist on the side of her head her arms raised trying to shield herself in vain her voice screaming screaming…
Again and again blows on her head her shoulders her ribs her belly…
The baby Christ my baby. ‘Joey, no! The baby, Joey! Joey!’
No use the blows still coming on and on arms clutched to her belly no way of shielding her face no help for it do what you like to me but not that not my baby…
It stopped.
Thrown flat on her back. The monster, lowering onto her. Pinned down by his weight, knowing what was coming, helpless.
Christ, I can see it in his face, between his legs. He’s enjoying this.
Rape, pure and simple, husband or no husband. No other word for it. Grit teeth and endure. Not a sound. Not a scream, not a sob, not a whimper. Don’t give the bastard the satisfaction.
‘Now get out of my bed, whore.’ He cuffed her again, shoving her off the bed to thump onto the floor.
Rosalind lay where he had thrown her, eyes shut, shuddering and gulping. Pain everywhere, filling the world. Through it she heard him pulling on his clothes and thumping down the stairs. A minute or two later, from downstairs, came the faint chink of bottle on glass.
I had a problem like this in my last effort, and it cost me more sweat than anything else in that story. It was all the harder because it was a husband beating up his wife. I really didn’t want to go there and tried everything to skate round it, but the plot demanded that I meet it head-on. In the end I did almost exactly what Jonathan suggests: I went right into the victim’s head, PD5, abandoned grammar, etc. If you think it would be helpful I’ll post the passage when I get back from holiday after the weekend, and you can see if it gives you any ideas.
I’m rather good at that too. Though how would I Know? In concrete terms I haven’t actually had any writing successes.
I see the ‘Latest Topics’ sidebar is still absent. Is there any way of bringing it back? I posted a blog a few days ago to almost total apathy. Of, course it may be that it’s a load of boring drivel, but it was quickly followed by a flurry of posts that pushed it off the front page, and it may simply have slipped below everyone’s radar.
Closed groups is what we used to do on the Word Cloud, and it seemed to work okay. With a communal password-protected area, how would you keep the password secure and at the same time make it accessible to those who want it? With a closed group per WIP, the owner has complete power over who can see it. and it’s easy enough to find if you click on ‘Groups.’
Yes, when I first started on An Argument, I kept thinking ‘Who’s that?’ and ‘What’s going on here?’ I soon got into it, but a straight-through read would avoid those little glitches.
So what’s your last NF book? I’ve lost track. Flying to the Edge?
As the frog said, ‘Read it.’ I’m not that big on historical fiction and it took me a while to get into An Argument of Blood (though it turned out to be worth it), but A Black Matter for the King is a corker and had me gripped from first to last.
Aelfgifa (can’t do the dipthong) is a really compelling character, which is all the more impressive since she’s almost entirely fictional. And I rather like that entirely fictional character, Gallet, too.
A well researched, fascinating insight into the most crucial event in our country’s history. Well done, both of you.
Now I suppose I’ll have to go right back to the beginning and read both books again, back to back.
So would I.
‘We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers… Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls.’
Er, no…
He left out ‘Take the dope, take the dope, take the dope.’ Though i’m not sure what the equivalent would be for writers.
So glad to hear this, Claire. I don’t recall hearing anything from you since you blogged on the Cloud about your first meeting with your agent, and that seems ages ago (though yes, glacial pace is about it). I’ve been wondering what happened, so this is all the more welcome. Congratulations.
I believe Hemingway also gave that tip about stopping in the middle of a scene, Raine, so you’re in good company there.
Though as it happens I am at this moment taking a break (all right, procrastinating) from struggling to get back into the middle of a scene…
Aaah! Hi Jackie, nice to (virtually) see you again. The group died some while back, after carrying on for a year or two with just the three of us: me, Peter and Lins. I haven’t heard from either in yonks.
I’ve written another novel since, a rather dark crime thriller, but maybe it’s time to return to my first love (as it were).
Ooh. Ooh. Maybe I really should. Bet I’ll find a load of things I want to change when I look at it again though. It’s been a while.
Er, maybe I should dust off my other MS then? The one I put aside, after I was told (three or four years ago) I had no hope of getting it published because it was a ghost story?
Thanks for the kind words, Daeds.
I too have always tended to wing it with structure, as I have with so much else. But I’ve got so used to being told that I’ve been clever and thinking ‘But I just bunged it down that way because it felt right,’ that I’ve probably got a bit too confident. Perhaps I’d better look at those podcasts too.
As for the age thing, I’m aware that publishing at my age can happen, but I’m also aware that it ups the odds against me considerably. And take into account that I have no involvement whatsoever with social media, no track record of writing success, and nothing interesting about me personally, and I’m not looking like an attractive prospect no matter how good my writing is. My Harry Bingham’s repeated insistence that all you have to do is write a brilliant book is sounding rather flip to me…
The trouble with ‘sooner or later’ for me is that I’m already (let’s face it) knocking on seventy. For me, ‘later’ probably means not at all.
I’ve had positive MS assessments on two MSs (in the case of the second one I was told it was ‘an incredibly powerful and engaging story that really draws you in,’ which is pretty encouraging), but got absolute apathy from agents with both of them. Although I have the confidence that yes, I can write, I’m left with the feeling ‘What the hell do I have to do to get somewhere?’
Maybe I should try another round of subs, but I find the whole process so soul-destroying.
It’s worth reminding ourselves here of Neil Gaiman’s famous quote:
‘When someone tells you something isn’t working, they are nearly always right. When they tell you how to fix it, they are nearly always wrong.’
Yes, there wasn’t much fantasy being written then, certainly not on the industrial scale we have today.
Obscure though Cabell is to the reading public, he has been quite influential in his genre. He nfluenced later writers of humorous fantasy like Jack Vance and Fritz Leiber, whose stories also feature protagonists who fall some way short of heroic perfection. The challenges to conventional mores that made Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land such a favourite in the sixties counter-culture were, according to Heinlein himself, due to reading Cabell. And when I read Neil Gaiman’s Stardust I found Cabell’s footprints all over it – even though I didn’t know then that Gaiman is a fan, and despite the fact that it is many ways very different from Cabell’s stuff.
Jane, it’s somehow particularly pleasing to hear that you enjoyed the blog even though it hasn’t made you want to read the book.
