Gus

An imagined location… or a real setting?

I’ve been sharing some writing about a character I have called Gus. I first wrote about him four or five years ago… I’m not sure because I don’t remember actually doing it – I came across  part of a story about a man wandering over the salt marshes, lonely and alone and I couldn’t remember witting it at all, nor what I intended to happen to him or what his story was or might be.  He obviously was quite vivid in my mind because I found another piece I’d written, he was still wandering by the sea, but this time across some water meadows leading down to an estuary. Intrigued by him now, I wrote some more pieces, not filling in his back story, although mentioning an ex-wife, and although he began to get to know a few people in the pub in the village where he lived, the ‘chapters’ – or episodes maybe, were all along the same lines… wandering, watching other people walking their dogs, noticing the wild life, identifying plants and shrubs and trees he walked past…

I have been sharing these pieces, and they are beginning to come together in my mind now, and last week I wrote another episode – the first new piece of writing about Gus for about a year. In this piece, he was out walking, slipped, and slithered down the river bank to become stuck in the mud with an incoming tide. We live in a similar area to Gus, and the estuary mud, and the muddy beach is a real and constant danger – especially to silly holiday makers who don’t read all the huge warning signs. Last weekend we passed a situation – there was an ambulance, a fire engine, the coast guards’ hovercraft, a triage van and the coastguards Land Rover altogether, attending an incident; the firemen were hosing down a small child who was covered in mud from head to toe, and his father was in the ambulance having been in the mud up to his shoulders… they could so easily have lost their lives.

So I have my character (and some collateral characters in the pub) and I am beginning to have a few ideas for a narrative, and I also have my setting – or do I? Most of my books have been set in my imaginary small old-fashioned, seaside town of Easthope. It has a little bay with rocks on either side of a beach, a small river runs into the sea nearby; further along the coast in one direction are pretty little harbours and villages, and in the other direction a large town. The great thing about having an imaginary location is that if you need an extra church, or school, or village you can just invent one! I do take careful notes so my imaginary geography is always consistent. As well as writing about location like this being so flexible, it also means no-one can read it and think I am writing about real people with real lives and real events…

So Gus and location… his location is based on the village where I live. We have the beach, the water meadows, the marshes, the river running into the sea with a very muddy, dangerously muddy estuary, the little boatyard, the rhyne (drainage channel) the pub – above all the pub! But if I set Gus’s story here, will the people in the real pub, our pub start thinking they are the basis for my characters? Might there be some coincidental real life story which is the same as a plot line? Hmm… this is a conundrum I shall have to think about…

 

Here is a link to my e-novels and my recently published paperbacks:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_6?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=lois+elsden&sprefix=lois+e%2Caps%2C168&crid=2VEOMR2MSPDI

 

 

Mud, mud, mud…

Gus is a character who has appeared in several of my stories… so far his loneliness has not been explained, nor his sadness and depression. He has recently moved to a small village by the sea, and most days he goes walking along the beach or across the water-meadows and marshes, or a circuit along the banks of the little rhyne which flows into the river, which in turn goes into the sea.

This was ludicrous… ridiculous to be stuck in the mud… It had happened shockingly quickly. Gus’s evening wander over the water meadows and down beside river was along the same route he always took… although he occasionally reversed it and started at the boat yard and wandered round across the meadows until he hit the path beside the river.

One of the many dogs had come prancing along, over excited and friendly and for some reason Gus had stepped aside to let the creature past and his foot slipped on the sodden grass and his leg, then the rest of him had slid, carrying him still upright down to the mud where he plunged in up to his knees. He had laughed spontaneously with shock, terror, relief and a little hysteria. The suddenness of  the Chaplinesque decent, and its conclusion, trapped and unable to move in the silt and clay of the bank, set him giggling… but he bit it back… these days laughter could turn to tears in an instant.

His heart was pounding and he took a few breaths to compose himself before climbing back up the steep bank… except he couldn’t… he was held fast by the mud. He looked round for something to hold on to pull himself out but there was just the same slippery grass which had sent him down here in the first place.

This was ludicrous! Ridiculous! He was stuck in the mud and could do nothing about it. He had descended sideways so he was facing down stream and trying to lie flat to pull himself free and escape was impossible… if only he had twisted  so he could lie back and try to hitch himself out, or if he’d slipped  face downwards on the sloping bank so he was lying on his front and could drag himself…

“Help!!!” but his voice seemed to travel along the river and not up the bank. The dog’s owner must be around, there were never dogs without people.

“Help!! Help!!! Help!!!!”

All he could hear were the gulls and the rattle of the rigging of the boats in the yard.

He shouted again but there was nothing in reply. He cursed out loud… he was stuck in mud, in the dusk and the tide would be coming in and…

He shouted again… He searched his pocket for his phone… Found it… but there was no signal and somehow as he tried to find the light it spun from his hands and he actually heard it plop into the water below.

It was ironic… he had been so miserable, so utterly miserable, that at times life had seemed worthless, and not that he had considered any drastic solution to end his loneliness and despair, but now it seemed as if fate was intervening… He swore again and shouted again and swore and shouted.

There was a bark… a dog!!! Where there was a dog there was a person!!

“Help! I’m stuck in the mud! Help me!!”

“Hello? Where are you? I can’t see you!” a woman’s voice called back and she was shining a light across the river bank. She was somewhere on the path above and suddenly there was the sound of someone slithering down the slope… but not a someone, the dog…

The over-excited creature was barking and jumping at him, and he caught hold of its collar… but it was too small to pull him out.

He was blinded as a torch or phone flashed over him.

“Don’t come down here – it’s really slippery, it’s really dangerous – call 999!”

“I see you!! Wait there!!” she called… as if he could go anywhere…

He began to shake… the realisation of what had happened overcame him and he could have wept…

“I’m chucking this down to you!”

A lifebuoy came tumbling down the bank and he caught it awkwardly and then slipped it over his head… there were the sounds of more voices above another shout and then a sudden yank.

“Heave!!” shouted a man and was joined by others, and suddenly Gus was hauled out of the mud, with a terrible dragging sensation as if it was a living creature clutching on to him.

In a blur of joy and relief he was dragged up the bank and arrived on the path among a group of people… They had looped the rope round the post of the style, and between them… three of them they had heaved him to freedom.

The mud had claimed his shoes and socks and phone, but he didn’t care…

He was surrounded by the three rescuers who hugged him and cheered him and the woman kissed his cheek and they were all laughing. Someone replaced the lifebuoy and, barefoot but uncaring he walked back with them along the path. He was shaking, with relief and release, and he had his arm round the woman’s shoulder, her arm round his waist, supporting him. There was a muddle of explanation, of stories of similar happenings, of his thanks and gratitude – the whole thing was now a funny.

They reached the car park and the lack of shoes began to impinge… well, he would limp home, have a bath… but no, his new friends would walk with him, make sure he didn’t have any more dangerous adventures… the road led past the rhyne, they couldn’t risk him falling in!

As they reached the pub where he would turn to head home he suddenly couldn’t bear the thought.

“I’d like to buy you fine people a drink!” he exclaimed and the two men cheered.

“Don’t you think you should go home and have a bath and get warm?” the woman asked and with a shock he realised he still had his arm round her shoulder, was still leaning on her as he tottered along.

“He can get warm by the fire! He can steam gently and buy us beer all night long!” it was the younger of the two men, taller and with longer than fashionable blond hair – that much Gus could see in the orangey streetlight.

“That sounds like a plan!” he shouted, suddenly excited, and the dog barked in agreement!

“Pub, pub, pub, pub!” sang the blond man and they crossed the road together.

© Lois Elsden 2017

You can find my e-books here, and her recently published paperbacks ‘So You Want To Write‘ and ‘Radwinter‘:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_2_6?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=lois+elsden&sprefix=lois+e%2Caps%2C141&crid=39GW02WRLWW81

It’s a bit chilly in here…

When we write we always try to convey our stories using not just what is seen, but what is experienced by the other senses, the sounds of the waves or the wind in the trees, the taste of the fog or stream from a volcanic vent, the smell of the air of a new place as you step out of the aeroplane door, the feel of the grasses on your skin as you walk through a meadow or the coat of a creature stroke… All of these add depth to our descriptions, and make the scenes we are trying to depict vivid.

However there are other senses we experience which might be linked to the five, for example the feeling of heat or cold… this is known as thermoception. We are unconsciously aware of it all the time, adjusting the temperature to what is comfortable almost without thinking about it – opening or closing windows, undoing or doing up buttons, putting on or taking off hats, scarves, woolly socks… But do we get our characters to do these things – or do we just describe them as feeling warm or cool – maybe adding details about the weather?

I admit it’s something I’ve not really properly thought about; however, without going to ridiculous extremes, I am going to try to bring this extra sense into my writing… I might try a little exercise where I write something specifically to try this… Recently I have had a character without a story, Gus, going walking on his own; so far there have been maybe half a dozen disconnected scenes, but I am beginning to feel a narrative coming on! As I pursue this I am going to consciously think about  thermoception and see if I can convey what Gus is experiencing as he wanders by the sea – possibly with an on-shore wind or a change in temperature as the tide turns…

 

Gus goes to the pub… again…

My hero without a novel, continues his wanderings by the sea, and begins to make very tentative plans…

The sea was out, far, far out, a mere silver sliver on the horizon beneath the clouds gathering round the setting sun. Gus surveyed it with a gloomy fatalism. He loved the sea, loved being beside the sea, but not this sea, this estuary flow of muddy salty water. He liked no he loved a clear sea, a bright sea, a moving sea, a sea which sang. He thought of the Antrim coast. The infinite variety of sea… blue, grey, black, soft, gentle, fierce angry, irate… he smiled. An irate sea, an amusing thought… but the humour died and he turned to plod across the damp sand.

The sea birds tonight had not settled, they were flying about, hither and thither, but silent apart from the odd squawk. Why did they not settle on the beach as they had the other night? A bee flew past, towards the sea and he called at it to come back, that it was going the wrong way.

He glanced around to see if anyone was near enough to hear his foolishness. The beach was deserted. he turned a full 360 degrees but there was no-one in sight and just as he was thinking how odd this was a couple with three dogs rounded the sea wall and a car moved into his line of vision.

Turning to trudge towards the yacht club he noticed another two couples walking across the sand. He sighed deeply and plodded on. Nothing was very interesting, the sky was a uniform grey, the clouds were just piles of fluff, the light was poor and the distant meadows fuzzy. It was not cold but there was mistiness in the air which was cold.

There were lights on in the yacht club tonight, and it had only been the other day that he had wondered whether anyone ever went there any more. He heard voices as he passed by, people chatting and laughing together.

He moved on and suddenly he was by the kissing gate. Somehow he had walked past the upturned dinghies, across the meadow, up the little bank, along the path by the river and here he was at the kissing gate. With no-one to kiss.

He stopped and looked across at the yachts in the boatyard. Some were on the bank of the river, ready to be launched, some were even moored in the river, and others were propped up in the yard. Would he like a boat? He didn’t think he could cope with all the ropes – sheets as they were properly called, and sails, and knots, and all the rest of the maritime gubbins.

To sit in a rowing boat and skull slowly somewhere, to paddle about in a canoe, to drift along in a put, yes how pleasant that would be… but a yacht… no, not for him.

A canal boat. Maybe he should sell up and buy a canal boat and live on that. It would be small, forcing him to sell or give away a lot of his junk. He would have to be neat, he would have to be tidy. He would live economically on baked beans and Worcestershire sauce. But he had met someone once who had lived on a canal boat. He had said it was cold and noisy…

Well, sometimes he was cold in his house by the rhyne, and quite often it was noisy. Maybe he would look up canal boats on the Internet and see how much they were… sell his house and become a water gypsy as his uncle called boat dwellers. He would have to pay mooring fees… and have to empty the toilet and buy water… but he did that already with rates, and refuse collection, and sewage and water rates… Yes, he would explore the possibilities.

He walked on with a more jaunty stride, knowing that really whatever investigation and research he did he would not do it… to sell his house would be making a decision, and the thought of trying to choose where, and how, and what… impossible.

In the pub, by chance one of the yachties, Jerry stood beside him at the bar and Gus asked him about the costs of a boat in the boatyard. Another Gerry joined in the conversation and the two men began to tell him about people who had lived on boats, it was not allowed apparently but they had some tales to tell, deviating off into other stories as they bought several rounds. Their girlfriends, partners as they were now called, Flip and Brenda joined them and they adjourned to a table and the talk turned to more general things and suddenly it was last orders.

 

More of Gus’s wanderings

I have a character in search of a story, Gus. I knew I had written about him wandering around a beach and by a river which ran into the sea because I came across something I’d forgotten… now I have come across more somethings! gradually an idea of a story is beginning to emerge and I’m getting a picture of Gus – mid to late forties, divorced (painfully) made redundant, living in his late father’s house in a small village by the sea… his life seems empty and aimless…

The sea stood still, or so it seemed, just for an instant and then there was a lazy roll of water and the sound of the wave dragging the sand. The sea looked like melted metal, smooth, limpid, with a slow plasticity. It had a pewter quality, not quite grey. The sun had gone but dusk hung along the horizon waiting for night to shove it over the edge.

Gus tramped along the damp sand. He wondered what the ripples on the surface meant, was it a particular tide? Was it wind? Was it always like this and he hadn’t noticed? A hinged shell lay open, pink and like a tiny pair of lungs. He stopped to look at it. There was a thing shaped like a cigar but with a spongy surface – some piece of detritus washed raw by the action of salt and water or some strange sea creature, sea weed root perhaps.

He strolled on and watched a couple who walked quickly past him with a prancing border collie. They threw a ball for it and it raced after it and had to skid and change direction when it bounced at an acute angle. The dog raced back dropped the ball and the man kicked it so it arced away again. The dog ran after it towards where a gaggle of sea birds stood on the tide line, facing onshore.

There must be a slight wind coming off the sea but nothing detectable to Gus. The couple walked on and Gus stopped to look at the birds. He could hear the sound of an oyster catcher but could not see one. He thought they might be black-headed gulls but wasn’t really sure. He looked further along the shore and three herons stood at the edge of the sea. As he watched them they raised, one after the other and began their ungainly flap across the river mouth to the meadow beyond.

 In the water a fat duck like creature was paddling in circles, too big for a duck maybe… so perhaps a goose of some sort? Gus turned to begin to tramp along the beach and his foot slipped as he reached the muddy part of the beach. Millimetres beneath the surface of sand were banks of grey mud. He tried to walk on but his shoes sank into the squelchy clay slime.

He turned back and could see the line of the mud like a shadow on the sand. He walked back to where he could gain beach and then carried on along the firmer sand. It was churned up where cars had been turning. He went past the yacht club up on stilts. It looked shut up and empty, no sign of life, he had never seen anyone standing on its little veranda or looking out of its windows. He supposed it must be used, he supposed the yachties must come down and socialise there, but they always seemed to be in the pub, and there was one area of the bar which they seemed to claim, with pictures and photographs of themselves.

The land rose slightly towards the dunes held in place by blackthorn and sea buckthorn. This was where the little dinghies were drawn up onto the sand above the tide line. Some of them had been there in the same place for years, never moving, and the sun and salty wind had peeled their paint away some had holes where the elements had vandalised them. Some looked smart and well-kept, but these were in the minority.

Perhaps he should sit here one day and watch and see if anyone ever came and took these little boats and launched them into the sea. This was where the ferry used to operate, across the river, join the beach to the meadows beyond. The ferryman had spent more time in the pub than at his ferry and it had fallen out of use. It would be useful to be able to cross to the other shore, it was a twelve-mile journey to go by road in order to cross the river.

There were a couple of walkways down to the water with notices forbidding use by ‘the public’ Again he had never seen anyone actually using them so why object to a casual visitor walking down the slippery wooden planks to the sea? He walked on to the end of the beach. Should he walk the long way round following the river, or should he cut across the field and join the path nearer the boatyard? He sighed. There was no joy in walking on his own. He dropped down into the field and followed the track worn in the grass up to the path along the bank of the river.

More about Gus

Several years ago I started writing about a man called Gus who lived in a village very like our village here where I live.  Gus lives on his own, and seems not to have a job; he’s lonely and sad and misses his ex-wife, more for her company than because he still has feelings for her. He doesn’t seem to work and spends a lot of his time walking, down by the water meadows, on the beach, round the boatyard, round the village, and he often ends up in the pub. I have no idea what I intended to happen in this story or where it was going or what I had planned to happen.

I shared the first part of the story four years ago – here:

http://wp.me/p2hGAs-1YJ

Today I came across more stories about Gus… he’s still wandering about, lonely and alone but I still have no idea where the story is going! here is the next part:

Trudging across the water meadows and looking down the land was shadowed ad dark. The tufty grasses, the large-leaved plantains, the sea grasses were a dark mass beneath Gus’s feet. When he stopped and looked up, the sky was still light, a strange purple grey with a slight tinge of pink. The last rays of a hidden sun caught the hill and gave it a light outline as if drawn in chalk. Looking west to the sun set, the sea was dark, the sun a brilliant globe of vermilion, the sky lost in a pale wash of indeterminate colour.

 It was somehow thrilling, but Gus was not thrilled. He turned his back on it and continued his tramp across the meadow which now seemed on the dark side of disk. A dog running past him made him jump; he was so lost in thought, had thought for a while that he was the only person still alive in the whole of the universe, that seeing this flash of black and white as the collie ran past him quite made him jump. He stopped and watched as it ran on, nosing among the scrubs of bushes and maritime plants.

He sort of wished it would come back and nose at him so he could pat and pet it, rub its ears have the sort of innocuous conversation one could have with a passing dog. But it sniffed around the suddenly darted off, straight as an arrow. He stood staring after it. Maybe he should get a dog. Maybe he would become so involved in its care and taking it for walks that he would forget about himself, forget about the web of misery which ensnared him and seemed unbreakable.

Last night some dog walkers had greeted him, conversed in cheery tones, he had vaguely and belatedly recognised them as people from the pub. If he’d had a dog maybe they would have stayed chatting…

“Good evening!” He literally jumped, startled by the voice which had arrived from nowhere. He had thought himself alone, but here was a figure striding past him, greeting him cheerfully.

“Good evening!” he called to the figure’s back, a small man or a woman he could not tell. “Lovely evening isn’t it?” He was desperate for converse, desperate to detain the stranger.

“Wonderful, lovely!” it was a woman with a low pleasant voice.

The dog raced back and twined round her legs so she had to stop and Gus was able to catch up. But then he could think of nothing to say.

 “We’ve been lucky with the weather recently, haven’t we?” she asked with a warm, friendly voice. “It’s been beautiful… my neighbour has been hoping for rain but I’m sorry that I just love the sunny days we have been having.”

He had come up beside her but could not make out her face, whether she was old r young, attractive or ordinary. She was bent over the dog pulling something from its fur. He wanted to stop to converse but that would be too creepy, out here in the dusky meadows, the light now dying from the sky.

He strode past her. He clambered over the style and started along the path; there was a man standing in the middle of the track ahead of him, silhouetted against the sky. He was looking down towards Gus and seemed large and threatening, etiolated, extended legs, a short thick spider’s body, a tiny head. He was quite spooky but Gus clumped up the path towards him and the man stood aside for him to pass and responded in a pleasant voice to Gus’s ‘good evening.’

The path dipped down to another style and Gus wanted to look back to see if the man was staring after him, he had a sense of someone watching him, staring at him. He clambered rather awkwardly over the style and looked back along the path but it was empty, no-one at all on the pale smudge of the track. There was no spider-like man, no collie dog, and no slim woman with a low pleasant voice. Gus paused, straddling the style, curious, and for a moment wondering whether he should walk back along the path to see where dog, woman, man were.

He looked up at the sky and the stars were brilliant and he stayed for a while picking out the few constellations that he knew, but even after he climbed down from the style and reached the beach road, there was no sign of the people and creature he had seen. Should he walk back, casually as if he was just doing a walk of a certain distance, to this point and turn back? But no… and he did not know why but he felt uneasy all the same.

He walked along beside the rhyne, it was too dark tonight to see whether there were any ducks or not but he peered over the wall anyway. He walked on and did not meet the dog-walkers of the previous evening.

He crossed the road to the pub and there was a quiz beginning.

“Are you in the quiz?” a man asked. He had a pint pot with biros standing up like soldiers and a load of change in the bottom.

“I’m on my own,” Gus said.

“I say, would you like to join us, we’ve been let down by our team, an elderly lady with a halo of white frizzy hair called him.