Pansies (Spires #4)

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

1 . Paragraph begins with: Half an hour later, Alfie was flinging a suitcase…

Alexis: There are few things as beautiful as the ugliness of a place that feels like home.

2. Paragraph begins with: From there, it wasn’t far.

Alexis: I’ve long since felt that a place has truly become home when a stranger asks you for directions and you find yourself saying something like, “Go past where Debenham’s used to be and then turn left by the pub that’s taken over from The Grapes” without recognising how utterly useless that is.

3. Paragraph begins with: “Ah reet.” Fen’s customer folded his arms and glared at him.

Alexis: If you’d like a bit more insight into the development of the Geordie accent and dialect, you could do worse than a YouTube performance of “The Lambton Wyrm,” a folk song of specifically North Eastern origin.

As the name suggests, it’s about a wyrm (dragon) that a minor local lord called Lambton fished up in Weir and then threw in a well. The wyrm grew and grew down there, until it eventually emerged to consume vast quantities of cattle and children, and curl itself up on Penshaw Hill. There’s a folly up there in commemoration of John Lambton (the one who fished up the wyrm in the song) that was actually built in the mid-nineteenth century, but I was always told it was where the wyrm had lived. Anyway, the fictional John Lambton eventually comes back from the Crusades and cuts the wyrm into pieces before it can scoff any more locals, and everyone is very happy about it.

There’s also one of the worst movies that probably exists loosely inspired by this story, The Lair of the White Worm , starring a very young Hugh Grant and an equally young Peter Capaldi.

Anyway, some highlights from the original folk song:

One Sunday morn young Lambton went

A-fishing’ in the Wear;

An’ catched a fish upon he’s heuk,

He thowt leuk’t varry queer.

But whatt’n a kind of fish it was

Young Lambton cuddent tell.

He waddn’t fash te carry’d hyem,

So he hoyed it doon a well.

Chorus:

Whisht! Lads, haad yor gobs,

An Aa’ll tell ye’s aall an aaful story

Whisht! Lads, haad yor gobs,

An’ Aa’ll tell ye ’boot the worm.

What I kind of love about this is that the chorus is the basically the singer having to tell the audience to STFU, which strikes me as on brand for this part of the world. “Haad yor gobs” is basically hold your mouths—i.e., be quiet a minute.

But it’s also just full of regionality that only exists in the North East. I’ll talk about hyem later, but fash basically means he couldn’t be bothered and hoyed is a very specific Geordie word for “throw.” You’ve also got aaful for “awful,” which represents the phonetic differences between the hard a ’s of the north and the softer sounds of the south. Bah, even the sounds doon there are soft.

4 . Paragraph begins with: “You know tulips wilt like motherfuckers?”

Alexis: I added this line to the new edition just to indicate that Alfie hasn’t swanned in like some magical saviour of floristry here. I hope it’s kind of noticeable that Fen pairs the tulips with irises, which are a lot less likely to flop around like moody teenagers the second you get them in a glass (also tulips and irises look gorgeous together).

5. Paragraph begins with: Something darkened Fen’s eyes for a moment…

Alexis: Whether Alfie can or should be forgiven for his previous actions is not exactly a simple question. I don’t think he’s wrong that he’s changed, that he didn’t quite realise the extent of his actions, and that he sincerely wants to apologise/make amends (independent of his desires). But I think part of that journey had to be a true understanding of the impact he’s had, and personally, I feel he gets there here. Though I have tweaked the language in the re-release to emphasise that.

Honestly, I’ve done slightly more tweaking and polishing with Pansies than I have the previous Spires books. One of the difficult things about Alfie’s voice is that he’s intended to be a bit rough around the edges, but the reality is, this was my most ambitious book at the time of writing, and I was also a bit rough around the edges. I hope, having got a bit more experience of this whole writing gig under my belt, I’ve been able to stay true to Alfie’s perspective but offer a bit more emotional clarity on some of the trickier issues of the story.

6 . Paragraph begins with: He needn’t have worried, though.

Alexis: This story makes me gah. It’s not true, exactly. But I used to walk through a graveyard in Oxford on my way to one of my jobs (I mean, as a shortcut I took respectfully, I wasn’t just gothing-out), and I started to notice that there was a grave there, quite an old one, that usually had a single orange gerbera daisy in a holder by the headstone. It always looked so wildly bright amidst the green and grey. Needless to say, I grew curious about who it was for, and then I discovered the grave was for an Air Force captain—beloved son and husband—who died in 1944. I don’t know who was leaving the daisy, maybe a friend, maybe family, maybe even a stranger, but there was just so much time between then and now, and still such loss felt, that it fucking broke my heart. Obviously the story that made its way into Pansies is made up, bar a detail or two, but I’ve never forgotten the daisy. And maybe it, y’know, blooms in these pages too. For all remembered love.

7 . Paragraph begins with: “Oh. Uh. That’s harsh.”

Alexis: I honestly think sadness is the hardest emotion. Rightly or wrongly (probably wrongly), anger feels active and consequently empowering. Sadness is just shit.

8 . Paragraph begins with: He’d felt the same way as a kid…

Alexis: This is another one of those complex ideas that found their way into Pansies . Because, God knows, I under no circumstances support physically punishing kids. But it’s also a reality of some (emphasis very much on some) types of working-class upbringing, and I wanted to represent that fairly here, without it necessarily being a big deal for Alfie.

9 . Paragraph begins with: He hadn’t even been resentful at the time.

Alexis: I do think, however, this is a world view Alfie needs to move beyond. And it’s one he’ll meet the limitations of in this very scene. I deeply understand his need to have things be neat and simple and fixable. But the reality is that life is complicated, and people are complicated, and he has to find ways of coping with that—even embracing it—over this very black-and-white perspective he’s been raised to assume is the default state of the world.

10 . Paragraph begins with: “I…I can’t,” Fen whispered.

Alexis: I hope it’s pretty obvious that this is the right outcome here. Like, Alfie needs to face up to the fact that he can’t just fix the past with a single gesture or display of manly resilience. And Fen, for all he’s incredibly messed up right now, at least recognises that retribution is not actually giving him what he needs.

Obviously, Alfie was young and daft and scared, and didn’t fully understand what he was doing, but he was flatly in the wrong and he can’t change that. In the same way that Fen forgiving or not forgiving Alfie can’t change anything either.

They can only move on, either together or apart.

11 . Paragraph begins with: No answer from Fen.

Alexis: I will just say floristry is murder on the hands.

But I also think it’s sort of reflective of Alfie and Fen’s relationship, and the people they are, that Fen is this somewhat femme-leaning queer type who does manual work, so his hands are rough. While Alfie thinks of himself as a manly man, but he does a city a job and has hands to match.

12 . Paragraph begins with: “It’s fine,” he declared with great authority…

Alexis: Apparently Alfie has learned less by nearly having his head stuck down the toilet than he perhaps should have: he’s still trying to fix things.