Where I Go When Warwick Won't Cooperate

There are mornings when Warwick will not cooperate.

He sits at the table in my head with his arms folded, and whatever I had planned for him that day, he refuses. The scene I had outlined in detail the night before turns to dust the moment I open the document, and the dialogue I was so pleased with last night now sounds so weird. The man I thought I had finally pinned down looks at me as if I have understood nothing.

Those are the mornings I take Blue out for a walk a little longer than normal.

There is a path near my house in Dorset where the hedgerows have been left to grow into themselves. Hawthorn, blackthorn, the occasional escaped honeysuckle. Blue knows the route by heart now. She goes ahead, then doubles back to check on me, then disappears into the long grass or under the bushes after something only she can hear.

When Warwick is not cooperating

The bird song is what does it. Blackbirds mostly, this time of year. And a wren if I'm lucky.

Margaret Paston would have heard the same blackbird. She would have heard it from a different doorway, in a colder house, with a son in London she could not reach. But the hedgerow is the same hedgerow.

Warwick walked through a meadow exactly like this one, the morning of Barnet, except it was foggy then, and did not know it was the last one. I'm almost sure of it.

The chronicles do not record what he saw or heard. They record only that he died there, on foot, when his men broke around him. But somewhere before that, there was a meadow and there was light and there was probably a bird singing.

Some mornings Warwick sulks (in my head) all the way back, although some other times I have to wait until evening. But more often than not, by the time I am unclipping Blue's lead in the kitchen, the scene I could not write at the desk has started to find its shape. The line of dialogue arrives while the kettle boils. I have to write it on the back of an envelope before I forget or dictate a note on my phone.

Writing doesn't always happens when I sit at my desk. Writing can happen in the field, with the dog, with the bird song, with the man who refused to cooperate quietly working things out in the back of my head while I'm not looking.

Tomorrow he will probably cooperate. Today, he made me walk the dog. I am not even slightly resentful.

If you fancy going deeper, my bi-monthly letter goes out from my writing desk. It is where I tell you what I have been reading, which morally complicated man has been keeping me up at night, and what is coming next. The door is open. You can join Whisper here: https://augusta-gosling-author.kit.com/profile