Last month, we were delighted to feature Vicky Grut’s post on the literary friendship between Beryl Bainbridge and Bernice Rubens. Today, to mark the occasion of Vicky’s debut short story collection, Live Show, Drink Included, we bring you a guest post by Vicky and her own friend Kathy Page, author of the recently published novel Dear Evelyn.
Vicky: We met in 1984. You came to see my degree show at Goldsmiths. I remember the person who introduced us telling my then boyfriend that you were ‘a proper writer’, which suggests I was tinkering with the idea of writing even then, though I was making video documentaries at the time. You published your first book. You learned to drive and moved away to Norwich and the UEA course with Malcolm Bradbury and Rose Tremain. We lost touch. About ten years later I found a copy of Frankie Styne and the Silver Man in a bookshop. I still have it. I wrote to you care of Methuen and discovered that you were living just minutes away from me in south London. By then I had started writing seriously. You invited me to join your writers’ group and soon afterwards I began to get my stories published. But I was quite awe-struck by you and all your achievements – I still am. Eleven books!
Kathy: We write quite differently and I like that. I’m always interested to read what you are working on and delighted that the book is finally coming out. As I soon discovered once you joined the group, you’re a very sensitive reader, and articulate too. Also, you talk with your hands… I’ve always appreciated your very nuanced response to my work in progress, and the way you’ll read something at short notice. Over the years I think we have become more and more attuned to each other’s concerns, aims and voices, which is mainly a very good thing, though I do think that in a way it does perhaps sometimes make it harder to see each other’s work as a stranger will.
Vicky: It was 1993 when we reconnected. Bill and I were living in a one-bedroom flat with our first child. We were desperate to move to a bigger place but everything in our price range was so cramped and ugly. One day Bill came back saying he’d seen a beautiful Edwardian flat in X road. ‘But that’s where Kathy lives!’ I said. There are more than a hundred flats in this road, but the one he’d found turned out to be right next door to yours. We moved in 1994 and we’re still living here. When Becki was born, you and Richard moved to a bigger place. In 2001 you emigrated to Canada.
Kathy: I really enjoyed us being neighbours in the nineties. The living room and kitchen areas of our maisonettes looked in on each other, and early on in that period when I was pretty unhappy I used to glimpse and overhear you and your family and feel inspired by you all getting along so well. I really think it helped me to have the vision and courage to finally ditch my unhappy relationship and find a better one. And then as a result you later got to overhear my moaning and groaning when I was in labour with my daughter.
Vicky: I was so impressed by the way you took charge of your life. You decided to choose happiness. I remember your first-date nerves when you started going out with Richard. Now you have two grown-up children.
Kathy: I was a bit worried when I handed my writing classes over to you. I was exhausted and had been doing too much teaching and I felt that perhaps it was a bit of a poisoned chalice. But I think you are a natural teacher, and it worked out well, and paved the way for us to have the opportunity to teach together later on. And here we are, seventeen years after I left the country, with our books coming out within weeks of each other! I’m very glad that we kept in touch (thank goodness for email) and that we’ve been able to see each other fairly regularly too.
Vicky: I’ve learned so much from our friendship. In the early days it was about the craft of writing itself, but also about publishing. I’ve watched your work go through a creative renaissance since you started working with indie publishers like Biblioasis and And Other Stories. Without them you wouldn’t have published those two wonderful collections of stories, both nominated for the Giller Prize. Your example encouraged me to gather my own short fiction together and to approach Holland Park Press.
Kathy: I like that ours is not just a writing friendship. We help each other through the ups and downs of the writing life and we share our stories and worries about our kids, husbands and work.
Vicky: And we have the long view. We know the road that each of us has travelled and we can check in with one another about what’s important.
Kathy Page’s eighth novel, Dear Evelyn, was published on 6 September 2018 by And Other Stories in the UK and Biblioasis in Canada, and is forthcoming in Germany. You can find out more about her work at http://www.kathypage.info/
Vicky Grut’s first book Live Show, Drink Included: Collected Stories is published by Holland Park Press on 5 October 2018. You can follow her on Twitter @VickyGrut. Her website is: www.vickygrut.com
Edited by Clêr Lewis. Clêr has an MA in creative writing from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is working on her first novel.
Something Rhymed 