In which Rebecca shares a story she wrote on a creative writing course, and explains a little about the photograph she used as the prompt.
Fishbowl
From her late parents’ front window she gazed across to the house opposite. There at last she would be comfortable, safe from any glances thrown by passers-by at the face of the wall with its single bricked-up eye.
Her parents had brought her up in what had once been the village shop and post office. Double-fronted and nestling comfily on the corner plot in the bend’s elbow, its wide-eyed windows had offered welcome to any passing customer.
And the former shop had remained a focal point for villagers. Many would congregate on the corner, some would lean against the wall next to the postbox, and all would look through the windows and wave. Her parents had responded in kind, and with what must have been the whole population of their new community welcomed into their home within days she’d felt they’d condemned her to a childhood of catastrophic cordiality.
She had hated those windows. Not a single pane had been blinkered with blinds, and whenever darkness came she had longed to close her eyes on outside. Daytime was one thing, the reflections in the glass giving her hopeful reassurance that anyone looking in couldn’t really see her, but the dark had always turned the well-lit front room into a fishbowl. Shoals of evening strollers would ride a slowing current past the curtainless windows and dart their staring eyes into every corner.
‘I wish we’d moved there’, she would sigh, glancing at the house across the road. On its dark wall pale mortar framed each block, and grim gridlines of grey converged on a blank inset square. Under the arc of its lintel eyebrow the bricked-up window was sightless.
Her parents hadn’t concealed their joy to have snagged instant and such insistent attention from their new community. ‘These shop windows are marvellous!’ her father had said. ‘I’m glad we hadn’t measured up for drapes. It’s so nice to invite outside in!’
Relentless rounds of entertaining guests had quickly become the norm, the illuminated lounge giving the passing pavement audience a performance framed in gloss-painted timber. Her parents had been the brightest stars in a perpetual diorama; the leading lights of village sociability.
Now, of course, they’d faded away. She was on her own.
She’d responded to statements of sympathy and was packing up the house, finding the waves from passers-by on the pavement a persistent irritation. Pointless, too, now her parents were gone.
As she swaddled trinkets and glassware in the front room she wondered if there was enough paper to shroud the windows too. No, she could endure the attention for just a little longer. In her new house across the road no one would see her at all.
Notes on Fishbowl
I’d often wondered whether I might one day tackle writing fiction, and my desire to attempt it had led me to enrol on a writing class.
In the session which marked the halfway point of the eleven-week course, The 60-minute writer taught by Terry Freedman, we used photographs as writing prompts.
The photograph of a bricked-up window we referred to in class is reproduced at the top of this post with Terry’s kind permission.
To avoid the window tax imposed by King William II in 1696 and repealed in 1851, many house owners during that period had their window spaces bricked up. The results of their cost-saving efforts can still be seen across the United Kingdom today.
Window tax was a property tax based on the number of windows in a house, and was designed to impose tax relative to the prosperity of the taxpayer, but without the controversy that then surrounded the idea of income tax. It was a significant social, cultural and architectural force in England, Scotland, France and Ireland during the 18th and 19th centuries.
When the window tax was introduced, it consisted of two parts: a flat-rate house tax of two shillings per house, and a variable tax for the number of windows above ten in the house. Properties with between ten and twenty windows paid an extra four shillings, and those above twenty windows paid an extra eight shillings.
In class, Terry’s photograph had prompted me to think about how vulnerable I feel whenever I know people might see me from outside, and Fishbowl was the result.
Thank you so much for reading the results of my first foray into fiction!
Love,
Rebecca
Regular readers of ‘Dear Reader, I’m Lost' will know that I have an ongoing writing relationship with Terry in the form of regular, light-hearted correspondence on Wednesdays. It’s my turn to reply to him next week.
If you’ve enjoyed this post, please let me know by clicking the heart. Thank you.
And thank you for reading! If you enjoy ‘Dear Reader, I’m lost’, please share and subscribe for free.
I have read many stories about women wishing to be seen or recognized. I don't think I have ever read one about a woman wanting to fade into obscurity. Your back story makes it completely plausible. You have created such evocative images here, Rebecca, that really allow the reader to feel the woman's feelings and see what she sees. The "bricked-up eye", the "catastrophic cordiality", the "shoals of evening strollers", the "lintel eyebrow and sightless window", the "insistent attention" and "relentless rounds" of entertaining guests. They lived as the "brightest stars in a perpetual diorama"! All her life she felt exposed (naked?) , poor thing. You have excelled here, my friend. Did you enjoy writing fiction? Will you give us more?
I loved this! And I love writing flash-fiction from picture prompts!
A few years ago I too took some writing classes. Our teacher was born and raised in the UK. I loved his classes and still have all my critiqued writings.
Lately with all that’s going on in real life here in the US as I mentioned before, I’ve not felt much like writing.
However, you’ve once again inspired me! I may have to dig out those older pages.
Thank you, and love how you described that window.
I also learned some tax history.