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» Book Reviews » Features » Short Stories
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Reading the book there is a sense that Lyndall might have tried to deliberately exclude herself. “Yes it was. My plan was to write biography, to do an experiment to see if I could write about obscure lives and make them as interesting as famous people, because I really was celebrating women’s friendship, and I thought that was something that had never been celebrated as a talent. As I put pen to paper as it were, I immediately felt as if I was there, that I couldn’t exclude myself. But I was somewhat embarrassed by this. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed to tell my story, but it wasn’t part of my plan, and I wanted to keep the focus of the three women who had died, and so I did try to keep my story a bit absent.” When she did come into the story, it was fleeting; you never got to hear her side, to understand her emotions and life. There was a feeling while reading of waiting for Lyndall to appear. “I agree with you I did keep myself out of it, out of a kind of modesty I think. Not that I wanted to, I did tell things that I don’t particularly enjoy talking about. But it wasn’t actually secretive that I kept myself out of it, it was really because I wanted to keep biography in the forefront.” Pondering the ease of writing about others as opposed to oneself, I asked her what she thought about this, and received a fairly logical response when one considers how easy it is to talk about yourself. “I think you have to be careful because it is all too easy to write about oneself. It’s so easy to go on about oneself that I had feelings that there has to be some control of that because I didn’t want to swamp the story of my friend." Romy was the central figure of the book, the protagonist, the girl who tied all the characters together. Lyndall spoke of her friend warmly giving insight to the character of this Fairy Godmother. “What seemed to me what made her so special, and that everybody who met her felt, [was that] it was memorable. She had this very generous wish to bring out what you really wanted to be. She was very intuitive. One of our friends said that she would rush in where angels feared to tread, she would hammer on the door of your soul saying what are you what do you want, and she would help, she would invent you, she had this incredible adventure. She was curiously un-shy. It was as though, possibly I suggest, because she came from an immigrant family. Every culture has it’s own ways, and so Romy didn’t have any inhibitions when she came to Good Hope which was our school. She wasn’t shy as a new girl, she just bounced in and had lots of aplomb and asked each one of us “who are you”. There was a kind of urgency in her and huge vitality and a very strong sense of an interrupted life because she died young. She got to know people terribly fast, almost too fast; you felt “what is your agenda”. But it really was very innocent and very gentle. She got closest to people when she could help them, and that was a great part of her friendship. And what I tried to show in the book is how she was able to generate in me, and in different other people their different talents, or their different wishes. She was almost like a fairy godmother in this little Fairy Story; she was so much better than any therapist. She was in a way a substitute therapist in certain cases for people who were down and depressed, but it came naturally to her. Virginia Woolf [describes in her To the Lighthouse] the Victorian mother [who] makes a dinner party that’s not just food. She creates a wonderful family bond, it is an ephemeral thing, only those people there will remember it. And only those who have actually benefited from Romy’s friendship will remember it.”
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