Written in Stratford(CPlatt) John Arden needed a break. Just needed to clear his head. When his publishers called him down to Warwickshire to discuss his second novel he decided to spend a couple of days in Stratford upon Avon before heading back to Manchester. The meeting hadn’t gone as well as he’d hoped. Some upstart ten years younger than him asking stupid questions, like what direction was the novel taking. How should he know? He was only writing what popped into his head. Ask him when it’s finished. The young man had nodded at John’s vague replies and said patronisingly that it sounds great.
As he drove towards Stratford he tried to put the meeting and all the bullshit out of his head. He had to forget the publishers and the marketing of his next novel. He just had to write the bloody thing. He pulled into the car park of a hotel chain on the outskirts of town. The television advert for the hotel chain came to him. A bloated comedian from the Nineteen Eighties promising a perfect night. John smiled. His idea of a perfect night would be a few beers, a curry and then go to bed with that brunette from Emmerdale. Somehow he did not think the hotel would provide all that.
The woman behind the reception desk smiled as he entered. He asked for a room for two nights. The woman smiled and said she’d check availability. Surely, he thought, you would know if you had a room free? A second later she said she could fit him in. As he filled in his details she asked what brought him to Stratford upon Avon.
‘I had a meeting in the area and thought I’d make a stop here on my way home.’
‘And why not? What is it you do for a living?’
‘I’m a writer. I’m just working on my second novel.’
‘Oh lovely. Well I’ll put you in room seventeen. They say the desk in that room once belonged to Shakespeare himself.’
‘Really? How interesting.’
John tried to hide the sarcasm from his voice. Didn’t everyone in the town have some fabricated claim on the Bard? Even from the drive in he could see Shakespeare this, Othello that, Hamlet the other. If you believed all you heard the Bard had dined in every restaurant, been a regular in every public house. Don’t tell me, he thought, Shakespeare also bought a mobile phone from the Car Phone Warehouse store on Stratford high street.
The room was like every other room in every other hotel in the chain. He could have been anywhere. He unpacked his belongings. He spread the notes and plans and what he’d written so far of his second novel out over the writing desk. He always found that until a novel or story was finished it was comprised of scraps of paper, scribbled notes and half finished sides of A4 ruled paper. He knew what everything was and how it related to the overall story. It all just had to be put into some kind of order. He knew what everything was and what it all meant. There was some order to the chaos.
He scribbled down a few pages. He was really struggling on his second book. The first novel had flown easily from his fingers onto the page. But this second work just didn’t seem to be flowing. He scratched his head. He stared at the reams of paper scattered all over the desk. He had his main characters, knew roughly where he wanted the story to go but it was just not flowing. The work had no umph. He spent the next couple of hours trying to get his novel on the right track. Then, swearing at papers surrounding him, he tossed his pen at the desk.
Around five o’clock that afternoon he left the papers where they were strewn and threw on his coat. He headed out into the town. He turned onto Henley Street. Despite shops selling all kinds of Shakespeare tat the pedestrianized street did have an old-world feel to it. He could imagine men on horseback clomping up and down the thoroughfare. Dozens of tourists clicking away on expensive cameras surrounded William Shakespeare’s birthplace. John nodded to himself. As a writer he had to visit the place. The Bard was arguably the greatest writer that ever lived. Who knows, maybe some of his magic would rub off on him.
He gasped as he entered the low beamed Tudor house. It was like stepping back in time. Light spilled in through the lead lined windows catching the dust specks in the air. There was a hush about the place that he only usually found in churches. He could almost feel the great writer’s presence. A man in period costume approached. He welcomed him to Shakespeare’s birthplace and explained about life back in Tudor times. John made his way through the small doorframe into the next room. He felt so inspired to be in such a place. He went up the creaking narrow staircase. He emerged in a large room. A man in Tudor style clothing greeted him. John smiled. The guy was clearly supposed to be William Shakespeare himself. He looked like the portraits he’d seen of Shakespeare. The likeness was uncanny. He went right upto John. He looked him in the eye.
‘Art thou not a man of words thyself?’
‘I’m a writer, yes.’
‘This above all else, to thine ownself be true.’
John was about to ask how he knew he was a writer when the man stepped towards him. He stepped right through him. John was startled. He looked around. The man had vanished. He had passed right through John and disappeared into thin air. One minute the man had been standing in front of him, the next he’d passed through and was gone. John was alone. He heard voices and movement from other tourists throughout the house. There was no sign of the Shakespeare look-a-like. How did they do that? How did they make a man just vanish?
As he went through to the gift shop he told a female member of staff that he was impressed. She thanked him. He said he had no idea how they made the man vanish. The woman looked puzzled but smiled politely.
Resisting the urge to buy any of the merchandise he headed back outside. He strolled around the streets of the town. He walked slowly, leisurely, taking it all in. The whole town felt so old and traditional. Despite the McDonalds and chain coffee shops the place retained something that was quintessentially olde English.
Despite the biting wind there were boats and barges ferrying tourists and holiday makers up and down the river. It was so picturesque, the Royal Shakespeare Company theatre on the riverbank, the boats, the people strolling by. He congratulated himself of deciding to stop off in this wonderful place. And he may even be motivated to finish his novel.
At the moment he thought of his novel he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see who had touched him. There was nobody behind him. The nearest person was over ten feet away and had their back to him. How strange.
A pub on the corner of the street caught his eye. He nodded to himself. Definitely time for a pint. The Encore was facing the RSC theatre and was one of those pubs that were newly decorated to look old fashioned. The place was packed. He pushed through the punters to the bar. The clientele was a mix of people. There were tourists in their waterproof coats, there were theatre goers in all their finery. He waited to be served at the bar. He noticed a chalkboard behind the bar. It was the kind of board that usually announced the specials on the menu. The board was blank. As he watched letters began to appear one the chalkboard. The letters appeared one by one. John, thou canst not be false. John gasped. He felt ice cold. His heart pounded. The words disappeared as though wiped away by invisible hand. He stared in shock as more letters appeared. Words, words, words. Underneath this two more letters were scrawled. WS.
Then the writing vanished and the board was clear once more.
‘Yes, love?’ asked the barmaid.
Mumbling and stammering he managed to order a pint of bitter. As she handed him his drink the barmaid gave him a sympathetic smile.
‘You okay?’
‘What’s the deal with the blackboard?’
‘That? We never put anything on it. It was the landlord’s bright idea to put specials and offers on there but we never use it.’
John nodded. He took a gulp of beer. He shook his head. He went to find a seat. Perhaps tiredness, overwork and stress was making his eyes play tricks on him.
He spent the next few hours wandering round the town. He stopped off at a few pubs along the way. The pubs were all old fashioned with low beamed ceilings and open fires. They all offered a wide range of real ales. He lost track of the names of the pubs. The Red Lion. The Garrick. The White Swan. The Golden Bee. The Old Thatch. All these ale houses dated back hundreds of years. All that history seemed to be right there. One pub called the Black Swan had been nicknamed the Dirty Duck by American GI’s during the Second World War. The name had stuck and today the place was known by both names.
He turned onto a main road. He stopped. The street was full of people. They were dressed in old fashioned clothing. The clothes were of a style from hundreds of years ago. The men wore hose instead of modern trousers. The women wore flowing dresses with long sleeves. He was reminded of a picture he’d seen of Henry VIII’s court. Men on horseback trundled up and down the street. What really spooked him was that the entire scene was transparent. The people, the horses, everything had a see-through quality. He could see the modern day street through the crowd.
A car horn beeped from behind. John turned to see a black Fiat Punto. He waved an apologetic hand and stepped off the road. When he looked back the street had returned to normal. The street was now full of the modern day. The tourists taking endless photographs that they would never look at, people chatted on their mobile phones, others chewed on sandwiches and pastries as they walked along.
He sighed. He always did have an over-active imagination. That was what made him such a productive writer. The writer’s curse, he called it. And now his mind was playing tricks on him. Firstly the man disappearing in Shakespeare’s house, then the writing on the chalkboard, and now a street full of people that were not there.
He walked slowly along. He tried to calm himself down. The world seemed to regain some of it’s normality.
That evening he dined at an Indian restaurant. The Usha was one of those modern curry houses with low spot lighting and a distinct lack of Indian style prints on the wall. As he munched on Chicken Madras and drank Cobra lager he thought about the decline of the old style Indian restaurant. Those places though dated had a certain charm about them. They seemed more authentic somehow. The new Indian places felt like every other restaurant in town. At least this place still had sitar music playing. That was something.
After a few more pints and a lovely meal he staggered back through Stratford. He headed back to the hotel. He turned onto Henley Street. The wide avenue was deserted. Gone were the throng of tourists outside Shakespeare’s house . John smiled. He walked upto the house. It loomed in front of him. He placed a hand on the wooden doorframe. As a writer he felt a certain kinship with the Bard. Admittedly he was no Shakespeare but he wrote. And that meant something.
He continued up the street. He heard footsteps behind him. Someone else must have come to see the house by night. He turned around. The street was empty. He shook his head. He was too drunk and too tired to worry about even more strangeness. Perhaps it was his imagination. Or perhaps the town was so steeped in its history that a certain remnant of the past lingered still. Maybe he was not the only one to experience these weird sensations when visiting the town.
He eventually found his hotel. He let himself into the hotel and reached his room. A minute after crawling under the duvet he was asleep.
He rolled over in bed. Had something woken him? He slowly opened his eyes. Sleep and beer clung to him but he glanced around the room. He was someone. There was somebody in his room. He half sat up. There was a man at the writing desk. A candle flickered beside him casting shadows across the room. The man was dressed in Tudor period clothing. John did not need his glasses to recognise him. It was the man he’d seen dressed as Shakespeare earlier in the day.
‘Hey,’ he called out. ‘What are you doing in my room?’
The man did not move. John stared. The man was scribbling away at the papers on the desk. John laughed. He must be dreaming. Waves of slumber washed over him. He slumped back onto the pillow and was soon fast asleep.
John woke just before nine the following morning. He stretched. He reached for his glasses. Putting them on he looked around the room. He was debating what to have for breakfast before the drive back home when he noticed his writing papers had been moved. He recalled the man he’d seen in his room during the night. He went over to the desk.
The pages he’d left strewn all over the desk were now in a neat pile. John flicked through the pages. The first few sheets of paper were in his own handwriting. The rest of the pages were filled with an old fashioned elaborate writing. Spots of ink dotted the pages. John gasped as he read. Whoever had visited his room during the night had finished his novel.
A shiver went through him. The desk had once belonged to William Shakespeare. Had the Bard completed John’s unfinished novel at his old writing desk?
Then he saw the initials at the end of the story. The letters were in the same swirling handwriting. WS.

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