Cleopatra's Script
Late 1990s: Eugene, from London, and Anne, from small-town France, meet in Rome. From the wild, and sometimes uncomfortable, nights they have in Rome’s gangster-haunted Twenty One Club, their paths cross a few times before they become attracted to each other. Before the course of true love can run like a jaunty Italian song, however, they have to get through the fact that they have pissed off a local psycho, have blundered into the secret at the heart of a child-murder, and have to make choices in the guise of a morality that Eugene, at least, never knew he possessed. Below is the book’s prologue.
Anne told Eugene this: she was given a long red pencil when she was a child, brought from Florence by a tweedy uncle, calm cigar smoker. He later beat his wife’s lover to death with a frozen leg of lamb. Anne saw the pencil put in a drawer with shells, cones, feathers collected from a nearby beach.
Eugene dwelt on the word death, but said only, “So… genuine flotsam.”
The words made Anne look puzzled and mad for a second.
“But go on.”
Anne grew and reached the drawer, found the pencil among condoms, phials of insulin, undelivered letters with an angry fish franked onto them, a blackened metal fragment from a German gun. She knew the pencil was hers. She remembered a high church without ever seeing it, over a square black with ants that shimmered in her magic child’s eye: Firenze.
She often remembered a crowded conversation, or surely a series of conversations, about her uncle and love and death and Italy, and it always hit her that she did not at that time know what death really meant.
The pencil was topped with a dome guarding a swirl of snow in which, alone and shivering, stood Pinocchio. Anne was disturbed by the scene, yet felt glad that she wasn’t at the mercy of the elements, and had things to do other than stand and freeze. For a few days she was going to be Sister Anne, go in sandals through the snow and collect Pinocchio and all children like him and bring them in to soup and warm beds. There must have been a time when Anne thought her pencil was the only one like it in the world. She hadn’t seen rows of them in Florentine shops, or clutched in the hands of tourists, too late in life for it to work the magic of compassion on them.
For the magic to work, you had to live in the Pas de Calais village in which Anne had grown up, in a house built centuries before with walls a metre thick enclosing dim, damp rooms. Had to have a father who put on a dark, dank suit and drove to Saint Omer to work at the post office counter, a mother who got on her Solex and visited the region’s women to do their nails and listen to their woes and their equally depressing triumphs. With her parents all talked-out during their days, words were put to rest in their evenings. To appreciate the loneliness of Pinocchio, you had to have no brothers or sisters and be in between the ages of the other village kids, had to have no history of friendship by the time you went to the secondary school in Calais. You had to be the funny-looking kid, hair always skew-whiff, with an air of fragility, skin pale and freckled, and glasses hiding big round eyes. Anxiety brought Anne’s top teeth onto her lower lip, and never quite let them retract. A bully welcomed Anne to class with the words, “Everybody’ll hate you here.”
Was her life really going to be that way? No, she decided, or she should just get it over with, and walk out into the sea. “I didn’t do that,” she told Eugene, and waited for him to trap her eye and laugh. A hand twitched towards her bag to show him the pencil, then she remembered the night it disappeared, and the bruises that came out on her arms, and the way her body fluids betrayed her.
Eugene claimed Pinocchio wasn’t Florentine at all, or even Italian, but came from a suppressed story by the English children’s author Enid Blyton. Anne believed this until he told her the title, which was Noddy the Lying Little Fucker Gets His Comeuppance.
It was with Eugene that Anne went to Florence, a weekend to escape the badness and madness eating up the people around them in Rome. After a stroll around the centre, Anne pleased Eugene by declaring, “I’m underwhelmed.” Statues of saints, he noted, renowned for their ability to balance dinner plates on their heads; chubby cherubs needing their jaws wired for a month, Anne countered. Both mused on Michelangelo’s David’s remarkable under-endowment, then remembered that David had been a mere boy. Goliath might have had the biggest dick in the world, but it was no help when David floored him with a rock and cut off his head for him.
“We’re Romans.” Anne shone out the horrible wonder of it. Eugene, struck by an alarming eroticism in the way the words moved her mouth, stood on the bed naked, and did Caligula’s dance.
“We’re Romans,” he agreed. “Will stay in Rome, and live and die there.”
“Die there?” With the badness, and the madness, and the murder to which they could lead, she thought it a possibility.
“Not like Pinocchio, though. Anything’s better than dying like Pinocchio.”
“Of the cold?” Anne asked.
“Woodworm. The woodworm won’t get to us, Anne, will it?”
Eugene dwelt on the word death, but said only, “So… genuine flotsam.”
The words made Anne look puzzled and mad for a second.
“But go on.”
Anne grew and reached the drawer, found the pencil among condoms, phials of insulin, undelivered letters with an angry fish franked onto them, a blackened metal fragment from a German gun. She knew the pencil was hers. She remembered a high church without ever seeing it, over a square black with ants that shimmered in her magic child’s eye: Firenze.
She often remembered a crowded conversation, or surely a series of conversations, about her uncle and love and death and Italy, and it always hit her that she did not at that time know what death really meant.
The pencil was topped with a dome guarding a swirl of snow in which, alone and shivering, stood Pinocchio. Anne was disturbed by the scene, yet felt glad that she wasn’t at the mercy of the elements, and had things to do other than stand and freeze. For a few days she was going to be Sister Anne, go in sandals through the snow and collect Pinocchio and all children like him and bring them in to soup and warm beds. There must have been a time when Anne thought her pencil was the only one like it in the world. She hadn’t seen rows of them in Florentine shops, or clutched in the hands of tourists, too late in life for it to work the magic of compassion on them.
For the magic to work, you had to live in the Pas de Calais village in which Anne had grown up, in a house built centuries before with walls a metre thick enclosing dim, damp rooms. Had to have a father who put on a dark, dank suit and drove to Saint Omer to work at the post office counter, a mother who got on her Solex and visited the region’s women to do their nails and listen to their woes and their equally depressing triumphs. With her parents all talked-out during their days, words were put to rest in their evenings. To appreciate the loneliness of Pinocchio, you had to have no brothers or sisters and be in between the ages of the other village kids, had to have no history of friendship by the time you went to the secondary school in Calais. You had to be the funny-looking kid, hair always skew-whiff, with an air of fragility, skin pale and freckled, and glasses hiding big round eyes. Anxiety brought Anne’s top teeth onto her lower lip, and never quite let them retract. A bully welcomed Anne to class with the words, “Everybody’ll hate you here.”
Was her life really going to be that way? No, she decided, or she should just get it over with, and walk out into the sea. “I didn’t do that,” she told Eugene, and waited for him to trap her eye and laugh. A hand twitched towards her bag to show him the pencil, then she remembered the night it disappeared, and the bruises that came out on her arms, and the way her body fluids betrayed her.
Eugene claimed Pinocchio wasn’t Florentine at all, or even Italian, but came from a suppressed story by the English children’s author Enid Blyton. Anne believed this until he told her the title, which was Noddy the Lying Little Fucker Gets His Comeuppance.
It was with Eugene that Anne went to Florence, a weekend to escape the badness and madness eating up the people around them in Rome. After a stroll around the centre, Anne pleased Eugene by declaring, “I’m underwhelmed.” Statues of saints, he noted, renowned for their ability to balance dinner plates on their heads; chubby cherubs needing their jaws wired for a month, Anne countered. Both mused on Michelangelo’s David’s remarkable under-endowment, then remembered that David had been a mere boy. Goliath might have had the biggest dick in the world, but it was no help when David floored him with a rock and cut off his head for him.
“We’re Romans.” Anne shone out the horrible wonder of it. Eugene, struck by an alarming eroticism in the way the words moved her mouth, stood on the bed naked, and did Caligula’s dance.
“We’re Romans,” he agreed. “Will stay in Rome, and live and die there.”
“Die there?” With the badness, and the madness, and the murder to which they could lead, she thought it a possibility.
“Not like Pinocchio, though. Anything’s better than dying like Pinocchio.”
“Of the cold?” Anne asked.
“Woodworm. The woodworm won’t get to us, Anne, will it?”
Some background
I worked on Cleopatra's Script for a very long time. I kept leaving it for a few years at a time, and every now and then did short bursts of work on it. It's a bit like one of the bikes in the garage: occasionally I get it out and toodle with it because I think I can probably fix it, and I can't, not very well, and not well enough to trust on a ride, but can't chuck it away because it's a beautiful object under all the mouse shit and dust. I started the book in the summer of 1998, during my first trip to Rome, and in the year following did a Diploma TEFL course so mind-numbingly boring that I got to about p200.
I finished Cleopatra's Script in September 2021. I have no idea why it took me so long, though the timeline is deceptive in itself; obviously, I'd have died of writers' cramp if I'd been working on it non-stop. It would also have been a million words long. I left it for years, and concentrated on writing other novels, other stories, songs and instrumental music. I never really knew why; I always knew what the ending would be. It was stalled for years at around 120000 words. I've since added another 40000 - it's a Dickensian-sized slab of novel, for sure, and I was resigned to it not being picked up for the economics of it alone.
That became unimportant to me over the 9 months or so it took to finish it. It was intense, but fun at times, tying all the ends together into the coherent story that lurked deep in my mind. For months I felt I was 'about 70 pages' from the end, and then something else would occur to me. I didn't know when I was actually 70 pages away from finishing it, of course.
The good news is that after the usual routine round of rejections, it was accepted by Golden Storyline Books, and is out initially in e-book form only at first - sensible in an age of short books and shorter attention spans. You can find it for sale for less than 2 fancy coffees right here: Amazon.com: Cleopatra's Script eBook : Sweeney, Nick : Books
I worked on Cleopatra's Script for a very long time. I kept leaving it for a few years at a time, and every now and then did short bursts of work on it. It's a bit like one of the bikes in the garage: occasionally I get it out and toodle with it because I think I can probably fix it, and I can't, not very well, and not well enough to trust on a ride, but can't chuck it away because it's a beautiful object under all the mouse shit and dust. I started the book in the summer of 1998, during my first trip to Rome, and in the year following did a Diploma TEFL course so mind-numbingly boring that I got to about p200.
I finished Cleopatra's Script in September 2021. I have no idea why it took me so long, though the timeline is deceptive in itself; obviously, I'd have died of writers' cramp if I'd been working on it non-stop. It would also have been a million words long. I left it for years, and concentrated on writing other novels, other stories, songs and instrumental music. I never really knew why; I always knew what the ending would be. It was stalled for years at around 120000 words. I've since added another 40000 - it's a Dickensian-sized slab of novel, for sure, and I was resigned to it not being picked up for the economics of it alone.
That became unimportant to me over the 9 months or so it took to finish it. It was intense, but fun at times, tying all the ends together into the coherent story that lurked deep in my mind. For months I felt I was 'about 70 pages' from the end, and then something else would occur to me. I didn't know when I was actually 70 pages away from finishing it, of course.
The good news is that after the usual routine round of rejections, it was accepted by Golden Storyline Books, and is out initially in e-book form only at first - sensible in an age of short books and shorter attention spans. You can find it for sale for less than 2 fancy coffees right here: Amazon.com: Cleopatra's Script eBook : Sweeney, Nick : Books