I'm struggling pretty desperately with Red Rose right now. To make myself feel a little better, I'm recounting Cambriel. In desperation I wrote some really embarrassing stuff that year that will never see the light of day. There is one part though that is so terrible it's amusing. One morning I remembered Lamb Chop singing that "Anything you can do, I can do better" song. It always amused me so much. So I actually worked it into a scene.
“I made bread,” I reported to Shelley as I brought him food on a tray in his study. “It’s a little funny-looking, but it tastes good.”
“Capital for a first effort.” He didn’t even break a smile at the swollen mound of bread. “The yeast must have survived the time.”
“That would be something for you to study beneath your microscope,” I said, pouring him a measure of tea. “A particularly vigorous form of life.” I crooked a smile at him.
Shelley looked particularly intent on his work when he wore glasses, tiny round spectacles perched on his nose. But now he was watching me, his eyes on my wrist as I served his tea, on the apron strings around my waist.
“I know you despise my laboratory, but I would like to show you something there. I want you to understand my work.”
I halted with surprise, remembering the difficulties from the night before. Surely he had not forgotten. But I would do anything to ease the tension of that event.
“I can come this afternoon when my cake is finished.”
He smiled, pleased.“I have something to show you, too. Perhaps a little before sunset, in the garden.”
I had made my discovery earlier that afternoon when I had grown tired of whipping the cake batter, which persisted in remaining lumpy. “You’re too weak,” Johnny had said, and set about whipping the batter to a fine consistency. I went back to the garden, craving air. In the stillness I found a little summerhouse which had been long abandoned. I left Johnny to pour the batter in a greased pan, as I had instructed him, and set it to bake.
I had not set a match to Cambriel’s journals—I was using them. But only conditionally and for my own ends.“Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything better than you,” I sang, looking at the mound of books.
“Cannot!” Johnny chimed in from the sink.
“Can too.”
“Cannot.”
“Can too.”
“Anything you can do, I can do better,” he chimed. “I can do anything better than you.” Soapy water sloshed over the floor at his vigorous movements, but he didn’t notice. I was so filled with affection that I would have mopped the floor thrice over for him. I supposed that was how spoiled boys came about.
Well, you had to be there, I guess. Ophelia is tired of being compared with Cambriel, so she taunts the absent maiden with a song. Johnny in turn taunts her. My characters were really dumb sometimes, but they had a sense of humor that kept me amused all month long.
How different this month has been from that one! Each word has been wrought with excruciating pain, but I like to believe there will be less throw-away material in the end.