Minutes of the meeting at La Rosa Hotel on the above date.
Present: Adele, Harry, Ian, Jan, Jenny, Magda, Michele, Suzanne.
Apologies: Gill, John, Jonathan, Kaz, Laura, Pip.
Topic: Members’ work-in-progress.
Matters Arising
Ian invited Suzanne to say a few words about Esk Valley News Quarterly, a publication that’s new to most attendees. Suzanne handed round a flyer entitled Contribute to our Next Issues… plus copies of past editions for members to inspect.
Suzanne also raised for discussion the forthcoming writers workshop: A Way with Words at Boggle Hole Youth Hostel, 10.30 am to 1.30 pm, Saturday 7 June 2025. Adele is also going, plus Ian, and they will report back at the next WWG meeting.
Members’ Readings
Michele — read the start of her new novel Beneath the Surgeon’s Coat, recounting the career of the fictional Dr James Fryer, who is based on the historical personage of James Barry (born Margaret Anne Bulkley in 1789).
A conspicuously successful military surgeon who spent his entire adult life as a man, Barry successfully concealed his biological gender from the world at-large with the zealous complicity of his mother and closest family, plus an inseparable black servant called John.
Dr Fryer’s first posting is to Cape Town, South Africa, where he is met off the boat by his batman to-be, Solani, a burly black man (c/f John) who will become his attentive minder and the guardian of Dr Fryer’s secret until his death in 1865. The first meeting is not auspicious: Fryer comes across as defensive and overly irascible, even for a surgeon, but the batman respectful and competent. Solani conducts his new master to the “castle” (the Fort), where he is accommodated in the late surgeon’s quarters.
A lurking stray dog moves in with him. Solani identifies it as the grieving pet of Dr Fryer’s deceased predecessor. Doctor and dog quickly take to each other, it being clear to Fryer that his adopted pet has instantly detected his secret.
Jenny — continued reading from Chapter 21 of her period novel based on the historical figure of Mary Eleanor Bowes, the heiress of a vast fortune from the Durham coalfields and the notorious butt of much high society scandal.
It is now December, 1776. Irish adventurer Andrew Stoney is plotting with his well-placed friends to marry Mary for her money. He has recently achieved a clandestine tryst with her, which has not escaped the attention of her butler George Walker and his wife, Mary’s loyal handmaid Lizzie.
Andrew and Mary continue to meet socially at Mary’s salon. Mary is besotted with Stoney and feels she is betraying Mr (Nabob) Gray, her current betrothed. She finds she is with child yet again. Mr Gray is delighted, and this time nothing can persuade him to procure the wherewithal to terminate the pregnancy. Mary privately takes pennyroyal, but to no effect.
Stoney announces a day out he has arranged for the ladies: consultations with a popular fortune-teller, Señor Bestino, whom he has suborned to give Mary some life-changing love-advice: to ditch the kindly Mr Gray and marry the handsome soldier who has come into her life. Around the same time, the Morning Post publishes anonymous scandalous accusations against Mary (actually penned by Stoney himself) of wantonness, neglect of her children and bestiality with her beloved animals, which allows Andrew Stoney to defend Mary publicly in print.
Magda — asked the meeting what sources of adult fairy stories there were that members knew about.
Attendees responded with a variety of sources: The brothers Grimm; Undine; H-C Andersen; 1001 Nights, etc.
Ian — read the opening passage of the revised draft of his sff novel Anitra’s Petition. He had offered to start where he had previously left off (circa covid lockdown), at the point the young heroine Anitra makes landfall on Mars. But only two attendees recalled this, and generously submitted to hearing the whole story again.
It is Midsummer’s Day, 1994 UTC. Commissioner Nilsson examines a desecrated grave on the far side of the Moon.
Harry — distributed copies and continued reading his 1960s seafaring memoir, Sea Wife. The SS Marwarri is steaming down the Savannah River to the Gulf of Mexico. Budweiser, gnat’s piss and the perils of asking for a glass in a Savannah bar. A far cry from Bengal, with its mutilated beggars and saucy temples. Now it’s scratchy cats and jettisoned H-bombs lost in the river mud.
Jan — is in touch with a Californian source of information over her history of Christiana I’Anson, an Edwardian society lady who elopes to New Zealand… and beyond. Jan asked if anyone had undertaken ghost writing, knowledge of which would help her to a sympathetic treatment of Californian turns-of-phrase.
Suzanne — read out a piece complementing Michele’s homage to Dr James Barry, told in the first person by the Doctor’s cleaner – and laying-out lady, when he died of “camp fever” in 1865. Dr Barry had insisted that he should be buried just as he was, with the bedding and nightclothes he was wearing when he died: no laying-out, no washing of the corpse. This message didn’t filter down to the narrator, who got into awful trouble from John the minder and Barry’s mother when she discovered the surgeon’s dire secret: the anatomy of a woman with parturition stretch-marks.
The meeting closed at 1:10 PM.
Whitby Writers Group 