Xavier Leret
Hello. I'm Xavier Leret. I am a writer, theatre director and film maker based in London. I write all sorts, and I have directed a wide variety of theatrical stuff. I have written a number of plays all of which have been performed - I'm very lucky to be the Artistic Director of KAOS Theatre www.kaostheatre.com. I am making my first feature film this Spring. I am also writing a novel, Caring for Daisy Byatt, which I have to say is taking some time. I am not one of these writers who can just spit out pages, tragically I fight for every sentence, so I have a feeling that this might take, because a lot keeps getting in the way, another couple of years. In the meantime I'm going to serialise another piece of work which you will find in the 'novels' section of this blog.
On this site you will find my work, and, as it all evolves, I shall publish work, in a variety of different formats, so that you can read them on all sorts of gadgets. The world has changed and technology means that words and images can be copied, ripped and shared - I invite you to do the same. Others in the arts will fight tooth and nail to try and prevent you doing this to their work, for me this is like corking a broken bottle. Personally I believe that it is better that my work gets read as this might lead to my plays getting another opportunity to be performed - this will only happen if I let you have access to it. It is better that you read it, than it remains a secret on my hard drive - I agree with Cory Doctorow on this one, secrecy is not a great business model for a writer.
I am going to be putting completed work here and work in progress. So please read, make comments, pass stories onto friends. All I ask is that if you put a play on or you adapt a story, and you make money then please give me some. I know theatre is a tough one to make money at but it is possible. I will totally understand if you make a loss, but if you are paying your actors you can pay me and if you are a teacher you can definitley chuck some cash my way. I won't make any demands, if you want to chop and change stuff go ahead, afterall that's exactly what I do when preparing to direct someone else's work.
What else do I need to tell you? I was brought up in Bristol, UK, and I now live in London with my wife and two children.
I need to say a very big thank you to my good friend Phil Morle, who has been badgering me for years to put my work on line, and has given up hours of his time to make sure the site runs smoothly.
With the stories and novel please credit me. Most importantly enjoy the work.
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January 31, 2008
January 9, 2008
Caring With Daisy Byatt - Chapter 13
It's been a while since I posted a chapter of Daisy - I've been very busy. But at last here it is.
Oh Happy New Year!
Moses
Chief Inspector Moses was tired. Being a copper he never turned the corner to find the Promised Land, more likely he found blind allies and dead ends. The thing he shared with the prophet, certainly that morning, was that degree of unpopularity which all leaders have at some point or other. That morning Moses came down from his mount after being on the phone not to God but his guvnor who had hit him with one big commandment “sort this mess out”. The prophet descended from Sinai with two tablets which gave sinners a head ache, the chief inspector took two tablets to cure himself of his headache, he then entered the conference room with an evangelically loud voice.
Moses spent most of his morning shouting. As the prophet once found, shout loud enough and it takes the mind off temptation, and temptation is instinct, instinct is desire and tragically for some instinct knows no moral bounds and this is why Chief Inspector Moses found employment. But it made his headache worse which in turn caused him perspire heavily so now his shirt was sticking to his sweaty body. He knew how this must look. There was no chance that he would ever pull anything more than, at best, a form of respect from the ladies coming new into the force, or those that had been there for some time, for that matter, and there was nothing like his temper to raise the veil of resentment – some wore this like a burka. He wasn’t out to impress, anyhow, he was already committed, wearing his commitment in the form of his pot belly.
He sat in his office on his own surrounded by photographs. Everyone was on the wall, Daisy, Carlo, Stanton alive, Stanton at the bottom of Cabot Tower, Stanton with no teeth left, Stanton like a bag of crushed fruit; Block, as a young man (he was too vain to keep photos of himself in seniority), Block with boys and Block with more boys and then, of course, Block kissing boys, Block with pool party boys, Block with black boys, Block with Asian boys in… Asia, and finally, Block with his rigor mortised cock at the wheel of his Robin Reliant, grimaced by the larger than life shudder of his final and total petit mort .
So much didn’t make sense. He had put a black marker of confusion in a halo around Carlo. Males can be sexually aroused by death or murder but this lad was no Rostov Ripper. It didn’t seem that he enjoyed torturing animals, children or toys. There were no rumours of sexual misdemeanours or concerned reports from his school. This behaviour was distinctly out of character. It was all wrong. What was a lad like him doing with a girl like her? How had they vanished, or, more importantly, who had absconded with them, what more had they done, what more were they capable of doing? Road trips are notorious adventures. They represent the transition to, not the arrival at a destination. Within the narrative of crime journeys unchecked and un-chased are never the conclusion but rather the passing into a more shadowy phase. More likely, he thought, this lad is simply out of his depth, playing with the under world.
He surrendered a glance at the photograph of Daisy. There was nothing that could be done for her that hadn’t already been tried. He had found no pleasure in reading her files, even if they were just a broad stroke history missing the harsh details of her reality. Experience told him that life was cause and effect, deprive a plant of sunlight and it withers, before long there comes a point when there is nothing that can be done except remove it or cut it down. It broke his heart. The world broke his heart. On paper it was worth working for a character like Daisy. It was worthy. Even if it wasn’t his role to do so, he felt that he should. Hope was an egg, it was life but he knew in reality he would watch it thrown back at him in a yellow yolky mess. That’s all a Daisy could do. It would be better if he didn’t care, and of course, in time he wouldn’t. Souls are cast asunder so that they must suffer, no saint can save them. Saints have eternity so that they might learn to switch off. “Nothing makes sense,” he thought. Love knows no boundaries, but life does. Communities are ring fenced plateaus, protecting against a long drop from grace. It is rare to climb back up so why bother throwing the rope.
He was looking out of the window thinking about the merits of re-instating the death penalty, whether it was a good deterrent and all that, when the phone rang. His view looked out onto Georgian stone, classic Bristol brick work. There were solitary clouds on recognisance in the otherwise sunny sky. His office was tired, not surprising really, he thought, it was Victorian and no amount of gruel could make it seem healthy. It had that asthma gloom one would associate with city smog or industrial revolutionary rain. It was entirely English in it’s mood, it was only cloudy when it wasn’t raining.
He picked up the phone to a sergeant. As he listened his eye caught Daisy’s looking out from the wall that held her snap-shot. She caught him unexpectedly, scanning his reaction, lifting his eyelids wider open to see what lay within. As the voice of the sergeant spoke through a telescope Moses watched her turn to a smiling photo of Carlo and whisper something. Carlo’s expression changed. He stepped out of the pin board and crossed the room to the Chief Inspector. He picked up a pen and wrote the words ‘I love her, I have done all along, and no-one will believe me,’ onto a piece of scrap paper.
“What?” Moses had encountered his burning bush. “She left no name, sir,” the sergeant replied. The sun screamed through his window tipping Moses out of his so named basket of clarity. When he turned back Carlo was once more pinned to the wall. He was wearing a school blazer with a castle badge above his left breast. He smiled at Moses, it was a broad genuine smile, capturing him in stillness as one would always hope to be remembered.
“Are you alright sir?”
Moses’ was transfixed, you might call it enraptured, though he was never going to be plucked up to heaven, at least not at that moment. Deep down Moses was all good, no more a contradiction than the most of us. His real talent was that he could be surrounded by the worst of life and not feel tainted, coloured or tempted. However, he was a practical man. His understanding of faith, which he tolerated on account of his wife, was a pragmatic one. Mystical magic was a topic of the great book and the imaginations of men that have passed before. His world was concrete. It was based on fact. It was fact that unravelled crime and banged villains to rights. He had no time for hallucinations or unearthly haunting. The world does not exist on this metaphysical level. Crime is three dimensional and physical. What happens after death, well that is not Moses’ dominion. In his world sticks don’t turn into snakes unless there is an obvious explanation. It was always his problem with the Sunday service, prophets were talented street magicians who captured the imaginations of story tellers living years after their deaths. His imagination was constructed in the here and now. He observed in order to build a pictured of the there and back then.
The sun was too bright. He was unable to look out of the window and if he had he would have noticed that view was no longer there. His world had become altogether luminous magnesium. It happened occasionally when he was thinking, lost in his autistic absence. It was speed of light, pure liminality. He was now moving in the dimension of which he was most cynical for it lacked mass. It was not an action. It was an inspiration with which he retrospectively gave foundations by installing fact. He never bothered to explain this act of other-worldliness because it was pure Descartes, I think therefore I am. However, he was all a shock with this message from Carlo. It was lying on his desk. It had been written right there in front of him by a manifestation hand. He had not imagined it. He had watched it, watched the lad step out of the wall, watched him walk over to him, watched him pick up a pen and watched his young hand write it. He prayed he hadn’t turned mystic. Oh please god no not that – he would be finished.
“Sir, sir? Are you there sir.”
“Yes, Sergeant. I’m still here.”
“We’ve found them sir. At least we’ve had an anonymous tip off. They’re in London. They are at the house of barrister. He’s quite a famous one sir.”
“Have they been there all this time?”
“I believe so sir.”
“Christ, what have they been doing?”
“You might want to come down, sir. They are a couple of little devils these two. A couple of little devils.”
Moses put down the phone. The view from his office had returned to normal. He looked at the scrap paper on his desk for a moment before he screwed it into a ball and threw it into his wastepaper bin. His burning bush, for the time being, had been extinguished and his sweat was beginning to dry.