Author, Victoria Cornwall, tells Female First how as a gangly 1979 platform-shoe-wearing teenager, forgetting her past, inspired her future...
The Daughter of the River Valley
Little did I realise that the events about to unfold, on that Friday in January, 1979, would motivate me to become a nurse and inspire the plot of a novel decades later. At the time I was a gangly teenager, wearing school-rules-breaking platform shoes and a Kate Jackson haircut (of Charlie’s Angels fame). Village People were topping the charts for the third week and I, and my friends, were navigating an icy slope on our way to double maths … only I never reached the classroom door.
At first my friends thought I was dead. I’d slipped on the ice, hit the back of my head on the concrete path and was now lying motionless at their feet. To their relief, I regained consciousness. I knew my friends were trying to help me as they escorted me to the school sickbay, but I understood little else. It was during this confusing journey that I lost my sight.
It is terrifying to experience sudden blindness, in this instance caused by my brain crashing against my skull in the fall. I don’t remember much of the walk, but later I woke up in an unfamiliar room. My sight had returned and I was watching large white doilies floating past the window. It took me a while to realise it was snow. Later I discovered that I had been placed in the room to “sleep it off”. Confused, I wondered outside, outstretched my arms to the first person I saw and begged for help.
Was I taken to hospital? Not at first. Remember this was the 70’s when hot, sweet tea was considered the magic formulae to heal most things. I was forced to drink it, despite hating the taste. Finally someone discovered something I had not realised myself. I had lost my memory. It is bewildering to search for information in your mind and there is nothing but a blank void. If that discovery was not bad enough, I then began to vomit. A teacher took pity on me and drove me to the nearest cottage hospital. I was quickly transferred to the main hospital with a concerned ambulance man doing his best to keep me awake.
I was lucky, my memory recovered before I was tucked into the crisp linen of a ward bed. The nurses left a lasting impression on me so after leaving school, I trained as a nurse. During my career I’ve seen how head injuries can deteriorate rapidly with fatal or life altering results. The incident taught me several things; How suddenly life can change; How complex and fragile our brains are; How vulnerable one can feel when we cannot make sense of the world around us.
Decades later I used my experience to write The Daughter of River Valley, a story about a man who loses his memory and the woman who caused it. Using the incident as inspiration for a novel taught me one final lesson. Even the accident of a teenage girl … who should have known better than wear school-rules-breaking platform shoes on a cold, icy, winter day … can result in something positive many years later.
Victoria Cornwall's latest paperback, The Daughter of River Valley, published by Choc Lit, is released on 9 July as paperback and audiobook. While it was gripping historical events from 1979 Cornwall that inspired Victoria's story - The Daughter of River Valley is a gripping historical set in 1860s, Cornwall. Further information can be found at www.choc-lit.com