Midland

by James Flint

  It was strange how life twisted round on itself. He’d moved to London years ago and had lived there as long as he had ever spent growing up in Warwickshire. And here he was standing in Trafalgar Square with his own family and his own very pressing concerns only a mile or two from the house that he owned. But he now knew that whatever happened to him in the future, however far he travelled, and however successful he should become, the Midlands was the one place he would ever truly call home.

  Acknowledgements

  In large part this book owes its existence to the unflagging support of all at the Port Eliot Festival, particularly to Catherine St Germans, Peregrine Eliot, Simon Prosser, and each and every one of the indefatigable Five Dials crew (you know who you are!). Every year since I first began Midland in 2006 you invited me back to read from what was then very much a work in progress, with no clear end in sight. Something that started life as an experiment in ‘slow fiction’ was thus able to grow into a long-running serialisation. When the scale of the task felt overwhelmingly nebulous and vast the annual festival deadlines encouraged me to keep pushing forward with the story in the small gaps I could find between the twin demands of my job and my young family, and very gradually I etched out various fragments and pulled them together into a coherent whole. Peregrine, sadly, passed away in 2016 – this small tribute to him is therefore in memoriam.

  It was at the festival, too, that I first came across the publisher Unbound, which has given Midland such an excellent home. John Mitchinson and Mathew Clayton gave me a terrific welcome into their fold; and especial plaudits are due to Rachael Kerr, whom I first met when she did a heroic job on the publicity for Habitus way back in 1998, and who has now done similarly stellar service as the editor of Midland. Fiction’s a long game, Rachael, and it’s been an honour and a privilege to have you on my team from the get-go. Similarly Marion Mazauric and all at Au Diable Vauvert have stuck by me through the lean years, and let me have repeated use of their writers’ residence on the occasions when I needed the space to focus on the book to the exclusion of all else. On my last visit there I managed to stop the whole place from burning down by borrowing a phone from a local farmer to call the pompiers when a fire broke out; I hope that goes some way to repaying the debt I owe you!

  Publishing through Unbound is a group affair, and several people played a very significant role in the fundraising efforts: Francis Upritchard and Kate MacGarry (artwork); Gilo Cardozo and all at Parajet (video footage and flying trips); Harry Harris (music); Mark Bowsher (video); Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair (DVDs); Simon and Bea Bishop and Hackney School of Folk (events). My two hundred and twenty individual supporters also all deserve a mention for their generous contributions, which were of as much psychological value as they were financial. It’s an amazing thing to see people step up to the mark to support an artistic project like this, and I can’t tell you what it meant. You all, of course, get your names listed at the start and end of the book, but the real roll-call is the story itself, into which I channelled all the emotional energy that your encouragement gave me.

  Thanks are also due to my agent, Jonny Geller, a man who doesn’t blink at the prospect of a twelve-year wait for a manuscript, and whose support and early stage edits helped turn a decade of scribblings into a readable book, and to all at Curtis Brown; to Peter Carty and Amit Gupta for crucial reader services at crucial moments; to Ben Rapp for Porsche lore and offshore insights; and to Garth Edward, Ali Miremadi and all at the excellent Amplify Trading for their significant contributions to my understanding of financial markets of all stripes. Your information and advice was always one hundred per cent correct; the mistakes I’ve no doubt introduced are one hundred per cent my own.

  As for inspiration, the good ship Litenese is loosely based upon the Earthwatch vessel the Toftevaag, which I was lucky enough to spend a few days on board while researching an article for Time Out some years before Matthew’s excursion to Almería, and which as far as I know is still going about its important work. And the entirely fictional resort of Rosaventos is an amalgam of the beautiful Cabo Polonio in Uruguay, where I once spent a memorable holiday (thank you, Mariana), and the Brazilian beach town of Jijoca de Jericoacoara, my knowledge of which comes entirely from Google Earth.

  Credit must also be extended to my lovely wife, Robyn Haselfoot, whom I met the month I began crafting a short story about a trader’s encounter with the bottlenose whale on the banks of the Thames, and who has followed the developing saga with patience and forbearance ever since. Robyn has not only contributed many character insights and numerous nuggets of information, but was the person who first drew my attention to the rare and little-understood condition known as Genetic Sexual Attraction. GSA is thought to occur when biologically determined assortative mating drives are not dampened by the learned kin recognition constraint known as the Westermarck effect. The condition particularly affects siblings and half-siblings separated at, or soon after, birth, and goes a long way to explaining why Jamie and Caitlin behave as they do. Should the separated siblings meet again later in life the sense of mutual recognition can manifest itself as a powerful sexual connection, and once the individuals concerned have experienced this particular intimacy they can find it all but impossible to form subsequent successful romantic attachments. For more information on GSA, Wikipedia is a good place to start; there is also a private online support group for those affected by the condition, which can be found at: http://thegsaforum.com/

  Finally, I’d like to give a nod to the Warwickshire hamlets of Shelfield and Spernall, and the nearby village of Snitterfield. These are real places, if somewhat idealised and thoroughly repopulated for the purposes of this novel. In and around them I was fortunate enough to enjoy an almost stereotypically idyllic childhood, and in and around them, it seems, my mind still happily roams.

  James Flint

  London – Warwickshire – Vauvert

  January 2006 to January 2018

  A Note on the Author

  Born in Stratford-upon-Avon, James Flint is the internationally acclaimed author of three novels: Habitus, 52 Ways to Magic America and The Book of Ash. In 2002, his short story ‘The Nuclear Train’ was adapted for Channel 4, while his journalism has appeared in Wired, the Guardian and Dazed & Confused among many others. Formerly editor-in-chief of the Telegraph’s weekly world edition, he is currently CEO of the health communications start-up Hospify.

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  This edition first published in 2019

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  All rights reserved

  © James Flint, 2019

  The right of James Flint to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Text design by Ellipsis, Glasgow

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-78352-595-9 (trade pbk)

  ISBN 978-1-78352-597-3 (ebook)

  ISBN 978-1-78352-596-6 (limited edition)

  Printed in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK)