Time to Be in Earnest

by P. D. James

  I was met at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle by Dominique Fusco, whom I have known since my books were first accepted by Librairie Arthème Fayard. As usual, I had been booked into a small and charming hotel, Le Duc de Saint Simon, where I was greeted by the same receptionist. Fayard had filled the elegant sitting-room with magnificent flowers: lilies, clusters of orchids and roses.

  France was the last European country to take my books, but Fayard tell me that I am now their highest-selling foreign author.

  Fayard had hoped I could stay for longer than two days but it wasn’t possible, so I saw nothing of the city and the whole time was taken up with the usual programme of newspaper and radio interviews, all of which took place at the hotel. But it was pleasant to be in Paris, as it always is.

  Yesterday a farewell dinner was given for me at her apartment by Mlle. Denise Meunier, the distinguished elderly and academic Frenchwoman who has translated nearly all my novels. The guests jabbered away in French, changing to English when they saw I wasn’t with them. I just about held my own but wished, as I always do when in Paris, that I was more fluent in the only foreign language which I have any hope of understanding. It seems ridiculous that I had a French lesson every school day of my five years of secondary education but still can’t speak the language with any confidence. Children today are more effectively taught; but then they have television, videos, foreign visits and exchanges and language laboratories. But acquiring foreign languages is a talent as well as a skill. I have met people on my travels who can learn and be fluent in a new language in a matter of months. My paternal grandfather was such a one, but his talent has certainly not been inherited.

  FRIDAY, 15TH MAY

  I have had three very happy days at Trinity College, Oxford, where on Wednesday I gave the Richard Hillary Memorial Lecture. Like most of my generation, I have a lively memory of first reading his autobiography The Last Enemy. Hillary stands for a generation of young men from the university Air Squadrons who fought in the skies over Britain. He was shot down, and on the first occasion was badly burned and disfigured, but managed to persuade the RAF to let him fly again. It was his last flight. An additional tragedy of his death was that he took a fellow airman with him, and one who was married with small children. I can understand that Hillary needed to prove himself by flying again, but the RAF should not have given way to his insistence.

  Before the war Hillary was a typically privileged Oxford undergraduate, too handsome for his own good, selfish, arrogant and hedonistic. But the war changed him, as it changed, for good or ill, everyone who took part in it. I am not sure I believe that the poignant final chapter in his book is strictly accurate, but it does show that he had become a writer.

  One of the pleasures of Wednesday was meeting the heroine of that book, Denise, now Denise Patterson, a widow. During the war she was engaged to Peter Pease, a friend of Hillary’s who was also killed, and it was she who, steadfast in courage and courageous in grief, most helped Hillary through the trauma of his burning. In the book she is described by him as beautiful; she remains beautiful today.

  Yesterday and today I gave seminars to some of the English students and post-graduate students. The Master gave a dinner in the Lodge this evening. It was a wonderful night and we were able to stroll on the lawn, glasses in hand. I sat next to George Carman, QC—a guarantee of fascinating conversation. When I was researching A Certain Justice I was advised to go to the Law Courts when he was appearing, to learn what cross-examination could be. I did so and he was indeed formidable.

  An additional pleasure of three memorable days has been meeting the English tutor Dinah Birch and discussing with her the Victorian novel. I very much hope that we meet and talk again.

  SATURDAY, 16TH MAY

  I took Nina Bawden and her husband Austen Kark to dinner at the Halcyon Hotel, a small return for the succession of wonderful meals I have enjoyed at their house in Noel Road. It was warm enough to sit outside, which was initially pleasant, but a noisy quartet at an adjoining table made conversation difficult and we asked to be moved inside. An excellent dinner and, as always, the ease and comfort of dear friends.

  It was on this day, eight years ago, that I stood with Ruth Rendell and helped knock down a portion of the Berlin Wall. The evidence is a small piece of rubble with one smooth painted surface which rests on a shelf in my bathroom and bears in ballpoint the date, 16/5/90. The colours were a garish purple and red when I hacked the piece away with one of the chisels an enterprising German was hiring out to those who wanted to make their small mark on history. The colours have faded now and the date would have been indecipherable had I not inked over the figures a few months ago. Both Ruth and I had been to Berlin on a previous occasion to lecture for the British Council, and she and her husband Don were anxious to see the Wall coming down.

  I still remember clearly my earlier visit, from 1st to 8th December in 1986. Then I stood on one of the high platforms near the Reichstag. The night was very clear and cold, the trees around totally bare. I gazed out over the Wall and the dead floodlit area beyond, imagining the watching eyes and asking myself whether the Wall would come down in my lifetime, or even in the lifetime of my grandchildren. But the city then was one of the most thrilling I have ever visited. The air crackled with a mixture of excitement and tension and no one seemed ever to go to bed. I remember one young West German writer saying that he lived in the most terrifying city on earth and could never bear to leave it. I often remember cities by the quality and distinctiveness of their street lighting: Berlin seemed a city of harsh floodlights. I stood at Checkpoint Charlie, as brightly lit as a film set, and saw in imagination the lonely hero of a Graham Greene or le Carré novel, walking with studied nonchalance along the floodlit road towards the waiting motionless figures.

  I can remember what people in Berlin told me, but not their names, nor what they looked like. One, a distinguished film director, told me over dinner that his passion for cinema began as a young boy living in the British-occupied sector. His mother had to work and left him with a minder, and she would take him to the cinema as soon as it opened and leave him there, with such food as she managed to provide, until late at night when the last programme ended and he would be collected and taken home.

  Another memory is of leaving my hotel room one morning and seeing a young woman dusting the wainscot in the corridor. When I said “Good morning,” she answered with a Northern English accent. I asked her what had brought her to Berlin, and she said that was a long story, one which she had obviously no intention of elaborating. When I enquired if she enjoyed working in the city, she said that she did and it was much more exciting and better in every way than the last place in which she had worked, which was terribly dull. She added, “But you won’t have heard of it, it was called Berchtesgaden.” It was the first time I realized that the location of Hitler’s mountain eyrie meant nothing to a whole new generation.

  It gave me the same small shock as I experienced when I first went to Japan to open an exhibition of crime writing in Tokyo. I was told at the hotel that a group of students would very much like to meet me. About a dozen smilingly presented themselves with large gold-edged cards on which they asked me to write a message and sign my name. The message they requested was “from P D. James to my fan club at the University of Hiroshima.”

  In both 1986 and 1990 I went from the West into East Berlin. On the first occasion I had to submit to the long unsmiling scrutiny of the frontier police. On the second, Ruth, Don and I were greeted with smiles and the hope that we would have a happy day. Were they the same guards?

  SUNDAY, 31ST MAY

  The Sunday Times Hay Festival was held from 22nd to 31st May, and I was sorry that I could only be there for the Friday and Saturday. For nondrivers Hay isn’t the easiest town to get to, but I went by train to Newport, a quick and easy journey, and was met by one of the official cars for the beautiful winding drive to Hay.

  I stayed, as I always do, with my long-standing friend Joyce Fla
ck in Honey Cottage, Bear Street. I was sad to find her less than well. I had expected this, as I knew that she has a heart condition which may require a pacemaker, and is blind in one eye. This will be corrected when the cataract is dealt with but the eye surgeon is waiting for a decision on the pacemaker. The border between Wales and England actually runs through Hay, but Joyce is in Wales. She says it’s odd to hear one surgeon saying, “We’ll have to send you to England for that” when being in England involves walking only a short distance down the road.

  I found Joyce as ebullient, determinedly cheerful and courageous as always, but one of the sadnesses of old age is that one seldom hears good news about the health of friends. We talked from time to time about death. Joyce has absolutely no fear of it and is optimistic, if not convinced, that there will be some kind of afterlife, which she looks forward to as an interesting change from Hay-on-Wye. Dear Peggy Causton, with whom I played Scrabble twice a week until she died, also had no fear of death. She was totally without religious faith but said that there was no point in being afraid of death since she wouldn’t be there when it happened. None of us, of course, will be there when it happens, but it’s being there before it happens that is the worrying part and whether we shall be there with mind intact or imprisoned in some limbo of pain, degradation and dependence.

  Hay is a popular festival with writers, as evinced by the glittering variety of novelists, historians, poets and biographers who appeared during the week. I had first thought that Hay wasn’t a particularly propitious venue for a literary festival, apart from the difficulty of getting there. There is no large concert hall—indeed no large hall of any kind—insufficient hotels to deal with a large influx of visitors, and success is largely dependent on the weather since all the events take place in tents. But Hay has a distinctive atmosphere of enthusiasm, with warm receptive audiences determined to enjoy everything on offer. The enthusiasm remained unabated some years ago when the rain beat down relentlessly on taut canvas making some speakers almost inaudible, and audiences had to wade gum-booted across sinking planks to get to their seats. This weekend the weather has been wonderful and the hills and woods at their most verdant and shining.

  I had two events, the first a discussion with Jill Paton Walsh about her completion of the unfinished Dorothy L. Sayers manuscript, Thrones, Dominations, and the second a talk about A Certain Justice, including a brief reading. After the first talk Jill and her publisher took me to dinner at the largest hotel. The conversation, concerned with ideas rather than people, was marvellous, the food disappointing.

  In the afternoon I went to hear Gitta Sereny talk to Anthony Clare about her new book, Cries Unheard, which explores the life of the child murderer Mary Bell. She defended her decision to write the book, rationally and with conviction, and showed herself willing to answer criticism without undue defensiveness. She was also less credulous than I expected in trying to check the veracity of Mary Bell’s account of her childhood where this was possible. But I still feel that the book shouldn’t have been published, mainly because of the effect of its revelations on Mary Bell’s daughter. I also disagree with Gitta Sereny’s basic premise. This is that children are born, if not naturally good, at least naturally not disposed to viciousness, so that if things do go badly wrong and a ten-year-old child wilfully kills two small boys, then something must have happened in her life to turn her from innocence into a killer. It must be someone’s fault, but not hers. This seems to me both simplistic and contrary to evidence. It is repugnant to think in terms of children being born evil, but some are born with a greater propensity to cruelty and unkindness than are others. Most of us know of children who seem born naturally good in that they are loving, generous and happy; others from an early age seem to take more pleasure from tormenting animals than is normal even with the most destructive child. I also deplore a book which lays the blame on the child’s mother when that mother, no longer alive, is unable to defend herself. If bad parenting can produce a monster, then the children of the Wests can have little hope. Such information as we have suggests that they are coping with life. I didn’t raise this objection during question time, and afterwards Anthony Clare asked me why not. I said that I felt that audiences had heard enough of my voice and I preferred to listen rather than speak. But I was a little surprised that no one raised the point.

  I can never be in Hay-on-Wye, even in summer, without remembering the notorious case of Herbert Rowse Armstrong; but his was a winter crime. Katharine Armstrong died on 22nd February 1921, and it was on 31st December of the same year that her husband Major Armstrong was arrested while in his office clearing up papers at the end of the year. He was at first charged with the attempted murder of a rival solicitor in Hay, Oswald Norman Martin. It was while Armstrong was in custody that his wife’s body was exhumed and examined by the Home Office pathologist, Bernard Spilsbury. She had died of arsenical poisoning.

  One memorable incident in a classic case was the attempted murder of Martin. Armstrong had invited him to tea and had handed him a scone from the plate with the remark, “Excuse fingers.” This unorthodox method of providing one’s guest with sustenance must have increased Martin’s suspicions when, returning home, he was violently ill with sickness and diarrhoea. His doctor sent a sample of his urine to be analysed; it proved to contain arsenic. A very difficult summer then ensued for poor Martin. Police enquiries and the procedures for exhuming Mrs. Armstrong’s body were slow and in the meantime Martin was ordered to behave naturally with his rival and never under any circumstances to put Armstrong on his guard. This became increasingly difficult as Martin was bombarded by Armstrong with invitations to tea in his office. It must have been a tremendous relief to the poor man when the arrest was finally made.

  Another interesting incident took place at the committal proceedings, where the magistrates, unused to committing a prisoner on a charge of murder, had to look to the accused in the dock for advice on the correct procedure.

  Reading the account of the trial, it seems to me clear that Armstrong was guilty, but there are still those in Hay, and in particular the owner of Armstrong’s house, who believe him innocent. Most poisoners murder, as it were, at a distance, sparing themselves the horror of watching the victim die. Armstrong was in the house while his wife suffered the torments of arsenical poisoning. Could a man be as callously wicked as this and not display his nature in his everyday dealings with other people? Apparently Armstrong never did. He was meek, mild-mannered, a good father to his three children who, in adult life, also believed him innocent. The case still intrigues, largely because the town, particularly in winter, seems so unaltered. The brass plate with Armstrong’s name is still inside the solicitor’s office he occupied, Martin’s office is still opposite, and Armstrong’s house still stands, as does the small gaol where he was incarcerated.

  Some years ago a television company made a film of the murder and Joyce saw the actor who played Armstrong, looking very like pictures of the man, walking in his 1920s suit up Bear Street. Joyce greeted him and he swept off his hat in salute. She said the moment was uncanny. One can imagine what this little town was like in the 1920s: claustrophobic, remote, everyone knowing the business of everyone else, the same gossip, the same tea parties, the same tennis afternoons at Armstrong’s house, where his wife would imperiously call him in to remind him that it was bath night.

  There has been a proliferation of local art and literary festivals in recent years and it sometimes seems that no small town is without one. Each has its individual atmosphere and, as a writer, one tends to believe also its different audience, so that one speaks of “the Cheltenham audience,” “the Edinburgh audience,” “the Hay audience.” Part of this may be imaginary. I doubt whether there is any essential difference. But the audience at Hay-on-Wye does seem particularly enthusiastic and committed, largely, I think, because the festival is small and the tents close together so that there is a sense of shared enjoyment. This closeness can be disconcerting, particularly when
a writer is reading a poignant passage and is interrupted by an outburst of enthusiastic clapping, or even by gales of laughter, from an adjoining tent. But this disadvantage is more than outweighed by the convenience of having all the main events on the same site.

  I have been thinking about what makes a successful arts festival. Firstly, the organizers should have the cooperation and, ideally, the enthusiasm both of the local authority and of local people. There is never a welcoming atmosphere if residents feel that the festival is not for them, and it is important to have events which they are likely to support. Then there is the question of access; Hay isn’t easy to get to, but cars meet the trains at Birmingham and Newport. Organizers should ensure that the writers can get to the festival and that, when there, they are comfortably looked after. Often arrangements are made for them to stay with local people who act as hosts or hostesses. For the gregarious this may be pleasurable, but most writers dislike it. A reading is in effect a public performance, and afterwards most of us need to be quietly alone and not be faced with a dinner party of guests who continue the questioning we have already endured after our session. It helps if the venue is attractive or as beautiful as is Hay-on-Wye, and if there is a reasonable number of good restaurants, but these are of far less importance than the power to attract writers and artists whom people want to hear and see, and the ability to promote that atmosphere of enthusiasm, stimulation and shared enjoyment which marks all the best art and literary festivals.

  At nearly every festival I get asked about my novel The Children of Men, either during question time or at the line-up for signing. This novel, which is totally different from all my other work, didn’t begin with a setting, but with a review I read in the Sunday Times. The book reviewed dealt with the dramatic and so far unexplained fall in the fertility rate of Western man. Apparently young men today are only half as fertile as were their fathers. The reviewer pointed out that, of the millions of life forms which have inhabited our planet, nearly all have in time died out or were destroyed, as were the dinosaurs. Man’s span on earth is as the blinking of an eye.