ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Winner of the
CWA
Margery Allingham
Short Story Competition 2014
MARTIN EDWARDS
Contents
Foreword (by Julia Jones)
Acknowledgments
Are You Sitting Comfortably?
Neighbours
Margery Allingham and Short Stories
About the Author
Foreword
The CWA Margery Allingham short story competition was one of those lovely ideas that seem to come into the world almost perfectly formed – no red-faced kicking and screaming, no tugging with ropes or forceps, no late-night haggling in smoke-filled rooms. The Margery Allingham Society (MAS) was enjoying its annual Birthday Lunch at the University Women’s Club and had invited crime-writer (and Allingham aficionado) Imogen Robertson to make a speech and cut the cake. There’d been a business meeting in the morning at which the treasurer, instead of pursing her lips and shaking her head – as I believe to be the usual custom at AGMs – had been able to announce that, due to the long ago generosity of Margery’s sister Joyce Allingham, the Society had a bit of money in its reserves. How should we spend it to enhance Margery’s reputation and perpetuate her writerly legacy? A Lecture Series? A Convention? Perhaps not. Allingham herself would have presented her excuses and avoided both of them.
Margery Allingham was a hands-on professional writer from childhood. She was born into what we might now describe as a ‘media’ family – there were journalists, editors, photographers, advertising copy-writers and actors among her closest relatives, as well as other inveterate fiction-producers. A story she liked to tell in her later years was of an exasperated housemaid ‘who once snatched a ragged notebook from my hand and exploded, “Master, missus and three strangers all sitting in different rooms writing down lies and now YOU startin’!” As soon as she could manage a pen she wrote poetry, drama, advertisements and of course, short stories. She was particularly encouraged by her father, a former penny paper editor who had regularly solicited short stories from his readers as well as commissioning established authors. The short story form was, I think, a much more widely accepted part of a writer’s development in the early twentieth century than it is today. It was also a more feasible way of earning money. Margery’s first published story earned her 8/6d from the magazine Mother and Home when she was just thirteen years old and throughout her life she continued to turn to this literary form when she needed prompt amounts of cash.
Once someone at the Birthday Lunch suggested that the Society endow a short story prize the idea was accepted at once. It had a rightness about it. Many members felt that Allingham’s own short stories are an unjustly neglected part of her achievement, despite MAS chairman Barry Pike’s useful and recent bibliographical pamphlet. Others pointed out that the short story form may be experiencing something of a renaissance in the new publishing conditions. Today’s readers, carrying entire libraries about with them on various electronic devices, are as happy to include flash fiction for possible brief moments of reading respite as enormous high fantasy series when uninterrupted hours might stretch luxuriously ahead. Short stories and novellas have their place in this new flexibility – though whether they will ever become as valuable commercially as they were in the days of the Strand magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Good Housekeeping et al. is debatable. But that’s currently true of almost all aspects of a working writer’s income. So, a properly sponsored prize might at least provide a windfall to one author per year.
Then of course people began to discuss logistics: who would publicise, who would read, who would judge? Our guest of honour, Imogen Robertson, mentioned that she was an active member of the Crime Writers Association (CWA) and knew that they were seeking sponsorship for a new award for unpublished short stories to complement the existing short story Dagger. They might provide the administrative expertise if the MAS would donate the prize. Another guest at this auspicious event was heard to mention that professional publication could also be a part of the prize – as it has been. In the space of a few convivial hours an idea had become a project and a partnership.
The essential ingredient – what one might perhaps think of as the soul of the prize – was one aspect that wasn’t touched upon that day. A few weeks later a small working party from the MAS and the CWA met in the British Library over coffee and cake. Any number of details were amicably agreed, including the important stipulation that there would be no discrimination between previously-published, un-published or self-published writers. All entries would be anonymous so the winning story would emerge by merit alone. We agreed easily that it was to be a story somewhere within the crime or mystery genre but this still left a multitude of options – comic, paranormal, historical, cosy, noir, procedural, psychological, puzzle. Margery Allingham herself had written in most of the styles as well as offering some short stories that have nothing ‘criminous’ at all. What, if any, guidance should be given to the long-list readers and the judges?
We knew that we could rely on our judges to strive for the best but still we felt that something should be offered to help resolve any cases of deadlock. Agatha Christie once said of Margery Allingham ‘Everything she writes has a definite shape’ and this obliquely provided our answer. We turned to Allingham’s own definition of the ‘mystery’ novel as a box with four walls – four ingredients, perhaps – ‘a killing, a mystery, an enquiry, a conclusion with an element of satisfaction in it.’
In retrospect this looks rather a hefty requirement for a 3,500-word short story but it was only intended for use in emergencies. Reading the winning story, Martin Edwards’s ‘Acknowledgments’ it seems to me that he has come much closer to the heart of the matter – and to the secret of success in Allingham’s own best tales. The voice of his narrative is so perfectly pitched (as it is in ‘Neighbours’ and in ‘Are you Sitting Comfortably’, the two companion stories included here). The narrative style of ‘Acknowledgments’ teeters expertly along on the edge of what Allingham would probably had called ‘awfulness’. Edwards has said that he got the idea for the story from actual examples and, regrettably, ‘Acknowledgments’ is so nearly believable. Allingham was a mistress of the gentle art of allowing characters to give themselves away through their own unchecked ramblings. I think she would have relished the comic allusiveness that gives us Dean Woodthorpe of the Poe Agency, Mary Lou McGillicuddy of the ‘virtual enterprise’ Ferreting Facts and Pixie Simpson, the ebullient but elusive publicist and Facebook friend.
Allingham herself would probably have found some gnomic and pseudo-philosophic way of summing up, whetting the appetite and leading the reader into the narrative whilst giving away nothing of the plot. Consider the opening of ‘Is there a Doctor in the House?’: ‘If Dectective-Constable Macfall had been a man with charm about him this story would have been too tragic to relate and as it is, with him the thickest dunderhead God ever put breath into, it has an element of great sadness’ (The Allingham Case-Book 1969). I don’t have that skill. All that I can confidently do is commend Martin Edwards’s ‘Acknowledgments’ as the worthy first winner of the CWA Margery Allingham short story competition and state with complete conviction that she would have loved it.
Julia Jones
Acknowledgments
Writing a book such as this involves embarking on a voyage of discovery, metaphorical as well as literal. On this particular mystery tour, I have been fortunate once again to be accompanied by a good many people, and it would seem…quite criminal not to pay tribute to them here. Together, we have made By-Ways around Britain what it is.
For the benefit of curious enquirers into my story, I need to record the unique part played by my wife, Sienna.
Since we first met – was it only two years ago? – her boundless energy and unorthodox imagination have taken my breath away. Sienna it was who encouraged me to take that first and all-important step towards writing another book. The life of an author is, perhaps today more than ever before, blighted by periods of intense loneliness, as well as by seemingly endless disappointments. When I was at my lowest ebb, Sienna was the one who urged me to pick myself up, dust myself down, and start all over again. A travel writer, however long in the tooth, must keep travelling. As she so rightly said, I needed to get out more.
And then there is my agent, Dean Woodthorpe, of the Poe Agency. Ever since Winston Poe’s unexpected decision to take early retirement following that memorable Valentine’s Day party at Soho House, Dean has kept the steadiest of hands on the tiller. Over the years, my debt to Dean has been greater than I can easily describe, and not merely because of his uncomplaining efforts to guide me through the ups and downs of a full-time non-fiction writer’s tenuous existence in a free-content world. Were it not for Dean’s sage and cheery counsel, I should never have dreamed of dipping my toe into the murky water of internet dating. Had I been cynical enough to realise that he was pulling my leg, I would never have experienced the joy of that first meeting with Sienna in the Middlesbrough night club managed by one of her father’s Albanian business partners.
Dean seized upon the By-Ways project from the moment I first mentioned it, insisting when I was prey to doubts that it could represent a breakthrough in my literary career, or at the very least in this austere age, a noteworthy milestone in a process of sensitively managed decline. How often have I been glad of his reassurance that “we are all in it together”! Needless to say, he proved a forceful and, whenever provoked by a thoughtless rebuff, aggressive advocate on my behalf with publishing houses both grand and modest. Long gone are the days of contracts with Penguin and Random House, but as Dean has so wisely reminded me, in times like these, beggars can’t be choosers. One has to cut one’s cloth, and Dean is, to coin a phrase, an accomplished tailor. New, young, vibrant firms have sprung up to take on the tired old media giants at their own game. Their innovative approach to print-on-demand and e-publishing offer so many fresh possibilities to those of us who cannot offer kiss-and-tell stories or celebrity memoirs. Thanks to Dean’s negotiating prowess, I have been fortunate to secure a relationship with Ferreting Facts, a “virtual enterprise” brimming with flair and optimism. In time, they will, I am utterly confident, establish a list of distinction. Meanwhile, I am proud to become the first previously-published “dead tree” author they have consented to take on.
My editor, Mary-Lou McGillicuddy, has proved a tower of strength from the time she received the initial synopsis for By-Ways around Britain. Among other things, she has taught me that long, lazy and liquid lunches with publishers are the enemy of a truly creative relationship of equals, and that a small cup of ginseng tea can be as inspirational as it is good for the blood-sugar. Her steadfast support for my decision to focus on the personal and emotional core of my journeys around the less-frequented corners of this sceptred isle, rather than prosaic trivia about word count and proof-reading, has been a source of strength in testing times. A remarkable series of diary clashes has denied me the opportunity to meet in person my publicist, Pixie Simpson, but both of her warm-hearted emails meant a great deal to me, as does the fact that we are Facebook friends. Their constant stream of lively and fun-filled tweets and blog posts has given me, along with a few dozen other carefully chosen followers, the privilege of an intimate glimpse into the lives and careers of both Mary-Lou and Pixie. Their passion for twenty-first publishing, and indeed much else, gave me confidence from the outset that, whatever else it may be, life on their list could never be dull!
When, finally, I was ready to pursue my investigations into Britain’s obscurest by-ways, I made it my business to renew acquaintance with my former wife, Sandra. As she so tellingly put it, when a couple split up, the man finds another woman, and the woman finds herself. Sandra, I was thrilled to discover, has found herself as a member of a small community in a quiet, leafy and unpronounceable corner of mid-Wales. Now that she is at one with Mother Nature, we were both able to agree that our parting, however painful at the time, was a blessing in disguise. During our brief but memorable reunion, Sandra supplied me with copious quantities of herb and beef bile soup while I interviewed her fellow sect members, and she was also kind enough to care for me during a subsequent and happily short-lived indisposition. I owe particular gratitude to Sandra for her intercession in the unfortunate dispute with her spiritual leader about the morality of driving an imported car fuelled by leaded petrol that is touched upon briefly in chapter five. Thankfully, lasting unpleasantness was avoided, and I believe we all parted with a fuller understanding of each other’s cultural imperatives.
It was good to see our son, Roger, when I journeyed to the coast of Lincolnshire. His unwillingness to lower his expectations with regard to working life is a shining example, not least to myself, of the importance of maintaining standards in a dumbed-down world. In writing this manuscript, I have kept in mind Roger’s injunction not to patronise my readers by producing a volume that I naively imagine they might wish to buy, but rather to concentrate on literary self-fulfilment, and have the courage to say: “I am what I am. Take me as you find me, or not at all.” Truly the child is father to the man! I can only express the profound hope that, in its reckless drive to prune public expenditure, the government does not impose such Draconian cuts to state benefits that Roger is required to compromise his ideals, and forsake his simple but dignified existence on the outskirts of Boston in the old family camper van. Rusty though it may be, to see once again the setting for my only child’s conception after so many years brought more than just a single tear to my eye.
It is far too long since I had the good fortune to express in print my admiration for my brother Tom’s hardiness and flair for self-sufficiency. Feeling rather like a hunter myself, I tracked him down to a small forest in the Peak District, and we spent a couple of chilly nights under canvas, our cockles warmed by knocked-off Johnnie Walker, reminiscing into the small hours about the good old days of scrumping apples from the farmer’s orchard at the end of our lane. Our late parents’ bosoms would, I am sure, have swelled with pride to see the accuracy with which Tom can pot a pheasant in twilight at a range of not less than forty yards. I recall with particular fondness a long evening spent with Tom and two of his friends, sitting in a cloud of midges downwind from a rabbit warren, waiting for the quarry to emerge before dusk. Male bonding has not always enjoyed a good press, but as I make clear in the pages that follow, that night was something to savour – unlike the rabbit, I have to confess!
When I travelled to the North East, I was fortunate to meet members of Sienna’s family as I explored a landscape scarred by poverty and abandoned coal-mines. Her father continues, sadly, to fall foul of the Parole Board’s narrow-minded interpretation of the requirements of public safety, so our time together was strictly limited and spent in conditions far from conducive to frank and open conversation. However, it was no small recompense to meet Sienna’s five siblings for the first time, and in particular to discover that young Jonquil is every bit as fun-loving as my wife. Jonquil it was who accompanied me on a nostalgia-filled visit to that very same night-club where Sienna and I met, and it was heart-warming to see that a talent for pole-dancing runs in the family.
To Ludmilla Arkadin, formerly Woodthorpe, the ex-wife of my agent Dean, I must offer especially profound thanks. Ludmilla generously took time out from her ceaseless fight against deportation from this country (and what happened, may I ask in passing, to our fine tradition of tolerance?) to break important and disturbing news that she judged – quite rightly – I needed to know.
At first, I was shocked by the suggestion that the easy and laughter-filled friendship between Sienna and Dean that I had so happily encouraged might have blossomed into something mor
e intimate. Ludmilla, to her eternal credit, continued to press the point, refusing to be discouraged by my insistence on putting the phone down and deleting her emails. The photographs she forwarded to me were too grainy to offer, in my opinion, cast-iron proof of infidelity, although something in the way that Sienna bent over Dean in the darkened car park of a motorway service station prompted more than a few fluttering of anxiety on my part.
My philosophy in life is simply expressed: “Expect the worst and hope for the best”. It seems especially well suited to the life of a professional writer, and on the whole it has served me well, offering comfort even in my darkest days. It was in this spirit that I confronted Dean with what his former spouse had told me, and when he laughed it off as the maunderings of an embittered woman who had married only for convenience and money, I was glad to take him at his word.
Unfortunately, it was a different story when, in a casual aside, I raised the matter with Sienna. By a miserable coincidence, I had told her only the previous evening that my share of the assets inherited from our parents (Tom has long squandered his on women and booze, of course) had diminished to a point where soon we would both need to seek paid work elsewhere if we were not to join Roger in relying on state hand-outs. Sienna took the news with a stoicism bordering on indifference, not least when I pointed out the wisdom and significance of that famous old phrase “for richer, for poorer”.
However, when I referred to the absurdity of Ludmilla’s allegation, it was as if a dam had burst, and Sienna subjected me to a tirade that combined confession with calumny. Bad enough to be a cuckold in my own home, but to be sent pottering around the drabbest back-waters of Britain to provide my wife and her lover with endless opportunities to satisfy their lust added insult to injury. The sting of her contempt as a self-appointed literary critic was, by comparison, something I could bear with my customary phlegm. It is not as if I enjoy writing any longer, let alone all the ghastly research. This business turns us all into brain-dead hamsters, forever running on an endless wheel.
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