From one of the ruined palaces they visited, they could look out towards the Bosphorus and, remembers Jonathan, ‘go down into a little town and have fresh cooked fish … [and] when you look at the bridges going across there must be a thousand people there with fishing rods’.11
The year 2004 also saw the launch of the Anne Perry website. ‘Great to see it running,’ Meg wrote to Jonathan, whom she was hoping would take on a support role for the web-master. ‘I’ve had an email this morning tearing me off a strip for allowing bad grammar on the site of a respectable author and I feel very embarrassed. Also, there are a lot of very bad factual errors which will be leading readers in entirely wrong directions.’12 There was room for improvement, but it was a necessary evolution.
As well as the future, there was the past. This year was the fiftieth anniversary of the Parker–Hulme case and predictably an email arrived: Chris Cooke at Television New Zealand was advising them of plans to produce a programme on the murder and asking for Anne’s participation. Meg declined on Anne’s behalf, but the memories were rekindled. The agency also received a letter from a member of the extended Parker family. It was a reasonable request to communicate with Anne: ‘I’m very keen to write to you about something that has been on my mind for many years. But, I imagine you have been pestered so much that you would rather not hear from me.’13 For Anne it was a painful look back when, after half a century, she just wanted to move forward.
In 2004 Anne wrote three short stories and the introduction to Penguin’s The Sherlock Holmes Mysteries. Towards the end of the year Don heard from Meg that Joe Blades at Ballantine had offered the same deal as the previous year for the ‘Xmas novella, A CHRISTMAS GUEST. That’s [a good amount], since that is pretty much exactly what the books seem to be earning, I suggest we accept. Okay with you?’14
Still ticking along, and with more potential for excitement and financial return, were Anne’s film and television ventures. There were rollover option contracts on the Pitts and the Monks, and concrete interest in the First World War series. Daria Jovicic, producer and co-founder of Wild Bear Films in New York, and producer of the film Girl with a Pearl Earring, was interested in the Monk series, especially The Face of a Stranger. Ken Sherman was in regular contact with Jane Merrow about the venture. ‘Daria Jovicic is still deeply dedicated to this project and has now attached Jonathan Kaplan as Director, which we are very pleased about,’ she told him.15 Julian Fellowes — actor, screenwriter for the film Gosford Park and later writer of the acclaimed television series Downton Abbey — had written a ‘very good first draft’ of a script that was now several years old and was also waiting to see what would happen.16
With Anne’s permission, Meg made moves in 2005 towards establishing a more public profile for her author. In July she emailed Jane Morpeth and Lucy Ramsay at Headline to begin the process.
You’ve deferred to Anne’s sensitivities about her past, which has held back what you might otherwise have done for publicity and marketing. As you also know, Anne has said in the last few years that she wants to ‘take the brakes’ off now. Her nephew and niece are now grown up enough that she feels they can withstand any adverse publicity. Accordingly, you’ve been more active in promoting her, which we’ve noticed and appreciated. Now that Anne’s had a couple of years to get used to this idea … [she would] now like to do everything possible to maximize her profile in this country. As a complement to Headline’s efforts, we wondered how you would feel if Anne engaged [British PR company] Colman Getty?17
Headline had no reservations, so Anne and Meg interviewed a number of public relations people and decided on energetic and positive solo operator Diane Hinds. Her impact was immediate. Within a short time she generated £3 million of advertising value. There were radio interviews, extensive articles in leading newspapers and multiple television events. After working with Anne for only two weeks, Diane was especially excited to get her on ITV’s very popular This Morning show. She thought the programme would handle Anne’s past sensitively; this was a coup.
On the day, Diane escorted Anne to the interview and was sitting in the green room watching the monitor as the live broadcast began. ‘I thought “I’ve lost my job”, because the male presenter was laying into her. It was awful. He put her on trial again. It was horrendous. And I was thinking, “I’ve got to go in there and stop it.”’ But she had no idea where, in the rabbit warren of corridors, the studio was located, or how to get there. ‘They broke for an advert and came back to her and it was still aggressive, but it soon ended. I walked out of there with Anne and kept saying, “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, I’m so, so, sorry.” … I thought that was it.’
The publicity generated was huge, and more television opportunities materialized as a result, but Diane kept asking herself if it was worth it. She was also wondering how she could have got it so wrong. The producer rang Diane, apologized profusely for the way things had been handled, and sent a big bouquet of flowers for Anne to Diane’s home address.
Anne was traumatized by the incident. For a long time she was silent and her hands shook. Later she would remember it as one of the worst experiences she has ever had. ‘It was absolutely appalling … in public … no taking any of that back.’ When Meg Davis saw the programme, she was horrified and rang Diane. In the end they decided they would just let it lie. Bringing in lawyers would only draw more of the wrong sort of publicity, and the last thing they wanted was a media stand-off.
When Anne had finally collected herself in the car afterwards, she reassured Diane: ‘Look, you don’t have any control over this, you’re doing your job.’ Diane was astounded by how ‘gracious and understanding she was, because I thought that’s it — at the end of this week, I’m history … Artists on the whole can be quite egotistical, and they will take it out on the nearest person, normally the PR … I learnt that I’ve got the most amazing client.’18
After their ordeal they became firm friends, and Diane continued to promote Anne’s profile in the United Kingdom. She organized book and speaking tours, workshops, public events, and interviews in Portmahomack. The results were mixed. There were headlines like ‘I’m the Heavenly Creatures murderer’ for a September 2005 article in the Daily Mail and ‘Murder She Wrote’ for Real Magazine, but there were also the more positive ‘My Home, Anne Perry: Author of her own destiny’ for the Independent and ‘Rising from the Ashes’ in At Your Leisure, both published in 2006.
There was something intensely personal to Anne about the storylines of the last two novels in the First World War series. In the rawness of these final wintry narratives, both the author and her characters are revealed. In At Some Disputed Barricade, published in August 2006 and set in the last years of the war, Joseph Reavley surveys the carnage. What is the value of life and what the price of taking it? ‘It was a pretense that in the seas of blood each death was somehow important. The whole of the Western Front was strewn with broken bodies; many of them would never be found.’
His mission is to track down the murderer of Major Howard Northrup, a hopelessly incompetent, tyrannical commander who sends men to their deaths just to satisfy his insatiable ego. When he is found shot through the head after a kangaroo court-martial by his own men, one or all must pay.
Joseph has already sent his friend Sam Wetherall, guilty of another justified war killing, over the trenches into no man’s land with a new identity. He could not dob Sam in, nor could he live with the knowledge that his friend is a murderer, so he helped him to stage his own death and wept over the grave, knowing his friend’s body was not there. Sam has missed the firing squad, but is now sentenced to a life as a fugitive.
Joseph could barely even guess at the pain losing his identity must have caused [Sam], hollowing out places of loneliness, character, and grief he could not imagine … the enormity of [the] situation began to sink in: the endless state of not belonging; the loneliness for anything deeper than [a] passing acquaintance; the knowledge that you were forever a stranger.
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But Joseph is smarter now and more conscious of the ‘complexity behind an apparently simple act’, and he will not make the same mistake again. This time he is ‘prepared to lie, evade, whatever was necessary, and live with his conscience’. The value of truth without context is tested in this incident, and Joseph discovers that truth is much more circumstantial and mutable than he had imagined. ‘To do the right thing was necessary, to need to be seen to do it was a luxury, even a self-indulgence, and completely irrelevant.’
Anne’s characters pick their way through a minefield of ethical issues. Their journeys are treacherous, and sometimes ‘Quixotic … [and] absurd’, but they are also singular and courageous. It is the questions they ask that are important. ‘I am halfway through the 4th book in the series,’ wrote one of Anne’s readers in April 2007, ‘and I must admit to being more morally challenged than I have been in a very long time. You compellingly present diametrically opposite sides of an argument with equal thought and reason. I cannot say how much reading these books has made me think and analyze my own views of right and wrong.’19
In August 2006 Anne heard from Vicki Mellor at Headline about the final First World War novel, due to be published a year later, in August 2007.
I just wanted to write and say that I have just finished the manuscript for WE SHALL NOT SLEEP and I loved it. I have to admit that I shed a tear at the end; both at the fact that from your writing you could feel what it meant to the troops when peace was eventually secured in the First World War, but also at the thought that I wouldn’t be able to read about the Reavleys anymore. As with all great books though, I am sure that the characters will live on in my mind.20
We Shall Not Sleep is set in the last few months before armistice is declared on 11 November 1918. The world has altered. Thirty-five million people are ‘missing, dead or injured; a continent spread with ruin’, but the ultimate price is not the fallen or the lost, but the living who remain and are changed forever. It is not whether there will be a peace, but what kind it will be, and whether it can be maintained. The Peacemaker, talking to his double agent Richard Mason, states, ‘Do I have to explain to you what happens to a nation if we rob it of its identity, its means of regeneration, its faith in its own worth and destiny? … Nothing good is built upon hatred.’ Like so many of the Peacemaker’s pronouncements, this is a telling observation.
This, however, is also the man who had the Reavley parents killed, and who perpetrates vile deeds as a sacrifice to greater good. ‘Much that the Peacemaker wanted is right, and perhaps to begin with he was the most far-sighted, the sanest of us all, but he usurped power to which he had no right. He is a man fatally flawed by the weakness to abuse it.’ The Peacemaker is proof that all behaviour must be scrutinized and audited, and that no one can sit superciliously behind good intentions while their actions are corrupt.
There is a memorable episode towards the end of the book. Joseph is crossing Flanders in an ambulance, from the trenches at Ypres, when he comes across a village whose inhabitants have stoned to death a young woman named Monique, mistakenly believing her to have been a traitor. When they realize their terrible mistake, they are overwhelmed by remorse. What kind of penitence is there for murder? When Joseph finds it almost impossible to forgive them their crime, his brother Matthew remonstrates with him: ‘there’s always a way back, Joe, from anywhere … You told me that. If you can’t help them, what hope is there for any of us?’ His romantic interest, Lizzie, equally sure he should intercede, adds: ‘You don’t have to lie to them. Tell them how hard it will be, just don’t say it’s impossible.’ In the end Joseph sees his error and apologizes for standing in judgement. He tells the villagers: ‘I have no right to [judge]. That is something you will have to do for yourself. You know what you did, and why, and what drove you. And you know she didn’t deserve it.’
The last two novels in Anne’s First World War series were well reviewed, both for their vivid descriptions of war and for their moral dimension. The Publishers Weekly reviewer noted that at the end of We Shall Not Sleep Anne ‘neatly and satisfactorily ties up all the loose ends from the preceding novels’.21 Left unresolved, however, is the fate of Monique’s murderers and whether they will ever find a way to forgive themselves.
‘I just had lunch with Meg and we talked about your recent trip to Naples,’ Vicki Mellor wrote to Anne in December 2007, ‘it sounds wonderful. I would love to visit the caverns under the city — they sound fascinating.’ Anne was enchanted with Italy, especially the hidden history and craggy southern coast around the Isle of Capri, and the ominous smoking cone of Mount Vesuvius. This trip for her was one of the special rewards of writing. She was invited to lecture to students of English literature at the University of Naples by ‘the most absolutely delightful person’, Annamaria Palombi, who had a villa on the Isle of Capri with exquisite vistas over rocks to an aquamarine sea.
Although Annamaria Palombi’s husband, Elio, did not speak much English, they were able to communicate well enough to enjoy each other’s company. ‘He’s a most remarkable man,’ Anne remembers. ‘He was a judge, then he went back to being an advocate … for people who weren’t represented properly, for cases that have gone skew-whiff … What a beautiful man … That’s something money can’t buy, the opportunity to meet people who are truly remarkable … That’s the sort of thing [writing does]: you meet wonderful people and they treat you as if they know you … because they’ve have read what you’ve written.’22
Although Italy was not as big a market for Anne’s books as Germany, France or Spain, from her early days at St Martin’s her Italian publisher Mondadori had enthusiastically represented her Pitt and Monk books. The experiences from her trip to Naples and Capri began to take shape as an idea for a novel set in Italy between the wars.
On her return to Portmahomack, Anne had to adjust to the idea of a new but strategic incursion into her private life. At a film festival in Edinburgh, Meg had met young director Dana Linkiewicz and they had talked about the idea of making a television documentary about Anne. They agreed between them that this would happen towards the end of 2007. Dana Linkiewicz’s plan was to shadow Anne with a sound and camera crew for three weeks, ‘recording her day-to-day activities’.23 Writing to confirm the arrangement, Meg set out their expectations: ‘We understand that the events of 1954–60 may need to be touched upon, but you undertake to do this with the utmost sensitivity and that this will occupy the least possible amount of the portrait.’24
Footage was shot on location at Anne’s home, in the village and the surrounding district and, at the end of filming, Dana and her crew returned to her base in Stahnsdorf, Germany. She edited through the early months of 2008, then came back to Portmahomack to show a preview. There were some anxious moments for Dana: ‘as I traveled to Scotland, I was excited and did not know what everyone would think of the film’.25 Anne was on a book tour in Spain when Meg responded formally with feedback. There were reservations. ‘I know Anne felt a bit bruised by how she seemed to come across in the film, and it sounds different from the professional persona that’s been very carefully constructed over the years by her and her publishers and agents.’26 However, the documentary was accepted on the basis that Dana made some minor changes. ‘I was very glad that Anne approved of the film — it showed a grandeur towards something that will never be easy for her.’27
While Meg and Dana negotiated over the documentary, there was an incident in Spain. Anne appreciated the freedom of no longer having to be secretive about her identity, and she enjoyed travelling and meeting people, but there was always an anxiety, a ‘numbness that never goes from some places — and you’re always waiting for the moment’. It happened during a public presentation:
A woman came in [to the auditorium] with a placard saying I should have been drowned at birth and screaming at me, she had to be removed … it was very embarrassing and then I had to give a speech … People pick on a public figure and attach all their demons, and the fact that the
y know nothing about you has nothing to do with it.
Always, there was that lingering chance of public humiliation or worse for Anne. ‘There are lots of things [that are] positive … it’s just that the negative is so numbing.’28
Since A Christmas Journey, which explored an episode in the young life of Lady Vespasia, was published in 2003, the Christmas novellas had been a successful addition to Anne’s list. After Vespasia, Henry Rathbone, Grandmama Ellison, Charlotte’s brother-in-law Duncan Corde and Monk’s ex-boss Runcorn had been featured, but it was not until A Christmas Grace, published in 2008, that one of the books made the New York Times extended bestseller list. This novella focused on the spirited exploits of Charlotte’s sister, Emily Radley. Anne’s publisher at Headline, Vicki Mellor, knew it was a winner when she read it. ‘I also wanted to let you know that I have just finished A CHRISTMAS GRACE and thought it was beautiful. It is very emotive and powerful, and your descriptions of Ireland, and particularly the storm, are so vivid that I felt like I was there.’29
This success added frisson to discussions about the next novella. Meg emailed Vicki an update. ‘I sent Anne back to do a revision and cut some repetition, so needed to give this a further look before sending it. She’s also taken the point that A CHRISTMAS CASKET is not the most cheerful of seasonal titles, however much “casket” is defined as “jewel box”. It’s now (at least provisionally) A CHRISTMAS PROMISE.’30 With any hint of morbidity removed from its title, A Christmas Promise, featuring the Pitts’ maid Gracie, was published in 2009.
It tells the story of how the diminutive Gracie is found alone and weeping in the squalid streets of London after the murder of her father. ‘The pathetic voices of the children in Charles Dickens’ bleak accounts of the miseries of life in the slums of Victorian London find an echo in this poignant little vignette of a Christmas book,’ wrote the Washington Times reviewer, and the Wall Street Journal noted that Anne had ‘made good, with style, on her Christmas promise’, while the Yorkshire Evening Post amusingly exclaimed, ‘if you don’t have a lump in your throat by the time you finish the final few pages, you shouldn’t have had all that sherry’.
The Search for Anne Perry Page 33
