After the War Is Over: A Novel

by Jennifer Robson

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  Further Reading

  About the author

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  Meet Jennifer Robson

  Natalie Brown/Tangerine Photo

  JENNIFER ROBSON is the USA Today and #1 Globe & Mail bestselling author of Somewhere in France . She first learned about the Great War from her father, acclaimed historian Stuart Robson. In her late teens, she worked as an official guide at the Canadian National War Memorial at Vimy Ridge in France and had the honor of meeting a number of First World War veterans. After graduating from King’s College at the University of Western Ontario, she attended Saint Antony’s College, University of Oxford, where she earned a doctorate in British economic and social history. She was a Commonwealth Scholar and an SSHRC Doctoral Fellow while at Oxford. Jennifer lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband and young children, and shares her home office with Sam the cat and Ellie the sheepdog.

  A Conversation with Jennifer Robson

  Congratulations on all the success your first novel Somewhere in France has had! Were you surprised by the response from readers?

  I have to admit I was! When you’re a writer, you spend years working more or less alone, and so when you present your characters to the world it’s hard not to feel a little bit anxious, even protective. I had become very fond of Lilly and Robbie, and indeed of all the characters in the book (excepting Lady Cumberland, of course), so it was terribly gratifying when so many people fell in love with them, too.

  We first met Charlotte as Lilly’s friend in Somewhere in France. How did you decide to make her the heroine of your second book?

  When I was creating her character, she kept reminding me of other women who have inspired me, among them my grandmother, who spent her working life as a journalist, and my late mother, who was a lawyer and, in the last years of her life, a judge. Both had the courage and determination to work in fields traditionally dominated by men, and they persevered in the face of what must often have been quite dispiriting working conditions.

  It made me wonder: although I grew up in a family where no one ever said I couldn’t do something because I was female, what must it have been like for women such as Charlotte and Lilly and their contemporaries? How would it have felt to live and work at a time when so many doors were closed to women?

  I also knew that I had to resolve the story of what happens between Charlotte and Edward, for good or for bad, or else risk the wrath of everyone who had been waiting to discover what becomes of them after the war.

  During the war, many women did “men’s” work, and took on all kinds of new and exciting challenges. Did that have an effect on their lives after the war?

  It did, but in a pretty limited fashion. Yes, some women (though not all) received the right to vote in 1918, and from 1919 onwards the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act opened the professions to women and also made it illegal to sack a woman if she got married. In practice, however, high levels of unemployment after the war—levels that were particularly dire in the industrial north—meant that virtually all women who had been employed during the war were given the sack shortly after its end, and few were then able to find positions outside occupations that had been traditionally considered “women’s work.”

  What the war did encourage, however, was a growing conviction among women that they were absolutely able to do the same work as men, that they ought to receive the same wages if they did the same work, and that they contributed just as much to society as did men. They saw themselves as capable, as able, and that perception lingered. Their daughters picked up on it, and then their grand-daughters—and so, while appreciable and measurable change did not happen until after the Second World War, it did happen. And I would say that we all owe a debt of thanks to those first women who had the courage to leave behind everything that was familiar and comfortable, and do the jobs they were asked to do.

  What was your favorite part of researching After the War is Over?

  Oh, definitely the portions that involved Oxford. I studied there in the early 1990s, and it was great fun to send Charlotte and Edward along streets I walked as a student, to put them in some of the same buildings I worked in and visited, and to describe the splendor of a degree ceremony. Fortunately for me, the city itself hasn’t changed all that much since the turn of the last century, and the ceremonial aspects of life at the university have hardly altered at all. So it was mostly a case of re-acquainting myself with smaller details that I had forgotten over the years, and brushing up on my Latin a little bit!

  Were there any historical details that were especially difficult to uncover?

  So many resources are available online via digital databases that in most cases it was simply a matter of digging and asking the right questions of the right people. I did have to be very careful when I was describing the layout of certain neighborhoods in Liverpool and the East End of London, however—large swaths of both were all but wiped out during the Blitz, so I couldn’t rely on modern maps as wayfinders. Instead, I turned to ordnance survey maps of the period, which showed me the streets as they existed in 1919.

  I will say, though, that if I know a street or building is largely the same as it was a century ago, I find Google Street View a tremendously helpful (and entertaining) means of putting myself in the shoes of my characters—just as long as I ignore the modern signage, cars, and other evidence of the twenty-first century.

  How did you research the details of Edward’s injuries?

  I began by reading a number of books and articles from the immediate post-war period that sought to explain and understand the phenomenon of what was then known as neurasthenia, but today we would call post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. At the beginning of the war it was understood imperfectly, to say the least. Though the number of soldiers and officers executed for cowardice—but who in fact were likely suffering from PTSD—is often exaggerated, it was nonetheless a horrible and tragic by-product of the lack of understanding that then prevailed.

  By the end of the war, however, there was a growing consensus that a man might, through no fault of his own, be so traumatized by what he had suffered that he was truly not fit for duty. It was also the case that growing numbers of men were being diagnosed with traumatic neurasthenia, which recognized that a man might be badly injured by the concussive effects of shellfire, even though he bore no readily identifiable wounds. In the case of many men, their concussions were overlaid by tissue wounds or fractures, as well as PTSD, so it was difficult for their physicians to diagnose them, let alone treat them properly.

  For my descriptions of Edward’s concussion—its signs and symptoms, as well as his recovery—I drew upon the experiences of a close friend. After suffering a severe concussion, as well as a skull fracture, she was bedridden for many months and recovered only after a frustratingly long period of complete rest and withdrawal from work and her daily routine. I should add that most people who suffer from concussion do recover fairly quickly, but a minority—like Edward, and my friend—suffer from post-concussion syndrome. For them, recovery can take months or even years.

  Do you have a daily routine for your writing?

  I’d say that my routine is somewhat unusual, in that I have young children who have only just begun to attend school full time. During the week I work from the moment I drop them off at school in the morning to the moment I have to collect them, a little less than seven hours, and I try to ignore emails and phone calls whenever possible and just focus on my writing. After my children are home I’m busy with homework, after-school activities, dinner, and bedtime until at least 8:00 P.M., at which point I fire up my computer again and try to get in a few hours of research or updates to social media. Fortunately my husband often has to work in the evening, too, so we keep each other company! If I’m really pressed for time—if I have a deadline looming—I often end up working through the night, since the wee hours are wonderfully quiet. But as I get older I’m finding this approach tends to knock me flat, so I’m doing my best to put work a
side and go to bed at a reasonable hour.

  Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

  The best piece of advice I have ever read is to simply sit at your desk and write. Just write. You’ll never be successful if you don’t write—and I don’t mean writing about writing on social media. Social media is terrific, but it can only help you if you first put in the work of actual writing.

  Beyond that, I would tell them to press on in the face of rejection. I was told no any number of times before I got my first yes, and like most writers I received enough rejection letters and emails to wallpaper my bathroom.

  What are you working on now?

  I’m in the middle of working on a third book, also set in the same period, with a protagonist who appears briefly in both Somewhere in France and After the War is Over. This time, however, most of the narrative will take place in Paris, in the world we now associate with the “lost generation” of Fitzgerald and Hemingway. If my first two books left you dreaming of a trip to England, this one will have you packing your bags for the City of Lights.

  About the book

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  The Enduring Appeal of Blackpool

  IN CHAPTER 13 OF THIS BOOK, Charlotte spends a day at the seaside with her friends. More to the point, she travels to Blackpool, that most iconic of seaside resorts, and takes in every delight it has to offer. If you happen to be British, or have spent any amount of time in Britain, Blackpool will likely be familiar, even if you’ve never holidayed there yourself. But I suspect there will be a number of you who will have read this chapter and wondered what all the fuss is about.

  Today, many of us think nothing of hopping on a plane for a week’s holiday, or jumping in the family car for a road trip to the nearest beach or national park. In 1919, however, the days of cheap overseas travel were still a half-century away, and only a wealthy few could afford to journey by ship to glamorous destinations such as Biarritz or Saint-Tropez. As well, while automobile ownership became far more widespread in the 1920s and 1930s, in the immediate post-war period only a small percentage of families had access to a car.

  This didn’t prevent ordinary Britons from enjoying their holidays: By 1911, historian James Walvin has observed, a little more than half the English population was visiting the seaside on day excursions and a further twenty percent was taking holidays that required overnight accommodation. Their destination was the scores of seaside resorts in England, Wales, and Scotland that grew and flourished from the mid-nineteenth century onward.

  Of the many seaside resorts in Britain in the early twentieth century, Blackpool was by far the most popular. Other resorts—among them Margate and Torquay in the south, Scarborough and Skegness in the north—attracted middle-class holidaymakers, but Blackpool was happy to cater to its working-class visitors, and determinedly fostered a jolly, old-fashioned, and often somewhat low-brow atmosphere.

  In the early 1920s, despite post-war unemployment and economic malaise, Blackpool attracted as many as eight million visitors a year. By the height of its popularity in the 1950s, nearly 17 million visitors flocked to the resort each year. These numbers were boosted considerably by the phenomenon of Wakes Week, when the mills and factories of Lancashire closed and gave their workers a week’s holiday. (The closures were staggered across different municipalities, so as to avoid the disaster of hundreds of thousands of families all trying to go on holiday at once.) Although most workers received no pay for their week off, many families saved their pennies for the rest of the year in anticipation of a week by the sea—for it was often the only vacation they received, apart from Sundays and bank holidays.

  While train fares from the industrial heartland to Blackpool were relatively cheap, the charabanc was an even less expensive option, though a decidedly dangerous one. Little more than an open-topped wagon bolted to the frame of a heavy-goods vehicle, the charabanc had a high center of gravity, no protection for passengers if the vehicle tipped over or was in a collision, and of course it had no seatbelts. But charabanc fares were cheap, and it was common enough for smaller workplaces, or large family groups, to hire one for the journey to Blackpool.

  Once at the resort, most families stayed in a boardinghouse; the hotels in Blackpool, relatively few in number, catered to a more middle-class clientele. It was customary for guests to be locked out for nearly the entire day, ostensibly so the landlady (often of a fearsome and unyielding disposition) could clean, which meant that from mid-morning to early evening families thronged to the beach and the many amusements on offer.

  At high tide, the beach at Blackpool was immensely wide and flat, and while it was pleasantly sandy the water was never especially warm. Most visitors contented themselves with a quick paddle, rolling up their trousers or holding their skirts high, and set their sights on other pastimes. It’s worth noting that, in the early 1920s, people were just beginning to feel comfortable wearing bathing suits in public; the bathing machines that once sheltered people from censorious eyes had only recently fallen out of use. It helped that most suits were extremely modest in design, covering their wearers, female and male alike, from neck to knee, and (this was before the advent of stretch fabrics) were typically made of thick serge, knitted cotton, or wool.

  While Norma’s less modest suit would have raised eyebrows, it wouldn’t have been considered scandalous as such, although she and anyone else wearing a bathing suit would have been in the minority. While Charlotte and her friends had enough disposable income to pay for such an inessential garment, many of Blackpool’s holidaymakers would not have been able to afford their own suits, nor even the fee to rent one. While younger children were often clad in homemade knitted suits—which could make for a miserable paddle once the wool became sodden with seawater—contemporary photographs reveal that most people on the sands of Blackpool beach were wearing their street clothes; indeed, many seem to have been clad in their Sunday best. Today we might think it odd to be by the sea and never go for a swim, but for many it was enough to be in the sunshine, to smell the salt air, and be away from the factories, traffic, noise, and smoky air of the cities where they lived.

  Of course there was more to Blackpool than its beach. There were donkey rides for the children, the rides and games of Pleasure Beach, the Winter Gardens with its Opera House, and the genteel offerings of the great piers stretching out over the sea, though the fees charged by all these attractions meant only better-off visitors could partake. Each autumn, as well, the Blackpool Illuminations drew many thousands of visitors with a dazzling display of electric lights, though the shows were halted during both world wars.

  Greatest of all the attractions, however, was the Blackpool Tower. It resembles (and was inspired by) the Eiffel Tower, but where the latter stands alone on the Champ de Mars, Blackpool’s tower rises from a large and rather squat brick building which houses its admissions hall, ballroom, circus, and, for many years, a menagerie and aquarium.

  Today Blackpool’s glories are somewhat faded, although its Tower is being expensively restored, and increasing numbers of families are traveling there rather than abroad. Vacant storefronts dot its waterfront, but its beach still welcomes thousands of visitors each summer, the donkeys are patiently waiting to offer rides to children, and sticks of Blackpool Rock may be bought and savored, just as they were a century ago.

  To learn more about Blackpool and its history, I recommend Beside the Seaside by James Walvin, The British Seaside Holiday by Kathryn Ferry, and The British Seaside: Holidays and Resorts in the Twentieth Century by J.K. Walton.

  Glossary of Terms Used in After the War is Over

  Antimacassar: A cloth placed over the headrest of a chair or sofa, ostensibly to prevent the furniture’s fabric from being soiled, but also used for decorative purposes.

  Armistice Day: On 11 November 1918 an armistice was declared between combatant nations and the guns fell silent. Its anniversary later became Armistice Day. In Britain and many Commonwealth nations, 11 November (or the nearest Sunday)
is still observed as a day of remembrance, and in some regions is a statutory holiday.

  Aspidistra: A particularly hardy form of houseplant that was all but ubiquitous in British homes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

  Bathing machines: High-sided wheeled carts that were stationed on beaches and rolled into shallow water; they offered privacy to bathers who didn’t wish to be seen in their swimming costumes. By the early twentieth century they had all but disappeared from British beaches and any that remained were used as stationary changing huts.

  Belgravia: A small district in central London notable for its grand squares of large Georgian houses. Edward’s family lives in Belgrave Square, from which the district takes its name.

  Blackpool Rock: Sticks of brightly colored, boiled sugar candy that were a popular treat at the seaside resort.

  Bovril: A proprietary brand of thickened, salty meat extract, often diluted with boiling water to make a sort of broth.

  Bubble and squeak: Main course dish made of fried cabbage and leftovers, typically potatoes, vegetables, and scraps of meat.

  Bully beef: Popular term for the tinned corned beef that was a mainstay of the soldier’s diet during the war.

  Carfax: The conjunction of four major streets in the center of the city of Oxford.

  Charabanc: Originally a large, open-topped wagon with bench seats for passengers; the motorized version of the early twentieth century was popular as a means of transportation from urban centers to seaside resorts.

  Chilblains: Tissue injury that occurs when a person is exposed to cold and humid conditions, often resulting in swollen skin, itching, blisters, and infection.

  Clippie: Popular term, first coined during the First World War, for women conductors on buses and trams.