“You mad bugger!” he yells, and begins to laugh and cough and splutter. “You mad fucking bugger!”
And the sight of this hysterical man, held together by whisky and weather-bitten skin, makes Ellis laugh as he shivers. He waves his arms exuberantly and shouts back, “I did it! I did it! Now I’ve done it too!”
Towzer leaps up and down, unable to contain himself, and the boat rolls from side to side.
“Too! Too! You’re the fucking first, you mad bugger!”
And he falls into his boat and screams with laughter. The boat shoots off at an angle until Towzer regains control of himself and the tiller. He comes alongside the silt ridge. Ellis clambers aboard. Towzer removes his coat and throws it to Ellis. The coat smells of cigarettes, of drinking and of fish. Ellis puts it on. They head back to the shore, to the lighthouse shore. To the beautiful, bleak, spent shore. Ellis looks across the surface of the water to the lights of the café next to the lifeboat station, as they flicker on. The café is the sort of place where being lonely felt warm and familiar and solid to him in yesterday’s world, when lonely was something he thought he was meant to be. But, this morning, he has no desire to go to the café or do anything else familiar. And there’s no need to keep watch here any longer. His father will not be returning. It will take him only a few minutes to pack his belongings and lock up the house and put the keys in an envelope for the agent, but even that will seem too slow because, for the first time in a long time, he cannot wait to get going.
Where were you born and where did you grow up?
I was born in Farnborough, where South London and Kent merge, and I grew up in a village in the Weald of Kent.
Were you encouraged to read widely as a child?
If I was I probably turned a deaf ear as sport was all I was interested in. Hugh Pullen, an influential English teacher, made us read
The Catcher in the Rye
at exactly the right moment in my, at the time, dubious academic life (when I was fourteen), and that was the start.
What was your favourite subject at school?
Football, basketball, cricket. When I finally and belatedly began to study, I grew to love English literature.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
Married to the girl next door. Then she moved to Belgium, when we were both seven. That was a kick in the teeth. Belgium … you don’t bounce back from that in a hurry.
Did you write compulsively as a child?
I started writing when I was fifteen. I have written ever since.
What book did you love as a child and why?
I can’t remember any as a young child, but early on at “big school” Hemingway’s
Indian Camp
was the first story I loved and found
thought-provoking
. I was a very childish seventeen year old, if that counts, when a girlfriend gave me Alain-Fournier’s
Le Grand Meaulnes
. It was the first time I read and re-read a novel. I loved that book, still do.
Did writing the book change you?
No.
What do you do when you are not writing?
Earn a living. Coppice woodland. Windsurf badly. Swim. Walk for miles in East Sussex and Kent. Watch Arsenal and moan about us leaving Highbury.
What would you be if you weren’t a writer?
When I was a boy I wanted to be a shepherd on Romney Marsh. So, maybe that. I don’t know. I’d be a completely different person, so who knows?
What is the best job you have had?
I once got paid to spend two months making mini-documentary films about football for a beer company. That was a pretty good combination.
Which authors do you most admire?
William Maxwell, Gabriel García Márquez, Richard Ford, Marilynne Robinson, Harper Lee, Ernest Hemingway. And Raymond Carver for his poems. I’ve just started reading Bukowski and that is a fantastic experience. Then there’s individual books that I have admired greatly, like
Middlesex
by Jeffrey Eugenides,
Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro,
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
by Jon McGregor,
Paradise
by Abdulrazak Gurnah,
A Box of Matches
by Nicholson Baker. Where do you start? Where do you end? I should say, to try to boil it down, that William Maxwell’s work is incredibly important to me.
Which book do you wish you had written?
Gilead
is the most perfectly written book I know about, or
Middlesex
for its invention. Or Barbara Cartland, for the dosh.
Do you have a favourite book?
So Long, See You Tomorrow
… by William Maxwell.
What do you look for in a novel?
I don’t look for anything. It either works for the reader or it doesn’t.
Do you have a favourite literary character?
There is something acutely beguiling and hypnotic about Frank Bascombe (Richard Ford’s novelist–sportswriter–realtor) which means that I find myself identifying closely with someone whose life is, on the surface, so foreign to mine. I feel bereft at the end of a Frank Bascombe novel, at the prospect of being parted from him. An awe-inspiring writer, Ford.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
As Ellis would say, not being asked questions like that. But if I were forced at gunpoint to answer, it would involve regular contact with the people I love – but not too regular.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
I give myself a very hard time when it comes to my work. Some would say, with good reason.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
“By definition.” And I swear, which I hate.
What is your greatest extravagance?
I don’t have any. Oh, yeah, going on trips abroad when I am broke – I remember now. When being hassled by utility companies and the council tax people for payment, I tend to sit down with a calculator and put my serious head on, with the intention of working out a budget and a master-plan for cutting costs and surviving a few more months, and ten minutes later I find that I have gone online and booked a fortnight’s windsurfing somewhere hot and real nice, trusting that things will have sorted themselves out by the time I’m back.
What would your superpower be?
A moderate command of English grammar.
What is your view on spiders?
They are good for old houses so I have a vested interest. The more I learned about them, the more awe-inspiring they became. Often, at sunrise and sunset in my garden and in the fields around, I see thousands of silk threads caught in the low light and it reminds me that they are everywhere, creating these extraordinary feats of engineering called webs. I’m a fan.
How did you start the book?
At a certain point in my life, I had a period of having very vivid recollections of the village I grew up in and of particular incidents. These were not dramatic or unusual but they were “mine” and I felt the need to record them. Somewhere in that time, what I was writing down changed from recording memories to creating wholly fictional stories and characters and setting them in various places I have lived. By 2003 I had decided these notes would be a novel, my first novel. Very few of those early notes and real memories survived the cull from a 700-page first draft to a 300-page book. In all, it took five years to write.
What encouraged you along the way?
My brother Pip, my best mate, Jim. And the fact that I was very focused on doing this, whatever the outcome and however long it took.
Did you visit the locations you were writing about?
I set the book in three places I have lived. Everything else about the process of writing a novel was foreign to me, including the story itself, so I decided that the locations would be the elements that I really knew and was expert on. My memory of these places is profoundly vivid and detailed, so I did not return to them for the purposes of the writing, and, in the case of my village, the changes that have occurred naturally over time would have hindered me. It is also the case that in writing the book I have manipulated the layout and reality of those settings to suit my story.
Did you know how the novel would end when you began it?
I knew, but it had other ideas. It won. My ending was terrible.
How did you want the reader to feel on finishing the book?
It would be immensely pleasing for me if the reader loved and cared for the characters, would miss them a little, and had their own vivid picture of the landscapes. But I’d settle for them not demanding their money back.
Are any of the characters based on people you have known?
No. There are real people who I have in mind and who inspire small physical or psychological elements of a fictional character, but I do not take real people and put them in a story - where’s the fun in that when you can play inventor and create characters just as you want them? The best example I can give is Reardon. In the village I grew up in there was a farmer who I found daunting and impressive when I was a child, and who I grew up to admire and love. He was a one-off, and, to me, an inspiration. He was incredibly encouraging of my work and we shared an appreciation of similar landscapes and art. I was by no means amongst his closest circle of friends, but he meant a great deal to me. I had a desire to write a character of a farmer who meant a great deal to Ellis, but the Reardon of the story and the Reardon-Ellis relationship are entirely fictitious. So, none of the characters are based on real people, but the essence of a real person (or maybe just a very detailed characteristic) is sometimes a starting point for what becomes a fictitious character.
Did any image or piece of music inspire you?
Strauss’s
Four Last Songs
and the paintings of Andrew Wyeth.
How important was research to the writing of the book?
I referred to the
Collins Field Guide: Spiders of Britain and Northern Europe
by Michael J. Roberts, and to the excellent
Spiders
by Michael Chinery.
How important is the temporal setting of the novel?
Perhaps, a bit like the settings I used, it was comfortable for me to set the story in the same years that I was Ellis’s age. I loved my childhood so, by association, I have vivid and positive images of rural and coastal life in the 70s and 80s.
How did you decide on the novel’s title?
What was important to me about Denny’s idea for the truces was that it went against the grain for him. He used his heart and his strength to bring his children up, but he did not use his imagination. The truces were the first time he did use his imagination, and risk embarrassing himself too. I love Denny for doing that.
When do you write?
Very early in the morning is the best time of all.
Where do you write?
My study. My kitchen. Under the oak tree in my garden. Pond Wood. Pett Beach. The Breakfast Club in Soho. On the train. I wrote a lot of this book in the New Piccadilly Café in Denman Street, London W1, the closure of which leaves an empty space in my experience of London.
Why do you write?
You either do or you don’t. If you do, there’s no “why”.
Who or what inspires you?
Absolutely everything and nothing much in particular.
What do you read if you need a prompt?
I don’t. I go out and do something. Usually a walk or a swim.
Do you listen to music as you write? If so, do you have a favourite piece to write to?
Not when I am writing from blank page. But sometimes I do when I am editing or adding dialogue. Arvo Pärt. Vaughan Williams. The
Concerto for Two Violins
by the undervalued contemporary British composer George Newson. Some film soundtracks. Sigur Rós. Amiina. Elliott Smith. Crosby, Stills and Nash. Folk compilations.
Do you use visual prompts?
Not really, not at the writing stage. But I do trawl through my scrapbooks and postcards and art books when first collating ideas.
Do you revise and edit your work as you go?
Yes, a huge amount, endlessly.
What tips would you give aspiring writers?
“Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.” Stanislavsky.
What single thing would improve your writing life?
More talent.
What distracts you from writing?
The kettle. The weather. Birds on the feeders. Horses on the lane. The fields. The beach. Women. Football. The pub. The kettle. The weather.
How do you balance writing with other commitments?