A Half Forgotten Song (58 page)

P.S.
Insights, Interviews & More . . .

About the author

Meet Katherine Webb

K
ATHERINE
W
EBB
was born in 1977 and grew up in rural Hampshire, England, and studied history at Durham University. She has since spent time living in London and Venice, and now lives near Bath. Having worked as a waitress, au pair, personal assistant, book binder, library assistant, seller of fairy costumes, and housekeeper, she now writes full-time.
A Half Forgotten Song
is her third novel.

About the book

The Story Behind
A Half Forgotten Song

T
HE FIRST SEED OF THE IDEA
for this novel was planted by a summer job I had during my university years. The job was in the bindery department of a printing works that produced high-quality art books and periodicals. For two weeks, I hand-collated a book about the artist Augustus John and saw, again and again, his glorious portraits, which were often of the women in his life. I was captivated by them. I took a copy of the book home with me, and learned a bit more about the man—one of Britain’s foremost twentieth-century artists.

He lived in a very unconventional way for the late Edwardian era, with his wife, Ida; his mistress, Dorelia; the children of both women; and sometimes Dorelia’s sister, too; all under one roof. He was said to have had tremendous allure, and to be a great lover of women—so much so that it was joked that he would pat the head of any passing child in the street, just in case it was his. His portraits are strikingly sensuous. He manages to convey mood, expression, and atmosphere with just a few strokes of his pencil, and often worked quickly, spontaneously, to capture a moment. There’s a photograph of Augustus, Ida, and Dorelia, with several of their children, enjoying a picnic on a cliff top in Dorset, where they lived for several years. When I saw it, I started to wonder—what must the residents of a quiet place like Dorset, in the early part of the twentieth century, have made of such bohemian living arrangements?

So the character of Charles Aubrey was born, inspired by but not based upon Augustus John. And the character of Dimity also came to me—a girl who had never known anything but the village and house where she grew up, and whose experience of life to date had been one of exclusion and hardship. How would she react when confronted by the warm, open extended family of a great artist? How would she react when she was invited into that circle? How would she adjust? Would it be too much for her? The most rural parts of any country are the slowest to change, and in the 1930s, the era in which I decided to set the story, a lot of houses in rural England would have remained unmodernized, without indoor bathrooms or telephones; in some cases even without electricity. The pace of life was slower, and still shaped by the farming calendar. Many people spent their whole lives within reach of the village where they had been born.

Dorset remains one of the most beautiful parts of England and one that, for me, epitomizes the joy of the British seaside. It has a stunning coastline and rolling hills inland. In the summer, it’s flooded with holidaymakers for these very reasons. When I was a child we took our summer holidays in Devon, rather than Dorset; but since then I have visited the county many times and come to love it. I jumped at the chance to try to capture the landscape and feel of the place—how wild and lonely, as well as lovely, the coast there can be. To an outsider, just coming to visit, it’s the picturesque scenery that gives the lasting impression. But I could well imagine that to have grown up there, in an earlier time, might have been a difficult and insular experience.

The nature of Dimity’s upbringing—in near poverty with a neglectful single mother—means that she has had to fend for herself, and often feed herself, a lot of the time. Dimity is an expert in the kind of wild food and foraging lifestyle that has recently come back into fashion! But I wanted to show that if you had to forage to survive, it would be a very different thing—knowledge would be passed down from parent to child, and it would become a necessity, even a chore. I have long been interested in lost herb lore, wild food, and hedge pharmacy. A low-income family in the 1930s, before the days of the National Health Service, would not have been able to see a doctor for every minor, or even major, ailment suffered. Home remedies were still very much in use for everything from liver disease to piles, birth control to beauty treatments, and such recipes were passed down in families and shared with neighbors. I really wanted Dimity to be perfectly adapted to her environment in this way—to have all this knowledge, which to the Aubrey family is something of a novelty, but to her is a means to survive. It would have been a hard way to exist, and when Dimity is shown an alternative way of life by the Aubrey family, she is captivated by it.

So the stage was set for two different worlds to collide—Dimity’s poor, traditional, lonely one, and the Aubreys’ cosmopolitan, expansive, exuberant one. Neither side will be the same again once the consequences of their meeting have fully played out. The intense and flattering attention of the artist, as he repeatedly sketches the rustic Dimity, is like nothing she has experienced before, and once she has tasted it she cannot let it go. I’m sure we can all remember crushes we had during our adolescence, and just how powerful and all-consuming they could be. I suddenly wondered, as I thought of Dimity, just how destructive such an obsession might be, given an extraordinary set of circumstances; how, with the carelessness of happy, privileged people, the Aubrey family might push Dimity past reason to a stranger, darker place.

The story also touches on memory, and the way it can play tricks on us. Or rather, the way we can willfully use it to play tricks on ourselves. How often, when something happens that we are ashamed of, do we deliberately forget about it, or tweak the events to exonerate ourselves somewhat? At the extreme end of this scale there are cases of people whose minds have entirely suppressed memories that are too painful or too traumatic for them to cope with. Given a lifetime to reflect, and bury, and build her own cover story, would Dimity manage to entirely expunge those memories of the Aubreys that were hateful to her? Would she be able to rewrite her own history, or, toward the end of her life, would the memories bubble up and refuse to stay silent? Would they come back to haunt her, like ghosts, and not rest until she had confronted them?

A Half Forgotten Song
became a story about the precarious balances we live with—how so many things can be both wonderful and destructive, both beautiful and savage; from love to landscape, from art to childhood. The apparent kindness of welcoming a stranger into your home can in fact be cruel; trying to fit in where you don’t really belong can make you lose yourself. It’s about what can happen to us when we’re put into a situation for which we are wholly unprepared, and how careful we all ought to be with the lives and feelings of others.

In Conversation with Katherine Webb

Which character in
A Half Forgotten Song
reminds you most of yourself?

I think they all have at least one trait I can relate to, or see a little of in myself. I have some of Hannah’s practicality and stubbornness, and also some of her self-reliance. But I also have some of Zach’s self-doubt and uncertainty, and I can be a bit of a fantasist, just like Dimity.

Silence or music while you write? If music—who do you listen to?

Silence—if there’s any music, I listen to it and stop working!

Do you like Zach?

I do, very much—he’s genuinely kindhearted, and honest, even if he’s not perfect. He’s sometimes uncertain and slow to act—not exactly an action hero! But I sympathize a great deal with the nagging feeling he has that he ought to be doing better than he is. People often expect an awful lot of themselves, and give themselves unrealistic deadlines and milestones to reach—
by the age of thirty I will have . . .
etc. I’d like to sit Zach down and tell him not to beat himself up so much! He’s doing his best, which is all any of us can do.

Which authors do you admire and why?

I find something to admire in pretty much every book I read—and I read a lot. I know how difficult writing a novel is, so I appreciate the hard work of others! The writers I really enjoy are the ones whose books hold me completely captivated, and so immersed that I forget that I’m reading and feel like I am actually inside the story; who make me care so deeply about their characters that I develop genuine feelings for them, be they positive or negative. Some favorites include Ian McEwan, Jim Crace, Margaret Atwood, Helen Dunmore, Kate Atkinson, Sir Terry Pratchett, Tad Williams, and Rose Tremain.

Like for Ilir, is your home where you were born?

For me, I would say yes. Not the exact town, perhaps, but the country. However much I moan about the weather, the overcrowding, the politicians, the prices, and the weather (again), I’m not sure I’d want to live anywhere else but England. If I did move away, I’d be homesick for it—and nowhere else serves a proper cup of tea! But I have friends who have cut all ties with the UK completely and never looked back, so I think it’s a very individual thing.

How did you physically write
A Half Forgotten Song
, and why?

I write directly into my laptop. I have a workbook full of scribbled notes which I have to have open beside me, even if it’s no help at all—it gives the illusion of planning and forethought when, to a large degree, I’m never quite sure exactly what I will write until I write it! I work from a good outline of the plot, but from scene to scene the books evolve very organically. It’s better that I type—my handwriting is atrocious. Half the time I can’t read my own notes.

How do you hope your readers will feel about Dimity?

I’m always interested in the gray areas of human behavior and morality—the fact that good people sometimes do bad things, and vice versa, and that none of us really knows what we might be capable of doing under extreme circumstances. With Dimity I wanted readers to be able to see why she ended up the way she did, and perhaps understand how desperate she had become and why. I personally feel that she did an inexcusable thing, but given that she spent the rest of her life punishing herself for it, perhaps readers might be able to forgive her in the end.

What’s your most treasured possession?

My two cats, Erik and Pole. Always there to wake me up when I oversleep, and to destroy my house with claws and muddy feet. I love cats—they maintain such a perfect balance of affection and indifference! I also have a ring that was my grandmother’s which is very special to me. The band has worn almost right the way through, and I like to think of all the many times she must have worn it. Grandma was a fantastically stylish, charming, and self-possessed woman. Whenever I’m feeling nervous before some important occasion, I put on her ring and try to “channel Grandma”!

Why did you call the novel
A Half Forgotten Song
?

The idea for the title came from all the little musical snippets and childhood songs through which Dimity was transported back into her recollections. Then I realized it perfectly described her flawed memories as well—the way her version of events, and the stories she tells Zach, don’t quite tally with reality. I think that happens a lot—an invented version, or rose-tinted ideal, gets more and more deeply entrenched until it completely obscures the actual, less appealing reality. It’s a way of protecting ourselves that I’m sure we’re all guilty of sooner or later, to some extent.

Did an actual artist inspire Charles? Did real paintings inform your description of his work?

Yes. The character of Charles Aubrey was inspired by the life and work of Augustus John. He’s a fascinating figure, and one of Britain’s greatest twentieth-century artists. He drew such beautiful, sensuous pencil portraits of his wife, his mistress, his children . . . I find them utterly captivating, and I tried to describe that magnetic quality when I was describing Charles Aubrey’s work. Augustus John was also rumored be to a tremendous philanderer . . .

What single thing about you would surprise us the most?

Not much! I’m a fairly straightforward sort of person, I think; no extreme hobbies or weird habits. Perhaps, given that the stories I tell are often quite tragic, and that I don’t give all my characters happy endings, it might be surprising that I’m generally a very cheerful and upbeat person! Also, I get completely paralyzed when I’m asked to write a dedication in a book, or a witty something in a birthday card—I can never think of
anything
to write, which is a bit embarrassing for an author.

Was the plot of
A Half Forgotten Song
worked out before you began writing, or did it develop as you went along?

It was pretty much all worked out. I wrote a comprehensive synopsis for my editor before I got going, which I don’t like doing and found very hard indeed, but which did hammer out a few plot holes before I’d written my way into them! I always know where my characters need to end up in a story; I work out how to get them there once I’m under way.

What’s your most vivid memory?

Memory is a funny thing. Some seemingly significant things have already blurred into the background, and some seemingly banal things I can remember with crystal clarity. Who knows why? The little things that stay with us must be significant in ways we can’t immediately decipher. I remember the squashed, desiccated frog I found in the road when I was five, and sitting at the kitchen table practicing my letter
e
’s. I remember in excruciating detail a social faux pas I made at a dinner party eight years ago, but I can’t really remember what I did on my sixteenth birthday. I remember the exact moment I heard that I’d got a publishing deal, and in what order I then called my friends and family to let them know; but I can’t really remember my graduation day at university. Moments of real fear or anxiety stay with me—probably because, happily, there have been so few of them.