Growing Into Medicine (29 page)

The six stories I wrote got longer as the course progressed. Towards the end the tutor suggested that the form might not be suitable for me. I must have taken that comment to heart. By the time I enrolled on the MA course in creative writing at Bath Spa University, two years later, I had the first draft of a novel in my hand.

The year was 1999. I celebrated my seventieth birthday with a party that I arranged for myself. As well as family and friends I invited a number of medical colleagues in an attempt to ease what I had expected to find a traumatic parting from my professional life. By the time it happened I was so enchanted by the idea of the new writing course that I hardly noticed.

Helen would have liked to organise a party for me but because I insisted on arranging it for myself she substituted a mystery tour the next day. I thought we might be going to France for the night but she said I did not need a passport. At the end of the party, my brother Arthur and his wife Ruth left – I thought for their own home in Cheshire. I imagined we would drive north and meet them somewhere between our two houses. When we turned south I was mystified but hid my disappointment. Biz had come from America and was with us in Helen’s car so at least I had one sibling by my side. At lunchtime we had reached Devon and turned into the car park of
The Nobody Inn
. To belie its name, three of the other most important people in my life were sitting outside: Arthur, his wife and my beloved cousin Jenny. After the meal I discovered that Helen had arranged for us all to go on to a luxurious hotel on Dartmoor where I was greeted by flowers fit for a bride, more champagne, a sumptuous dinner and much loving banter.

It is for the people gathered at that dinner, and especially for Helen and her family, that I try to be as independent and happy as possible. An idea from the novel by R C Hutchinson,
Testament
, has
reverberated in my mind for many years; that one has a duty to be happy – for one cannot make others happy if one is not happy oneself. I was born with a reasonably contented nature, a ‘glass half full’ sort of person. The effort needed to be content is not so great – indeed, my relative happiness can be a matter of smug self-congratulation. I have to remind myself that the difficulty of judging the struggle another person has to find contentment is as great as trying to assess the degree of someone else’s pain.

Before the MA in creative writing started, I stayed for five days at Lumb Bank, one of the residential Arvon centres for creative writing. The eighteenth-century house once belonged to Ted Hughes and is at the top of a steep lane with wide views over the Yorkshire countryside. The tutor who influenced me most was the poet Michael Laskey. When he visited Bath recently I was touched and amazed that he remembered a hate poem I wrote about my mother. I spent some time trying to write poetry but surprised myself on the MA by choosing prose modules. I probably realised that I had not read enough poetry to be much good in that form.

By the time the course started I had became addicted to the discipline of writing. If I do not write for a few days I get itchy inside, as if I am deprived of a necessary antihistamine to soothe an urticarial rash. Despite constant battles with my poor spelling, my lack of dexterity with words provides a challenge as well as moments of intense pleasure. Apart from giving birth to a baby, the course was the most exciting thing that has happened to me in my life. I was at least twenty years older than most of the others in the year, but because we had a common goal the generational differences did not seem to matter. I spent my time rewriting the novel and trying some more short stories.

After the MA course ended I enrolled on a third OCA course, this time in poetry. My tutor, Robert Drake, reminded me of my father. Robert’s first collection of poems,
A Line on Stone
, moved me greatly, for it drew on his experiences with stone and included building the dry stone walls that my father strove to perfect.

At the same time I found myself writing a second novel. I sent the two novels out to agents. Their negative responses did not deter me and during the first decade of the new century I wrote five novels in all. I was lucky to have the help of Lindsay Clarke’s tutorial group during some of this time. He was the most demanding of all the teachers I have met in my struggle to become a writer. I am greatly in his debt. Leaving the group after four years was hard. I was influenced by Tom Main’s idea, that after three or four years doctors in psychosexual training needed to forgo the support of the group and go out into the world to practise what they had learned. He believed they were professionally independent people who had to be responsible for their own work. He encouraged them to re-join a group later for a ‘top-up’, in order to unpick bad habits, like mistakes in a knitted garment, and to halt the tendency to backslide into more traditional forms of doctoring. The same dangers may lie in waiting for the aspiring writer.

The seeds from which my fictions germinated were most often psychosexual problems. Heather says there is nothing interesting or exciting about sex gone wrong. I disagree. Sex is a central part of the human condition and no one can divorce themselves from its drives and complications. The problem is to find good enough ways to write about it. I am surprised and hurt when told that my characters do not come alive or feel real, for I believe that professionally I have touched ‘reality’ in the depths of many people. I would like to blame Tom for my inability to flesh them out. His training, concerned as it was with ‘deep penetration on a narrow front’, probably blinded me to many aspects of a character. But the reason is more likely to be my own underdeveloped writing and imaginative skills. My need to rationalise and control my material might be even more of a handicap. Lindsay told me on more than one occasion, ‘Put down your pen and close your eyes. Go back into the scene and see it better, in all its details.’

Since the end of the MA course a small group of us has continued to meet at my house every four to six weeks. The company has dwindled to four and I am deeply grateful to the others, who arrive
through all weathers and at whatever personal inconvenience. After a shared meal we workshop our writing in a disciplined way. The critical edge of our eyes and ears has sharpened over the years. Without their company and belief in my work, their encouragement and critique, I could easily have given up the struggle.

My second novel
Parallel Journeys
was eventually published, but not under ideal circumstances. After many refusals I was put in touch with an agent who suggested a publisher in the north of England. I was excited of course, and when he explained that I would have to pay a considerable amount of money I did not demur. His letter, which arrived with the formal agreement, was very explicit about the number of copies I would have to sell to cover my costs, the many people worldwide to whom he would send review copies and the amount I might expect to make per copy. I was totally naive and saw the arrangement as somewhere between vanity publishing, or to use a kinder word self-publishing, and the real thing. I did not even realise that the book would be published ‘on demand’.

I have no evidence that any review copies were sent out. I enjoyed working with the sub-editor and the production team. The Bath branch of Toppings bookshop arranged a launch party to which I asked friends and ex-colleagues. This gathering was the highlight of my publishing career. Ninety people turned up to listen as I read some extracts, a tribute to the loyalty of my friends rather than the literary quality of the novel.

Since then few copies have sold and my fiction publishing has ground to a halt – but I have continued to write. Despite the disappointment, and the financial loss, I am glad I got something into print. My stories are about human relationships, with an underlying serious idea. In the published novel the theme was the temptation for businesses to cut corners to make money. I set it in the research and development department of a drug firm. Unfortunately one of my friends thought I was getting at all such companies and she pointed out, quite rightly, that without them we would have no drug research. My intention had been to show that unscrupulous people are to be found in many different settings.

I have enjoyed researching for the books, especially one about an environmentalist who believes the only way to influence people would be to blow up the Thames river barrier. One icy day in January the barrier was expected to rise for its routine check, and I set off at 6 a.m. wearing five layers of woollies and carrying my grandmother’s walking stick. By this time I was in my mid-seventies and not too happy on slippery ground. I travelled on the Docklands Light Railway for the first time, and arrived on the north bank of the river. Entering the Thames Barrier Park I found an imaginative place that had been opened in 2000. It has a sunken green area to represent a dry dock. It was still early but I ignored the cold, being on a high, feeling like an explorer, my senses heightened by the need to look, listen, smell and feel for the sake of the book. The writing that followed that visit has etched the experience into my mind, enhancing the power and enjoyment of the memory despite the fact that the barrier never rose. My one human contact, a man walking his dog, told me it had been used for a high tide the day before and the routine check was not needed.

I also consulted a friend I had met on my first birding trip who was a waterman’s daughter and had lived close to the barrier all her life. She knew every craft that had ever travelled on the Thames and had helped with some of the surveying for the barrier. When I sent her a draft of my story she felt I had used her experiences in such a way that she might be confused with one of the characters. I hastily made some changes.

My anti-hero swims down to attach limpet mines beneath the water. I wrote to the Imperial War Museum and had a most helpful answer about how limpet mines could be disguised in a variety of objects including boat fenders. These mines were used during the Second World War to blow up enemy ships moored off Bordeaux. That story has been immortalised in the fictional film
Cockleshell Heroes
. I also had a lesson with the Bath Sub Aqua Club, where the instructor was friendly and helpful. The equipment was heavy, especially out of the water. I managed to float for a few minutes between the surface and bottom of the pool and the
freedom was intoxicating. If I were younger I could become addicted.

My fifth novel started differently, sparked by the terrorist incident at Glasgow airport. A group of doctors and other medical personnel had driven a car into the terminal doors. I had no ideas in my mind apart from my horror of fundamental religious belief. I can imagine I could become a violent terrorist if I had suffered great deprivation, or my family had been killed or tortured. But I could not, and still do not, understand how such privileged people could have been radicalised in this way. I decided that I did not know enough about Islam to write about it, so I chose a Church of England vicar for my main character. I had no idea what was going to happen and was greatly surprised when he got severely beaten up in the second chapter. I still have hopes that some publisher might be interested in this story in the future, but I need to re-write it to make the characters more realistic; not so ‘naïve and nice’, as Heather says.

Writing has filled a part of my life that I believe is occupied, to some degree, by religious practices or meditation in those who cultivate their inner life. Within a minute or two of taking up my pen, or re-reading something I have written, I am detached from my surroundings. The immediate buzzing in my mind is stilled. The discipline cannot take over if I am really worried or depressed – or if there are other people in the house – but given a moment of reasonable stability and isolation, the magic works. The concentration needed to find the best word, something that Lindsay Clarke says can take him half the morning, becomes an absorbing task. I do not claim to be so dedicated, but exploring the thesaurus has become a very important part of the work. The height of excitement comes when I find an image or a form of words that carry a metaphor or meaning that I had not consciously put in when I first wrote the text. That demonstration of my unconscious mind in action is the highlight of the experience, providing as it does an access to a deeper layer of my psyche – although I do not understand why it should evoke such overwhelming joy.

As I begin on the downward path towards real old age I treasure
the extended boundaries that writing has provided. My day to day experiences are richer, I look more closely and make more effort to remain open to new people and ideas. Reserves of energy, unavailable for other occupations, are released in a surge that only occurs in response to this itch that needs to be scratched – by the act of writing.

20

Mining the Past

Indian philosophy divides life into three parts. The first is spent growing up and fitting oneself for life in work and family. The second is devoted to earning one’s living, taking an active part in society and raising one’s children. During the last third one has to learn to let go of precious things and prepare oneself for death. When I first came across this idea the divisions each lasted twenty-five years. Given the length of modern training, and our increasing life span, thirty years might be more appropriate for the present day – at least for those of us living in the west. However, many of the activities that have brought me greatest satisfaction – editing the later psychosexual books and writing my own, followed by the world of fiction – have taken place since I was sixty.

As I admit that fact, I feel a stab of disloyalty. Ralph died when I was sixty-one. I am loath to admit that being forced to live alone has freed me in any way. My marriage was not easy, but I know it was a good one.

A friend recently asked me if writing this memoir was therapeutic. The question feels strangely irrelevant. The inner thirst to free myself from early constraints was quenched during my analysis. Yet I am still searching to understand my marriage. While writing these chapters it has felt increasingly like writing a love story, although there is quite a lot of complaint about Ralph and I am sure there are places where he does not emerge as a very sympathetic character. I need to understand how my marriage worked, to find some basis for my conviction that it was good, for the
devastation I felt when he died and for the changes that have taken place since.