Out of the Woods But Not Over the Hill (31 page)

‘Mind you,' said the man, ‘it were somebody.'

‘Really,' I sighed. ‘Who was that then?'

‘Charlie Dimmock,' the woman told me.

‘And what's he got that I haven't?' I asked, mischievously.

The woman shook her head. ‘It's a woman,' she told me.

‘And she digs the garden without a bra,' added the man.

‘So do I,' I said.

The man threw back his head and laughed. ‘Aye, but you 'aven't got what Charlie Dimmock's got.'

My mother always advised me never to try and be clever with people. It never pays off. I should have heeded her advice.

‘So, is that the main criterion for writing a book then?' I enquired.

‘What?' asked the woman.

‘Digging a garden without a bra?'

She thought for a moment before sharing her thoughts. ‘It might not be, love,' she told me with a small smile playing on her lips, ‘but I reckon she sold more books than you're ever going to sell. Come on Ron.'

And with that they departed, leaving me sitting by my lonely self amidst the piles of unsold books.

The Curse

When my first Dales book,
The Other Side of the Dale,
was published I was understandably very excited to see it in the shops and to read the reviews in the papers. Christine and I were staying at a hotel in the Yorkshire Dales and were joined for dinner that evening by my editor, Jenny Dereham, and the writer and broadcaster, Mike Harding, and his wife. In the corner of the lounge sat an elderly woman, engrossed in reading the very book.

‘Why don't you tell her you've written it,' urged my dinner companions. ‘I'm sure she'll be thrilled to meet the author.'

I took little persuading and approached the woman.

‘Excuse me,' I said pleasantly. ‘You perhaps aren't aware but that is my book that you are reading.'

‘I think not,' said the woman tartly. ‘I borrowed it from my sister. And if you do find your copy I wouldn't bother reading it – it's not up to much.'

Borrowed books are a sensitive subject for me.

My brother-in-law, Keith, is something of a bibliomaniac – his nose is forever in a novel or a biography and his house has wall-to-wall shelving in virtually every room, all crammed with books. He has one golden rule when it comes to his treasured books: never ever lend them to anyone. ‘Invariably,' he says, ‘those who do never see them again and if the books are returned they are stained with sun-tan lotion or coffee or have the corners of the pages turned down or the spines hanging off.'

I do wish my dear wife Christine would take a leaf out of Keith's book, if you will excuse the metaphor. I have a study at home which has its fair share of tomes but time and time again I will be searching the shelves for a particular book and, having been unsuccessful and enquiring of Christine if she has seen it, my dear wife will say: ‘Oh, I lent
The Kite Runner
to Margaret', or: ‘If you're looking for the Basil Hume biography, Mum's got it', or: ‘I let Anne borrow the Michael Dobbs.'

‘Christine,' I say with exasperation in my voice, ‘will you please, please ask me first when you lend people my books, and if you feel compelled to loan them out will you ask for them to be returned?' Of course, the books rarely are returned and I have to go out and buy another copy, which, being a thrifty Yorkshireman, does not go down well at all.

The pasting of a bookplate at the front of my books, with EX LIBRIS printed in red and, just for good measure, stating that the book is the property of Gervase Phinn and could it please be returned, I am afraid has had little effect. I have now resorted to placing in each loaned book a copy of the splendid Spanish
Curse on Book Thieves
, discovered in the library of the monastery of San Pedro in Barcelona, and I have to say that now my books are returned pretty promptly.

 

For him that stealeth or borroweth and returneth not

This book from its owner,

Let it change into a venomous serpent in his hand and rend him.

Let him be struck down with palsy and all his members blasted.

Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy

And let there be no surcease to this agony 'til he sing in dissolution.

Let bookworms gnaw his entrails

And when at last he goeth to his last punishment,

Let the flames of hell consume him forever.

A Character of Fiction

‘We've been having a little
contretemps
about you,' said the very elegant elderly woman at a literary luncheon. She turned to her equally elegant companion. ‘Have we not, Patricia?'

‘Indeed,' agreed her friend.

‘Could you settle our difference of opinion?' she continued, resting a heavily bejewelled hand on my sleeve.

‘If I can,' I replied.

‘Where did you acquire your
soubriquet
?'

‘My what?'

‘Your cognomen, your pen-name, your
nom de plume
?'

‘Obviously, Gervase Phinn is clearly not your real name,' added her companion.

‘It's so very literary, like a character from Dickens. I said to Doris that I think it comes from Trollope – Phineas Finn – but my friend here thinks you acquired it from Edmund Crispin's novel,
Love Lies Bleeding
, in which the main protagonist is the sleuth, Professor Gervase Fen.'

‘It's my real name,' I told them, smiling.

Doris arched an eyebrow. ‘How very singular,' she said.

‘However did you manage, growing up in Rotherham?' enquired her friend.

I was relating this conversation to another speaker at the luncheon. My fellow writer gave a wry smile. ‘Well, can you imagine what I had to put up with?' replied David Nobbs.

Gervase is a name which appears quite frequently in historical romantic fiction, but he surfaces as a thoroughly bad lot. The name is usually given to aberrant aristocrats, narcissistic, dandified poseurs and devious, upper-crust and well-connected villains. Rather than the Regency buck, with his coal black curls, swarthy skin, dark smouldering eyes and tight-fitting britches, the Gervase of literature inevitably turns out to be a bloated, raddled old roué with quivering jowls, a wet handshake and extremely questionable habits.

In
Slightly Tempted
(a story of ‘sparkling courtship, scandalous passion and all-consuming love') by Mary Balogh, Lord Gervase Ashford is the notorious rake, intent on ravishing the beautiful Lady Morgan Bedwyn. In
The Faun's Folly
by Sandra Heath, Lord Gervase Mowbray, Duke of Wroxham, is only marginally better. Georgette Heyer, in
The Quiet Gentleman
, had a central character called Gervase, Earl of St Erith and, in
The Queen's Man
, by Sharon Kay, Gervase Fitz Randolph is no better than he should be. In
Mistress Wilding
,
by Rafael Sabatini, portly Sir Gervase Scoresby is not someone to be trifled with and, in
Mr Castonel
, the eponymous hero is Mr Gervase Castonel: ‘It was a prepossessing face; it was silent, pale and unfathomable with grey impenetrable eyes that disliked the look of you; and dark hair.' Mary Jo Putney, in her romantic saga,
Dearly Beloved
, paints a picture of a cold and brittle man who prefers his own company to that of others:

 

In spite of their physical closeness, Gervase was remote from her, his expression harsh and withdrawn. Diana leaned across the narrow gap for a light kiss, asking softly, ‘Is something wrong?'

His eyes were shadowed and he was silent for too long.

 

So, I think I have made my point: the Gervases in literature are well connected, but not very nice.

When I met the third speaker at the literary luncheon, the bestselling novelist Margaret Dickinson, author of such cracking reads as
Wish Me Luck
,
The Miller's Daughter
and
Chaff Upon the Wind
, I suggested rather facetiously that she might like to name the hero of her next novel,
Suffragette Girl
, a Gervase, and use my second name, Richard, as his surname. To my surprise and delight, she agreed. True to her word, the novel features a young, dashing military hero called Gervase Richards.

The Critic

‘I think Mr Phinn will agree with me that his books won't win a Booker or a Pulitzer prize for literature, but if you want a light-hearted, entertaining, easy holiday read you need go no further.'

That was the introduction to my talk at a recent literary festival. Damned with faint praise, I thought. I know none of my books will ever rank amongst the great works of literature or become set texts for ‘A' level, but the comments did, I have to say, rankle a little.

Those who write books, however, have to accept that some critics will be less than generous in their opinions and should not get too upset about it. If you present your work for public scrutiny, you have to take the rough with the smooth. Authors and poets should follow the advice of Lord Byron, in his clever and amusing
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers:

 

‘To spurn the rod a scribbler bids me kiss,

Nor care if courts and crowds applaud or hiss.'

 

Of course, authors sometimes entertain wicked thoughts about their critics but to enter into a slanging match with a mean-minded reviewer can do a deal of harm to that writer's reputation. If I receive a letter criticising some aspect of my work, I never reply. It will irritate the sender to think that their efforts have been wasted and their opinions ignored.

Recently, the philosopher Alain de Botton became apoplectic when he read the review of his book,
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
, by the critic, Caleb Crain. He accused Crain of being ‘driven by an almost manic desire to badmouth and perversely depreciate anything of value'. He went on to wish his critic ‘nothing but ill will in every career move you make,' and to declare, ‘I will hate you till the day I die!' He really was upset.

Nicci Gerrard, writing about the novelist Jeanette Winterson, wrote somewhat cruelly that: ‘She has come a long way from playing tambourine in a missionary tent in Lancashire; she's the ultimate self-made woman – self-taught, self-improved, self-produced, self-invented and oh-so self-confident.' Miss Winterson was so angry she turned up one evening on Gerrard's doorstep and confronted the critic with the words: ‘Never come near me or my writing again, do you hear?'

In reviewing Piers Morgan's book,
God Bless America
, Giles Hattersley, rather than focusing on the content of the book became rather personal in his attack when he wrote that ‘being Piers Morgan these days sounds exhausting – naff parties, D-list squabbles and pictures of your wobbling moobs splashed across tabloids'. Morgan's retort to Hattersley was equally personal, branding his reviewer as ‘a Norton-esquely camp, pint-sized toe rag.' Let us hope they don't meet each other at one of the ‘naff parties'.

If writers must respond to critical reviewers it is best done with humour. I was speaking at another literary lunch with a very popular and successful author of romantic fiction. There is a great deal of critical and patronising clap-trap about what are dismissed as ‘pot-boilers', that the characters are shallow and the plots predictable and far fetched, but those who write these massively popular stories know their audience, research their subjects and produce entertaining reads. Those quick to criticise should have a go at writing one of the novels. I asked the author at the literary lunch if she felt upset and angry with the critical reviews of her work.

She smiled. ‘I sell more books than any Booker prizewinner,' she told me, ‘and laugh at my critics – all the way to the bank.' Then she added, ‘And after all, critics are like eunuchs, aren't they? They like to tell you how to do it but are incapable of doing it themselves.'

The Campbells Are Coming

I was asked to speak at the Scottish Education Conference in Glasgow. There was a stipulation: tartans will be worn.

I was recommended ‘Scotland's Premier Kiltmaker' in Glasgow, and duly paid the shop a visit to get kitted out.

The delightfully friendly and somewhat mature lady enquired of my clan. I explained that my paternal grandmother was Margaret Helen Macdonald, a fearsome and zealous matriarch who hailed from South Uist. My grandmother maintained she was a direct descendent of the famous Ranald Macdonald, who fought for Bonnie Prince Charlie. I guess many have laid claim to this but, if my turn comes to be on the television programme which traces ancestry, I will know one way or the other.

‘I'm minded to have a pair of trews rather than a kilt,' I told the proprietor.