Time to Be in Earnest (14 page)

It has been a good weekend, the beautiful, delicately hued skies and the sea changing from grey-green to pale milky blue. We had much talk, mostly personal on Ann’s side, and we also discussed how far the novelist’s strong emotions should influence the process of writing. I made the point that a novel can’t be just a raw slice of personal experience, however tragic or engulfing. Obviously we must use our own lives as material—what else do we have?—but a novelist must be able to stand aside from this experience, view it with detachment, however painful, and fashion it into a satisfying shape. It is this ability to detach oneself from experience and at the same time portray it with honesty and controlled emotion which makes a novelist. Perhaps it is also this ability to assume the role of privileged spectator, the cold searching gaze, which caused Graham Greene to write that every writer has a splinter of ice in the heart. Even as a child I had a sense that I was two people; the one who experienced the trauma, the pain, the happiness, and the other who stood aside and watched with a disinterested ironic eye. But I know that there are two experiences too overwhelming for such detachment. One would be the death of a child; the second, overwhelming physical agony. Pain, our response to it, our fear of it, makes the whole world kin. Perhaps because no detachment is possible from intense physical agony. I can think of no novel which has described it adequately. The more intense, the higher, more refined and exquisite the physical sensation, whether of agony or ecstasy, the less power have words to describe it.

I went this evening to the Royal Society at Carlton Terrace for the Annual General Meeting of the Society of Authors. It was the last
appearance as chairman of Simon Brett, who presented the 112th Annual Report and, as expected, made an entertaining and lively speech. He welcomed his successor, Clare Francis, and also reported that I had been elected by the Council to succeed Sir Victor Pritchett as President of the Society. This has given me immense pleasure. When Mark Le Fanu, Secretary of the Society, wrote to tell me about it I replied that I knew I was following a president of great distinction both as a writer and as a man, and hoped to be worthy of the trust the Society was placing in me. The words were conventional but the emotion was sincere.

After the AGM there was a discussion under the title “For how much would you sell your soul?” with a panel including Robert McCrum, formerly of Faber and Faber. The discussion concentrated less on money than on the problems raised by indecency and pornography. The general view was that all censorship was wrong, indeed indefensible, but I made the point that there were surely some matters—the depiction on video of the sexual exploitation of young children, for example—which no civilized country ought to tolerate. There are two easy options for any society: total prohibition as in a totalitarian state, or total licence. Both avoid the ardours of decision. Both have the attraction of certainty. The difficult option is to decide where the line should be drawn and this, surely, is the responsibility of any civilized and democratic country.

One of the questioners suggested, although she did not positively state, that I have sold my soul over television since she had seen one of the less successful adaptations. I pointed out that television is a visual medium and that one can’t expect ever to be totally satisfied with an adaptation. When people say to me, “Do you like what television has done with your book?,” I reply that the director has done nothing to my book, since he has no power to alter a single comma. But it is true that television is increasingly trivial. I have no doubt of the current priorities as far as television is concerned; first in importance is the scheduling, second the star, third the director, fourth—and a long way behind—the drawing power of the writer’s name and, last of all, the book. But to turn down the offer of a television series is not a simple decision. The series can dramatically affect paperback sales, which gives the publisher as well as the author a strong interest, and the series provides jobs for actors and adapters.

It is easy for me to say, “I am rich enough now to do without television and will keep my art undefiled,” but I am not sure how far this high-mindedness is justified. I am, however, only too aware what
changes may be made to the plot of
A Certain Justice
in order to ensure that the star has an appropriate number of appearances on screen. The story, too, will have to be compressed if a long and complex novel is to be televised in only three episodes. More I fear will be lost than parts of the plot.

I arrived home from Heathrow after 9:30 p.m. having spent the weekend in Oslo helping my Norwegian publisher, Aschehoug, celebrate their 125th anniversary. A century and a quarter is apparently a special commemoration in Norway and the event was impressive. It must also have been extremely expensive.

There was a dinner on the Friday night at the Drammensveren Hotel, and on Saturday there was open house at the firm’s recently extended offices with a buffet lunch and plenty of drink, and in the evening a concert with 1,500 invited guests. The concert was a celebration in words and music of Aschehoug’s 125 years in publishing, and I enjoyed the Norwegian songs and the special mini-opera composed for the occasion, although I could understand none of the rest of the programme, except the words “Sherlock Holmes” and “Dr. Watson” during the episode celebrating the publication of the Conan Doyle stories.

On the Sunday morning there was a little free time and my escort Ivor (I never registered his surname) took me to see Amundsen’s ship, the
Fram
. It is incredible to think that the crew of thirteen were held in the ice together for three years, apparently without anyone going berserk or murdering one of his colleagues. A ship marooned in ice could be a dramatic setting for a detective story, a closed circle of people exposed to the inevitable emotional traumas of enforced intimacy, and a limited number of suspects. This last is important if each suspect is to be given equal space and attention, each motive made credible.

Providing a believable motive for murder is one of the greatest difficulties facing the modern crime writer. In the 1930s readers could apparently believe that A had murdered B because B knew something highly discreditable about A’s sex life which he was threatening to reveal. Today, so far from fearing disclosure, people receive good money for writing
about the more lurid aspects of their sex lives in the Sunday newspapers. Politicians who are guilty of flagrant infidelities are no longer propelled into the wilderness of ignoble obscurity, but into the lush pastures of media fame and fortune. Blackmail can still provide a credible motive but our priorities for disgust have changed; nowadays it would not be a sexual misdemeanour but racism or child abuse which would invite disaster. Money, the need of it, the lack of it, particularly if the amount is large, is always a credible motive, as is that deep-seated hatred which can render an enemy’s very existence insupportable. In one of my early novels an experienced sergeant is reported to have said to the young probationer Adam Dalgliesh that the letter “L” covers all motives for murder: love, lust, loathing and lucre. He adds, “They’ll tell you, my boy, that the most dangerous emotion in the world is hate. Don’t you believe it. The most dangerous emotion is love.” As a writer I find that the most credible motive and, perhaps, the one for which the reader can feel some sympathy, is the murderer’s wish to advantage, protect or avenge someone he or she greatly loves. But should the reader feel sympathy for the murderer? Perhaps sympathy is too strong a word; but I think there should be empathy and understanding. In the words of Ivy Compton-Burnett: “I believe it would go ill with many of us if we were faced with a strong temptation, and I suspect that with some of us it does go ill.”

On board the
Fram
there was a piano and a gramophone for entertainment, and their scientific expeditions by sledge would have added a change of scene and the relief of physical activity. Even so, the whole enterprise was a triumph of courage, will and scientific passion over danger and discomfort. What I wanted to know and didn’t discover was how they kept healthy, particularly how they got their vitamins. They obviously shot and ate bears and other wildlife, but they couldn’t have had vegetables or fresh fruit.

Ivor was an interesting guide. We talked about his country’s educational system, the health service, and social and economic problems which are remarkably similar to ours. We also spoke about language and he said one thing which I found interesting, that much German thoroughness comes from the need to think every sentence through to its concluding verb before speaking it, whereas in English and Norwegian, words can be strung together in an occasionally artless concatenation.

We then went back to the hotel to collect Marilyn French, who wanted to see the Anselm Kiefer pictures at the Astrup Fearnley Museum for Modern Art. I was glad we went. I was impressed and
moved by the Kiefers, but the Francis Bacons—violent slabs of meaty flesh—are not pictures I could live with without some risk to mental health. There were three good nudes by Lucian Freud. He paints what he sees with total honesty if little humanity. I should like to own a Freud.

Before coming back on Sunday there was a reading in the Great Hall of the University by two Scandinavian writers, and by Marilyn French, Salman Rushdie and myself. Salman and I had been booked on the same plane at Heathrow and we both went through the VIP channels on arrival, although he was whisked off in a police car with escort and I was found a taxi. I suppose I might have been slightly nervous in flight had I realized that he was a fellow passenger. William Nygaard, my Norwegian publisher, was shot and was lucky to escape being killed when he decided to publish
The Satanic Verses
. He wore a bullet-proof coat during most of the weekend, but I can’t say I felt that any of us were particularly at risk. Salman read from
Midnight’s Children
exceptionally well, then was hurried away to catch an early plane home. I felt slightly ashamed of my relief that I was booked to travel later.

It was a joy to have Marlene Mitev at the door to welcome me back. She has spent the weekend here looking after Polly-Hodge. When she is here, I realize how much I have missed being greeted at the end of a trip. We shared a room together when we were both working at the Home Office, first in the Whitehall building and then at Queen Anne’s Gate. To share an office is to spend more time in one another’s company—about eight hours a day—than most people spend with their families. It can also mean sharing more experiences, good and bad. Marlene is intelligent, amusing, kind and, being a Yorkshirewoman, given to speaking plain common sense. We became, and remain, close friends.

It occurs to me that I have mentioned but not described Polly-Hodge. I have shared this house, and to an extent my life, for the past ten years with a white long-haired female cat. Previously I had two Burmese: Cuthbert, plumply indolent and affectionate; Pansy, flirtatious and overactive. Both were stolen. I never heard anything of Pansy again, but the RSPCA telephoned to say that Cuthbert had been found dead in the Underground but without his collar. I don’t know how they traced him to me. I suppose he somehow managed to evade his captors and made a dash for the stairs at Holland Park.

After this I decided not to have another cat. I wasn’t entirely uninfluenced by the difficulty of arranging for an animal to be fed while I am away. But then this white cat began to appear in the garden, sleeping on
one of the chairs under the glass roof of the loggia. She was excessively nervous and would glide from the chair and disappear at great speed as soon as I opened the kitchen door to feed the birds. But she was frequently in the garden getting—at least to my eyes—thinner and slightly bedraggled. Eventually I could not resist putting out a saucer of Whiskas. When I went down for my early morning tea the next day she was curled up on the kitchen wicker chair and showed every intention of remaining there.