Time to Be in Earnest (19 page)

St. Edward’s Church, in defiance of its traditions, was going through a brief period of High Anglicanism, and we both went to confession before confirmation. Father Colin had suggested that it would be helpful if we listed our sins so that none were forgotten, and I can remember to my chagrin that Joan’s list was twice the length of mine, and my relief at discovering that, whereas I had put down “unkindness to members of the family” as one sin, she had listed her family members separately to produce a far more impressive total. Even so, I felt that my offering was hardly worthy of Father Colin’s attention, a thought which, alas, would not occur to me today. Occasionally our current boyfriends from the Perse or the boys’ grammar school (the word “followers” would be a more appropriate description since we never encouraged them) would attend the morning service in an attempt to ingratiate themselves with us and we would spend much time during the sermon throwing them discouraging and disapproving looks.

But it was King’s College Chapel which, during these years of early adolescence, provided for me my most meaningful religious experience. Evensong was sung at half-past three on Sundays and in the evening on weekdays, and I would often drop in when cycling home from school. I can recall the solemnity, the grandeur and the beauty of the building, the high, soaring magnificence of the roof, the candle-lit gloom, the decorous procession of the boys of the choir, the order and the beauty of the traditional service. This, I believed then and still do believe, was what worship should be. I think I probably realized even then that I was in danger of confusing worship of God with a strong emotional and aesthetic response to architecture, music and literature, but it seemed to me that religion could be an aesthetic experience and that God should be worshipped in the beauty of holiness.

From an early age I have taken little pleasure in sermons; it is the more reprehensible that I have occasionally succumbed to the temptation to accept invitations to deliver them. Special children’s services have always been anathema to me and I greatly deplore the present fashion for rewriting the Eucharistic prayer to make it suitable for children. I must have listened to thousands of sermons during a lifetime of churchgoing, but few have remained permanently in memory. The fault no doubt lies in my arrogance. From childhood I wanted to question the preacher and to engage in discussion, particularly when the points he was putting forward differed greatly from those propounded in the previous Sunday sermon. After all, even in school we could put up our hands, ask a question,
seek elucidation of half-understood points. There seemed something unnatural in a whole congregation listening in silence to one person’s voice without the chance to intervene.

But if as a child I disliked the sermon, I loved the hymns, and this affection has remained with me. The soaring triumph of the processional Easter hymns, the celebration of All Saints’ Day, with the hymn “For All the Saints,” which was my mother’s favourite, and the plangent melancholy of the evening hymns, particularly “The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Has Ended,” sung while the church windows darkened and the mind moved forward to the walk through the churchyard between the gleaming tombstones in the evening dusk. Some of my early religious memories are of the hymns and my mother’s rich and overloud contralto and my own piping treble. Some of them still have the power to move me to tears.

The Church of England in my childhood was the national church in a very special sense, the visible symbol of the country’s moral and religious aspirations, a country which, despite great differences of class, wealth and privilege, was unified by generally accepted values and by a common tradition, history and culture, just as the Church was unified by Cranmer’s magnificent liturgy. There were, of course, varieties of practice and little superficial resemblance between the multi-candled ceremonial, the incense and Stations of the Cross found in the extreme High Church and the simplicities of an evangelical church which could have been mistaken for a nonconformist chapel. But it was possible to attend different churches—on holiday, for example—and feel immediately at home, finding in the pew not a service sheet with a series number, but the familiar and unifying Book of Common Prayer.

The importance of the Church of England as the national church was perhaps most clearly shown on Armistice Day, when whole communities gathered in their parish church, united in sorrowful remembrance. To be born in 1920, two years after the end of the slaughter of a generation, was to be aware from one’s earliest years of a universal grieving which was part of the air one breathed. Today I frequently hear people and families referred to as being Christian as if they were members of a minority and slightly eccentric sect. In my childhood the great majority of the population, whether or not they regularly attended a place of worship, thought of themselves as Christians, and most described themselves as C of E. The English have always respected and felt a devotion to their national church, provided they are not expected regularly to attend its services.

My early religious experience, like all the experiences of childhood, has both formed and influenced my subsequent years. I have inherited a love of and devotion to the Church of England which is still strong, although I sometimes find it difficult today to recognize the church into which I was baptized. Much of its former dignity, scholarly tolerance, beauty and order, have been not so much lost as wantonly thrown away, together with its incomparable liturgy. The King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer have both been central to my life and to my craft as a novelist. In particular, the words of the Prayer Book are so much part of my consciousness that I do not need to remember them, search for them or concentrate on them, but can release my mind to enter into that communion with the unseen, unknowable God which I call prayer. I still see myself as a searcher after truth rather than as one confident she has found answers to the great and eternal questions of human existence, not least the problem of the suffering of the innocent, and at seventy-seven I do not think I shall find all the answers now.

Publication day of A
Certain Justice
, which was launched at a party given by Faber this evening in Middle Temple Hall. For me publication day is never an unalloyed pleasure. Like several writers I know, I would sometimes like to go abroad incognito and lie low until the fuss is over, returning only when the best and worst are known. But it helps to have a few preliminary good reviews, or the assurance of them, and in this I have been fortunate.

A Certain Justice
is one of the novels I have most enjoyed writing, largely because of my fascination with criminal law and the fun and interest I had in researching the book. It began, as do nearly all my novels, with the setting. I had been to the 11:15 service in the Temple Church, to which I occasionally go when I feel the need to hear Mattins beautifully said in accordance with the Book of Common Prayer and with superb accompanying music. Strolling after the service through the Temple and into Middle Temple Lane, I was struck by the contrast between the peace, the traditions, the history and the ordered beauty of this unique part of London and the appalling events with which criminal
barristers daily deal in courts like the Old Bailey. I thought that it would be exciting to bring murder, the ultimate crime, into the heart of this bastion of law and order, striking down a female barrister of the criminal Bar in her own chambers. At once, as has happened with all my detective novels, this initial inspiration was followed by the heart-lifting certainty that I would write another book.

I was extremely lucky with the research. By chance at a public dinner I sat next to Gavyn Arthur, who inquired what I was working on. When I said I was researching a new novel to be set in the Middle Temple, he told me that he was in Chambers there and would be happy to help. This help, generously given, proved invaluable. Within minutes he had saved me from what could have been a serious error if I had myself failed to detect it. He asked which detective I was employing on the case. When I said Adam Dalgliesh, he reminded me that the Temple is within the jurisdiction of the City of London Police, not of New Scotland Yard. This was something I knew but had completely forgotten and might not have remembered in time. I have got over the difficulty by placing my imaginary court and chambers on the boundary between the two jurisdictions so that at least part of the unfortunate victim’s body lies within the territory of the Metropolitan Police. Gavyn Arthur provided me with maps of the Temple showing the entrances and exits, arranged for me to speak to lawyers and clerks in Chambers, to have lunch with the judges at the Old Bailey and to watch a trial in Court Number One. He also kindly vetted the details of legal procedure in the court scene with which the book opens. It was with genuine gratitude that I acknowledged his help in my foreword.

I suppose that one of the small deprivations of age is that nothing, and certainly not great success or triumph, is ever as exciting as it was in youth. This is probably a mercy, since pain and distress are also less acute. But I woke with a thankful heart for having been given the book. This is always how my writing has seemed to me; nothing to do with my own cleverness but born of a talent which I have done nothing personally to deserve.

Faber sent my usual driver to collect Joyce and myself and we arrived in very good time. Middle Temple Hall was ideal for the launch. As always it looked magnificent and the publicity department at Faber had been clever over the embellishments.

The party was a great success and I think everyone there enjoyed it. I was a little afraid that we might break up into groups; lawyers, writers,
journalists, family and so on, but that didn’t happen, and everyone seemed to find a kindred spirit to talk to. There was great advantage in having plenty of room for the one hundred or so present. I can no longer tolerate crowded launch parties where the level of din is so high that ears and brain are continually assaulted, I can’t speak without inducing a sore throat, and am totally unable to hear anyone. This really was a civilized occasion.

Matthew Evans, Chairman of Faber, made a short, funny and informal speech and I replied equally briefly. It was a huge relief to be holding the party with some excellent reviews behind me. I am always desperately sorry for writers who have to go ahead with these jollities in the knowledge that the book has been poorly received, but it must be even worse for actors who spend long weeks in rehearsal and then are dependent on one or two really influential reviewers.

I’m frequently asked how much I care about reviews. I’m tempted to say not at all, but this is hardly honest. Most of us do very much welcome good reviews, not only for our own satisfaction, but because of the pleasure they give to publishers and friends. The majority of mine have been so good that I can have no possible complaint. One reviewer was maliciously scathing but he is not someone I would worry about. There are, of course, some reviewers who use reviewing to compensate for professional, creative or sexual failure and others who criticize the author not for the book written, but for the one they think he should have written. There are also those who are reviewing not the book but the writer, and who strongly dislike what they think he stands for, his class, his sex or, most frequently of all, his politics. But these are relatively few, and it is stupid for any writer to take the slightest notice of them.

When the party ended I got the family together—Lyn and Clare, Peter and Jane—and we were driven to the Savoy for a very late dinner. I had booked in the River Restaurant, hoping for a quiet meal and a river view, but there was a somewhat noisy small orchestra. Jane, knowing how this would affect me, beckoned to the head waiter and asked if we could go to another part of the hotel. They disappeared together and returned five minutes later to say that Jane had approved a table for five in the Grill Room. There we ate in comfort a traditional but uninspiring meal, and then dropped Clare and Lyn by taxi at Oxford Circus and came home here so that Jane and Peter could pick up their car and drive back to Oxford. By then all of us were tired, myself particularly, too tired to write this before bed. But it was a good day, for which I am very grateful.

Thinking of reviews has encouraged me mentally to draw up a list of somewhat presumptuous advice for reviewers, among whom I list myself.

1. Always read the whole of the book before you write your review.
   
2. Don’t undertake to review a book if it is written in a genre you particularly dislike.
   
3. Review the book the author has written, not the one you think he/she should have written.
   
4. If you have prejudices—and you’re entitled to them—face them frankly and, if appropriate, acknowledge them.
   
5. Be scathingly witty if you must and can, but never be deliberately cruel, except to those writers who themselves deal in cruelty, and therefore presumably expect it.
   
6. If you absolutely hate the book and have nothing either interesting or positive to say, why review it? Any review gives a book much-wanted publicity and it is a pity to waste space on a book which is meretricious or dishonest when you could be saying something of value about one worth reading. An exception to this rule is an eagerly awaited major work by a well-known writer when the verdict of leading critics is expected.
   
7. If you are given a book to review by a close friend and you strongly dislike it, don’t review it. We none of us like hurting our friends and the temptation to be over-kind is too strong.
   
8. Resist the temptation to use a review to pay back old scores or to vent your dislike of the author’s sex, class, politics, religion or lifestyle. Try to believe that it is possible for people of whom you disapprove to write a good book.