Author: chrisnickson2

Walking With Ghosts

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It’s six days since we moved into this new place. Six days since I came back to Leeds and 37 years since I left. And I’ve returned pretty much to the neighbourhood where I grew up. It’s a feeling of both tension and relief. Even after so long, this is familiar ground. I know the streets, I know the shopping areas, I can find my way from A to B without thinking.

In these six days I’ve done a fair bit of walking. But at every turn I find myself face to face with the person I was all that time ago. He comes with baggage. A mother and a father, a dog, the friends of his youth. He’s the ghost who walks every step beside me.

Sometimes I almost see him from the corner of my eye, wearing the old dark blue Navy greatcoat he favoured once the weather turned cold, or the cheap hippie Afghan coat that stank of goat whenever it was wet. His hair is longer – but not long, school wouldn’t allow that – and sometimes he’s carrying a guitar. He always has a paperback book peeking out of his pocket. Sometimes he seems to turn towards me with a questioning look, as if to say, ‘You look strangely familiar. Do I know you?’

It’s been six days of walking here and there. The ginnels and alleys that were my way home from school. The road to the tennis courts. The park where I lay on my back on a summer’s night in 1968, having had my head torn apart by Easy Rider, the hill at Roundhay Park, which was cut into terraces then, where I’d spend warm weekend afternoons hoping to meet girls. The paddle boats that no longer exist on the lake. Seeing the faint outline of a shaggy little dog roaring over the grass, happy to be off his lead and free.

Heartbreak, joy, and the day-to-day tedium. An awakening into adulthood. So many of the streets and the buildings around here hold my stories. For six days now I feel I’ve been walking with ghosts, going to place to place and collecting those stories, putting them in a bag and moving on to the next one. Six days so far, but many, many more to come. Then, perhaps, there’ll be new ghosts walking.

Leodensians And Unconvention

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So we’re in. We’re Leodensians – in my case, again. After what turned out to be months of solicitors and leasehold companies taking their time, moving day arrived Friday and the completion and physical move went as smoothly as something like that could (I’m still missing a box of clothes but it’s probably with so many other boxes in the garage). The weather’s even co-operated, with glorious sunshine for the last couple of days. Thank you, Leeds.

Then yesterday saw the launch of my new novel Fair and Tender Ladies at the 2013 Book Crossing Unconvention. Taking the bus into town, down roads that were once so familiar, I realised that yes, I did live here now. The event was a great success – wonderful audience and such avid readers – and an extra frisson on the bus journey home as I realised the vehicle would go past the building that had once been the Victoria pub in Sheepscar, an important place in my next novel.

To top it all off, a fairly long walk through Roundhay. Not the park; we’ve been there several times on recent trips up here, and there will be many, many chances to explore it all. No, this took us to the stunning specialty gardens, with the Monet and Alhambra gardens being outstanding, then along Old Park Road, down the ginnel by Roundhay School that was my way home when I was a pupil there, back along Gledhow Lane and over Soldiers’ Field. Quite literally retracing so many steps of my youth, remembering when we threw cherry pits at a house and the owner chased us back to school, the trek every other week to the gold club (it was better than playing rugby) or the tennis courts (an interest that last for one summer term after I’d been knocked out by a cricket ball).

From the end of our drive, we look out over acres and acres of playing fields. If there tress weren’t there, my old school would be in sight. It’s strange to come full circle this way, to walk into the ghost of my teenage years. I’d never really expected it, but over the last few months my excitement at returning has risen. And now I’m so happy to be back.

T Minus 4

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It’s T minus 4 and counting. On Friday we move. Finally. Finally? Well, we originally thought it would happen at the beginning of August. But buying a leasehold place seems to create its own set of hellish problems that drag on and on. If I were Catholic I’d believe we’d already gone through at least half of purgatory.

The house is made up of hills boxes. Of course, it’s been that way since the middle of July. We’ve had to dig in some of them in order to find things we didn’t believe we’d need before moving. But now there’s very little left to pack.

As we’re downsizing a lot has gone to charity shops. Last Friday saw them take out five wardrobes (yes, you read that correctly), a couple of bedside tables and a few other things. It’s a strangely cleansing experience, watching it all disappear.

I’ve moved numerous times before – to another continent and back, and once a good couple of thousand miles across that continent, as well as many other smaller moves – but this one fills me with joy. I never believed I’d go back to the place where I was born, let alone to the area where I grew up. Yet times change feelings. Since I began writing about Leeds I’ve wanted to spend more time there. I seem to know more people there than elsewhere in the UK, and none of them are old schoolfriends.

I’m excited by what’s ahead. We both are.

In Praise Of The Editor

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I try to avoid writing about writing. After all, what the hell do I know? And what works for me might not work for anyone else. But I do know one thing. While the act of writing might be a solitary occupation, bringing that writing to the printed page is a team effort.

A good editor makes a huge difference.

I’ve been lucky, I’ve had several. There was the guy in charge of The Rocket who offered me tips and chances 20 years ago before unleashing me on an unsuspecting Pacific Northwest. For his own safety, it’s better to leave him nameless, although I feel indebted to him.

In the late 1990s, well established, with well over a dozen non-fiction titles under my belt, as well as regular appearances in music magazines and on local National Public Radio, I began writing for a website called Sonicnet. It doesn’t exist any more – MTV bought it and I’ve no idea what happened after that. It was a music news site. I was a freelancer in the amorphous ‘World Music’ section, and it was demanding, writing and researching stories five days a week, tracking people down, interviewing first and second sources.

With my experience, I felt pretty confident when I turned in my first story. It came back torn apart by the editor. At first I felt affronted. I knew how to write, I’d been doing it a while. But he worked with me. Once I’d stopped raising my hackles in defence, I read, listened – and learned. Over the course of a year or more, he improved my writing 100 per cent. Again, I’m hugely grateful.

Starting review for national NPR in 2000, my producer was a perfectionist. I voice the script I write, and she’d have me going over it time after spending, spending up to an hour for what was little more than two minutes of text. But it helped me not only be better on air, but (hopefully) as a writer. I learned to write for voice, not for the page.

And then there’s Lynne Patrick, the editor of my novels. I’ve been lucky, and had the same one from The Broken Token to the about-to-be-published Fair and Tender Ladies (not that this is an ad, you understand). She’s become a friend, but also one who knows my writing and can call me on things I’ve missed. I almost always accept the changes she suggests, and they make the book better. I’ve even dedicated this book to her, for all she’s done to improve my writing.

She’s the direct link. But not to forget commissioning editors (the people who say ‘Yes, we’ll have that” – extremely important, the publishers themselves, designers and proofreaders. They all deserve their plaudits. Yet this one goes out in praise of editors. Thank you.

A Bit More 50s

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“Good morning, Mr. Markham.”

            He glanced up, thoughts vanishing behind him.

            “Hello, Joyce.” She was bundled in the old back wool coat she only shed at the height of summer. Long and shapeless, it made her look like someone who’d stepped out of another century. She worked in the Kardomah down on Commercial Street, a cheery enough soul in her sixties with grey hair curled tight against her scalp, covered with a headscarf.

            “You can seem ‘em all remembering, can’t you?”

            “Do you blame them?”

            “Not a bit, luv. We just need to make sure we never forget and let it happen again.”

            At 10, Albion Place he pushed hard on the door, forcing it over the hump in the lino and walked up to the second floor, past the typing bureau and unlocked the door of his office. Daniel Markham, the plain brass plaque read, Enquiry Agent.

            One pace inside and he stopped. Someone had been here. Everything look right, the arch files on the bookcase, folders neatly aligned, the ashtray emptied and the chair squared against the desk. But there was a faint scent, a hint of bay rum, trapped in the closed room that shouldn’t have been there.

            Whoever broke in had been neat; they’d even set the lock behind them. If the burglar hadn’t been so vain he’d never even have guessed. He unlocked the drawers of the desk, searching through, but nothing seemed to be missing. Even the Webley Mark Six he’d brought home from the service was there.

            Another twenty minutes and he was ready to swear that nothing had been taken. Even the smell had vanished. He sat back in the chair and lit a Gold Leaf, watching the smoke rise to the ceiling. A careful burglary where nothing was stolen. A coshing with no robbery. It didn’t add up. What the hell was going on?

 

By dinnertime he didn’t have any answers. The telephone hadn’t rung and the postman hadn’t delivered any letters. An empty morning. He put the trilby on his head and strolled around to Briggate, glancing in Burton’s window before going next door to eat at Lyons.

            The windows were damp with condensation and the air heavy and warm. Someone had left a copy of the Manchester Guardian at the table and he skimmed through it as he ate. He’d just pushed the plate aside and settled back with a cup of tasteless coffee when a hand touched his should and the fat man eased into the seat across from him with a grunt, placing his hat on the table.

            “I hear you were lucky not to end up in the cells last night, Dan.” Roger Baker took a briar pipe from his jacket, a box of Swan Vestas out of the waistcoat stretched across his belly and lit up, puffing patiently until he was happy with the way it drew. “Three sheets to the wind, the copper on the beat said.” He turned to the hovering waitress. “A cup of tea and a slice of jam roll, please luv. My friend here’s paying.”

            Baker was a detective sergeant with Leeds Police, a man with a wide, florid face and deep knowledge of Leeds behind his soft eyes. He’d started out as a young constable in 1935, his service interrupted by the war. He’d seen the city grow and change. Not much happened that escaped his ears.

            “I know you’re young and you need your beauty rest, lad. But your own bed’s a better place than Merrion Street.”

            Markham bristled. At twenty-five he was half the age of the other man, and Baker never let him forget it. Still wet behind the ears, he said. Hardly out of nappies.

            “I was coshed, Mr. Baker. Got the lump to prove it.”

            “What did they get?”

            “Nothing,” he answered and Baker pursed his lips.

            “I know they have cosh boys down in London. What do they call them?”

            “Teddy boys.” He’d seen the pictures in the Sunday papers, posing with their Brylcreemed hair and long drape jackets. But he’d never spotted one in Leeds.

            “Aye, that’s it. Bloody disgrace. Should birch the lot of them.” He put the pipe aside for the tea and the jam roll smothered in custard. When Baker ate, everything else stopped. He was a man who relished his food. Markham lit a cigarette and waited until the sergeant wiped his mouth with the serviette, the signal that he’d finished.

            “There’s something else. Someone broke into my office last night.”

            “What did they take?”

            “Nothing.”

            “Another nothing?” he asked with disbelief, taking a long drink. “Seems like you’ve got a whole lot of bugger all.” But his eyes gave him away. He was interested. “Sounds like someone has it in for you lad.” He relit the pipe, waving away a cloud of smoke. “Been doing summat you shouldn’t?”

            Markham shrugged.

            “No. I don’t even have any work at the moment. The last thing was a divorce. I turned the photographs over to the wife’s solicitor last week.”

            “Dirty business, divorce.” Baker grimaced. Dan knew the man had been married for a good twenty years, with two sons and a daughter.

            “It pays the bills.”

            “Aye, like as not.” Baker pushed himself up with a grunt and reached for his hat. “If owt else happens, you come and tell me, lad. Alright?”

            “Yes, Mr. Baker.”

            After the man left he pushed the coffee away, paid the bill and made his way through the crowds on Briggate. Cars and buses and delivery vans filled the road, a tram passing silently as the crossed the Headrow by Lewis’s. On New Briggate, next to the Odeon, he climbed the stairs. The door proclaimed Studio 20 and he rattled the handle until he heard someone muttering inside and a key turned in the lock.

            A short man with a long, dark beard and bleary eyes looked up at him.

            “Bloody hell, Dan, what do you want?” I thought you was the bread man.”

            He turned his back and Markham followed him into the attic room with its sloping ceiling and garish musicians wallpaper. An upright piano stood in the corner, a drum kit had been pushed against the wall, and folding chairs were stacked in a row.

            It was the only jazz club in Leeds. Probably the only one in Yorkshire, he thought. Music seven nights a week, going on until the last player gave up. They all came here when their gigs had finished, to sit in and jam, George Webb, Ken Colyer, Ronnie Scott. He’d come down and listened to them all, carrying on until dawn.

            He’d picked up a taste for jazz in Hamburg during National Service. Not that the Germans had any. They didn’t seem to have any music worth the name, just the desperation of finding enough food to keep body and soul together every day. But his intelligence work meant liaising with the American forces and one of them, Jimmy Powers, a slick little corporal from Ohio, had been a jazz nut. He’d set out to make a convert of Markham and he’d succeeded.

            There’d been good coffee – real coffee, not the NAAFI rubbish – and records from the PX, enough to start a collection. Then he was back on England, on Civvy Street. And Leeds was a wasteland for the new music.

            Someone had told him about Dobell’s down in London, and he spent far too much on their mail order service. And then Studio 20 had opened.

            “If you’re looking for Bob, he won’t be here while this evening.” The man filled a kettle at the sink and placed it on the gas ring. “Cuppa?”

            Blackie Smith seemed to live in the club. Maybe he did, he was always here, day or night, as if he had nowhere better to be. And Bob Barclay, the owner, seemed to trust him.

            “No thanks. Were you around much last night?”

            “In and out,” Smith said cautiously. “Why?”

            “Do you remember me leaving?” It hadn’t been much of a session, no one catching fire, fronted by a tenor player no one knew who wanted to be Lester Young and feel far short.

            Smith shrugged. “Wasn’t paying attention. Why?”

            “I was coshed on my way back to the car.”

            The man’s eyes widened under his thick brows.

            “Coshed? Did they get anything?”

            “Didn’t even try,” Markham told him. “I was wondering if anyone left right after me.” It hadn’t been a large crowd, just ten or twelve. Other than a couple of faces he knew, he hadn’t paid the audience much mind.

            “Not that I remember,” Blackie said after some thought. “Sorry. Dan. You alright?”

            “Thick skull, that’s me.” It was what his mother always said when he banged his head. For a moment he could almost hear the tone of her voice. But she’d been dead for three years now, a tumour that ate away at her brain, leaving her family helpless. His father had gone six months later, his heart broken and no will to love. “Never mind, it was worth a try.”

            “You coming down later?”

            “Will there be anyone good?”

            “Probably just Bob and the lads. Tomorrow, now, that’s a different matter. Chris Barber’s in York. He might come over when the gig’s done.”

            He’d heard Barber. The style was too traditional for his taste. But somewhere freer he might be worth hearing.

            “We’ll see. Thanks, Blackie.”

And Now for Something…

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I’m happy. We have an almost[-firm date for our move back to Leeds, only the better part of two months after we expected it to happen. But better late, etc….and my copies of Fair and Tender Ladies have arrived, with its wonderful cover.

On an unrelated note, in recent weeks I’ve been reading a great deal about the 1950s. It’s the decade when I was born, so I assumed I knew it well. Wrong. Seems I knew next to nothing. But my reading sparked an idea. Or the start of one. Like they say in music, it goes something like this….(no apologies for typos – it’s rough). Let me know what you think. Please.

CHAPTER ONE

He was falling, falling, somewhere between heaven and earth. He reached out but there was nothing to hold on to, only the feeling of tumbling through space. Pictures spun and twirled in his head, things he could quite place before they moved on. A face, a building, a hand.

Then he landed.

It jolted the breath out of him. His skull banged down hard and a shock of pain ran through his body. For a moment he could do nothing. All he could manage was to lie there, trying to gulp in air and stop the nausea rising.

Finally it passed and he was breathing steadily. He rolled gently onto his side and opened his eyes. He was lying on the pavement, the flagstones shiny and wet against his cheek. It was night and he couldn’t remember what had happened.

The next he knew, something was pushing gently against his ribs.

“If you can stand up and walk away, I’ll not arrest you, lad.” He blinked, trying to bring the figure into focus. A copper, he saw finally, with the pointy hat and the black boots that shone in the streetlights. “Had a skinful, have you?”

He didn’t try to answer, but sat up, his head drumming with every movement. One hand against the wall, he eased himself upright, pausing until the dizziness passed.

“I’m sorry, officer, I don’t know what happened,” he said honestly, rubbing the gash by his temple, then the bump at the back of his skull, wincing at the tenderness.

“It’s alright, sir.” The policeman’s mile was almost hidden by his thick moustache. “Couldn’t let you sleep there all night, that’s all.” He bent and picked a trilby from the ground, dusting it off with large hands. “This yours, is it?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Get yoursen home, that’s my advice. You’ll be feeling it in the morning.” He gave a brief nod. “Goodnight, sir.”

“Goodnight. And thank you.”

He waited until the constable had disappeared around the corner, brushing the worst of the damp and the dirt from his suit and picking gravel out of his palms. Then he felt inside his jacket, checking the wallet was still there, and the watch still on his wrist.

His head hurt like buggery but it was beginning to clear. Looking round, he knew exactly where he was, on Merrion Street, the ABC cinema dark at the bottom of the hill. He moved his fingers gingerly around the lump on the back of the head.

Why had someone coshed him?

CHAPTER TWO

All around, Leeds was quiet, two in the morning and barely a sound, the shop windows dark. He sat in the old Anglia, window rolled down, and smoked a cigarette. Men had taken a swing at him before; it came with being an enquiry agent. But no one had ever used a cosh. Why? There was nothing unusual on the books. Just the usual divorces and frauds that paid the bills.

Finally he pulled out the choke then turned the key in the ignition, pressing down on the accelerator as the engine caught. There was no traffic, just a few lights shining behind curtains where sleep wouldn’t come.

In Chapel Allerton he turned onto Town Street, then down the alley between the police station and the Nag’s Head, parking by a brick house. Inside, he climbed carefully to the third floor, avoiding the tread that squeaked, and let himself into the flat.

It was a small place, no more than a bed-sitting room with a sink and gas ring in one corner, the bathroom and toilet on the landing, perched at the top of the stairs. From the window he looked down on the graveyard. But it was his and a damn sight better than the lodgings.

He stripped off the suit, examining the material and hoping against hope that the dry cleaner would be able to rescue it. It was good worsted, better than any fifty shilling job. He’d bought it right after National Service, a sly deal that didn’t involve clothing coupons, and it had worn well.

Sod it, he needed to sleep.

He woke as the early sun streamed on his face. He clawed his way out of a dream, opening his eyes as he sat up, stopping as something seared behind his eyes.

By nine he’d washed and dressed. He couldn’t do much about the dark circles under his eyes but he’d shaved and cleaned up the cut on his temple. At least he no longer looked like he’d spent a week on the razzle.

He parked the Anglia on King Charles Street and walked down Lands Lane. Everyone he passed seemed subdued. The third of September. It was a date none of them could forget. The start of the war and thoughts of lost comrades, fathers, sons, brothers.

He’d been ten, called in from a Sunday morning playing in the garden just as his sister was dragged down from his bedroom. He’d sat cross-legged, picking at a scab on his knee as Chamberlain’s voice came out of the radio. When the speech had finished, his father had looked at his mother and simply said, “That’s it, then.”

He was a bright enough lad, set for a scholarship to grammar school. He knew what war meant. Or he believed he did. All the bravery of Empire, the things he’d been taught in schools. It wasn’t until he did his time in the army that he learned the brutal truth. The empty faces, the ruins as far as he could see. He spent a winter there, working in military intelligence. He saw the people freeze and work and scrabble for anything resembling a normal life. What they taught him at Roundhay, death and glory and greatness, it was all bollocks. Dead was nothing more than dead, another memory and a poppy in November.

“Good morning, Mr. Markham.”

He glanced up, thoughts vanishing behind him.

Honour and the Old School

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I went to a grammar school that desperately – desperately – wanted to be a minor public school (Roundhay in Leeds, if you want to know). Opened in 1923, it was all boys, with twin emphases on academic and sporting performance. The masters, not teachers, wore their gowns and most of them were Oxbridge graduates. We were divided into houses (Scott, Nelson, Kelvin, Gordon) and wore our uniforms with differing amounts of pride. I received a wonderful education there, I was encouraged to learn for the simple sake of knowing, and for that I’m eternally grateful.

Many of those who taught us were older. They’d grown up with a different tradition, one where a man’s word was his bond. I recall being asked after a test if I’d cheated (I hadn’t), and to answer “on my honour.”

Honour. It’s an outmoded concept these days. Shakespeare wrote: ‘Mine honour is my life; both grow in one; Take honour from me and my life is done’ (of course, far more cynically, he also wrote: “What is honour? A word. What is in that word honour? What is that honour? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No.”). But to the generation that taught me, it was a very tangible thing. My parents wouldn’t have used the word, but they’d have said ‘Tell the truth and shame the devil.’ Be honest, know right from wrong.

There’s still that sense in me.

As a concept it probably become more codified in those long-gone days of chivalry. Knights – who were the aristocracy – had honour. They lived by it, at least in theory. The rest of us, the peasants, couldn’t absorb the idea, let alone be expected to practice it. And so it remained, there in the class divide. Those we were conditioned to think of as honourable men, our betters, could be trusted.

They’d have us continue to believe that, as if a public school education fitted a man – and it’s almost always men, isn’t it? – to rule. We shouldn’t question their ideas or motivations. But the notion of not believing crept in during the Great War, as well it might (indeed, it had long before, but it gained more widespread traction there). However much those in power try to make us believe they’re honourable men, we know the truth now. We can see behind the curtain.

Tell the truth and shame the devil? Doubtful. I’ve been trying to think of the last honest politician. There’s Mandela, of course, but he’s more icon that political. Jimmy Carter? A good man who seemed to wander into a presidency by mistake. And since 1980, in the West at least, they’ve been very hard to find.

Because of that, perhaps, maybe honour’s run its course, had its day. The phrase ‘greed is good’ resonated for a reason. Can it be a coincidence that those at the top seemed determined to create an economic underclass, and that the pace of that division has increased so much since the 1980s? Maybe we need to look in the bin, dig down a bit and find honour. Pull it out, blow off the dust and wear it again.

 

All In A Good Cause – Please

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We all have good causes that we support. Invest in ME and Equality Now are two excellent charities and they’ll be the recipients of proceeds from a screening of the Josh Whedon film Serenity that’s being organised by Leeds Browncoats on Friday, September 27 at Leeds Metropolitan University. The film starts at 6.30 pm, and doors open half an hour before. Tickets are £10, and there will also be a raffle of autographed items and comic books.

There’s even an after party at the White Swan down on Swan Street.

Now, I’m not a browncoat (admission time, I don’t even know what they are) and I’m not a big Whedon fan. I’ve watched some episodes of Buffy and that’s about it. But friends have been involved in setting this up and getting out the word and I’m glad to help them.

Serenity, for those who, like me, don’t know, is a science fiction film that follows on from the Firefly television series. You get extra points for turning up as someone from Firefly or Serenity.

Image

Please, do go down and support this.

An Interview with John Lawton

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About a dozen years ago, browsing through the fiction in my local library in Seattle, I came across a book by John Lawton. It featured a London policeman named Troy and was set during World War II. Worth a chance, I thought, and took it out. Two days later I was back to hunt for more of the Troy novels. Lawton had me hooked. He was immensely readable, the book filled with fine period knowledge that dragged the reader into the time and place. Every character, even the minor ones, was completely three-dimensional, a mix of fictional and real people. The plot was part-mystery, part-thriller. And the icing was Troy himself, one of the great creations. Clever, the son of a Russian émigré who’d smuggled a fortune out of the old country and become a publisher. Troy – Frederick – was British in name, upper-class by education. And an outsider by nature.

Over the years, after moving back to England, I’ve bought all Lawton’s fiction, all of the Troy series and Sweet Sunday, his novel set in America (he’s one of the few English writers to really capture the rhythm of American speech). He’s become one of my favourite writers, and one from whom I regularly learn – I read the Troy canon ever couple of years. Now he’s come out with a new book, Then We Take Berlin, featuring Joe Holderness – or Wilderness, as he’d nicknamed. For those who know the Troy books, there are several familiar faces, Eddie Clark, Tosca, even Troy himself very briefly. It is, as someone has noted, a Troy novel without Troy. Well, yes and no…

“Every so often you reward yourself with a break,” John Lawton explains. “I’d written two Troys in a row. I don’t know where it came from but it wasn’t a Troy. I started kicking around Eddie Clark.” But although Clark might be a deep and profoundly interesting character, he wasn’t the stuff of leading men. “I made the lead as different from Troy as possible. When I was at university in the 1960s, two of my teachers were from working-class backgrounds. When they’d gone through National Service (Britain’s version of the draft) they’d been offered the choice between square-bashing or learning Russian. So I decided on a working-class background for him; I’m more comfortable dealing with that. I lived in Stepney in the 1970s (an area of London that’s featured in many of his novels, here as where Holderness grew up) and it still looked like World War II. I put on my blog that I was writing about Sidney Street and someone from there responded. I asked him to tell me everything. I put it all in the book and gave him an acknowledgement.”

Although much of the book (whose title comes from a Leonard Cohen song, for those who don’t understand the reference) takes place in Berlin, there’s also a section in Hamburg, just after the war ends. The city, like much of Germany, is a sea of rubble.

“I ran out of ways to describe rubble,” Lawton says with a laugh. He restricted the descriptions of destruction to Hamburg, figuring that “it was a given for Berlin. The hardest part was imagining Berlin just before the Wall. I had to make it up and hope no one picked me up on it. Tony Le Tissier’s book, Berlin Then and Now was very helpful. I was there when the Wall came down, but not in 15 or more years until I went to do my homework.”

One of the key locations is a particular Flak Tower in Berlin, and Lawton struggled to find pictures of it when demolished. Books and documentaries didn’t help, until he chanced up a Montgomery Clift film shot on location that contained a scene with the ruined tower. “He goes past the Flak Tower. You almost get a 180. It was a godsend, better than any other movie.”

The ending of Then We Take Berlin begs the question of whether there’ll be a sequel – will this be a new series for Lawton?

“I told the publisher I would write a sequel,” he says. “I can see a second book. After Blackout (his first Troy novel), I couldn’t see another.” And that series now stands at seven books.

For much of the ‘90s, in addition to being a writer, John Lawton was also a television producer, working extensively with Channel 4, and people as diverse as Harold Pinter and Gore Vidal (in Mississippi, of all places). In fact, his writing and television careers seemed to begin in parallel.

“I was just starting at Channel 4 in the late 80s and my agent put me in touch with a publisher that was looking for a study of 1963. I agreed, as the book was something I could pick up and drop. In the end it was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1992 and 1963: Five Hundred Days (now long out of print). It was a gift. Because of that book I’m well-versed in the culture of the US and the UK from 1945 onwards.”

1963, of course, was when it all changed. Kennedy was killed, the Beatles and others brought Britain into Technicolor modernity. It was, really, when the Sixties that everyone remembered kicked into gear. The year it all went boom. And the year that’s the cut-off (so far) for both Troy and Holderness.

“It’s my cut-off point,” he agrees. “I stop when the ‘50s end in any sense but the chronological.” It was a time he can recall, although he was never part of himself. “Everyone was out doing drugs and fucking and I was studying maths!”

Of course, no rules are hard and fast. Lawton’s just-published short story, Bentinck’s Agent, takes place in the 1980s. But in Troy he’s had ample chance to examine the 30s, 40s and 50s, and even take a jaundiced view of the 1960s. The character changes over time, of course.

“In Blackout he’s an idealist. Then he’s taught to shoot properly and once he learns he’s lethal. And at the start he’s an innocent. I kept that in the two prequels, but from there he leads a precarious sex life.” Sexually, though, Troy is quite passive – it happens to him, rather than especially involving him. “By 1963 he’s in bad shape. He’s a drug addict, popping Mandies (Mandrax) and he lets himself get picked up by a 15-year-old. He hits a low point when Val, the mother of the girl (who knows on some level what’s happened as is another old lover of Troy’s) slaps him around. But the lowest point is at the funeral for Anguse – I liked writing his character – when his widow Anna (also an on-off lover of Troy says ‘Hold me, Troy.’ ‘Now fuck off, Troy.’ It’s the complete failure of his relationships.”

He’s the antithesis of Holderness, and that’s intentional.

“Troy isn’t a nice man,” Lawton insists. “He doesn’t belong.” And because he doesn’t belong, whatever he does, which is a great deal, can’t be betrayal. “Wilderness can appreciate betrayal.” He’s the outsider who comes inside “and when he’s accepted, he will accept.”

These days, although often described as a producer and a writer, Lawton admits that “I haven’t made a programme in 15 years. It’s time to admit that I make a living from my writing – and it’s a privilege to do so.”

Although lauded by critics and those who’ve discovered his work, Lawton has yet to become a household name on the order of, say John Le Carré. Why remains a mystery, although perhaps Then We Take Berlin (which will be published in December), which is more direct than the Troy novels, might help him vault higher in the public consciousness. That it’s good enough is beyond question.

But he hasn’t forgotten Troy and he’s not ready to give up on him yet. Although he has a couple of shorter things in his head, there will be another Troy, “set in 1958. This is between Old Flames and Blue Rondo. It’s what my characters are asking of me.”

And that, as any writer knows, is a summons that must be obeyed.

Many thanks for Rhian Davies for putting me in touch.

Words Like Cream

On By chrisnickson2In UncategorizedLeave a comment

I was saddened to hear of Elmore Leonard’s death this week. The man had reached a good age, and after a stroke who knows if he’d have ever written again. But he left behind a body of work that will be enjoyed for many, many years to come.

I can’t claim to have read all his books, probably not even a majority. But every time I’ve sat down with an Elmore Leonard novel, I’ve devoured it. He had everything in balance, the humour and the action, the surprises and the twists. His dialogue was superb, always so natural. His writing was like cream. All you had to do was sink into it.

It was only fair when he was lauded as more than a crime writer. A good novel is a good novel, not matter the genre. And has he showed so well, literary fiction doesn’t have the monopoly on style. And because of his stories, there’s one of the best shows on television – Justified (Raylan is based on a character Leonard created).

He was a writer for others to measure themselves against and know they’d come up short. A good and salutary lesson.

But he’s far from being the only one. I’m currently reading The Guts, the new book by Roddy Doyle. It’s has everything that made me fall in love with his work in the first place – the laughter, compassion, family love and craziness (and music). And, of course, the dialogue. Again, so natural, so perfect that it seems to leap off the page with a Dublin accent. Like Leonard, his dialogue is an art form, it can bring beauty of the mundane. Again, words like cream.

They’re not the only two, of course. Other writers are available. But these are the pair in my week.