The White Pearl (64 page)

What is your writing day like?

Each day starts with excitement. I begin early. When I’m in the middle of a book I don’t sleep well, and often lie awake from
5 a.m., full of adrenalin, planning my next scenes and writing a first draft of them in my head. Around 7 a.m. I seize a pen
from beside the bed and start putting it all down on paper before it vanishes. At that point I just grunt at my husband and
the cat, reluctant to let anything disturb the early flow of words, and only after I have been brought a cup of tea in bed
and have set down my night’s imaginings on the page, do I become vaguely human and sociable.

Words are so elusive. They are powerful and yet strangely fragile. They can vanish from your head altogether when confronted
by a blank page or screen, but once I have got over the early morning hump, they seem to behave better. I can then venture
downstairs to my study where domestic distractions like cats, faulty washing machines, crosswords and emails etc lie in wait
– though my friends know not to telephone me in the morning. In theory I am then ‘in the zone’. Not that it always works out
like that. Some days the words stick together like mud.

I dose myself with ginger tea all day – just because the act of making myself a drink allows my brain a brief respite from
its labours and gives my legs a reason for activity. Around 4 p.m. I go for a brisk walk down to the beach or a tramp through
the woods to shift any logjam in my head. If I’m feeling energetic I’ll go for a bike ride or to the gym, to assuage my conscience
for all the hours I’ve wasted staring out of the window at the wood pigeons splashing around in the birdbath.

In the evening I deal with the day’s emails and phone calls. I used to type my handwritten scrawl on to the computer after
dinner, a chore I hated with a passion, but now I have the lovely Marian to do that for me. Instead I can enjoy a glass of
wine with my husband, totally devoid of grunts.

Where did the idea for
The White Pearl
come from?

My brother-in-law spent four years in a prisoner of war camp in Java and though he talked little of his experiences, the few
incidents he did describe made my hair stand on end. They haunted me for a long time and when I was researching China for
my first book,
The Russian Concubine
, I started to read about Malaya too and became fascinated by this exotic and vibrant world.

One of the themes I am repeatedly drawn to in my books is how a small community reacts to sudden stress and trauma. I like
to explore where the fracture lines open up, how relationships change when the veneer of civilisation is stripped away. What
more enclosed community could I find than on a boat? What greater stress could I inflict on them than a war and the stormy
South China seas? I just sat back and watched my characters go for each other’s jugular.

Did
The White Pearl
end up where you thought it would when you started writing it?

Yes … and no. Yes, because I had established in my mind a skeleton for the plot, with the story following a pre-planned
arc. But no, because so much happened that I did not expect. That’s what makes writing so much fun – you never know what’s
coming next.

Which character in
The White Pearl
did you enjoy writing the most?

That’s an unfair question! It’s like asking a mother to choose between her children. I loved writing them all. Each has something
that endears her or him to me. But if you twist my arm, well … it has to be Connie. She is so complex. A real challenge.
I loved seeing her develop as the story progressed, the events changing her so much that she reached out and grabbed life
by the scruff of the neck.

But I also adored the young native girl, Maya, who virtually wrote herself. She just scampered across the page with a will
of her own, and words tumbled from her mouth that constantly took me by surprise. Her scenes zipped out as if they had nothing
to do with me – which was weird.

What are you working on at the moment?

A new place. A new time. 1932 Egypt. A taut and complex story of a sister haunted by the loss of one brother, while she is
searching for her other brother, an archaeologist, among the pyramids and desert of a bewilderingly alien and dangerous country.
It is set during the excitement following Howard Carter’s discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb, and draws Arthur Conan Doyle
and Oswald Mosley into the convoluted twists and turns of the plot. I am very excited about it.

Which book do you wish you had written and why?

Catch-22
by Joseph Heller. Brilliant, devastating and so funny.

What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

Nothing. I become seriously slothful. When I finish a book, my brain is so tied in knots that I’ve learned to let it go into
freefall. So I go beach-combing for hours on end, and just when I think I will never have another creative thought ever again,
ideas start to sprout and a new book emerges. I don’t know how the process works but it astonishes me every time.

Writing is such a sedentary occupation that I force myself to do something energetic most days, to get the heart pumping.
I used to play a lot of tennis but a few broken bones recently have put paid to that for the moment. So I make do with watching
Wimbledon and eating strawberries instead. I like to walk – on Dartmoor if I can – but I’ll also happily waste a rainy afternoon
in front of an old black-and-white film on television with a box of tissues and a packet of Liquorice Allsorts. Blissful sloth.

I am constantly plagued by the need to know how the creative process works in other people. So I spend as much time as possible
in theatres, cinemas and at exhibitions, or at lunch with other writers – as if by osmosis I can absorb some of their inspiration
and energy.

Deadlines bring me out in a sweat, but in the lull after a book is finished I love to get out there and meet my readers. I
want to hear what they have to say about my latest book. That kind of input is invaluable and helps to focus the mind for
the next.

So when the writing starts again, I am ready for it, pen poised, raring to go.

I am a fanatical note-taker! My problem is that I love doing the research too much. Once I get started, I can’t stop. I make
hundreds of pages of notes, most of which I will never use, but they fill my head with the time and place I intend to write
about. For
The White Pearl
I had to be so familiar with Malaya in 1941 that I could move with ease through the world I was going to create for Connie.

I devour everything I can lay my hands on that will expand my knowledge of the period, some fiction but mainly non-fiction.
I adore memoirs. They are a rich vein of information because they provide the kind of intimate details that no historian
would bother to record. These personal accounts are wonderful for helping me build the daily life of my characters.

I get excited about discovering facts about a whole new subject – like the planting and milking of rubber trees. Nigel’s passion
for them in the book was a reflection of my own. The temptation is to include too much research material, but I always keep
in the forefront of my mind that the characters and plot have to come first.

I thank the Internet, Amazon and Google Books from the bottom of my heart. They give me access to facts and accounts that
it would otherwise take me a lifetime to track down. Whatever the subject – the flying snakes of Malaya, the sail configuration
of native trading boats, the placement of guns in Singapore or the address of General Percival’s headquarters – there is always
someone out there who has written about it. I thank them all.

Where possible I also spend time in the country I am writing about, but I am cautious about doing so, because I can’t bear
to see McDonald’s
and Coca-Cola signs eclipsing the 1930s world I have conjured up in my head. But this is where old film footage and old photographs
are invaluable. Often a photograph, curling at the edges, will tell me more than any number of books.

One of the problems of living with research notes is that the facts and places become so fixed in my own mind that it is easy
to forget how much the reader does – or doesn’t – know about the period. The city of Darwin in Australia is a case in point.
I refer to it at the end of
The White Pearl
, because, as a strategic military port, it was savagely bombed sixty times between February 1942 and November 1943, causing
great devastation and killing many inhabitants. A dangerous time for everyone.

Excuse me now. Time to burrow in to Howard Carter’s account of his discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen.