Time to Be in Earnest (30 page)

Sometimes my family and friends say to me before a major tour, “Why do you do it? Surely you don’t need to?” Part of the answer, I think, is my always feeble wish to be accommodating, particularly as I have a personal affection for my publishers both at home and in the USA. There is also the assurance that I shall travel in extreme comfort, be looked after all the way, shall meet friends from previous tours and probably enjoy new experiences. But I think the chief reason is the pleasure of meeting my readers face-to-face. Readers of crime fiction are remarkably loyal, knowledgeable and enthusiastic. I have never faced an audience before a signing without a sense of being among personal friends.

I have learned now to pace myself; I know, too, what is and what is not possible. A few years ago I made it plain that I wanted the minimum of socializing on tour; indeed, that what I liked best was to go back to my hotel at the end of the day, have room service and relax. This was difficult for the hospitable Americans to understand. They hated the thought that their author was spending the evening alone. But it really was impossible to cope with a day of publicity and follow it with a party in which the same questions—“Where do you get your ideas? When did you know you wanted to be a writer? Do you use a word-processor?”— are reiterated over the wine or the dinner table.

I also early laid it down that I wanted only two press interviews at a time. Ten or so years ago I was on my USA tour in San Francisco when I had one press interview from 9 to 10, another from 10 to 11, and the third from 11 to 12. Each journalist had brought a tape recorder to place between us, and what I endured was three hours of continuous interrogation. Until that experience I had always in my naivety found it difficult to understand why suspects questioned by the police confessed when they were innocent. I now know how psychologically distressing, indeed traumatic, interrogation
can be. But at least, had I been a police suspect it is doubtful whether the questioning would have lasted for three virtually uninterrupted hours. So now press interviews are interspersed with television or radio. I find the last two much easier, indeed often enjoyable. The other person is actively participating in the discussion and we share a joint wish to make the broadcast or programme interesting to the viewer or listener and satisfying for ourselves.

I have seen great cities which I would not otherwise have visited, have received much generosity and kindness and have shared much laughter. I imagine that I shall continue to undertake major writer tours as long as I continue to write and have the strength. But this method of selling books, promoting the writer rather as if he or she were a pop star, seems a curious, even a farcical, concomitance. I note that today a new writer who is young and physically attractive starts with a considerable initial advantage. He or she will be a hit on the publicity trail; the image is pro-motable and acceptable. There is, too, a curious development of which
Swan
, a novel supposedly written by the model Naomi Campbell, is an example. We live in an age which, despite its apparent sophistication and its technological advancement, is remarkable for silliness and gullibility. What can be the possible interest of reading a book reputedly written by Naomi Campbell unless she has in fact written it?

Soon we shall get to the stage where a bestseller will be written by a computer with all the necessary ingredients of sex and violence fed into the machine. The publisher will then find a young man or woman with a fashionable face, appropriate body measurements, and a sensational emotional and sexual life, and place his or her name on the title page. I suppose the book could then be sold on the Internet and would no doubt cause a literary sensation.

In the meantime there still seems to be considerable interest in an elderly grandmother who writes traditional English detective fiction. And so I embark tomorrow on the major American tour, which will take me to twelve cities in nineteen days.

I arrived in Dallas yesterday from Pittsburgh, am here for two nights, and shall leave on Tuesday for Houston. I am still in good health and
spirits after ten hectic days. I arrived in Boston on 9th January and then continued to New York, Washington, Chicago, Dayton and Pittsburgh. I have seen little of any of these cities, except for the interiors of television and radio studios, bookshops, and the venues for talks and lectures. But all the experiences have been good so far, with large and enthusiastic audiences, sometimes numbering as many as 400. This is less a tribute to my drawing power or popularity than an indication of cultural differences between our two nations. Even if it were rumoured that Graham Greene had risen from the dead, I doubt whether we would get audiences of this size in England to listen to a writer.

I was glad Knopf included Dayton in the tour. Roz Young more than fulfilled her promise; my signing and talk at Books and Company was more like being welcomed home after a long absence than a first visit, and it was interesting to spend the night at a hotel which wasn’t five-star and where I could meet and eat with a cross-section of Americans.

It is a truism to say that Texas is large, but it is this immensity, the sense of space stretching out, flat, featureless, limitless, sky and land indistinguishable, which strikes me every time I travel in the state, inducing a faint agoraphobia. I feel the absence of water, of sea or lake or river, like a parched throat. The Dallas skyline could be almost any American city. Approaching from the airport, the roads curve on their high T-shaped struts of concrete. The exit signs point to different communities, sometimes disconcertingly called cities. Most of these seem to have grown up, or rather been spontaneously brought into being, since my last visit. The city itself, indeed, seems the creation of real estate; nothing here is huddled together, space is there for the taking. But how could one live in any of these communities without a car? Unable to drive, for me it would be too like living in an open prison with fellow inmates of the same class, background and income; every physical need catered for admirably and often with imagination but in an intimacy more circumscribed than solitary confinement.

The hotel had a notice to say that it was illegal to bring in concealed weapons. Does this mean that loaded guns held at the ready are acceptable? An interview in the morning with a journalist from the
Dallas Morning News
was loosely based on a former
Vanity Fair
interview which has surfaced often during this tour. The interviewer, like many others, asked about Princess Diana. Why wouldn’t the Queen grieve? I was tempted to point out that, had I been the Queen, my grieving, though sincere, would not have been excessive. Instead I said that not everyone
showed grief by pinning teddy-bears and flowers to the railings of public parks. We then went on for some reason to talk about Myra Hindley. Had I visited her in prison? No. Why not? I replied that, since there was nothing I needed to say to her, or presumably she to me, and nothing I could usefully do for her, a visit would be too much like morbid voyeurism.

I had my hair washed and set at a salon opposite the hotel in a high complex of shops with a centre courtyard with water and trees, balconies and seats set out where shoppers could rest in comfort. I found it cool and pleasant. In the salon a young stylist was trimming the beard of an older customer, kneeling in front of him like a supplicant and delicately parting, combing and snipping the silken hairs of the long beard with a concentrated, almost loving dedication. I hadn’t seen this done before.

I am writing this on the BA flight on my way home from Miami. The captain promised a relatively smooth flight, but this was optimistic and my wine slopped over the pristine tablecloth as soon as it was served. I like the redesigned first-class cabin of British Airways. I am sitting, as I did on my way out, in my own capsule, my window seat isolated from the rest of the cabin by a curved partition with a panel of buttons to my left to operate the various seat positions. This I find more convenient than the previous system of having them in the armrests where I could never comfortably reach them when wearing a seat-belt, nor easily identify which button was which. The main advantage of the redesigned seat is that one can lie flat and attempt to sleep. One button when pressed elongates the seat into a bed and each passenger is provided with a duvet and pillow. At least one male passenger changed early into his pyjamas and settled down dinnerless for the night. This morning the cabin, with passengers neatly folding their duvets, had the appearance of a small and exceptionally luxurious school or army dormitory. I had no appetite for breakfast, but early morning tea arrived on a small tray with elegant teapot and jug. First-class travel, provided one hasn’t to pay for it oneself, is the most insidiously addictive of life’s luxuries.

My hotel in Miami, the Biltmore, was the largest and most impressive at which I had stayed. I love five-star American hotels, not because of the
luxury, but because they are so wonderfully efficient and anonymous. One is a transient among other transients. Nothing is here of previous visitors and I shall leave behind nothing of myself. To return to the room after an absence is to find everything immaculate as if the absolving hands of the chambermaid have smoothed away more than the detritus of the past day. I think I could write in such a place. On tour, however, there is hardly time even to appreciate the comfort. But I shall remember breakfast at the Biltmore. I ate it in warm sunshine in the courtyard under a palm tree and beside the largest hotel swimming pool in the United States; each breakfast was separately cooked in an open-air kitchen, the smell of bacon overlaying the warm scent of flowers and water.

The last day of the tour in Miami was the only one on which there was spare time. My minder took me to see Miami Beach. A thin rain was falling and a sluggish tide crept wearily over the deserted and pitted sand. Versace’s house, the gates locked, looked elegant and incongruous among the sugar-candy colours of the innumerable hotels. For someone whose ideal of a day at the sea is a secluded and empty cove, Miami in high season must be Hell-on-Sea. From there we were driven to the botanical gardens. The weather had by then improved and we enjoyed a quiet walk under the trees and by the lakes.

There was still some time to spare before leaving for the airport, so my last event in the States was a visit to a cinema to see
Titanic
, something I could just as well have done back home. It is over-long but the special effects are certainly memorable and will no doubt achieve an Oscar. I didn’t believe in the young lovers and was irritated by the usual Hollywood anti-British bias. The Englishmen all wore evening dress to demonstrate their upper-class unfeeling arrogance, even on the last night of the voyage, when they would not have changed for dinner, while the Irish were happy innocents dancing their jigs below deck. One of the crew, who in real-life had behaved impeccably, was shown as a murdering coward, which I thought unforgivable. The young hero, Leonardo di Caprio, clung to the wreckage on which Kate Winslett was elegantly lying to deliver a poignant valedictory speech before sinking slowly out of sight. I felt the energy required for this could have been better spent in swimming to a similar piece of wreckage and keeping himself alive. But I have no doubt the film will be an immense success with adolescent girls all over the world. It was an odd way of spending my last evening.

Soon we shall prepare for landing and the tour will finally be over. It has been far less exhausting than I feared, except for the days in New
York and Washington. I enjoyed the company of the three publicists from Knopf who accompanied me—Sophie, Jill and Gabriella—all enthusiastic, intelligent and highly capable. I could not have been better looked after.