Time to Be in Earnest (41 page)

On Sunday to Holy Communion in St. Edmund’s Parish Church at eight o’clock. I had expected the service to be held in the Lady Chapel with the usual small group of worshippers. Instead there was a substantial congregation in the main body of the church. Most of them, admittedly, were old. I suppose, like myself, they were people who prefer the 1662 liturgy, have an aversion to sermons and prefer to worship early in the day. What one misses, of course, is the music. The rest of the day we spent gardening to good effect, Alixe being particularly adroit at tying up the tangled and top-heavy clematis and training the honeysuckle under the kitchen windows while I more prosaically tackled the weeds between the crevices of the York stone. There was one bright green weed which had encroached like a carpet over a large part of the stones but, because of the recent rain, was quite easy to handle. I could insert a trowel under the edging and then roll it up like a rug, a highly satisfactory procedure that was to show the carefully designed pattern of the stones for the first time.

Later we walked along the promenade towards Walberswick, then back along the beach under a sky rapidly changing from dark blue to black. But the rain held off and, tired, we were able to lie on the pebbles. They are surprisingly comfortable, providing one chooses the right spot where the pebbles are small and can be used rather like a bean-bag, accommodating themselves to jutting bones and curves. It was wonderfully peaceful lying there, looking up at the moving clouds and hearing always the fall and retreating hiss of the waves. I wish I could so order my life that this could happen more often.

Polly-Hodge adjusted remarkably well to the new house. Clare had taken her cat, Charlie, to Southwold and had left a litter tray with a packet of litter in the understairs cupboard. I placed the tray for Polly-Hodge in the conservatory, together with a saucer of water. She drank, and then immediately squatted on the tray, which seemed to me remarkable
considering that I have had her for at least ten years and she has never had to use a tray. Then she explored every room in the house, sniffing and obviously defining her territory. Eventually she totally disappeared. We knew that she was upstairs but the most detailed search failed to find her. We even got to the expedient of foolishly opening cupboard doors and drawers which had been shut and which she couldn’t possibly have got into. Then Clare phoned and reminded me that Charlie had behaved in just such a way. “She’s in the bathroom,” she said. “You’ll probably find her behind the two wash-basins.” I protested that there was no room behind the two wash-basins, but Clare pointed out that if I lay down flat and looked into the knee-hole between the basins then reached up with my hand, I would find a very narrow slit between the back board and the wall. That is where Charlie had been. I swathed my arm in a towel and then gently inserted it, to be met at once by a hiss and by the appearance of a white furry head. So Polly-Hodge’s secret was discovered. She had demonstrated such a degree of ingenuity, not to mention a little malice, that she was thereafter confined to the sitting-room, the kitchen and the conservatory.

Today, Monday, we had an early lunch and were on our way by half-past twelve. The drive back took three hours, not unduly long. Joyce was here to welcome us. Polly-Hodge went to the back bedroom at the top of the house, which she rarely visits, and immediately fell asleep.

This evening Ruth Rendell and I held a conversation on “The Art of Writing Crime Fiction” at the Royal Geographical Society in aid of the Notting Hill Housing Trust Limegrove Appeal. This was part of a series of literary evenings to raise money for a new centre for West and Central London’s homeless people. The Centre will contain forty single bedrooms instead of the usual dormitory accommodation, a doctor’s surgery, a subsidized canteen, advice on finding a job and on educational opportunities including computer training, a quiet room for study, showers and a laundry—all the facilities, indeed, to enable homeless young people to rebuild their lives. The facilities will be open during the day to London’s rough sleepers, of which there are, I understand, about
2,000 each night. Ruth is one of the Appeal Patrons and before we began speaking gave a brief talk on what the Appeal hoped to achieve.

Ruth and I have taken part in a number of similar events, always for charity. Each event follows the same pattern; we have no chairman and sit together on the platform to talk about our craft, taking it in turns to initiate the conversation. We usually cover the same subjects—how we became writers, why we write crime novels, problems of technique, our differences and similarities—but no conversation follows precisely the same pattern and the level of success depends as much on the response of the audience as it does on us. Tonight was a good evening with a chance to meet a number of friends at the reception before we began. We took questions after the talk and then signed books.

Several people, presumably some of them dealers, came with early editions to be signed. It is dispiriting to see how many of these are now hardly readable with the stuck bindings coming loose and—worse—the paper browning. We are perpetually being reminded of the importance of reading and the written word, yet publishers apparently have given up producing books which will last for more than a few years. I accept that much crime writing is ephemeral, but need it be
so
ephemeral? Before this appalling deterioration in standards, readers could buy a hardback copy of a favourite author in the knowledge that it would be a permanent acquisition for their personal library, to be read and re-read, handled with pleasure and handed down to the next generation. Unless something is done to restore standards we shall have no libraries in future, either national or personal. The reason for the present shoddy productions is, of course, money, but I would have thought that it would pay publishers to bring out at least a limited number of the most important twentieth-century writers in a form which would endure.

I later learned that the evening raised £16,000, enough to build three bedrooms: a remarkable result for a literary evening.

I am tired, having returned from participating in a session of
Any Questions
at Devizes. As I travelled by train from Paddington to Chippenham where I was to be met, I wondered why I had agreed, for the first time,
to take part. I suppose it is an example of my often unwise and sometimes disastrous disposition to say yes to something new which I am far from certain I can carry off successfully. The other guests—if that is the correct word—were Paul Foot, David Puttnam and Bernard Ingham, and we met first at a local hotel for a buffet supper and drink before going on to the venue in the Corn Exchange. Paul Foot and Sir Bernard are old hands at the game; indeed Paul Foot has been taking part, he said, for over thirty years. Nevertheless there is always a sense of slight apprehension before a public performance of any kind, and we would have been happier with a meal after, rather than before, the event.

Over supper Paul Foot and I discussed the Hanratty case
^*
and his book on it, published some years ago, in which he seeks to convince the reader that Hanratty was innocent. I said that I had read it but still believed that the verdict was right. Paul said, in that case I couldn’t have read the book, but David Puttnam interposed to say that if I said I had read it, then I had. I remember that it was very cleverly argued and certainly raised questions which still remain unanswered. The case is often quoted as demonstrating the differences and the respective merits and demerits of our own accusatorial system of justice and the investigatory system of, for example, France. Under the latter the question would have been addressed as to why a small-time London crook who had never been known to handle guns would be in a field in Slough holding up the lovers Michael Gregsten and Valerie Storie, and why he came to be so far from his normal haunts. The prosecution, naturally, did not address this question and the defence did not do so since they were putting forward the case that he was not there. The explanation I heard later was that he had been hired to frighten the two lovers, but that what had been meant merely as a warning had gone dreadfully wrong and had ended with murder. Then there is the ambiguous part played by Peter Louis Alphon and the fact that the jury were out for nine and a half hours before they returned a verdict of guilty. In some minds a discussion which needed nine and a half hours surely proves that
there must have been reasonable doubt. I can’t help wondering whether, if Hanratty had been brilliantly defended, a reasonable doubt might not have been established. But none of this affects my own view of his guilt. As the case continues to be controversial it would seem right to exhume the body and establish the truth once and for all by DNA evidence. I find it strange that this hasn’t been done.

There was the expected large audience, who were warmed up before we filed on to the platform. The questions were predictable: the recent case of a prisoner released after twenty-three years for a murder which he not only didn’t commit, but which was now considered not even to have been murder; how could one deal with the problem of the Balkans; would we employ the Chancellor of the Exchequer to advise on our private finances? I didn’t disgrace myself, but nor did I feel at the end that I had said anything either original or useful.

I was driven home with Paul Foot. In the programme he vigorously promoted at length his own preoccupations and seemed rather like a left-wing propagandist who had become permanently stuck in the 1960s. But I found, as so often happens, that I liked him more as I understood him better, and we shared the drive to London, if not in agreement, at least in amity.

I was lucky in the House of Lords draw for tickets to watch yesterday’s Trooping the Colour and was particularly pleased about this as I’d hoped to invite Miss Lowe to see the parade with me. The weather forecast was depressing and rain was falling heavily as we joined a queue to go through the security barrier before taking our seats. We were directed to the wrong stand and later had to move, but couldn’t have been better placed, in the front row of Stand Five. I had warned my guest to be warmly dressed and this proved very wise advice as, although the rain cleared, it was an exceptionally cold day. The parade took place under grey and lowering skies but no rain fell. The guards marched on wearing short grey cloaks and there was a moment of orchestrated drama when a command was barked out and simultaneously they swept off their cloaks to reveal their scarlet uniforms. The precision of the marching never fails
to raise one’s spirits and I suspect this must be so even with those who have no sympathy with any military spectacle. But somehow Trooping the Colour lost part of its magic when the Queen substituted a carriage for riding sidesaddle to review her guards. The sight of that small figure wearing a summer hat, being slowly paraded like a mascot along the lines of the guards in what I think is a phaeton, looked incongruous and even slightly ludicrous.