Jacob's Room Is Full of Books: A Year of Reading Read online

  It also happened to be at the time of the death of the Duke of Windsor. His funeral was in St George’s Chapel, preceded by the lying in state of the former king, and of course Stephen was very involved in all of it.

  On the first evening of the lying in state, he came to the drawing room, where I was with Scilla and one of their daughters, Rachel, playing some music – Rachel on the piano, me on the oboe. He said that if we could be almost invisible, and more silent than mice, but wanted to take part in a small bit of history, we should follow him.

  We went in awe, and indeed in silence, to where he told us to conceal ourselves behind a stone pillar in the shadows, and to wait and watch. I remember it so well. I remember the extraordinary sense of that historic building all round us, and of the centuries and the events it had seen and the cold and weight of the very stones and the deep dimness. I remember being not entirely sure what we were there waiting for. And hardly daring to breathe. We all peered into a patch of grey light, beyond the shadows and the pillars, and, after a few moments, into that light a black car glided to a stop. Men in suits leaped out, looking around them, as the royal detectives do. We froze. Out got the young Prince of Wales and then, on the other side, our side, slowly, cautiously, stepped the Duchess of Windsor. Prince Charles went to her. She turned for a second and I can see vividly now the ashen pale face beneath a black hat and behind a black veil. I remember her stricken look, her face of grief and a sort of bewilderment, but a bearing of great dignity. And so they moved off towards the entrance to the chapel, where she would pay her last respects to Edward, the husband who had abdicated the throne for her, and had loved her, through all those years of dull, dreary exile.

  It was history. I felt it as I have never felt it before or since – and how would I? Nobody else was there. Certainly no one knew that we were there, except Stephen. We waited, and eventually, very moved and thoughtful, crept back through the shadows again to the house, in even deeper silence and awe, and a sort of disbelief.

  The next morning, I went with the Windsor household to process past the coffin in St George’s Chapel. There he was. There were the soldiers standing guard. The tall candles flickering. The white flowers. The draped flag. The absolute stillness and silence, save for the slight sound of footsteps, soft on stone. The occasional muffled cough. As we went slowly past, the guard changed. The soldiers came to attention. Changed arms. Marched off, to be replaced by the next men. But their footsteps rang on the stone floor.

  And then we went out into the June sunshine.

  On the day of the funeral, we watched from the windows. Ted Heath, then Prime Minister, came to lunch – he and Stephen were old Oxford contemporaries and friends. What a bloodless, stuffy man he was – though perfectly pleasant and polite, and delighted with the curry Scilla had cooked. He loved curry, he said, ‘and I very rarely get it’, as if he could only ever eat what was put in front of him and had no say in the matter. Perhaps that was so.

  That evening, I went into Stephen’s study to fetch something for him and found his copy of the Order of Service for the funeral dumped in the waste paper basket. I stole it.

  I have it here. I have slipped it into my copy of Philip Ziegler’s biography of King Edward VIII. It is plain and simple, my small bit of English history.

  And what of Wallis? Having read so much about her that I feel I know her better than she knew herself, I am still uncertain what to make of her – or indeed, of the whole story. It seems so complicated, but perhaps it isn’t really. I don’t think she ever meant him to abdicate for her. I think she would have been happy to be the royal mistress for however many years … After all, her first husband connived at the affair and indeed was rather proud of having a wife who was the King’s mistress. It could have carried on more easily then than now. The media had not yet become all-seeing, all-knowing. Many of the country’s citizens had no idea at all of what the King was up to, though the Court knew, Society knew. The former disapproved but the latter probably didn’t care.

  But his mother, Queen Mary, cared. And David Windsor, the King, cared, cared above all about having the throne with Wallis beside him as Queen. That he could never have. I don’t honestly think it was what Wallis wanted. It all got out of hand and, before she knew it, she found herself divorced, exiled, not an HM or even an HRH, but merely the Duchess of Windsor, out of Society, out of favour, out of everything except his absolute slavish devotion and adoration. She married him.

  What a tragedy it was. What a silly, weak, vain, ineffectual man he was. And what a load he dumped on his shy, stammering, unprepared brother, who only wanted to continue to be happily married and a loving father to his two daughters. Instead, he got lumbered with the throne and all the stress and distress that brought.

  But of course if he had not been King, we would not have had Queen Elizabeth II – and what a splendid fist she has made of it, for longer than any other British monarch.

  I put my Order of Service and the biography of King Edward VIII – David, Duke of Windsor – back on the shelf.

  I SEE FROM MY LITERARY DIARY that today (22 June) was the birthday of H. Rider Haggard. Graham Greene always mentioned him as a formative influence – as a boy he was addicted to Haggard’s adventure novels set in exotic places. The best known is She but Greene also loved Allan Quartermain and King Solomon’s Mines. Greene wrote of Haggard: ‘Enchantment is just what this writer exercised; he fixed pictures in our minds that thirty years have been unable to wear away.’

  I tried to read them years ago, but gave up. They are boys’ books really, though probably not for boys today. As a devoted reader of John Buchan’s adventure novels, also sometimes set in far-flung parts of the old globe, I had expected to enjoy Rider Haggard. Never mind. Not everything lasts or goes around again and I doubt if he will.

  Haggard was a Norfolk man and is buried in Ditchingham. It is the writings of his daughter, Lilias, that have helped me settle into this part of the world. She wrote for our local paper, the Eastern Daily Press – EDP – for years and they sometimes reprint her articles. I have her A Norfolk Notebook on my bedside table. It is now out of print but second-hand copies are easy to find round here. She knew North Norfolk as well as anyone ever has – its fields, lanes, marshes, villages, churches, coast. She sailed off Blakeney. She picked cockles at Morston and she saw many a rare bird at Stiffkey. Reading it, one feels that nothing changes. Lilias goes to a summer fete in one of those ‘small agricultural villages which struggle so hard to save and support the heritage bequeathed to them by past generations – an ancient and lovely church’. I went to just such a fete last Saturday. The teas, the homemade cakes, the tombola, the ancient skittles, the whack-a-rat game, the jams and preserves, the book stall – all were in their usual places on the playing field (‘if wet in Village Hall’). Those magnificent churches are still there, still needing support, and now with just a single vicar for four or five of them and services sometimes only one Sunday a month. But people still care for and about them very much. Only the second-homers are conspicuous by their absence from these occasions, as they are from the working parties to clean said church, or to paint the hall, or pick litter from the church environs. As ever, these jobs fall to the faithful few, some of whom try to relinquish the role of treasurer or clerk, but can never do so because no one will replace them. It was the same story when I lived in the Cotswolds. It is the same story throughout rural England.

  At the top of the lane near to my house is a sign: ‘To the Shell Museum’. It was a couple of years before I followed the sign, which led me to Glandford – through which the river runs, with a ford across it, like the one in this village. ‘Unsuitable for Motors’, the signs read, but so many people do not notice them or just ignore them and plough on, sinking as they go, and end up with sumps splitting on the rocky bottom and spilling oil down the river and, for them, an expensive call-out from the AA. Not far from the ford at Glandford is the Shell Museum, open from March to October. Let Lilias Rider Haggar
d describe it:

  Thousands of shells from every part of the world are set out in all the glory of a myriad shades of pink and purple, green, orange, yellow, and a shimmering iridescence which has defied the years, locked away from the salt water in which they were born.

  They are mysterious things, shells, holding every colour of the sea and sky fixed and eternal, just as within them sings everlastingly the murmur of a ghostly tide. One wanders round, wondering which are the most beautiful. The big cowries blazing with the reds and oranges of the sunset. The mottled browns and purples of the ‘plovers’ eggs’, which have a glaze unequalled in any china made by man. The thin, pearly substance of the fairy-like nautilus, who spread their frail sails to catch the wind on warmer seas than ours. Or the tiny, delicate shells which look as translucent as soap bubbles, frozen into immobility.

  You can still see them, as she saw them. There is a modest entrance fee.

  Nothing changes.

  It was in A Norfolk Notebook that at last I found the prayer I had half-known for many years, but not who wrote it or its exact words. It was by Charlotte Mew – long-forgotten – though whether she actually wrote it herself or only took it down from someone else, I do not know. It is called ‘The Old Shepherd’s Prayer’.

  Heavenly Master, I wud like to wake to they same green places

  Where I be know’d for breakin’ dogs and follerin’ sheep.

  And if I may not walk in th’old ways and look on th’old faces

  I wud sooner sleep.

  EVERY YEAR WE GO TO FRANCE for a month, either June or September, and if it is June, we therefore miss the irises, the best roses, the peonies … and the longest day, on which my lugubrious father always said, with gloomy satisfaction, that the nights had now started drawing in. But June is the best month in France. Their roses are in full spate, the swifts are in full flight, swooping and soaring and diving in and out of the church towers and the old barns.

  Wild boar are menacing then, though, because they have young. We once smashed into a huge male as it ran straight across a long straight empty country road from the woods alongside. We hit it smack on and, as I caught a glimpse of its massive tusks and stiff bristle whiskers, I knew it was actually the Gruffalo. The thump as it hit the front of my 4 × 4 was frightening. I looked back and the boar was stone dead in the middle of the road and I knew I should have returned and … well, and what? An English friend who has lived in France for many years says he would have stopped, loaded it on to the roof rack and taken it home to cut up, cook and eat. ‘Dinners for weeks, one way or another.’ I ate wild boar once, in Germany. Have you ever chewed your own handbag, covered in red wine sauce?

  A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO I did a stupid thing in the heat of the moment. Who has not? It comes of impatience and impulsivity, which are slaves to modern technology. One used to be admonished to write a letter, out of anger and resentment or self-justification, in response to something hurtful or annoying and then either sleep on it before posting – or not posting – or tear it up immediately. Then along came email and the social media. If you are lucky, you can delete a post on Facebook or Twitter, but you cannot unsend or retrieve an email.

  So, annoyed at something I read about a bookshop where I was to give a talk, I put up an angry post in response on Facebook. An editor read it and asked me to tidy it up and send it to the online edition of her magazine. From there it was picked up by the social and traditional media, and all hell broke loose. Well, I can deal with all hell. I have faced it often enough in my writing past. But for nine-tenths of that past the internet did not exist. Now it does and, in response to my article, as it had now become, Twitter broke loose and the ugly face of Twitter is not only not pretty, it is unutterably vile. Trolls, as they are called, patrol tweets, as they do newspaper articles online, prepared not only to jump into an argument – that would be fine – but to be abusive, threatening, vile, filthy-tongued and generally hurtful. I copped the full might of a Twitter storm, Force Ten, and the very moment it hit me I ducked out of the site altogether and did not read, reply to or comment on anything whatsoever for at least three weeks. It was more or less safe to go back after that.

  But even the little I read, even the rest which friends and the not-so-friendly reported to me, made me understand how devastating being ‘monstered’ can be – not least because few people actually read and understand what you said originally and why you said it. They read what they think is there – no, want to be there. What it was all about was a nine-day wonder and there is no point in giving the thing further oxygen, but the effect was not simply bruising and annoying. I was accused, in disgusting language, of many things I was not in a million years guilty of – a fascist and a lackey of Donald Trump being the least of it.

  I have been in the book world since 1960 and I have become, or so I thought, as tough as any. I do not flinch from a bad review so long as it is not personal – does not make unpleasant jibes at me, not my book – and does not show off at my expense. It helps if the reviewer has read the book attentively, too. I have dished out adverse criticism when reviewing, so I should be able to take it when it comes around to me. My lovely friend, the Daily Mail journalist Lynda Lee-Potter always answered her own phone if she was in the office – she said that if she dealt it out she ought to be able to take it.

  Three months later and I am mended. Apart from one thing. The vileness thrown at me did not make me cry or even make me rage and storm. But it did, for the first time in fifty-seven years, cause me to lose my confidence as a writer. I simply could not write, or address any of the ideas that came to me, as they do, every day. I could not continue with the book I was planning. I could not think of myself as a writer any more.

  And that was a first. I may not be many things, but I am a writer. It defines me. I have been one since the age of five and I have never been anything else – except for wife and mother and grandmother, but one’s personal life is different.

  So, there I was. A doctor friend of mine, a GP, was tricked and betrayed by her fellow partners, maligned and undermined by a process of passive-aggressive bullying, to the extent that she was forced to resign and lost her confidence as a doctor. She has not practised since – she took early retirement. It broke her, and when she was exonerated and proven innocent of all the trumped-up charges, it was too late. The damage was done. I would not claim that my case was remotely as serious as hers and, in any case, she was not to blame. Mine was self-inflicted. She cannot simply resume her professional life. A writer can. I have.

  Then something else happened. While looking for something – which I did not find – on the internet, I found instead a vicious article by a commentator not well known for his tact and sensitivity, about the novelist Rachel Cusk. I had not, at that stage, read any of her books, for no reason other than that one cannot read everyone. I then followed the trail and uncovered a whole library of antagonism, unpleasantness and worse about a book Cusk had written – not a novel but an account of her marriage breakdown. I did not go far before I then found an interview with her in which she confessed that, following the publication of this book and the subsequent public storm it had aroused, she was frozen, unable to write a new novel or even to think about one. I knew precisely what had happened to her because I had been in the same situation more recently, but in my case the freeze only lasted a month or two. Rachel Cusk was unable to write for four years.

  I could do very little other than feel silent sympathy, except for one thing. It does nothing to make up for what happened to either of us, but writers are survivors and the one thing that keeps us going is the hope that people will buy and read and get something from our books. So I bought every Rachel Cusk book in print. They are stacked beside my bed, with the one about her marriage that roused the rabble at the top. Because honest, considered criticism and comment should be welcomed by all of us, but vile abuse and personal hostility and malevolent sneering from any commentator, public or private, should never be.

 
JULY

  EBOOK SALES ARE DECLINING, but not before they have done permanent damage to one thing – not the physical, printed book, which is apparently thriving in both hard and paperback form, but the second-hand aka antiquarian book market.

  I bought a book from a dealer last week which was not of great value per se but was out of print and needed by me – it was in fair condition and I might easily have chanced upon it in a charity shop for £1 but, of course, I might not – so I paid £12 for it. Plus postage. The dealer may well have got it from said charity shop himself. But it is all a game of chance and that book could well have been sitting on his shelves for five years.

  A friend asked a second-hand book dealer to come and assess half of his book collection – some 2,000 volumes – to see what they might be worth and if he wanted them. The dealer offered £500. If that had been me, I would have refused, knowing that about twenty of the books alone were worth that and, having extracted said twenty and a few more, and having decided to keep, say, another couple of dozen, would have given the rest to an Oxfam bookshop. Instead, the friend decided to accept the £500, on the grounds that the man would take the books away and so he would be spared a lot of trouble.

  It is not so long ago that second-hand book dealers could rip the public off and make a very handsome living for themselves. Not many people, unless they are specialists or in the trade, know the value of some of the books they own. Everyone thinks a signed copy of any Harry Potter book is worth a fortune, but I know someone who gave away three first editions of James Bond books to a charity shop and discovered that they had been worth around £30,000. He had bought them at the time they were published and kept them because he had the space. The charity shop got in touch with him when they found out how much the books were worth and asked my friend if he wanted to take them back, which was good and honest of them. He swallowed hard and said, ‘No’, which was good of him.