Natural Flights of the Human Mind (34 page)

Writing
Natural Flights of the Human Mind

N
ATURAL
F
LIGHTS
started with a picture in my head of a small biplane circling a lighthouse. The picture would not go away, and my interest grew when I saw an advertisement for a vacation home in a converted lighthouse. Living miles away from anyone, alone with the wind and the sea, appealed to me. Lacking the initiative—and the resources—I haven’t moved there myself, but I thought my imagination could produce someone who had.

I wanted to write about guilt. It is a destructive emotion, but without it you cannot have acknowledgement of responsibility or redemption. How do you live with bad decisions, carelessness, or errors, especially if your actions have led to disaster? I’ve worried about the man who didn’t close the doors properly on the
Herald of Free Enterprise
passenger ferry or the engineer who last inspected the tire which burst on the Concorde. There is a culture of blame in our society, yet everyone makes mistakes and behaves carelessly on occasion. Most of us are just lucky, and nothing happens. But what if it does?

It is also about death and grief. I wanted to touch and care about the people who die in the accident. They should not be just numbers, but people with real lives and relatives and dilemmas. I am interested in the impact of premature death on families and friends, and the way it goes on affecting them, reaching out its tentacles and drawing them in, long after the event. Grief can be passed down. It can alter people’s personalities, their relationships within families, the way they
bring up their children, and the way those children bring up their own children. Sudden violent death must inevitably take generations to resolve.

The biplane turned out to be a Tiger Moth, and Biggles makes a fleeting but significant appearance in the novel. We have furiously argued in my writing group about how much Biggles should be included, but I am most influenced by the fact that we always end up laughing. I like this. Humor and grief are both the result of heightened emotions and are closer than we realize. Tragedy is always more powerful if there is humor as well. Biggles and the Tiger Moth need to be there.

I squeezed a lot into this novel and rejected a lot more, but the rejected characters are already crowding their way back into my thoughts, queuing up for a place in my mind, and jostling for position. New pictures are forming in my mind that won’t go away. The next novel is just around the corner.

A Modest Superhero

I
CAN’T REMEMBER
the moment when I decided to allow Biggles some space in my new novel, but I imagine he just turned up one day demanding attention. An ingrained loyalty to past escapism meant that I had to take him seriously. There’s an inner store in my mind, a bag of glittery details that I’ve accumulated over the years. Biggles was probably sitting around waiting for an opportunity and jumped out when I was rummaging around for something else.

His presence in the novel has been the subject of intense debate for anyone who has read it in its embryonic state. How prominent a role should he have, or should he be there at all? Every time we discuss this in my writing group we end up laughing. So because I believe in humor, because I think it opens your mind, sets you up for suspension of belief, and heightens your emotions, Biggles still has a walk-on part.

In fact, more people become excited by references to Biggles than I had anticipated. He evokes a nostalgia for a childhood world of heroes, goodies and baddies, and right and wrong, that is immensely reassuring in these troubled times. Times were troubled then as well, of course, but you knew who the enemy was. He had a name, a nationality, and a language—usually German.

The first Biggles book,
The Camels are Coming
, was written by Captain W. E. Johns in 1932. It was a collection of short stories based on the author’s own experiences as a pilot during the First World War. He wasn’t really a captain, only a flying officer, but he thought the title would appeal to children. He and his protagonist, James Bigglesworth, were members of the Royal Flying Corps, which amalgamated with the Royal Naval Air Service in 1918 to become the Royal Air Force. Biggles was apparently the inspiration for hundreds of young men who applied to train as pilots during the Second World War, and many of the books were updated for that purpose (Camels became Spitfires). After the war Biggles joined the Air Police and embarked on a whole new career as a detective. The scene was set for dozens of books with that heady combination of airplanes and adventure.

I’m not sure how the Biggles books found their way into our house, but they must have come from rummage sales, secondhand shops, or been passed on by other people. They were hardcovers but had lost their dust jackets, and they were well-thumbed by the time they reached me. The volumes I borrowed from the library were the same—they hadn’t
yet invented that useful see-through plastic which preserves dust jackets forever. I loved the ready-to-read smell of those thick, slightly yellowed pages squashed up together on a library shelf.

I didn’t care about, or even consider, any previous readers. But they must have been present in the musty aroma of the books, eager hands and the exhalation of thrilled breath having left their marks. The covers were dark, usually blue, sometimes green or maroon, with plain black lettering:
Biggles Goes East; Biggles Flies West; Biggles Fails to Return
. Oh, the heart-fluttering anticipation of that one. Would he get hurt? Would he show some vulnerability—so much more moving in an all-action, all-achieving hero?

Captain W. E. Johns was born in 1893 and died in 1968, halfway through
Biggles Does Some Homework
. There is some debate about how many Biggles books there are. Estimates range from 98 to 104, complicated by the fact that many stories first appeared in magazines and annuals and were later compiled into volumes. At the same time, he was producing plenty of other books. The Worralls series about a member of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force was requested by the War Office as a recruiting incentive. Why else would Johns choose to write about a woman?

Johns wrote an extraordinary number of books—as many as forty between 1931 and 1939. There can’t have been many authors with that kind of output. If Enid Blyton and Barbara Cartland head a list of prolific writers, Captain W. E. Johns can’t be far behind.

My knowledge of First World War aircraft is extensive, because Johns provides detailed footnotes. There are accurate, first-hand descriptions of Sopwith Camels, Bristol Fighters, SE5s, and all the other British and German aircraft in use at the time. The Camel had a reputation for being a difficult aircraft to fly, but it was the airplane flown by real heroes, the equivalent of the Spitfire in the next war. However, many of the books are set between the wars and later, when Biggles travels the world with his companions Algy, Ginger, and Bertie. They solve crimes, catch villains, and save the planet from evil plots. He is a kind of modest superhero with no magic powers, but he does have plenty of pluck, luck, and brains.

Ginger seems to have been Johns’s favorite auxiliary character. Indeed, there were several times in the later books when I became irritated by his escapades because all I really wanted to know was how Biggles was doing. The focus had shifted, and Biggles was no longer the slight, fair-haired, good-looking lad with deep-set hazel eyes that were never still. In the early books people were concerned about him. I liked that. It meant I too could be concerned.

Of course he couldn’t go on being young forever. Although he
doesn’t age hugely in the later years, he has to be a bit more mature. He becomes an Air Commodore, for goodness’ sake. You can’t be pale and delicate with that kind of responsibility. I thought that Ginger had replaced Biggles in Johns’s affection and I was jealous for Biggles. Ginger went on being the headstrong young man, brave, needing guidance, but capable of the occasional flash of inspiration.

Then there was Algy. He was significant in the early books, but had to grow up a bit when Ginger arrived. He had a poor deal in the later books, assigned to stay behind at base, to phone the authorities, and to be the backup. Ginger had all the fun. Biggles’s third companion was Bertie, with his monocle, who said things like: “Let’s toddle along, old boy”—straight out of P. G. Wodehouse. He was only there for the humor. He never actually did anything. He’s the one everyone remembers because he is a stereotype, and people like stereotypes. You know where you are with them.

I had the most fun in my novel with the language. I have been to writing classes. I know all about style. You write: he said, she said, they said. You never write: “he averred,” “he opined,” “he expostulated.” Johns doesn’t seem to know this.” ‘Lucky!’ ejaculated Biggles sarcastically.” Marvelous stuff. I wonder why these words exist if no one’s allowed to use them. Is it fashion? Did it all change at some time and I only found out twenty years ago? But Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence don’t use them, and they come from the same time period. Who was right? Woolf and Lawrence or Captain W. E. Johns?

Like me, Johns believes that humor is important. I remember giggling to myself at some comment tossed off by Biggles (usually dryly remarked to let me know it was a joke). All the short stories from the First World War end with a lighthearted bit of banter to show that everyone would survive, that they were human really, and that they weren’t going to break under pressure—the
M*A*S*H
principle on a rather more basic level.

Sadly, there are racial stereotypes that would not be tolerated today. The baddie is frequently a German, epitomized by Biggles’s arch enemy Von Stalheim, who crops up in the oddest places long after the war. He leads a charmed life, like Moriarty, and always survives to come back in another book. But he and Biggles respect each other’s cunning, brilliance of mind, and strategic thinking. They never make the mistake of underestimating their enemy.

The air detectives often whiz off to exotic places—Borneo, China, South America, and various mysterious Arab countries where the locals are always baddies like the Germans. I’m not sure about the accuracy of
the habitat, but you need natives to grunt and use their muscles to do the dirty work. Some stories are set in Britain. I recently read one (in the interests of research) about a bull that disappeared and was found hidden in a herd of cows disguised by painted white patches. I had the feeling this was written to fill in time during a few weeks in the summer while Johns planned Biggles’ next great expedition to Outer Mongolia.

There are no women in the books. Nobody is married, has a girlfriend, or shows interest in anything female. There was an attempt in a First World War story
—Affaire de Coeur
, helpfully translated in a footnote—to depict an unhappy love story between Biggles and a French spy, but it is very brief. She risks her life to tell him she has survived and we never hear of her again. You can’t help thinking that Johns thought he ought to make a gesture, but his heart wasn’t in it. Who wants women in adventure stories? They just get in the way and scream all the time and want rescuing. And let’s face it, Ginger is pretty good at needing to be rescued himself.

In 1932 John Hamilton, Ltd. became the first publisher to produce Biggles, followed by Oxford University Press. From 1942 onward, Hodder & Stoughton and Brockhampton Press seemed to be publishing books at the same time. Maybe they were coming so thick and fast it required two publishers to handle them. They were also popular abroad. Biggles is twenty-ninth on the list of most translated books in the world. According to my sister who lives in France, even the French, who don’t understand Boys’ Own stuff, have accepted Biggles with enthusiasm. Red Fox has reprinted about twenty Biggles books in the last few years, so they are again available for today’s children—or for nostalgic adults.

There is still something fresh and pleasing about the simplicity of the stories in our cynical age. They are full of nonstop action with no worries about psychological damage or post-traumatic stress syndrome. There is no ambivalence. We know who should win and we know that they shall win. Nothing is left in the air, as it were. Vintage detective stories proliferate on television and are hugely popular. People are nostalgic for a time that never was. It’s gentle escapism, and why not? There is no derring-do in Miss Marple or Poirot, of course, so perhaps Biggles is more in the Indiana Jones tradition—without the blood and gore. The tales are a cross between Miss Marple and Indiana Jones; James Bond without the sex; with a bit of
M*A*S*H
and Jeeves thrown in. That seems to sum it up.

Oh, and let’s not forget the joy and romance of seeing a biplane take to the air—in reality or in the imagination.

What more could you want?

Astonishing Splashes of Colour

An Excerpt

A
STONISHING
S
PLASHES OF
C
OLOUR
, a finalist for the Booker Prize in 2003, takes its title from J. M. Barrie’s description of Peter Pan’s Neverland. Caught in an overvivid world as a result of synesthesia (a condition in which emotions are seen as colors), Kitty Wellington is tipped off-center by the loss of a child. As children all around become emblems of hope, longing, and grief, she’s made shockingly aware of the real reasons for a pervasive sense of her own “nonexistence.”

What mystery at the heart of Kitty’s family makes her four older brothers so vague about her mother’s life? And why does her artist father splash paint on canvas rather than answer his daughter’s questions? Kitty glimpses on the edges of her dreams the kaleidoscopic hippie van that took her sister Dinah away, and wonders how this event may link to the dim corridors of her own childhood, a childhood in which she had no tangible sense of her mother.

This compelling novel is threaded through with dark humor and resonates with universal truths as it tells of identity struggles in a large family, the sadness of lost children, the approach of breakdown and desperation—and the optimism of an eccentric, loving marriage.

“Beautifully subtle…. It draws the reader in page after page.”

—Boston Globe

“
Astonishing Splashes of Colour
is a brave and startling book, tinted, shaded, and stained like life itself.”

—Philadelphia Inquirer

Chapter One: “The Flash of My Skirt”

At 3:15 every weekday afternoon, I become anonymous in a crowd of parents and childminders congregating outside the school gates. To me, waiting for children to come out of school is a quintessential act of motherhood. I see the mums—and the occasional dads—as yellow people. Yellow as the sun, a daffodil, the submarine. But why do we teach children to paint the sun yellow? It’s a deception. The sun is white-hot, brilliant, impossible to see with the naked eye, so why do we confuse brightness with yellow?

The people outside the school gates are yellow because of their optimism. There’s a picture in my mind of morning in a kitchen, the sun shining past yellow gingham curtains on to a wooden table, where the children sit and eat breakfast. Their arms are firm and round, their hair still tangled from sleep. They eat Coco Pops, drink milk and ask for chocolate biscuits in their lunchboxes. It’s the morning of their lives, and their mums are reliving that morning with them.

After six weeks of waiting, I’m beginning to recognize individuals, to separate them from the all-embracing yellow mass. They smile with recognition when I arrive now and nearly include me in their conversations. I don’t say anything, but I like to listen.

A few days ago, I was later than usual and only managed to reach the school gates as the children were already coming out. I dashed in, nearly fell over someone’s pushchair, and collided with another girl. I’ve seen her before: an au pair, who picks up a boy and a girl.

“Sorry,” I said, several times, to everyone.

The girl straightened up and smiled. “Is all right,” she said.

I smiled back.

“I am Hélène,” she said awkwardly. “What is your name?”

“Kitty,” I said eventually, because I couldn’t think of a suitable alternative.

Now when we meet, we speak to each other.

“’ello, Kitty,” she says.

“Hello, Hélène,” I say.

“Is a lovely day.”

“Yes, it’s very warm.”

“I forgot to put washing out.”

“Oh dear.”

Our conversations are distinctly limited—short sentences with one subject, one verb. Nothing sensational, nothing important. I like the pointlessness of it all. The feeling that you are skimming the surface only, whizzing along on water skis, not thinking about what might happen if you take a wrong turning away from the boat. I like this simple belief, the sense of going on indefinitely, without ever falling off.

“Where do you come from?” I ask Hélène one day. I’m no good with accents.

“France.”

“Oh,” I say, “France.” I have only been to France once, when I was sixteen, on a school trip. I was sick both ways on the ferry, once on some steps, so everybody who came down afterwards slipped on it. I felt responsible, but there was nothing I could do to stop people using the stairs.

Another mother is standing close to us with a toddler in a pushchair. The boy is wearing a yellow and black striped hat with a pompom on it, and his little fat cheeks are a brilliant red. He is holding a packet of Wotsits and trying to cram them into his mouth as quickly as possible. His head bobs up and down, so that he looks like a bumble bee about to take off.

“Jeremy, darling,” says his mother, “finish
eating one before starting on the next.” He contemplates her instructions for five seconds and then continues to stuff them in at the same rate as before.

She turns to Hélène. “What part of France?”

Hélène looks pleased to be asked. “Brittany.”

James would know it. He used to go to France every summer. Holidays with his parents.

One of Hélène’s children comes out of school, wearing an unzipped red anorak and a rucksack on his back in the shape of a very green alligator. The alligator’s scaly feet reach round him from the back and its grinning row of teeth open and shut from behind as he walks.

“’ello, Toby,” says Hélène.

“Have we got Smarties today?” he demands in a clear, firm tone. He talks to Hélène with a slight arrogance.

Hélène produces a packet of chocolate buttons.

“But I don’t like them. I only like Smarties.”

“Good,” she says and puts the buttons back in her bag.

He hesitates. “OK then,” he says with a sigh, wandering off to chat to his friends with the buttons in his pocket. His straight blond hair flops over his eyes. If he were mine, I’d have taken him to a barber ages ago.

Hélène turns to me. “We walk home together? You know my way?”

“No. I live in the opposite direction to you.”

“Then you come with me to park for a little while? Children play on swings?”

She is obviously lonely. It must be so hard to come to Birmingham from the French
countryside. How does she understand the accent, or find out the bus fares and have the right change ready?

“I have to get back,” I say. “My husband will be expecting me.”

She smiles and pretends not to mind. I watch her walk miserably away with her two children and wish I could help her, although I know I can’t. She chose the wrong person. The yellow is changing. I can feel it becoming overripe—the sharp smell of dying daffodils, the sting and taste of vomit….