It was on a trip to the vegetable store on Bryher that I heard the story which triggered my third Scilly novel. The farmer who grew the vegetables had been ploughing up his potato field when he came across a great hole in the ground. On close examination he discovered an ancient tomb. Inside were the remains of a fleece, a mirror and a sword – the sword and mirror are now in the museum of St Mary’s. Experts who examined it declared the tomb to be about two thousand years old. Scilly is littered with ancient tombs – I’ve lain in one on Samson Hill. It fits me perfectly! It so happened I had already written my version of the King Arthur story, Arthur, High King of Britain – the only genuine autobiography – and had set his resting place on Scilly in a cave under an island called Little Arthur, one of the Eastern Isles. So this new discovery of the ancient tomb in the potato field on Bryher had to be Sir Bedevere’s tomb, I thought, and the sword Excalibur, of course. He never threw Excalibur back in the lake as the wounded King Arthur had instructed him. Bedevere didn’t want to see Camelot die so, unbeknown to the king, he kept Excalibur, the talisman of Camelot’s power, to be ready for Arthur when the time came to use it again. Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Anyway, it’s the story behind my book The Sleeping Sword.
I’m looking forward to my next summer in Marion’s cottage, the same cottage we always have. The hospitality will be as warm, the beaches as clean as the sea. The fog will roll in and hide us from the rest of the world. Then there’ll be a wind and the sea will dance with light again. But either way, whatever the weather I will feel a perfect peace. I will feel at home. And who knows what will turn up this time? All I know is that something will. On islands, something always does.
Robert Louis Stevenson loved islands too – Scottish ones, Pacific ones, he wasn’t fussy. He wrote the greatest island book of all time. As I’ve said, if there’s one book that fired my imagination as a young boy, it was Treasure Island.
I think I first heard of Stevenson and Treasure Island through a card game I used to play called Author. The object was to match up cards to make a sort of literary Happy Families – the author’s name being the family name, the author’s book titles the members of the family. It’s how I first learnt, for instance, that Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter; that Charles Dickens wrote not only A Christmas Carol but David Copperfield too; that Thackeray’s middle name was Makepeace; and most importantly that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, Catriona and Treasure Island.
I longed to collect the Stevenson cards because I loved to look into his face – the authors’ faces were the link on all the cards. Stevenson’s hair was long and lank, his face thin and pale, his eyes thoughtful, kind and intelligent. He was everything I longed to be, but couldn’t – I was round-faced, red-faced with jug ears and sticky-up short hair, and of only average intelligence. Whenever I looked into his eyes, I felt he was looking back at me, that he was in some way genuinely interested in me, that perhaps he thought of me as a kindred spirit.
So, to collect the Stevenson cards before anyone else was always my main ambition. The other authors I cared less about (though I still wanted to win). I never cared much for Dickens, who looked like a tired bloodhound with a beard! No, Robert Louis Stevenson was the one for me; he was my kind of man. When later on I’d read all his extraordinary books, and when I’d read something of his life – of his adventures and travels, his fame, his last island home and his tragic early death – there stirred in me the longing to follow in his footsteps, to follow where my dreams led me, to dare all – even to die young if I had to. But that was many years ago, and I’ve long since grown out of that last romantic aspiration. However, the excitement I found in his stories and my admiration for Stevenson as a writer and a man have stayed with me all my life.
So what exactly is the magic of Stevenson’s genius as a writer and storyteller? For a story to resonate, to captivate the reader, a writer has to make the unbelievable believable. The reader must believe absolutely in the characters and their relationships, in the place and time in which the story happens. The unfolding of the plot must also be entirely credible, not contrived, but growing organically out of circumstance.
With a deft dab of description, with a turn of phrase or a tone of voice, Robert Louis Stevenson brings his characters in Treasure Island to life: Jim Hawkins, Long John Silver, Dr Livesey, Ben Gunn and the rest. Each is both plausible and complex. Through Jim’s wide eyes we see the Jekyll and Hyde in Long John Silver. Like Jim, we are at first entertained and entranced by Silver, then appalled and entranced again. The thread of the story is seamless because no one is pulling strings except the characters themselves – the author just goes along with them, or so it seems. It is all made so real for us, so convincing, that we believe at once in poor marooned Ben Gunn; live with Jim as he witnesses murder; feel the danger, the tension and the companionship behind the stockade on Treasure Island.
As for place, I know the Admiral Benbow inn, where the book begins, as well as I do my own village pub. I can picture every nook and cranny of it. I know the Hispaniola as well as if I’d sailed on her – from the exact location of the barrel of apples in which Jim hides, to how the sails are set and how the lantern swings below in the cabin. And Treasure Island I know as well as I know the island of Bryher, because Jim Hawkins has taken me to the island and shown me the lie of the land, the marshy groves, the stockade on the hill. I know the entire coastline as Jim takes the helm of the Hispaniola and single-handedly beaches the ship. All utterly incredible, but made credible.
Then there’s the plot itself. From the first time we hear the eerie refrain “Fifteen men on the dead men’s chest – Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!” and then learn of the mysterious “black spot”, we are hooked. And once hooked, Stevenson never lets us go. He takes us on a giddy journey of twists and turns of fate, through hope to horror and despair, and back to hope again; all of it unexpected, all of it thrilling. He pulls no punches – there is violence and blood. These are no cardboard cut-out pirates – these are cut-throat pirates. We see man’s greed for gold in the raw. We see men murdered, watch them die, hear their screams. We live the adventure with Jim, are terrified with him, and all the while we are urging him on, willing him to watch out, to win through somehow.
Read the book. If you haven’t already, you have a treat in store. If you’ve read it before, then do it again. It will surprise and excite you all over again. I’ve just reread it for the umpteenth time in my life and was enthralled, just as I was all those years ago as a young boy.
I do have one thing, though, that I hold against Stevenson: he wrote Treasure Island and I didn’t. It’s the one book I should love to have written myself. But I suppose it’s just as well, because although I hope I might have told the tale well enough, Stevenson told it wonderfully, beautifully, poetically. For Stevenson wasn’t just a fine storyteller – he was one of the greatest of writers and, to my mind, Treasure Island is the most masterly of his masterpieces.
the mozart question
The question I am most often asked is always easy enough to answer. Question: how did you get started as a writer? Answer: funnily enough, by asking someone almost exactly that very same question, which I was only able to ask in the first place by a dose of extraordinarily good fortune.
I had better explain.
My good fortune was, of course, someone else’s rotten luck – it is often that way, I find. The phone call sounded distraught. It came on a Sunday evening. I had only been working on the paper for three weeks. I was a cub reporter, this my first paid job.
“Lesley?” It was my boss, chief arts correspondent Meryl Monkton, a lady not to be messed with. She did not waste time with niceties; she never did. “Listen, Lesley, I have a problem. I was due to go to Venice tomorrow to interview Paolo Levi.”
“Paolo Levi?” I said. “The violinist?”
“Is there any other Paolo Levi?” She did not trouble to hide her irritatio
n. “Now look, Lesley. I’ve had an accident, a skiing accident, and I’m stuck in hospital in Switzerland. You’ll have to go to Venice instead of me.”
“Oh, that’s terrible,” I said, smothering as best I could the excitement surging inside me. Three weeks into the job and I’d be interviewing the great Paolo Levi, and in Venice!
Talk about her accident, I told myself. Sound concerned. Sound very concerned.
“How did it happen?” I asked. “The skiing accident, I mean.”
“Skiing,” she snapped. “If there’s one thing I can’t abide, Lesley, it’s people feeling sorry for me.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“I would postpone it if I could, Lesley,” she went on, “but I just don’t dare. It’s taken me more than a year to persuade him to do it. It’ll be his first interview in years. And even then I had to agree not to ask him the Mozart question. So don’t ask him the Mozart question, is that clear? If you do he’ll like as not cancel the whole interview – he’s done it before. We’re really lucky to get him, Lesley. I only wish I could be there to do it myself. But you’ll have to do.”
“The Mozart question?” I asked, rather tentatively.
The silence at the end of the phone was long.
“You mean to say you don’t know about Paolo Levi and the Mozart question? Where have you been, girl? Don’t you know anything at all about Paolo Levi?”
I suddenly felt I might lose the opportunity altogether if I did not immediately sound informed, and well informed too.
“Well, he would have been born sometime in the mid-1950s,” I began. “He must be about fifty by now.”
“Exactly fifty in two weeks’ time,” Meryl Monkton interrupted wearily. “His London concert is his fiftieth birthday concert. That’s the whole point of the interview. Go on.”
I rattled off all I knew. “Child prodigy and genius, like Yehudi Menuhin. Played his first major concert when he was thirteen. Probably best known for his playing of Bach and Vivaldi. Like Menuhin he played often with Grappelli, equally at home with jazz or Scottish fiddle music or Beethoven. Has played in practically every major concert hall in the world, in front of presidents and kings and queens. I heard him at the Royal Festival Hall in London, five years ago, I think. He was playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto; he was wonderful. Doesn’t like applause. Never waits for applause. Doesn’t believe in it, apparently. The night I saw him he just walked off the stage and didn’t come back. He thinks it’s the music that should be applauded if anything, or perhaps the composer, but certainly not the musician. Says that the silence after the performance is part of the music and should not be interrupted. Doesn’t record either. Believes music should be live, not canned. Protects his privacy fiercely. Solitary. Reticent. Lives alone in Venice, where he was born. Just about the most famous musician on the planet, and—”
“The most famous, Lesley, but he hates obsequiousness. He likes to be talked to straight. So no bowing or scraping, no wide-eyed wonder, and above all no nerves. Can you do that?”
“Yes, Meryl,” I replied, knowing only too well that I would have the greatest difficulty even finding my voice in front of the great man.
“And whatever you do, stick to the music. He’ll talk till the cows come home about music and composers. But no personal stuff. And above all, keep off the Mozart question. Oh yes, and don’t take a tape recorder with you. He hates gadgets. Only shorthand. You can do shorthand, I suppose? Three thousand words. It’s your big chance, so don’t mess it up, Lesley.”
No pressure, then, I thought.
So there I was the next evening outside Paolo Levi’s apartment in the Dorsoduro in Venice, on the dot of six o’clock, my throat dry, my heart pounding, trying all I could to compose myself. It occurred to me again, as it had often on the plane, that I still had no idea what this Mozart question was, only that I mustn’t ask it. It was cold, the kind of cruel chill that seeps instantly into your bones, deep into your kidneys, and makes your ears ache. This didn’t seem to bother the street performers in the square behind me: several grotesquely masked figures on stilts strutting across the square, an entirely silver statue-man posing immobile outside the café with a gaggle of tourists gazing wonderingly at him.
The door opened, and there he was in front of me, Paolo Levi, neat, trim, his famous hair long to his shoulders and jet black.
“I’m Lesley McInley,” I said. “I’ve come from London.”
“From the newspaper, I suppose.” There was no welcoming smile. “You’d better come in. Shut the door behind you; I hate the cold.” His English was perfect, not a trace of an accent. He seemed to be able to follow my thoughts. “I speak English quite well,” he said as we went up the stairs. “Language is like music. You learn it best through listening.”
He led me down a hallway and into a large room, empty except for a couch by the window piled high with cushions at one end, a grand piano in the centre and a music stand near by. There were just two armchairs and a table. Nothing else. “I like to keep it empty,” he said.
It was uncanny. He was reading my thoughts. Now I felt even more unnerved.
“Sound needs space to breathe, just the same as we need air,” he said.
He waved me to a chair and sat down. “You’ll have some mint tea?” he said, pouring me a cup. His dark blue cardigan and grey corduroy trousers were somehow both shabby and elegant at the same time. The bedroom slippers he wore looked incongruous but comfortable. “My feet, they hate the cold more than the rest of me.” He was scrutinizing me now, his eyes sharp and shining. “You’re younger than I expected,” he said. “Twenty-three?” He didn’t wait to have his estimate confirmed – he knew he was right and he was. “You have heard me play?”
“Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. The Royal Festival Hall in London, a few years ago. I was a student.” I noticed his violin then, and his bow, on the window ledge by the couch.
“I like to practise by the window,” he said, “so I can watch the world go by on the canal. It passes the time. Even as a child I never liked practising much. And I love to be near water, to look out on it. When I go to London I have to have a room by the Thames. In Paris I must be by the Seine. I love the light that water makes.” He sipped his mint tea, his eyes never leaving me. “Shouldn’t you be asking me questions?” He went on. “I’m talking too much. Journalists always make me nervous. I talk too much when I’m nervous. When I go to the dentist’s I talk. Before a concert I talk. So let’s get this over with, shall we? And not too many questions, please. Why don’t we keep it simple? You ask me one question and then let me ramble on. Shall we try that?” I didn’t feel at all that he was being dismissive or patronizing, just straight. That didn’t make it any easier, though.
I had done my research, made pages of notes, prepared dozens of questions; but now, under his expectant gaze, I simply could not gather my thoughts.
“Well, I know I can’t ask you the Mozart question, Signor Levi,” I began, “because I’ve been told not to. I don’t even know what the Mozart question is, so I couldn’t ask it even if I wanted to; and anyway, I know you don’t like it, so I won’t.”
With every blundering word I was digging myself into a deeper hole. In my desperation I blurted out the first question that came into my head.
“Signor Levi,” I said, “I wonder if you’d mind telling me how you got started. I mean, what made you pick up a violin and play that first time?” It was such an obvious question, and personal too, just the kind of question I shouldn’t have asked.
His reaction only confirmed that. He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. For fully a couple of minutes he said nothing. I was quite sure he was trying to control his impatience, his rage even, that he was going to open his eyes and ask me to leave at once. When he did open his eyes he simply stared up at the ceiling for a while. I could see from the seriousness of his whole demeanour that he was making a decision, and I feared the worst. But instead of throwing me out he stood up and walked sl
owly to the couch by the window. He picked up his violin and sat back on the cushions with his violin resting on his drawn-up knees. He plucked a string or two and tuned it.
“I will tell you a story,” he began. “After it is over you will need to ask me no more questions. Someone once told me that all secrets are lies. The time has come, I think, not to lie any more.”
He paused. I felt he was stiffening his resolve, gathering his strength.
“I will start with my father. Papa was a barber. He kept a little barber’s shop just behind the Accademia, near the bridge, two minutes from here. We lived above the shop, Mama, Papa and I, but I spent most of my time downstairs in the barber’s shop, sitting on the chairs and swinging my legs, smiling at him and his customers in the mirror, and just watching him. I loved those days. I loved him. At the time of these memories I must have been about nine years old. Small for my age. I always was. I still am.”
He spoke slowly, very deliberately, as if he was living it again, seeing again everything he was telling me. My shorthand was quick and automatic, so I had time to look up at him occasionally as he spoke. I sensed right away that I was the first person ever to hear this story, so I knew even as he told it just how momentous the telling of it was for him, as in a totally different way it was for me too.
“Papa was infinitely deft with his fingers, his scissors playing a constantly changing tune. It seemed to me like a new improvisation for every customer, the snipping unhesitatingly skilful, so fast it was mesmerizing. He would work always in complete silence, conducting the music of his scissors with his comb. His customers knew better than to interrupt the performance, and so did I. I think perhaps I must have known his customers almost as well as he did. I grew up with them. They were all regulars. Some would close their eyes as Papa worked his magic; others would look back in the mirror at me and wink.
“Shaving was just as fascinating to me, just as rhythmical too: the swift sweep and dab of the brush, the swish and slap of the razor as Papa sharpened it on the strap, then each time the miraculous unmasking as he stroked the foam away to reveal a recognizable face once more.
Singing for Mrs Pettigrew: A Story Maker's Journey Page 10