by Wilbur Smith
This was also a book about the relationship between a tough man and an equally formidable woman. I named Hector Cross after the great hero of the Iliad, and like many of my heroes, he is a professional soldier, now in charge of a global private security company. I built him, and the lesser characters in his employ, from the profiles of men I had known who carried out their deadly business in Afghanistan, in the Gulf, in South America and Central Africa. I had spoken to these men and heard their tales of the dark business of war, and, though I will never be able to publicly acknowledge their input, nor pass on the stories they have told me, they have found voice in the steely, capable character of Hector Cross.
I had been writing about strong men all my life, but in Those in Peril another character entered my imagination who would be a powerful counter-balance to Hector Cross. I decided there were enough tough guys out there, and I was beginning to think that nowadays, as Norman Mailer entitled his 1984 novel, Tough Guys Don’t Dance. It was time to put together some new steps on the dance floor, get my guys jumping and singing a little louder to a different tune. I had always respected the power of women, and I relished the challenge of writing a strong, believable female character. Centaine Courtney had been the first of those, but in Those in Peril I needed something more, a heroine as clever and competent as the hero, as ruthless in her quest for victory, as adept at facing off against the villains.
I find strong women fascinating, I enjoy their independence, their self-containment and self-belief. My mother, Elfreda, was as resilient, in her own way, as my father, and, I think, much more unbreakable. The mother will hold the family together—and the same can go for countries, for nations themselves. From Queen Boadicea of ancient Britain, to Indira Gandhi, to Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel, Queen Elizabeth: these are the kinds of women from whom I would find the inspiration to build Hazel Bannock.
Margaret Thatcher, who everyone knows as the Iron Lady, was determined to always be number one, to be the best at whatever she turned her hand to. I remember the time I went to a stock signing at my publisher Macmillan’s Basingstoke warehouse to sign copies of my latest novel before they were sent out to the bookstores. I sat down at a table and signed three thousand books in their stockroom. Ten days later, Maggie Thatcher went to the same warehouse to sign her book, the first volume of her autobiography I believe it was. The staff said to her, “Oh, Wilbur Smith was here last week.” Maggie frowned and asked, “How many books did he sign?” and they said, “Three thousand, which is a lot!” She looked at them and said, “Give me four thousand!” That’s the kind of spirit I loved and wanted to capture in my character Hazel Bannock, somebody who could stand their ground with Hector Cross. That indomitable resolve would be the heart of the novel.
The gambit paid off. Those in Peril was a Sunday Times hardback number one bestseller for several weeks, with yet another strong opening week’s sale. Its success was taken as proof that hardback book sales could yet survive in an era of ebooks and the threat to traditional high street bookselling, and what was particularly heartening for someone like me, who had started his career fifty years before with pen and paper, in an age before computers and instant communication, was that it topped Apple’s iBook chart.
Once, the Courtneys had changed my life, offering me a career of which I could only have dreamt. Then, along came Ben Kazin and Taita, to show me that heroes did not always have to be Herculean men of action. Now, with Those in Peril, I had given voice to my lifelong faith in and admiration for women who took center stage. That novel was evidence that my days of conjuring up new characters and new stories were not over yet. As one chapter of life closes, another always opens.
I might have left the Indian Ocean behind, but with Hector Cross it would follow me wherever I roamed.
•••
For a while Niso and I spent some time in Switzerland. We both loved skiing after I introduced her to the sport, so we bought an apartment in the Swiss village of Davos in 2001. I had skied in Davos every year for twenty-five years. Switzerland is beautiful, the winters are a fairyland of delights and the skiing is exhilarating. I stopped skiing in 2007, however, listening to the voice in my head: “Wilbur,” it said, “if you’re over seventy-five and you’re skiing then you’re a fool, because you’re going to break something and over seventy-five it doesn’t mend so easily.” Niso is something else altogether. She’s like a rubber ball—falls, bounces up and is off down the slope again.
Niso only knows one speed and that’s flat out, straight down the slope, no turns, no slowing down. Only one thing is capable of distracting her: her love of children. Once when I was still skiing and she had just started, I told her to follow me down the mountain, and we set off. I was about halfway down when I looked back and there she was, far, far behind me. She’d been distracted by a whole bunch of kids, about twenty of them on a school outing. And while they’re talking away, she’s picking up speed. Eventually I call “Niso, Niso,” and she calls back, “I’m coming, I’m coming.” And she did. Straight into me, knocking me off my feet and out of my bindings.
When we got up and dusted ourselves off, I said, “Look, you’d better ski down on your own, my bindings are broken, I’ll walk.” But she’d have none of it. “No,” she said, “If you walk, I’ll walk too.” She’s such a selfless person, and it’s at moments like these you realize why you love someone unconditionally. And it’s also when you find out why people ski down mountains. It’s no fun trudging down-hill through knee deep snow, carrying your skis—you feel about as dignified as a prehistoric mammoth.
Switzerland is not far from Paris, which I have always loved. The chalet in Davos allowed us to pop across the border to eastern France to stock up on excellent wines, cheese and other local produce. I have always found the French, outside of the big cosmopolitan cities, to be extremely warm and friendly. Niso and I used to cycle a lot on the quiet roads in France and often when we stopped for a breather, Madame would come out of her home to offer us water or just to pass the time. Nothing, though, beats the culture in Paris, and both of us love visiting the Musée d’Orsay, topped off with duck and raw seafood at La Coupole, where Hemingway used to eat. Alternatively, the mussel dishes and bouillabaisse at La Méditerranée, on the Left Bank, are delicious—all rounded off with excellent French wine and Cognac, of course.
•••
London is where we now make our base for a large part of the year, but during the summer of 2002, we lived in Ireland, in a village called Midleton, near Cork. The Irish are very positive toward writers and artists, but neither Niso nor I could handle the weather, and found Irish humor a bit puzzling. Niso was bored to tears one day, so I said, “Go and see the Blarney Stone,” and she said, “What’s that?” I explained what it was and off she went, but she got a bit lost, so she turned into a side road and, seeing a sign above a building that said “gas pump and general store,” she pulled up and went inside to ask for directions.
There was a woman behind the counter. Niso asked her: “Do you know where Blarney Castle is?” The woman answered, “Yes,” followed by a long silence. So Niso said, “Well, can you tell me where it is?” The woman responded: “Oh, I thought you were asking if I knew where it was.” There was another long silence, so Niso tried again: “I want you, if you know where it is, to tell me. Can you tell me how to get there?”
The woman said: “Where is your car?” Niso pointed to her car and said: “There it is, outside your shop.” The woman said: “Well you can’t get there then.” “Why not?” said Niso. “Because it’s facing in the wrong direction,” the woman replied. So Niso said: “If I turn the car around can I get there?” And the woman said: “Yes.”
All this of course was played out in music hall Irish brogue.
Then there was the time Niso went to buy Brussels sprouts. She went into a grocer’s and asked, “Do you have any Brussels sprouts?”
The man behind the counter replied: “Is it Christmas?”
Niso said: “No,
not for another six months?”
“Well then,” said the man, “you don’t get Brussels sprouts. They only come at Christmas.”
It wasn’t long before the allure of the emerald green countryside, usually obscured by rain, wore off entirely and we went looking to make our home in London.
17
THIS WRITING LIFE
I’m often asked at readings or publicity events: “Wilbur, I’ve written a novel, how do I get it published?” I think the answer is persistence, never give up, or as Samuel Beckett famously said: “Fail again. Fail better.” There is of course luck, which is largely out of our hands, but I do believe we can create our own luck by willing it, by being so devoted to what you want to achieve that possibility becomes probability. And there is human chemistry, finding the right people who love what you do to enable you to do it.
You need to find the right agent who understands your work and can navigate the intricate pathways to the right editor and publishing house for your book. I sent my first novel The Gods First Make Mad to a number of literary agents and many of the copies of the manuscript were returned without even being read. I knew this because I’d put tiny dollops of glue in between some of the pages to see if they’d come unstuck—they were still stuck together. However one agent, Ursula Winant in London, saw promise in my work, agreed to take me on and took a punt. She sent my novel to twenty or thirty leading publishers and collected a similar number of rejection letters. It seemed my career as a best-selling author had crashed during takeoff.
Rejection is one of life’s harshest experiences. It’s like being mugged on a dark night and being left battered and bruised, and you can’t fight back. You’re on your own, carrying the weight of utter defeat. My advice is to use it as a spur, pick yourself up and build some muscle, tone-up your defiance, your resolve, your ambition—fail better.
After a year, Ursula got in touch with me again and inquired about my new novel. I was amazed that she was so encouraging. I started writing again. This time I wrote about what I knew. When I had finished When the Lion Feeds, I sent it to Ursula. She was brilliant, she loved my novel and called me to say so. She prepared to do battle on my behalf. She had known Charles Pick at publishing house William Heinemann for twenty years. As I have already mentioned, Charles was a special blend of innovation and experience, knowing every important detail about publishing. He had started as an office boy at the age of sixteen with publishers Victor Gollancz. His next job was in sales. Shortly afterward, he tried to sell a “marvelous new book” called Burmese Days by an author named George Orwell to a Hampstead bookshop. Standing behind the counter parrying Charles’s pitch was a part-time assistant called Eric Blair, who admitted he knew Orwell very well . . . It was Orwell himself.
Charles’s skill was his ability to work with a broad range of authors and develop them into household names. He published J. B. Priestley, Paul Gallico and Monica Dickens, Charles Dickens’s great granddaughter, among many other authors.
Ursula was determined that Charles would be my publisher.
She called him up and pitched, saying she had just read this wonderful manuscript that he was going to fall in love with. Charles demurred: he’d heard this sort of sales patter many times from agents; but he knew and trusted Ursula’s taste. It was when she followed up with some outrageous demands that he knew she was serious. She said that before she sent the manuscript to him, there were three conditions: she wanted an advance of £500, a guaranteed first print run of 5,000 copies and the novel must be published before Christmas.
“I can’t comment on those conditions until I’ve read the book,” said Charles.
Ursula sent the manuscript of When the Lion Feeds to him, Charles read it that weekend and was captivated by the first chapter. On the Monday morning, he gave the manuscript to Tim Manderson, Heinemann’s sales director, who was widely read in all forms of fiction. The next day, he came into Charles’s office and said, “What a marvelous novel! We must publish it, call the agent immediately!”
He called Ursula: “The book is everything you said it was. We can’t publish before Christmas but we’ll publish in February, a much less crowded month for new fiction. As for the other two conditions, I won’t offer you the £500 you suggested—the book deserves an advance of £1,000—and your print stipulation is too modest, our first printing will be 10,000 copies!”
I think Ursula nearly fell off her chair.
Soon, a letter arrived in Salisbury from Charles, congratulating me on the novel. They were words I had been waiting to hear ever since The Monarch of Ilungu—confirmation that I might yet make it as a writer. I responded right away, telling Charles how pleased I was, and that I would visit him in England at the earliest opportunity. So began one of the most fulfilling personal and professional relationships of my life.
Publishing is a team effort and the players were in position to lead When the Lion Feeds out into the world.
By the time publication day was upon us, we had already reprinted a further 10,000 copies making a total of 20,000 copies in all.
As soon as contracts were signed and I received my advance, I flew to England, the first time I had visited the country I would one day call home. I stayed with Charles’s family in Lindfield, under the South Downs near Brighton, forging a friendship that has lasted a lifetime.
Born in the year the Great War ended, Charles was fifteen years my senior—and a man who had seen as much of the world as I one day hoped to do. His own war had been spent in Burma, India, and on Mountbatten’s far-eastern war crimes commission, a period of his life that intensified his interest in other cultures and less familiar parts of the world. He was one of that rare breed of publishers who seemed to operate by pure instinct, and, at a time when editors’ tastes were the lifeblood of a publishing house, he was given license to pursue literary excellence wherever he could find it. He was a tough publisher, extracting the best from his authors, just as he wrestled the best terms out of bookshops and foreign markets worldwide. Some said his unstinting work ethic was born after his father was bankrupted when Charles was ten; whatever it was, it had turned him into one of the canniest operators in the business. His faith in me and my work was revelatory, and his unwavering support across the decades would always anchor me.
At Lindfield, I met Charles’s son Martin, who had just returned from working as a volunteer in what was then Bechuanaland, now Botswana; at the age of nineteen he had very definite ideas about Africa. We had a spirited discussion that first night, but when Charles, who would later become my literary agent, passed away, there was no chance that anyone but Martin would replace him as my agent. I also met a French publisher at Charles’s house, Thérèse de Saint Phalle, who recommended When the Lion Feeds to Presse de la Cité in Paris, which would become my French publisher over the next few decades.
Charles and I talked from breakfast to bedtime. Patiently and enthusiastically, he shared his knowledge and wisdom with me. While we walked on the Downs he said, “You have written one book. A good first step on the ladder. You still have a long way to go. It takes ten years for an author to establish himself. We will review your progress each year.”
He also advised me to “write only about those things you know well.” It is because of him that I have written only about Africa. “Do not write for your publishers or for your imagined readers. Write only for yourself.” This was something that I had learned for myself. Charles confirmed it for me. When I sit down to write the first page of a novel, I rarely give a thought to who will eventually read it. Another critical piece of advice was: “Don’t talk about your books with anybody, even me, until they are written.” Until it is written a book is merely smoke on the wind. It can be blown away by a careless word. I sit down to write my books while other aspiring authors are sometimes talking theirs away.
Finally, he said, “Dedicate yourself to your calling, but read widely and look at the world around you, travel and live your life to the full, so that you will always h
ave something fresh to write about.” It was advice I have taken very much to heart.
I took the advice seriously in London that winter and was determined to have a good time. After the weekend at his house, Charles invited me to the Heinemann office Christmas Party. He told me afterward that one girl had swooned on the staircase at meeting their “hot new author.” I didn’t believe a word of it.
I walked into the room where the party was in full swing and looked across and there was this little English rose—she was just so cute. She had a peaches and cream complexion and the sweetest smile. I saw her steal a glance at me and then go back to chatting to her friends. I did the rounds, talking to the sales and publicity people, marketing executives, the production department and other important folk, and then I went up to the girl—let’s call her Suzie—and her circle of colleagues. The sales manager said, “Wilbur, this is Suzie,” and Suzie turned to me and said, “Your novel is the most fantastic book I’ve ever read.” She then planted a sucker of a kiss on my lips. I’d never experienced anything like it. It was so joyous. After the party was over, she insisted we go for a dance, and of course I had no choice but to enjoy her charming company!
It was London in the swinging sixties, an uninhibited time, and girls were just as happy as men to make the first move. It was exhilarating, liberating, there was so much optimism in the air, and women had opinions, they could take you or leave you. You’d go on to a dance floor and start dancing and a girl would just sidle up and whisper in your ear. There was an innocence about it all, as if young people had been reborn and were going to change the world. I had such an amazing time in London during my first trip.