Time to Be in Earnest

by P. D. James

  I have been out of the regular working world now for so long that I have to resist the temptation to take lightly difficulties which other women may be experiencing in their professional lives. During my career in the Health Service and Civil Service I certainly worked with a few men who disliked women, which was disagreeable enough, and occasionally with some who disliked me, which was even less agreeable. But I cannot in honesty say that, once in post, I ever experienced real discrimination. Admittedly when I went before appointing committees in the National Health Service to gain promotion, I accepted that I would have to be not only better qualified than the male candidates, but considerably better qualified. This can hardly be regarded as equality of opportunity. The discrimination was partly because hospital administration was seen primarily as a male career if only to balance the considerable power that matrons then exercised in the hospital world. In the Home Office I experienced no trace of discrimination, but I accept from what is told to me that in some professions it does exist and that sexual discrimination and harassment can’t be dismissed as the obsessive preoccupation of extreme feminists. But it is remarkable how much has been achieved for women during my lifetime. When I was a child I can’t remember ever coming into contact with any professional women who were not either nurses or schoolteachers. Obviously there were women doctors, dentists, solicitors, but I never met them.

  The career opportunities available to us grammar school girls in the 1930s were limited, particularly those of us who had no chance of going on to university. I can recall a sentence from the Cambridge High School prospectus which, after pointing out that girls could enter the sixth form and be prepared for teacher training college or could take a secretarial course, added: “The school thus prepares pupils either for a career or for the ordinary pursuits of womanhood.” The ordinary pursuits of womanhood consisted of finding a husband, bearing his children, looking after the home and, if money and leisure afforded, undertaking voluntary work in the community. No girl I knew at school went on to a university although a number became teachers.

  When I entered the Health Service in 1949 I was paid less than a man on the same grade doing comparable work simply because I was a woman. Then, after my father-in-law retired and I had to find a home for myself, my husband and the children, I was told that a mortgage would not be granted without my husband’s signature. Eventually I was able to persuade the mortgage company of the impracticability of this since Connor was unable to earn and spent most of his time in hospitals, but it was a long struggle.

  But all the benefits and advantages we women have won during my lifetime have their compensating disadvantages. Professional women with small children certainly work harder and under greater stress today than ever I experienced. I was, of course, fortunate in living with my parents-in-law so that, although I had to work, my daughters were assured of devoted and reliable daily care. The relationship between the sexes is more fraught with uncertainty and anxiety than when I was a girl. Girls growing up today have privileges and opportunities which would have seemed unbelievable to that fourteen-year-old schoolgirl before the war, but I do not think that their lives are necessarily easier and I do not envy them.

  Despite the arguments at dinner, Friday was a happy day. It is always a delight to see Louise and her husband Ric Young, who has more energy than any other man I know. It is impossible to dine in a restaurant with him without at least half the staff and three-quarters of the other diners coming over to greet him and Louise, and to chat.

  Monday 17th November was the real beginning of the tour, with a continuous programme of radio and television in the morning and afternoon, and a reading at Trinity Church followed by a book-signing. After this, a Canadian friend, Vern Heinrich, collected me and took me for a quiet dinner to his and his wife’s Toronto home. It was good to sit and eat in quiet comfort away from the questioning voices.

  The next morning I flew Air Canada to Montreal for the usual schedule of television, radio and newsprint events, followed by dinner and a talk with two other writers at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. I went to bed early to be up in good time for the 8:40 a.m. flight to Ottawa, where Louise joined me at the Château Laurier Hotel. I was in Ottawa for one event only, at the National Arts Centre for a talk followed by a signing.

  Kathy Reichs, author of Déjà Dead, had read with me in Montreal and was again part of the event. She is a highly intelligent, lively and likeable forensic anthropologist and is being strongly promoted as the new Patricia Cornwell. The strength of her novel is the insight it gives into the scientific procedures of a murder investigation, and with its gruesomely authentic background, its contemporary heroine, Dr. Temperance Brennan, an ex-alcoholic, and the interesting setting in bilingual Montreal, I predict that it will be a bestseller. The event was sold out well before the night and Kathy Reichs’s talk to the crowded audience was as fascinating as it was unexpected. She decided to talk about her work, not her novel, and image after gaudy image of mutilated and decomposed bodies was thrown up on the screen; one of particular horror to the squeamish showed a dead male with his hands hacked off seeming to hold out the bloodstained stumps in piteous entreaty. The audience, composed predominantly of middle-aged women, seemed totally unflustered by this realism, but the audience for a concert in another part of the Arts Centre, enjoying an opportune interval, pressed their faces to the glass partition in some wonder at the strong stomachs of the mystery book—buying public.

  Listening to Kathy Reichs giving her presentation I pondered on the difference between the books written by women crime writers in the Golden Age and women writing today. Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, all created gentlemanly detectives operating predominantly in a middle-class or upper-class world: Lord Peter Wimsey, son of a duke; Roderick Alleyn, son of a baronet; Albert Campion of unspecified but aristocratic lineage. This emphasis on gentility wasn’t entirely snobbish. The detective story is popular entertainment and readers in the 1930s preferred their heroes to be at least their social equal and to demonstrate qualities which were then regarded as essential for the hero: courage, reticence, intelligence and good manners. There was small regard for credibility, particularly in the method of murder. The relations between the police and omni-talented private eye were unrealistic. Forensic and police details were usually inaccurate or omitted. There was an avoidance of violence, sometimes indeed an absence of blood, and the villain invariably received his or her just deserts without too much regard for psychological subtleties.

  The 1930s were years of remarkable freedom from domestic crime and although there were areas of the inner cities which must have been as violent as they are today, pictures of social disruption were not being brought daily into our drawing-rooms by television. It was therefore possible to live in a small country town or village and feel almost entirely secure. Reading the detective stories of the 1930s brings the decades between the wars vividly to life. What we find in these essentially gentle mysteries is an ordered society in which virtue is regarded as normal, crime an aberration, and in which there is small sympathy for the criminal. It is accepted, although seldom stated, that murderers, when convicted, will hang. Agatha Christie, arch-purveyor of cosy reassurance, is careful not to emphasize this fact, but Dorothy L. Sayers in Busman’s Honeymoon actually has the temerity to confront Lord Peter Wimsey with the logical end to his detective activities, when he crouches weeping in his wife’s arms on the morning when Frank Crutchley is executed. I couldn’t help feeling when I first read the novel that Lord Peter was somewhat oversensitive; no one after all had forced him to become a detective.

  One of the criticisms made today of the 1930s detective story is that it pandered to the snobbery of the middle class. Certainly I can’t think of a single crime novel of the 1930s in which a servant or member of the working class is either the murderer or plays a major part in the story. It is almost as if the working class were there to feed the detective with useful scraps of information, provide comic relief, and occas
ionally be sacrificed as an additional, but seldom the main, victim. This uncritical acceptance of the division of class runs through virtually all the detective stories of the 1930s, although it is perhaps strongest in Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngaio Marsh. But if the detective story was snobbish by present-day standards, so was virtually all popular entertainment including commercial drama, as I know from the series of Plays of the Year on my bookshelf. Here the name of a cook or house parlour-maid in the cast list is a guarantee that the playwright is aiming to inject a leaven of domestic humour.

  Dorothy L. Sayers, among much in her novels that is incredible, or over-romanticized, does deal realistically with the 1930s problem of the superfluous women, not only the pathetic spinsters in their boarding houses and cheap hotels, but women with intelligence, initiative, and often with education, for whom society offered no real intellectual outlet. I can’t think of a single detective story written by a woman in the 1930s which features a woman lawyer, a woman doctor, a woman politician, or indeed a woman in any real position of political or commercial power.

  In her biography of Margery Allingham, Julie Thorogood states that the fashion historian James Laver, a correspondent of the novelist, described the era between the wars as “hectic, frivolous, frustrated, puzzled, frantic,” and Margery Allingham herself said, “Whatever happens, never go pretending that things were going well before the war. Never deceive yourself that you could not foresee a dead end.” They were not, of course, going well, but in general the detective story was concerned to provide diversion from the ills of society, not to dwell on them or propose a solution. In Christie, for example, there is no real horror, no real blood or grief; indeed, even the murders are sanitized. And we know at the end that the corpse will pick itself up, shake itself down, and normality will be restored to Mayhem Parva, the fly-in-amber village, which, despite its above-average homicide rate, never really loses its peace or innocence.

  The heroes created by women writing today could hardly be more different. Forensic and medical details are invariably accurate and women make use of their own expertise. Patricia Cornwell, whose detective, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, is a forensic medical examiner, herself worked in this field; Kathy Reichs is of course a forensic anthropologist, whilst Sarah Dunant with Hannah Woolf, Sue Grafton with Kinsey Millhone, Sara Paretsky with V. I. Warshawski, and Joan Smith with her academic Loretta Lawson have created tough private eyes all over thirty, independent, highly professional and operating successfully in a predominantly male world. None of these fictional women is a single working mother or a married woman with children, trying to cope with her job whilst negotiating with a series of au pairs and torn with guilt about leaving her children. This is not the kind of realism which most readers of crime novels want. Adam Dalgliesh is similarly unencumbered. I ruthlessly killed off his wife in childbirth even before beginning my first novel. Neither his poetry nor his professional life are inconvenienced by the pram in the hall. To that extent, I suppose, we still deal in fantasy, and it is only the fashion in fantasy which changes.

  *The Principal grade is the first officer grade of the Civil Service. Candidates are usually chosen from among new college graduates.

  December

  MONDAY, 1ST DECEMBER

  It was on this date seven years ago that I learned I was to receive a life peerage. I remember that the post was particularly heavy that morning and I gathered up the letters to open at the kitchen table while I drank coffee. The stiff white envelope came from 10 Downing Street and I opened it with no particular expectations. When I read the first line, “I have it in mind on the occasion of the forthcoming list of New Year Honours to submit your name to the Queen”—I immediately assumed that my OBE was to be upgraded to CBE. There was scarcely time for this thought to take hold before I read the rest of the letter and learnt that I was to be recommended for a life peerage.

  Looking back now over the past seven years I feel some guilt that I have taken so little part in the affairs of the House. I wasn’t appointed as what is commonly known as a working peer, but I did expect to show my face more regularly than I have. The problem has been with my writing life, particularly the public and charitable appearances and overseas tours, which are arranged months in advance, whereas the business of the House comes up at very short notice. Another problem has been my reluctance to speak without having become a more regular attender and better conversant with the traditions and procedures of the House. But I should be doing more and doing it better.

  I made my maiden speech on the subject of literature and the preservation of the English language. Nearly all new peers confess that, whatever experience they may have of public speaking, their maiden speech in the House of Lords is an ordeal. There is no reason why this should be so as the tradition of the House is to be unfailingly courteous and supportive to the new member, and maiden speeches, however inadequate, are by custom received with tributes of praise and congratulations from following speakers. And so it was with me.

  And now, if the Government’s intention in its manifesto is to be carried out, the House will change fundamentally and will, indeed, cease to be the House of Lords. Although few people would wish to defend the right of hereditary peers to have a part in the government of the country merely because of their birthright, to seek to reform the House by first abolishing the hereditary peers without deciding the final constitution and form of the second chamber seems to me dangerous and irresponsible folly. The first step to reform would surely be to prohibit any elder son from taking his father’s place when the peer dies, and to exclude from the chamber all those who don’t have a record of regular attendance. This would enable the work of the House to be carried on while the long-term future was discussed at leisure. There should be no hurry about changing an institution which has served for 700 years.

  The proper way is to appoint a Royal Commission and to give them adequate time in which to take evidence from a wide variety of people and interests. The reform of the House is more complex than a government anxious for quick results is prepared to admit. Reform of the second chamber involves considering the relationship between the two Houses, and between the Westminster Parliament and the legislative bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is also for consideration whether the second chamber should have powers in relation to European legislation. The Royal Commission would need to consider whether the Lords should be appointed or elected and, if elected, by what means and for how long; whether the present system of appointment, if continued, is sufficiently democratic and open to scrutiny; and whether it is desirable that the power of a second and revising chamber should be increased. If the second chamber is elected or partly elected, it will, of course, have a democratic legitimacy which it now lacks, and it could well flex its muscles to be a far more effective check on the executive. At present the Lords, only too aware that all members are there by privilege not by election, are afraid to exercise those powers which are already theirs. A more democratically constituted Upper House would be more powerful and more troublesome to the Government; is this likely to be acceptable to the Commons?

  I am not sure, either, whether we really need a second chamber composed mainly of professional full-time politicians. There is something to be said for the present system whereby men and women with particular expertise will try to attend and make their contribution when their subject comes up. A danger, too, in an elected chamber is that the House will lose that sturdy independence which has characterized not only those on the cross-benches, but peers who have declared a political allegiance. And when the hereditary peers go, will there be any point in retaining life peers? The ermine, the title, the coat of arms for those who decide to have one, the induction ceremony, all will become meaningless flummery if the House has in fact become the equivalent of a senate.

  The House as at present constituted may be an anomaly and one difficult to justify democratically, but it does work effectively and if it is to be changed, it must be changed for the better and
not merely to gratify the more ignoble impulses of class resentment or envy. Our present system of government makes a strong revising chamber essential to the cause of democracy. Because of the first-past-the-post voting system, which does have the advantage of producing strong government, nearly every government is elected on a minority vote; there are always more people who didn’t want the party in power than those who did. The second chamber should have a keen ear to hear their grievances and the courage and independence to voice their concerns. No one doubts that the final authority rests with the elected chamber but it is carrying hypocrisy too far to pretend that the elected chamber always represents in every respect the will of the majority of the people.

  Whatever happens, the House will be far duller without the hereditary peers, and I must try to attend more often while it retains some of the vigour, independence, excitement and breadth of knowledge which characterizes it at present. And is it too much to hope that the reforms will be made in a spirit of dignity, courtesy and generosity? The hereditary peers have served the country well, some of them with distinction. They deserve our thanks before they go. But then, ours is not a dignified, courteous or generous-minded age.

  WEDNESDAY, 3RD DECEMBER

  I arrived last Friday at Grand Cayman, flying from Gatwick to spend a week with Dick and Mary Francis. The journey is much easier now that there are direct flights. Previously I had to transfer at Miami, a tedious time-consuming business, since the airport has apparently no transfer lounge and I had to go through Immigration merely in order to change planes. This is my second visit and, as before, I stepped out of the aircraft into warm, sweet-smelling air and saw Mary and Dick waiting for me under the leafy canopy which leads to the airport building.