by Simon Brett
It was the view of Jude, who had of course read the book, that if there was any explanation of its sudden success, it was because Stray Leaves in Autumn was, at its most basic, an old-fashioned romance. In spite of some stylistic embellishments and the mandatory juggling of timeframes that qualified it as ‘literary fiction’, the book could easily have been shortlisted for an award from the Romantic Novelists’ Association.
Her own, private view was that Stray Leaves in Autumn was rather mawkish. While she could recognize the skill of the writing and structure, she found it horribly soft in the middle. She just hoped that, in the course of the evening ahead, Burton wouldn’t ask directly for her opinion of his novel. Jude had never been very good at lying.
Stray Leaves in Autumn chronicled the travails of a film director – clever that, not a writer, so that no one could ever imagine that the central character was actually the author. His name was Tony, which sounded nothing like Burton, and long ago he’d been at Oxford University (totally unlike Burton, who’d been to Cambridge). Mind you, both men, real and fictional, were fifty-three years old.
At the beginning of the book, Tony is in the doldrums. His career had never really taken off. He is creatively sterile and still in mourning for his wife, Maureen, who had died two years previously after a long battle with breast cancer. Tony’s prospects – and the possibility of happiness returning to his life – revive when he meets Celia, a former wild child from the fringes of the music industry who, now a divorcée in her fifties, has written a so-far-unpublished novel, which she is convinced would make a great movie. She is also convinced that the right person to direct it is Tony.
Experienced readers of romance would by this point in the book have realized that he and Celia were not only the right people to bond creatively, but also the right people to bond emotionally. Tony, however, proves remarkably unaware of this blindingly obvious fact, so it is not until the couple – and the development of their film – have endured a sequence of setbacks and tribulations that he eventually recognizes true love. This revelation happens, needless to say, at the premiere of the movie, which of course goes on to be an international success.
Though Burton St Clair would never have admitted it, Jude reckoned it was by serendipity rather than calculation that he’d managed to press so many relevant buttons in Stray Leaves in Autumn. Popular entertainment had taken a surprisingly long time to recognize the increase in average age of the first world’s population. It kept its focus on attracting new, younger audiences rather than catering for the growing numbers of the robust ageing.
When a couple of successful movies and television series featuring mature central characters woke the entertainment moguls up to this self-evident fact, suddenly you couldn’t move for late-flowering lust: in movies, on television and in bookshops. The publication of Stray Leaves in Autumn fortunately coincided with this wave of geriatric romance. Rather than fulfilling his own fantasies (like most middle-aged male authors) and making the object of his hero’s affections a much younger woman, Burton had been shrewd to focus Tony’s interest on someone of his own age. And the fact that his novel was just an old-fashioned romance with a happy ending had been disguised by enough tricks of post-modernism and magical realism for the literati not to feel they were demeaning themselves by reading it.
Thinking about Burton’s past had distracted Jude from listening to what he was pontificating about. She gave herself a mental rap over the knuckles and concentrated, to hear him saying, ‘… and obviously writing a book is an activity during which the author is constantly having to make moral judgements. And I am always aware of the ethical implications when I kill someone.’
TWO
The suggestion of murder got a predictable little frisson of indrawn breaths from the ladies of Fethering. Burton St Clair held the pause after his statement. It was clearly an effect that he had honed over many years of repetition. Then, with a wry smile, he picked up. ‘I should say at this point that I never have actually killed anyone in real life, but as an author one frequently is in the godlike position of deciding whether a character should live or die. And that’s a responsibility that one has to take seriously. I’m not in the business, as a crime writer might be—’ he spoke the words with appropriate contempt – ‘of killing people simply for the convenience of my plots. If a character in one of my books dies, I can assure you I have considered the termination of their life very seriously. He or she does not deserve to die – far from it in many cases – but they need to die to obey the artistic and emotional demands of the book that I am writing. I would be failing in my duty as a novelist if I did not kill them.
‘I must say it’s very interesting how much debate killing a character generates on social media.’
Di Thompson, the senior librarian, had made much in her introduction of the large number of followers Burton St Clair had on Facebook and Twitter. Looking at the average age of that evening’s audience, Jude wondered how many of those present would have encountered him there. But, even as she had the thought, she realized she might be guilty of unthinking prejudice. Apparently quite a lot of people considerably older than she was were much involved in social media.
‘For instance,’ Burton continued, ‘a lot of my followers have criticized me for killing off Clinton, Celia’s fading rock-star husband in Stray Leaves in Autumn. He was a character who clearly struck a chord with many people. Struck a chord with me too. Needless to say. All of my characters strike a chord with me. If they didn’t, I couldn’t immerse myself so deeply in their lives during that agonizing time which covers the nativity of a work of fiction. I loved Clinton, but the dynamics of my story left me in no doubt that I had to sacrifice him to the greater good of my novel.’
There was an impressed stillness while the audience took in this act of creative magnanimity.
‘And now …’ the author broke the silence, nonchalantly picking up a copy of his novel, ‘before I open up to questions from you, I would like to conclude with a reading from Stray Leaves in Autumn. And I think I dare mention to you now – you’ll be the first people to know this – that all the Ts are not quite crossed and the Is dotted, but there is a strong interest from Hollywood in developing the book for a movie. Early days, of course, a lot can go wrong, but there’s talk of Meryl Streep being interested in playing the part of Celia. And, as for Tony … well, there is talk … no, no, I don’t want to tempt providence here. Let’s just say there is a male actor being talked of who has an even greater profile than Meryl Streep. But …’ he raised a finger to his lips ‘… keep it to yourselves, eh?’ Knowing full well that they wouldn’t.
Burton St Clair’s reading, like the rest of his performance, sounded almost offhand, but again was the product of meticulous preparation.
He concluded on a funny line and, as he bowed his head, the audience’s laughter melted into enthusiastic applause. While this was going on he poured more water into the glass he’d occasionally drunk from during his talk and took a long swig.
‘Right,’ said Burton with a self-depreciatingly boyish grin. ‘Any questions?’
Jude wasn’t to know, but when he’d started on his literary career, this cue had always been greeted with very English awkwardness, silence, and a lot of people concentrating on their shoes. Every author doing a library talk had experienced that aching hiatus. And it was frequently only ended by a member of staff from the library hosting the evening coming in with her own carefully prepared fall-back question.
But that was no longer the case. The Fethering librarian who had introduced Burton St Clair, Di Thompson, did not anticipate any such awkwardness. With dark hair cut so short she looked almost like a recent cancer patient, she sat serenely at the back of the audience, pleased with how well the evening she had set up was going. She knew that, since the mass explosion of book clubs, many of which were organized by librarians, such reticence about asking questions had long gone. Audiences at author events were well used to expressing their literary vie
ws, and question-asking hands shot up as soon as they were given the opportunity.
The hand which got in ahead of the others belonged to a thin, shaven-headed man in his fifties, who wore a safari jacket and combat trousers in a different camouflage pattern, above black Doc Martens. On being given the nod by the visiting author, he asked in a voice which combined lethargy and insolence in equal measure, ‘Can you tell me why the photograph behind you is twenty years younger than you are?’
The expression on Burton St Clair’s face suggested he was piqued. Since the publication of Stray Leaves in Autumn he’d become accustomed to wallowing in a warm bath of praise, so this very positive rudeness brought him up short. What’s more, Jude recalled, he had always been extremely vain about his looks. When the photograph blown up behind him had been taken, Burton had had more hair, and it had been shot in such a way as to hide what deficiency there was. Since that time, more of the precious follicles had given up the ghost, and the overhead lighting of Fethering Library only accentuated the thinness on top of his cranium.
The author’s preparedness for public speaking did not include a ready supply of lines to deal with hecklers, so all he said was, ‘Oh, very amusing. Do we actually have any serious questions?’
Of the raised hands, he selected one belonging to a well-groomed woman – no, she would have thought of herself as a ‘lady’ – in her sixties. And with her question, normal fawning was mercifully restored.
‘Mr St Clair …’ she began.
‘Call me “Burton”, please.’
‘Very well … Burton, one thing I can’t help noticing in Stray Leaves in Autumn … and I’ve come across the same thing in your earlier books …’ The author’s good humour was instantly restored – a reader who’d read his previous books was clearly a serious fan ‘… is that you do have a very deep understanding of women characters, you seem to be able to get inside the female brain. Is this something that you’ve had to work on very hard, or is it something that just came naturally?’
‘I’m very glad you asked me that question.’ And he was. It gave him an unrivalled opportunity to demonstrate what an unusually sensitive man he was; to show, in fact, his feminine side. ‘The thing is,’ he went on, ‘I do actually like women … and I’m not sure that that’s a universal masculine characteristic.’ His words prompted sympathetic nods and sighs of regret from his listeners. He then elaborated at some length about how much more empathetic he found female than male company. Burton St Clair drew around himself the mantle of The Perfect Man – caring, appreciative of women’s contributions to life, aware of the shortcomings of his own gender, and yet safely and loyally married. The Fethering audience could not get enough of him, though Jude found herself adding liberal loads of salt to every word he spoke. She had known Al Sinclair too long to be totally taken in by Burton St Clair.
Eventually his disquisition on the natural rapport he felt with women came to an end, and he looked around for another question.
The raised hand he selected belonged to a man in his sixties, dressed in a light tweed jacket and expensively faded pinkish trousers. He had about him the ease of having been to the right schools and university.
‘I was interested, Burton, in what you said about crime fiction …’
‘Ah.’ The author smiled. ‘I’m not really here this evening to talk about crime fiction.’
‘Perhaps not, but your comments on the subject …’ the questioner looked down at some notes he had made ‘… when you said you were not in the business “as a crime writer might be – of killing people simply for the convenience of my plots”.’
‘And I stand by that. Though plot is a significant ingredient in any kind of story-telling, in literary fiction it does not have the primacy that it does in crime fiction.’
‘Are you talking here about Golden Age crime fiction or more contemporary stuff?’
‘Does it make much difference?’ asked Burton St Clair loftily.
‘Oh, so you’re saying all crime fiction is an inferior genre?’
‘I’m not saying “inferior”,’ said Burton, though he clearly was. ‘I’m sure there’s some very fine writing in the crime world, but I just feel that, for me, the crime novel would not offer sufficient space to explore the ideas that I need to pursue in my own work.’
‘Hm,’ said the man with the pink trousers. ‘There is of course quite a history of literary novelists …’ The way he spoke the words implied a level of pretension within the breed ‘… sneering at the works of—’
‘I’m not sneering. Far be it from me to—’
‘John Banville, for instance,’ his interlocutor went on implacably, ‘is well known for writing his crime novels as Benjamin Black and referring to them as “cheap fiction”, when compared to his literary novels. And the CV of Booker Prize-winning Julian Barnes doesn’t draw attention to the Duffy novels he published under the name of Dan Kavan—’
‘I don’t think any of this is really relevant to this evening’s discussion.’
‘Oh, but it is,’ the questioner persisted. His manner was not aggressive, it was infinitely reasonable. He argued with the skill of an experienced debater, someone who had always dealt with words. ‘We’re here to talk about your work and I am particularly interested in the books published – self-published – under the name of Seth Marston which—’
Burton St Clair was clearly rattled now. ‘I’m going to have to cut you off there,’ he interrupted.
‘Are you saying you don’t know the works of Seth Marston?’
‘I’ve never heard the name. We’re here this evening to talk about my novel Stray Leaves in Autumn.’ The author appealed to his audience. ‘Do we have another question on that subject?’
The woman whose raised hand was favoured this time was inordinately tall and expensively blonde, dressed in a slightly fussy pink jacket over an extremely fussy cream blouse. ‘I don’t think we should leave the subject of mystery fiction.’ Her voice had the relaxed refinement of an East Coast American intellectual. ‘The gentleman who spoke before mentioned the Golden Age, and that is a topic on which I have done considerable research, and indeed on which I teach a college course. I’m very interested in the relationship between classic mystery fiction and its so-called “literary” counterparts. I wondered if you, as a—’
‘I’m sorry to interrupt you there,’ said Burton St Clair, who clearly wasn’t sorry at all, ‘but without wishing to sound egotistical, I thought this evening we were meant to be talking about my books rather than those of the Golden Age, however classic they may be.’ Quickly, before the American could come back at him, he pleaded, ‘Now do we have another relevant question?’
One of his worshipful company of ladies came to the rescue. ‘From my reading of Stray Leaves in Autumn, I get the impression that you believe some level of adversity actually strengthens the bonds of love. Is that true?’
‘Oh yes, certainly. And it’s very perceptive of you to pick up on that. Shakespeare tells us “the course of true love never did run smooth”, and I think that there, as in many other areas of life, experience – and not always happy experience – can intensify the emotional reaction to …’
And Burton St Clair was off again, laying bare the depths of his sincerity to the good people of Fethering.
Jude was less convinced by his oratory than most of them. She remembered Megan telling her that, in his years as an aspiring but rejected writer, Al Sinclair had scraped up enough money to have three crime novels vanity-published. She didn’t know that they’d been written under the name of Seth Marston, but it wouldn’t have surprised her. It would have been in character for Burton St Clair to have lied about his early history as a writer.
THREE
Tickets for the Burton St Clair Author evening had cost five pounds, but that included a glass of wine. So as soon as she had finished her speech of thanks to the author, Di Thompson busied herself and her helpers with moving the furniture to make room for the less formal part
of the evening. There was limited space in Fethering Library and the drink-dispensing table could not be set up until the chairs had been folded away.
Most of the audience stood patiently while this process took place. A few public-spirited souls helped with the chair-folding. Maybe they were just being helpful, or perhaps volunteers had been delegated to the task. There was a purpose-built trolley with prongs on to which the chairs had to be hung. Jude noticed that the man in pink trousers was one of those doing his duty. The more infirm audience members stayed resolutely in place. They were not going to risk losing their chairs.
One elderly woman, in a trouser suit from a different era, was doughtily helping, however. Though it looked as if she needed the chair she was moving to support her frail body. Jude moved forward to assist.
‘It’s all right,’ said the woman in a reedy but cultured voice. ‘I can manage.’
‘Well, if you’re sure …’
‘Oh yes. I’ve been moving chairs at this library since long before you moved here, Jude.’
She was unsurprised that the woman knew her name. Even if they’d never actually met, most residents of Fethering knew the names and personal histories (true and embellished) of everyone else in the village. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve seen you around, but I don’t know your name.’
‘Eveline Ollerenshaw, but everyone calls me “Evvie”.’ It was clear she regarded this conversational opening as an opportunity for a break in her strenuous task. Propping herself up on the chair, she continued, ‘I live right next door to the library.’ She gestured through the wall. ‘Been here since I moved down when my husband Gerald retired, and he passed on in 1997. I’ve been volunteering here ever since then. I do love books, you see. They’ve been such a comfort to me. I was a volunteer here before Di Thompson took over. She often says she couldn’t manage without me.’