by Emma Rous
The Romans made a start on it. Efforts continued through the Middle Ages. In 1620, King James I called in the expertise of Dutch engineers, including Cornelius Vermuyden. Water channels were dug and widened, coastal walls were built, and—despite bitter resistance from local residents—slowly but surely wind-powered pumps drained the marshes to expose a vast plain of rich agricultural land. In later centuries, the wind pumps were replaced by Victorian steam technology, then diesel-fueled engines, and finally modern electric pumps. Meanwhile, the crops that thrived on the black, peaty soil earned the Fens the nickname “the breadbasket of England.”
As I drove my beloved Volvo down the surprisingly wide Great Whyte in Ramsey that day, I was only vaguely aware of this watery fenland history. And it was a fair while longer before I discovered that the word whyte here is believed to come from the Anglo-Saxon waite meaning dock.
Before the Fens were drained, Ramsey was one of the “islands” that could be reached only by boat, via either channels through the marshes or along a river called Bury Brook. In medieval times, the town of Ramsey flourished, not least due to the Benedictine Ramsey Abbey, which was founded there in AD 969. Goods were delivered to the townspeople along Bury Brook, and the section of the river where the boats docked was called the Great Whyte. But when the drainage of the Fens began in earnest in the seventeenth century, the very shape of the land and watercourses changed.
As the land area increased, the town of Ramsey was able to expand, and the Great Whyte now flowed not along the edge of an island but down the center of a broad street. Road links sprang up across the region. The “island towns” in the Fens were no longer wholly dependent on their waterways. And by the mid-nineteenth century, with the additional promise of the railway soon to come to Ramsey, the much-reduced Great Whyte had fallen into redundancy.
So in 1852, engineers built a set of brick tunnels to enclose the water that flowed down the middle of the street and conceal it underground. After that, the townspeople no longer needed a bridge to cross the Great Whyte; they could stroll back and forth between shops, banks, public houses (with names such as the Boat Inn, the White Swan, and the still-open Jolly Sailor), and eventually, of course, the veterinary surgery.
I continued to work at that surgery on Great Whyte, on and off, until 2016, when I left veterinary practice to start writing fiction. During that time, I learned about some of the other side effects of fenland drainage, both on the region’s threatened wildlife and on the land itself. Year upon year, as the water continues to be drawn out, the peaty soil shrinks and the land sinks still farther.
In recent years, I’ve taken my children to Holme Fen to visit the lowest point in Great Britain, where a four-meter-high iron post marks the fall in land level between 1851 and now. I’ve explored some of the nature reserves in the region, and I’ve read about schemes to reflood parts of the Fens in winter months, not least to lock carbon into the peat to prevent its release from contributing to global warming. I’ve even tried a bit of wild swimming in the chilly fenland waters.
Little wonder that when I started mulling over ideas for the setting of The Perfect Guests, it was a patch of fenland that sprang to mind: an isolated house next to a remnant of what was once a great lake, surrounded by fields and water channels in every direction. Here, a child could grow up roaming freely but still be hidden away from the world. Here, no one could approach without fear of being spotted. Here, a fire could take hold without alerting the neighbors . . .
Raven Hall is a fictitious house set in a very real landscape. I hope, if you haven’t already, you might one day get the chance to visit the Fens—to marvel at the richness of its wildlife and its wonderful conservation projects, to catch a fascinating glimpse of its history, and most of all to soak up the glorious sense of open space under that huge dome of a fenland sky.
Questions for Discussion
1. In the early stages of Leonora’s relationship with Markus, she worries that she’s a bad person, and she hopes that Markus might help her “to change, to improve, to become more like him.” Do you think Leonora’s desire to be a good person counts for anything? Is it fair to say that in the end, it’s Markus who becomes more like her?
2. Who was responsible for the cracks that formed in Beth and Nina’s friendship? Do you think it was inevitable that things would go wrong?
3. Nina tells Beth, “My mother always loved this house more than she loved me.” Do you think that’s true? Does it fit with Leonora’s behavior when she ignores Markus’s instruction to phone the fire brigade and rushes upstairs into thick smoke to search for Nina?
4. Stephanie tried to be a good friend to Leonora, protecting Nina’s identity and warning Leonora about Hendrik’s visits. Do you think Stephanie did the right thing? If she’d decided not to keep Leonora’s secrets, might the outcome have been better for Nina?
5. Do you feel Leonora and Markus bear equal responsibility for the initial “game”? Was it reasonable for them to assume it would be harmless for Beth?
6. If you could explore the life of one of the minor characters, which would you choose?
7. How do you feel about the choices Caroline made, both before Beth was born and afterward? Do you feel any sympathy for her?
8. In the aftermath of the 2019 events at Raven Hall, Beth says about her childhood there: “Most of the time—it was a pretty wonderful place to live.” Does this statement surprise you?
9. Near the end, Sadie wonders whether it’s worse to be a targeted victim of a crime or to be thought of as collateral damage. What do you think?
10. What would you like to see happen at Raven Hall in the days and weeks following the final chapter?
Emma Rous is a Cambridge University graduate who spent eighteen years working as a veterinary surgeon before starting to write fiction. Her first novel, The Au Pair, was a USA Today bestseller. Emma lives in Cambridgeshire, England, with her husband and three sons, and she now writes full time.
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