Aftershocks Read online

  Aftershocks

  A. N. WILSON grew up in Staffordshire and was educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is a prolific and award-winning biographer and celebrated novelist. He lives in North London.

  ALSO BY A. N. WILSON

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  The Sweets of Pimlico

  Unguarded Hours

  Kindly Light

  The Healing Art

  Who Was Oswald Fish?

  Wise Virgin

  Scandal: Or, Priscilla’s Kindness

  Gentlemen in England

  Love Unknown

  Stray

  Incline Our Hearts

  A Bottle in the Smoke

  Daughters of Albion

  Hearing Voices

  A Watch in the Night

  The Vicar of Sorrows

  Dream Children

  My Name Is Legion

  A Jealous Ghost

  Winnie and Wolf

  The Potter’s Hand

  Resolution

  Non-Fiction

  The Laird of Abbotsford: A View of

  Sir Walter Scott

  A Life of John Milton

  Hilaire Belloc: A Biography

  How Can We Know?

  Tolstoy

  Penfriends from Porlock: Essays And

  Reviews, 1977–1986

  C. S. Lewis: A Biography

  Paul: The Mind of the Apostle

  God’s Funeral

  The Victorians

  Iris Murdoch As I Knew Her

  London: A Short History

  After the Victorians

  Betjeman: A Life

  Our Times: The Age of Elizabeth II

  Dante in Love

  The Elizabethans

  Hitler: A Short Biography

  Victoria: A Life

  The Book of the People: How to

  Read the Bible

  The Queen

  Charles Darwin: Victorian

  Mythmaker

  First published in hardback and trade paperback in Great Britain in 2018 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

  Copyright © A. N. Wilson, 2018

  The moral right of A. N. Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

  Please see p.277 for permissions details.

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Hardback ISBN: 978 1 78649 603 4

  Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 78649 604 1

  E-book ISBN: 978 1 78649 606 5

  Printed in Great Britain

  Atlantic Books

  An Imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

  Ormond House

  26–27 Boswell Street

  London

  WC1N 3JZ

  www.atlantic-books.co.uk

  Homage to E.R.M.

  A NOTE

  A NEW ZEALAND FRIEND READ THIS NOVEL AND ASKED – WHY ‘not set it in New Zealand? Why call your imaginary country “The Island”?’

  The answer is that this is not a novel about New Zealand. It is about a group of people caught up in an earthquake, two of whom fall in love. It is set in an imaginary place, and it is not intended to be a roman à clef about Christchurch, which suffered a devastating earthquake in 2011.

  I visited Christchurch in May 2017 for three days, and nothing had prepared me for the experience of seeing a city which had been completely laid waste by a quake. It was during my short time there that the seed of this novel was planted in my mind. My imagined city, Aberdeen, is, like Christchurch, a Victorian colonial city which is, likewise, all but wrecked. But I do not know Christchurch, and I did not want to write a novel about its real inhabitants. The mayor, the Bishop and the property developers in my story are, fairly obviously, all invented. So is the Green MP. So are all the characters in the story, except for the blind busker, whom I have named Penny Whistle, and who, throughout my three days in Christchurch, could be heard singing eighteenth-century English songs in a robust baritone, never repeating himself, among the ruins. I hope he will forgive me for putting him in a story. Although the English characters inhabit actual named places (Winchester, and some named Midland towns), these too are fictitious. There is a funeral in Winchester Cathedral. That was because I wanted my heroine Nellie to pause beside the grave of Jane Austen, not because I wanted to depict the actual clergy of Winchester Cathedral.

  The invented Island in this book finds itself in the position of several real postcolonial, mixed-race, modern countries. In this respect, it has characteristics in common with New Zealand, with Fiji, with Australia, and with some African countries. To compare great things with small, it bears such a relation to former dominions and colonies as Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo bears to several countries in South America. I have spent less than three weeks in New Zealand and could not possibly hope to write a book about it, even if that had been my intention.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  IT WAS ALWAYS THE TWO OF THEM, DIGBY AND ELEANOR. THE inseparables. Then came the Earthquake, and everything changed.

  I don’t want to swank, but I was the only one in Aberdeen who saw this. An early sign of love, I suppose. True love, the full works, orchestra playing Puccini, blood coursing through your temples, inner certainty that this wasn’t some fly-by-night thing, but Destiny in the Person of the Beloved calling us to Newness of Life . . . But this is jumping ahead a bit, people! Sorry about that. Let’s go back to the Dyce, where I was wandering around in a bit of a daze that lunchtime, having just broken up with my tutor, Barnaby Farrell.

  An art gallery’s a good place to go and think, specially if, like the dear old Dyce, it doesn’t really have any good pictures. Course, now the paintings in the Dyce have all been destroyed, I miss them, the Alma-Tadema of Aeneas at the court of Queen Dido; the Holman Hunt of ‘Caedmon tells St Hilda how he received the gift of song’ – in which the cowherd bard had those strange flesh tones which Hunt’s figures always have, as if they had been made up for American TV with loads of orange slap. No one would ever have sat in front of that picture and been lost in rapture, as you would if you saw a Vermeer for the first time. They are the picture-equivalents of background music, those middle-rank Victorian efforts, and so you can just wander round, have a look at them, smile a bit; or have your own thoughts; or spy on the other gallery-goers, who, during lunch hour on a weekday in our city, Aberdeen, tended to be a mixed bunch – some of them like the sad people wandering round parks in Larkin’s ‘Toads’ poem, and some of them there for reasons which a gossipy person, like me, would like to winkle out.

  But I’d primarily gone there to think. To ask myself – what did you imagine you were DOING, sleeping with the man who is meant to be teaching you about tragedy? I mean, if I’d been nineteen, you’d have understood it, but I was twenty-seven. I’d been round the park, had a number of not especially
satisfying relationships in the recent past, and I did not need to prove anything, to myself, or to him, by sleeping with Barnaby Farrell. Nothing against Barnaby. He’s very good-looking, in a classic hunk sort of way – thick curly dark hair, quite muscular, fine-boned face – and a lot of the women in the class fancied him. Well, I did – obviously, but why not just leave it at that? Now it was all going to be just a bit embarrassing, attending the class he ran with Digby. (She did the Greek tragedy stuff, he did Shakespeare and Hardy, it was a fantastic class – I’ll tell you more about it in a later chapter.)

  He’d been really nice, said he wanted us to continue, said he wanted to see how it would go, but I could see how it would go a mile off – we’d sleep together about twenty more times; then one of us would start thinking they were in love, and the other would be going off the boil; then he’d say he wanted me to move in with him and look after his kid, and, thanks, Barnaby, that wasn’t my idea of a life. I’d taken a year off from an acting career which was going really well. But I was finding that when I was faced with a real challenge – like when I was Hedda Gabler at the Redgrave in Carmichael, which has been the high point of my career to date – I just did not know enough. Mum said, actors don’t need to know, they need to feel. I don’t agree. I know what she means, but – well, let’s pitch it really high, why be modest – Mrs Siddons or Sarah Bernhardt or Ellen Terry or Sybil Thorndike really knew Shakespeare and the Canon in and out. True, an actor’s perspective is different from an academic’s, but it is a form of intelligence. I’d rather hear Gielgud or Branagh talking about Shakespeare than read some middle-grade university lecturer on the subject. Barnaby and Digby, though, who gave our seminar jointly, were well above the middle-grade. Their seminar really fizzed. And I’d reached a stage of my career where I needed to think more – about the drama, about what I wanted to do in my theatre life – and I was in the fortunate position of being able to come back to Aberdeen, live at home with my mum, and go out to Banks University a few times a week for seminars and lectures.

  I’d said quite firmly, when Barnaby asked why not just let’s see how it goes – no, we should stop NOW. Of course, I’d said, ‘before we get too fond of one another’. And at least he had not embarrassed me by making any declarations of love or anything like that. But I felt rather foolish all the same and, like I say, I was wondering what on earth a grown woman like me thought she was DOING behaving like that.

  I think the answer was that, before I found True Love, I wouldn’t ask myself – when the question arose of going to bed with someone – why I should. Instead, I asked why I shouldn’t, and quite often I did not see the reason even if it was staring me in the face.

  Anyhow, the Barnaby thing was over now, and there I was in the Dyce. I’d had the embarrassing conversation with Barnaby the previous day, and we’d been all very ‘civilized’ about it, and kissed one another on the cheek and given a little hug after breakfast (I’d been staying over at his place) and then I’d slipped out of the flat before Stig, his kid, woke up.

  It was nice, always, that day or two after you’d broken up with a lover. Even if you’d been in love (which Barnaby and I certainly weren’t) there was always also this feeling of being free, and wondering what you’d seen in him. (Very unlike NOW, when the thought of splitting up with the one I love would be totally unthinkable, and I’d quite honestly rather die than suffer such a thing. Luckily we both feel the same, and I am sure I have found True Love Forever and Ever Amen.) But this is to leap ahead. That’s what this story is about. How an earthquake helped me find True Love. My lover, my East and West, said I should call this book The Earth Moved for Me – How About You? But I’m settling for Aftershocks.

  Anyhow. There’s me in the Dyce. And another good thing about wandering around an indoor public place like that is noticing all the other people and speculating on what they are up to. Of course, you get the odd pest, wondering if you are on for it, but as I have told you, I was twenty-seven, a big girl, capable of looking after herself. By big, I do not mean heavy (in spite of someone later in this narrative describing my face as ‘fleshy’!), but I mean grown-up. And quite tall. I don’t know if that is a disadvantage in my profession. Most theatrical people are smaller than average – Judi Dench, Laurence Olivier, Garrick . . .

  It was while I was ambling about idly that I heard her voice.

  Maybe before we hear her together, I should explain that when I heard that voice, I never knew if it was Digby’s or the Dean’s. Different as they were, they both sounded exactly the same.

  I saw more of Digby, ’cause of my course. Already, by this stage, she was coming to fascinate me. I loved her mind. Her grasp. Her sure-footedness. The way she really loved that Greek stuff, knew it backwards, and had not merely mastered it in an academic way, but lived with it. The Dean was a frostier, much less passionate person, or so it seemed to me when I sometimes accompanied Mum to the Cathedral. As I stood there in the Dyce, though, a second or two of listening assured me that it was the Dean’s voice I could hear. The Dean’s name was Bartlett, Eleanor Bartlett.

  —I know we’re not supposed to like this sort of thing, but gosh, I DO. Always HAVE ever since I was nine.

  —How did you see this picture when you were nine? You were in England, surely.

  —I grew up in England, but Mum was a Huia. She taught at St Hilda’s here. Science. Came to England one summer to stay with relations. Met Dad.

  It would be hard to find a voice which was less ‘Huia’ than this. It was real old-fashioned English. It put me in mind of the old St Trinian’s films. Joyce Grenfell. ‘Gossage, Call me sausage.’ You hardly ever hear a voice like this on the Island, and I’d guess it is dying out in England. Yet she was only forty. Course, when I heard her dad’s voice, all was explained.

  The pair were certainly closely absorbed in one another. They did not see me. I wasn’t hiding, and I wasn’t in disguise, but I was wearing shades. OK, I may as well admit this, as well as being a relief, breaking up always made me a bit red-eyed. I wasn’t in love, course I wasn’t, but I felt I’d made a fool of myself. Again. I was wondering why I’d got to twenty-seven without getting this love business straight, perhaps no one can get it straight, and . . . well, anyhow, that made me just a little weepy. I was wearing a white tee-shirt, jeans and white Converse with red piping.

  Why would pairs be wandering round an art gallery at lunchtime on a weekday? Think about it, and there can only be a few answers. The lonely singletons have a whole variety of reasons, no doubt. Some were like me, still a bit stunned from breaking up. Some might have been bereaved, fearful of going into a café or a pub in case they suddenly found themselves crying. Some were just depressed, drifting about in a daze. Some of them were genuine enthusiasts for second- – no, let’s be honest – third-rate painters such as Gilbert Rhys, or for the poorish pictures by good painters like G.F. Watts, which was all the Dyce could muster. If you’re European, reading this, you probably are used to going to galleries which have Titians and Rembrandts and Picassos by the score, but don’t mock Aberdeen. We did our best, and the Dyce was all we had.

  But back to the pairs who went there at lunchtimes . . . I don’t mean the pairs of seniors, ’cause they have usually become ‘Friends’ of the Gallery, partly because they no longer have many real friends of their own, and partly in the hope that they can get free coffee in the Friends’ Room, or find reliably clean toilets.

  Pairs which are real pairs, though, they wouldn’t come to a place like this at 1.40 p.m. on a weekday. They’d wait till they had finished work and meet up for drinks in some bar – there were plenty of good bars in central Aberdeen before the Quake – or go home together. And those who were in the middle of some irresistible adulterous passion – they wouldn’t be ambling about the Dyce, they’d be in a hotel or some flat somewhere. The point is, think about it. Only those whose relationship had not started, or was in a state of crisis, would have chosen to come here at this point of the week. So if you
sit still and wait, in a place like the Dyce, you’ll see a lot of drama.

  The two likeliest dramas are: ‘Are we falling in love?’ or ‘Shall we break up?’ And I did not think this pair were about to break up.

  It was clear that he was nuts about her. I’ll describe her first, though my ways of describing her will change as this book goes on. I’m trying now to recollect exactly what I saw, WHO I saw, that day in the gallery. Tall, like me, taller than me, nearly six foot. Thick dark hair, cut quite short, so you could see the nape of her neck. The swan-like, truly beautiful neck. It was so beautiful that it took my breath away. Deep blue eyes which had not yet seen me. Eyes only for him, seemingly. A short nose. Creamy complexion. Apparently no make-up. That toothy smile, instantaneously beguiling.

  He was a bit older. Or maybe being so worried, and so in love, made him look older. Long face with black hair which flopped over his forehead, cut short at back and sides. Raven black eyes. Hollow cheeks and the sort of blueish chin which he’d have had to shave at least twice a day if he wanted to keep it smooth.

  By the way, in case you’re thinking all the people in this book are going to have dark hair – and there would be no reason why they shouldn’t – I have mousey-blondish, very thick hair, quite long, cut with a fringe over my brow; brown eyes, freckles. But back to Charlie.

  His voice was Huia, but of the old world – a bit like Mum’s. We – my generation – speak with much stronger ‘accents’ – whereas they sound more English. He was wearing a smart suit and highly polished shoes, but you wouldn’t have been surprised to see his lean face sticking out of Victorian costume – an earnest Mr Rochester or Mr Dombey.

  The woman was telling him more about the year her mum, a young teacher from Aberdeen, had been to England, stayed with some cousins near Birmingham, and been introduced to her dad who was a young clergyman in a place called Dudley. Mr Dombey’s facial expression suggested that this conjunction, of the woman’s parents, was the happiest thing which had occurred in the history of the world. I was asking myself how much he’d paid for his shoes. Hundreds of dollars.