THE EXPERIENCE OF PLACE
A good novel needs many ingredients: a compelling story that draws in the reader, a cleverly structured plot, characters that live and that you can believe in, and a writing style that uses the wonders of the English language to best effect. In addition, the conveyance of place is essential because this is what our character sees, hears and smells. He or she experiences the surroundings – the landscape, the sea, the wind and the tides, the hard steel of a ship’s deck – and is impacted by them.
The nature of places change with time, of course; both historical time and also day to day time. Then, there are seasonal changes and changes of weather or the state of the tide. The experience of place was a key feature of INVASION, my first novel. It was the coldest winter for a hundred years. Storms, the tide, fog, silence and other aspects of place will also help shape my second novel. It will be set in and around Falmouth, in Cornwall, although the story begins in Bordeaux, in France.
Why Bordeaux? The reason is because of a British cargo ship, SS Broompark (which I have written about in an earlier blog) left Bordeaux on the 19th of June 1940 and arrived in Falmouth on the 21st, two days later. I discovered its arrival in the Harbour Master’s log, authenticating my research. Whether my character makes it to the quay in Bordeaux docks, and whether he is allowed aboard before the ship leaves…we will see. But that ship, leaving port in Bordeaux, is where the story begins. Naturally enough, the reader will want to know what our character experiences as he approaches the city.
SS Broompark, June 1940. The only known photograph.
Here is a short extract in the draft manuscript as it stands.
Tommy Bligh had slept the night ‘fitfully on a low, wooded hill above the Isle river, awaking to the wary silence of early dawn. Hope, stubborn and resolute, had survived the night. His recurring dream was that Bordeaux would still be free.
Forcing open his eyes, he dragged himself to the edge of the wood. The cool of the night was ebbing away and a grey, melancholy light seeped through the chestnut trees. Traces of Bordeaux emerged, far off in the valley. As the minutes passed, the sun showed itself at last and a soft pink light lit up a church spire, and then another, and then the terracotta jigsaw of roofs appeared as the sunlight spread over the whole city. The hulking outlines of the cranes were now visible, emerging through the night mist resting in the folds of the valley. And finally, as he paced the shadows, the mist faded away and the ships came into view, lined up beside the silvery ribbon of the Garonne.’
Around two weeks later, the story moves on to Cornwall. A different character has a different experience…it’s another place. Gillan Creek, in Cornwall is a winding, tree-lined inlet to the south of the Helford River and only a few miles from Falmouth as the crow flies. To really experience my character in his setting, I spent a day here and watched the tide coming in. Here it is, washing in quite fast over the muddy banks. At high tide, the water becomes still for an hour or so, the perfect time for a clandestine operation under the cover of darkness.
Gillan Creek, a rising tide. August 1940
Imagine what it might feel like to be a spy aboard a canoe, paddling silently towards the shoreline. It’s midnight. A thin crack of the moon is rising in the east. The faint light from a million stars picks out a few shapes in the darkness. It’s the top of the tide, silent and still.
As Agent Blitz approached the shore, it became darker still in the shadow of the oak trees arching out over the creek. He drifted on the flat water, barely moving, freezing at every gloop of an insect sucked down by a fish from the glassy surface, every distant screech of an owl, every thump of a door being slammed far away in one of the villages. Each time, he stopped paddling and listened to the air so heavy in its silence that once he cried out involuntarily, the sound seeming to be amplified by the emptiness of the creek. The demons were out that night, he was sure. Leaning forward, he withdrew his silenced pistol from his rucksack, placing it on the thwart, ready if needed.
My second novel will be a story of espionage, love and betrayal set in Cornwall and, I hope, will be worth the wait! Please sign up to my Newsletters to keep in touch with progress.