And then there is the work. Come back to that. Get up on the wire, walk the line in the sunlight. Breathe, concentrate, find the nerve. What is it about? Something says ‘my soul’, and I am uneasy, and turn away, embarrassed. My being-in-the-world expressed as performance. The rhythm of my body imprinting on the page, what my eyes have seen, what my heart has lived. And the movement of my hand lets me share it with others. I am here, now. I am writing the truth of it. For most writers, work is not just a product.
My book had fallen foul of the market, but rereading it, I believed in it. The question was, where could I go? How could I get my portrait of Britain out to the British?
Once again, friends of mine stepped in, Moris Farhi, the Turkish writer, campaigner and intellectual, and his wife (and editor) Nina Farhi. Nina: it is still hard to write about her, those intelligent brown eyes and bird-like profile under a Greek girl’s thicket of curls: with whom I would talk passionately about novels while Moris (‘Musa’) cooked succulent chicken, his deep voice interjecting knowledge from the stove. Nina: who played football with us in the garden, lithe and laughing but a deadly opponent. We discussed Fay Weldon and Anita Brookner and our beloved only daughters, and our central theme was often writing, though Nina was a well-known psychoanalyst (she died, alas, most fierce and beautiful and missed, her mind still the mind of an eagle, a claw-hold on life as the sky went dark, while I was finishing this book. How can such presence become an absence?)
Moris and Nina with Rosa—Nina once saved Rosa from falling downstairs with a magnificent goal-keeper’s dive
Nina and Moris both loved The White Family and discussed gravely what to do about it. Moris showed the book to his friend and publisher, the Lebanese sculptor and writer Mai Ghoussoub, co-founder with André Gaspard of Saqi, which had been in existence for over twenty years. I am sure Moris encouraged her in certain expectations; probably he told her it was wonderful; in other words, the ‘frame’ was right.
She read it expecting it to be good because she loved and trusted Moris. I knew she had the manuscript. I dared not hope.
Only my diary can truly tell the story of those unforgettable three days in late April.
Tuesday April 17 2001 was just an ‘ordinary’ day. My daughter was ‘grumpy’, I went on trying to write ‘a new book’ (it was the start of The Flood, in fact), but the diary says ‘a mere 650 words so far’. Then the page breaks into big, bold, type:
Oh happiness, oh unimaginable happiness that may yet turn into absolute bliss, for this afternoon … the phone rang, and it was a melodious woman’s voice, foreign. I stood in the grubby hall and took it in. ‘Mai … Mai Ghoussoub … We have a friend in common, Moris Farhi … I have phoned to tell you I have finished reading your book, and I have enjoyed it very much … It was such a pleasure. It is literature. Literature does not judge … All your characters are human. And the end. I liked it very much, the end. Because it moves it outside of London and makes it universal … Very touching. I think I enjoyed it more than any manuscript I have read in a long time …’
Then there was apparently a note of caution, for she said the book would be discussed at a meeting they would have over the next day or so, and her last words were disquieting: ‘I hope we meet, at any rate.’
Once I had put the phone down, though, I was ‘suffused and energised with hope … someone likes my White Elephant!’
Wednesday April 18
Still fizzing. I wrote a little more on the new novel, diary, fun with Rosa—but the weather is cold—‘It’s winter again,’ said Nick. No phone call from Saqi yet at 5 pm.
Thursday April 19
What a day. Fear started to replace joy some time around the end of the morning, Nothing could protect me from gloom … as the afternoon went on in the empty house. Had Mai’s meeting been on Wednesday? Had it been this morning? No call meant bad news. I hate the feeling that I can do nothing, nothing to help myself—not my busybodying nature to do nothing and accept what comes.
I tried to read and got—next to nowhere. Nick rang [from the BBC] around four—any news? No. He was full of love. ‘Go and read outside,’ he said—then, ‘Maybe not, it’s raining.’
Actually I did go outside and read, in the garden, on the step, though it was splashing with April rain which dimpled my pages, and there was April sun, too. Wild violets where the grass had given up. Magnolias in the next-door garden. I thought, ‘I mind terribly about this, I’ve just been kidding myself that I would understand if Saqi turn me down.’ In the end the rain drove me in and I sat in my armchair testing the phone at intervals to see if it was working. Picking it up, putting it down. Random absurd compacts with fate—‘If when I look at my watch it is past 5 o’clock, there’s no hope.’ And yet in part of me hope was very strong. Another voice inside me said loud and clear, ‘This will work. They will take it. It will come right.’ But time slipped on, past 5.15, past 5.30 … Too late, I thought. They have gone home.