Undercover

When you’re as old as I am, pictures of yourself as a child take on a particular weirdness. It’s not just that you’ve changed beyond recognition. It’s that the world has. The past really is another country, and because it’s at a safe distance I felt fairly comfortable about writing something almost autobiographical.

I say almost because Clem Ackroyd isn’t me. He’s a bit older than me and better-looking. And, very sad to say, I never had a passionate relationship with a sexy posh girl like Frankie. (There’s a narrow line between writing fiction and wishful thinking.)

But lots of Clem’s experiences are mine too. His council house is where I grew up. His parents are a bit like my own, but not much. My gran worked in a laundry and was churchy and a bit batty, but was nothing like as harsh and bitter as Win. Newgate is a fairly accurate portrait of the Grammar school I endured. I rode the same bike as Clem and worked in the same strawberry fields. And, of course, I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Unlike Clem, though, I didn’t end up as a successful illustrator living in New York.

More wishful thinking, perhaps.

By the middle of the day Clem had started to work out that pushing the pedals with his feet – like walking but sitting down – made the heavy thing move. Ruth guided him back and forth the short distance between the kitchen door and the front door, leaning over him to work the steering wheel, which he couldn’t get the hang of.
     In the early afternoon the rain died off and a pallid light filled the garden. Ruth carried the car outside and set it down on the concrete. Clem climbed into it, bundled up in his winter coat. She steered him round the corner of the lav and onto the brick path that led down to the gate. His knees went up and down in a way that didn’t belong to him. He turned the steering wheel randomly.
     On the third trip to the gate he became aware that his mother’s hand was no longer on his back. The car stopped, and he looked up at her. She had her hands to her face, which had changed colour. She was looking at something beyond him. There was a man standing the other side of the gate. Clem’s eyes climbed up him, from the wet-edged brown shoes to the legs and jacket of the grey suit to the suntanned face which was divided in half by a black moustache. The man wore a grey hat, and carried over his shoulder a huge long bag with white lettering on it. Between the stranger and Ruth a silence stretched above Clem’s head like a sheet hung on the washing-line.

A while ago I was thinking, in my cheerful way, about nuclear weapons. In particular, about the fact that we don’t talk about them much any more. We’ve transferred our survival anxieties onto climate change, international terrorism, overpopulation. Still, the fact is that there are -  at the very least - some seven thousand nuclear warheads stashed around the planet. More than enough to blow it off its orbit.



Then it occurred to me that explosions – real or feared – had played a significant part in my life.

I’d never before wanted to write anything autobiographical. I’d always thought that if I did I’d feel pressured to tell the truth, and not know how to. Besides, my memory isn’t what it was.

So I invented Clem Ackroyd and told his story instead.

The novel has a long time-line. The whole of the 20th century and a bit more, in fact. But the core of the story is the summer and autumn of 1962. Seventeen year-old Clem is conducting a feverish love affair with sixteen year-old Francoise Mortimer. There are all sorts of reasons why he shouldn’t be. He’s a working-class boy from a council estate; she’s the only daughter of an enormously wealthy landowner who also happens to be Clem’s father’s employer. His parents, Ruth and George, and his Bible-thumping grandmother, Win, share a morbid fear of anything to do with sex. Her parents are ferocious snobs. Clem’s family are Protestant, hers Roman Catholic. So Frankie and Clem are constantly searching for secret places to be together and in constant fear of being discovered. They do eventually find a safe and private place; but soon afterwards, US President John F. Kennedy goes on TV and announces that he’s discovered the Soviet Union has installed nuclear missiles on Cuba, and he won’t stand for it. Over the following two weeks, Russia and America edge towards the ultimate war. Clem and Frankie feel an urgent need to Go All the Way before the world does and are hurried towards their fate.  

Clem Ackroyd isn’t me; his family, his school, his life aren’t mine. But as I worked on the novel I couldn’t help noticing some striking resemblances. Mostly, though, I managed to avoid the truth. I was worried that the shades of my mother, father, and grandmother – not to mention Frankie – might be reading over my shoulder.

The first is Life: An Exploded Diagram. Mal Peet is an exceptional author who has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, and his latest offering is a coming of age story set against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It's had some amazing reviews already!