At the beginning of the book, Tony is in the doldrums. His career had never really taken off. He is creatively sterile and still in mourning for his wife, Maureen, who had died two years previously after a long battle with breast cancer. Tony’s prospects – and the possibility of happiness returning to his life – revive when he meets Celia, a former wild child from the fringes of the music industry who, now a divorcée in her fifties, has written a so-far-unpublished novel, which she is convinced would make a great movie. She is also convinced that the right person to direct it is Tony.
Experienced readers of romance would by this point in the book have realized that he and Celia were not only the right people to bond creatively, but also the right people to bond emotionally. Tony, however, proves remarkably unaware of this blindingly obvious fact, so it is not until the couple – and the development of their film – have endured a sequence of setbacks and tribulations that he eventually recognizes true love. This revelation happens, needless to say, at the premiere of the movie, which of course goes on to be an international success.
Though Burton St Clair would never have admitted it, Jude reckoned it was by serendipity rather than calculation that he’d managed to press so many relevant buttons in Stray Leaves in Autumn. Popular entertainment had taken a surprisingly long time to recognize the increase in average age of the first world’s population. It kept its focus on attracting new, younger audiences rather than catering for the growing numbers of the robust ageing.
When a couple of successful movies and television series featuring mature central characters woke the entertainment moguls up to this self-evident fact, suddenly you couldn’t move for late-flowering lust: in movies, on television and in bookshops. The publication of Stray Leaves in Autumn fortunately coincided with this wave of geriatric romance. Rather than fulfilling his own fantasies (like most middle-aged male authors) and making the object of his hero’s affections a much younger woman, Burton had been shrewd to focus Tony’s interest on someone of his own age. And the fact that his novel was just an old-fashioned romance with a happy ending had been disguised by enough tricks of post-modernism and magical realism for the literati not to feel they were demeaning themselves by reading it.
Thinking about Burton’s past had distracted Jude from listening to what he was pontificating about. She gave herself a mental rap over the knuckles and concentrated, to hear him saying, ‘… and obviously writing a book is an activity during which the author is constantly having to make moral judgements. And I am always aware of the ethical implications when I kill someone.’
TWO
The suggestion of murder got a predictable little frisson of indrawn breaths from the ladies of Fethering. Burton St Clair held the pause after his statement. It was clearly an effect that he had honed over many years of repetition. Then, with a wry smile, he picked up. ‘I should say at this point that I never have actually killed anyone in real life, but as an author one frequently is in the godlike position of deciding whether a character should live or die. And that’s a responsibility that one has to take seriously. I’m not in the business, as a crime writer might be—’ he spoke the words with appropriate contempt – ‘of killing people simply for the convenience of my plots. If a character in one of my books dies, I can assure you I have considered the termination of their life very seriously. He or she does not deserve to die – far from it in many cases – but they need to die to obey the artistic and emotional demands of the book that I am writing. I would be failing in my duty as a novelist if I did not kill them.
‘I must say it’s very interesting how much debate killing a character generates on social media.’
Di Thompson, the senior librarian, had made much in her introduction of the large number of followers Burton St Clair had on Facebook and Twitter. Looking at the average age of that evening’s audience, Jude wondered how many of those present would have encountered him there. But, even as she had the thought, she realized she might be guilty of unthinking prejudice. Apparently quite a lot of people considerably older than she was were much involved in social media.
‘For instance,’ Burton continued, ‘a lot of my followers have criticized me for killing off Clinton, Celia’s fading rock-star husband in Stray Leaves in Autumn. He was a character who clearly struck a chord with many people. Struck a chord with me too. Needless to say. All of my characters strike a chord with me. If they didn’t, I couldn’t immerse myself so deeply in their lives during that agonizing time which covers the nativity of a work of fiction. I loved Clinton, but the dynamics of my story left me in no doubt that I had to sacrifice him to the greater good of my novel.’
There was an impressed stillness while the audience took in this act of creative magnanimity.
‘And now …’ the author broke the silence, nonchalantly picking up a copy of his novel, ‘before I open up to questions from you, I would like to conclude with a reading from Stray Leaves in Autumn. And I think I dare mention to you now – you’ll be the first people to know this – that all the Ts are not quite crossed and the Is dotted, but there is a strong interest from Hollywood in developing the book for a movie. Early days, of course, a lot can go wrong, but there’s talk of Meryl Streep being interested in playing the part of Celia. And, as for Tony … well, there is talk … no, no, I don’t want to tempt providence here. Let’s just say there is a male actor being talked of who has an even greater profile than Meryl Streep. But …’ he raised a finger to his lips ‘… keep it to yourselves, eh?’ Knowing full well that they wouldn’t.
Burton St Clair’s reading, like the rest of his performance, sounded almost offhand, but again was the product of meticulous preparation.
He concluded on a funny line and, as he bowed his head, the audience’s laughter melted into enthusiastic applause. While this was going on he poured more water into the glass he’d occasionally drunk from during his talk and took a long swig.
‘Right,’ said Burton with a self-depreciatingly boyish grin. ‘Any questions?’
Jude wasn’t to know, but when he’d started on his literary career, this cue had always been greeted with very English awkwardness, silence, and a lot of people concentrating on their shoes. Every author doing a library talk had experienced that aching hiatus. And it was frequently only ended by a member of staff from the library hosting the evening coming in with her own carefully prepared fall-back question.
But that was no longer the case. The Fethering librarian who had introduced Burton St Clair, Di Thompson, did not anticipate any such awkwardness. With dark hair cut so short she looked almost like a recent cancer patient, she sat serenely at the back of the audience, pleased with how well the evening she had set up was going. She knew that, since the mass explosion of book clubs, many of which were organized by librarians, such reticence about asking questions had long gone. Audiences at author events were well used to expressing their literary views, and question-asking hands shot up as soon as they were given the opportunity.
The hand which got in ahead of the others belonged to a thin, shaven-headed man in his fifties, who wore a safari jacket and combat trousers in a different camouflage pattern, above black Doc Martens. On being given the nod by the visiting author, he asked in a voice which combined lethargy and insolence in equal measure, ‘Can you tell me why the photograph behind you is twenty years younger than you are?’