Inspiration

Where does the idea for a story come from? I think it’s born out of a kind of creative sludge in our heads: that particular blend of everything we have ever done, everything we have ever seen or heard or read, everything we have ever felt, and everything that has ever happened to us. Sometimes it seems as though stories are floating around in the air, waiting to be pinned down, but each storyteller will go about the process of capturing one in a different way.

So what is washing around in my mind that might have given rise to Swallowcliffe Hall? The old country house perched on a clifftop, perhaps, where I went to boarding school for a couple of years, with its tiled mosaic floors, echoing marble staircase, wood-panelled rooms and glass cases full of mournful-looking stuffed birds. Or maybe the silver chatelaine we found in my father-in-law’s flat after he died. Running my fingers over its smooth, engraved surface, I couldn’t help wondering about the stern Victorian housekeeper who might have hooked this clinking bunch of keys, pillboxes and button hooks into her belt, striking fear into the hearts of under housemaids as she stalked along the corridors of her domain.

At any rate, the seeds of an idea were planted. Then, re-reading one of my favourite books, Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson, I came across this passage describing a young girl leaving her home to take up a place in service:

The tin trunk would be sent on to the railway station by the carrier and the mother would walk the three miles to the station with her daughter. They would leave Lark Rise, perhaps before it was quite light on a winter morning, the girl in her best, would-be fashionable clothes and the mother carrying the baby of the family, rolled in its shawl…

They went off cheerfully, even proudly; but, some hours later, Laura met the mother returning alone. She was limping, for the sole of one of her old boots had parted company with the upper, and the eighteen-months-old child must have hung heavily on her arm. When asked if Aggie had gone off all right, she nodded, but could not answer; her heart was too full. After all, she was just a mother who had sent her young daughter into the unknown and was tormented with doubts and fears for her.

And so the image came into my head of a mother and daughter saying goodbye to each other at the gates of a large country house (which I thought would be more poignant and dramatic than a railway-station farewell) … and there was the beginning of my story. Thinking about it, I realised there must have been many parallels between the worries of a Victorian girl and one on the threshold of some big adventure today – perhaps starting at a new school, or going on a journey away from her family for the first time. Am I wearing the right clothes? Will I know where to go, what to do? Will anyone talk to me? Will I make friends? In the back of my mind were probably my own feelings of loneliness when I started at boarding school, that sense of desolation as my parents’ car vanished around the corner, leaving me behind. In fact, the original opening to House of Secrets might have been influenced by these emotions a little too much,

It was still early when we arrived at the gates of the big house, my mother and I. We had risen in the dark, leaving the sleeping village soon after, and a couple of hours’ steady walking had brought us here. The coachman would have come to collect me the evening before, but I wanted to make the most of the last precious time we had together at home and had decided to make my own way to the Hall that morning. There could be no turning back now; the new year had begun and with it, a new life for me. I reached for my mother’s warm hand in the depths of her shawl and held it tight for comfort. But when her eyes met mine, all I could see were my own fears and anxieties mirrored there. All the love I had ever felt for my dear family and my home, poor though it was, suddenly rushed over me like a wave and I clung to Mother, feeling as though my heart would break at the very thought of leaving her.  

I like the rhythm of these sentences, but when I came to know my heroine, Polly Perkins, a little better, I realised this behaviour was much too drippy for her. She wasn’t the sort of girl who’d cling on to anyone. (That’s what I love most about writing: the moment when your characters start telling you what they will and won’t do!) So I rewrote the beginning – something I’ve had to do with every one of my books – starting the action after Polly and her mother had already said goodbye. This helps to make her arrival at the Hall more immediate and dramatic, and also solves the problem of getting Polly from the gates, up the drive and into the house (a rather boring passage in my first version). See which opening you prefer:

I stood on the doorstep of the big house, my heart thumping so hard it was fit to jump out of my chest, raised the knocker and brought it down with a clap that echoed around the empty courtyard. A couple of pigeons pecking at crumbs on the cobblestones fluttered up into the air; such a great noise in that quiet place startled me too, even though I had made it myself. For two pins I would have taken up my basket and run all the way home, but there could be no turning back now: the new year had begun and with it, a new life for me. I had arrived to start work as under housemaid at Swallowcliffe Hall – if only someone would let me in.

Now I had my first paragraph, but what about the rest of the book? Some writers have no idea how things are going to turn out when they start their first page, but I like to know roughly how my story is going to fall and spend some time planning it first. The final version may be slightly different, but the bones of the plot – the skeleton on which everything else hangs, if you like – are usually already there in my head. I also had to do a great deal of research before I began writing, to find out as much as possible about the Victorian period. (You can read more about this in the ‘Background Information’ section of this site.)

A gatekeeper and his dog, standing outside the gate lodge at the entrance to a large country house in Edwardian times (Philippa Besant)

Children from Harby village school, photographed in 1890. Some of the older girls in the centre of the picture might have started their first jobs in service (or ‘petty places’, as they were called) not long afterwards (Harby School)

House of Secrets took me roughly six months to finish. There were so many different ideas I wanted to include that the final story became too complicated but luckily, I have a great editor at Simon and Schuster to help with that. She points out where I’m veering off the rails and suggests ways to simplify the plot (among other useful pieces of advice). In the end, I probably cut out about a third of what I’d written. Sometimes, shorter is better. That’s something to remember in your own work – you may be able to make a scene punchier if you cut it down to the bare bones. Ditch the waffle!

A spooky PS

There’s an intriguing twist to the ‘Swallowcliffe Hall’ tale. In the process of putting this website together, I discovered that there is a place called Swallowcliffe in Wiltshire, which has a site of its own: www.swallowcliffe.com. It looks like a picture-postcard English village, all rolling fields and stone cottages smothered in roses. I thought it might be fun to contact someone from real-life Swallowcliffe to tell them about the Swallowcliffe I’d invented – and the person I ended up talking to was a Mr Stanbury. Cue for goosebumps: Stanbury happens to be Polly Perkins’ married name, and the surname of her daughter Grace, the heroine of Standing in the Shadows. So now I know this story was meant to be written …

I hope you enjoy the book. Do email to tell me what you think or ask any questions.