Edna O'Brien: Life, Stories

That's why there were some news stories and in that selection as

well? Yeah. Can I ask you something, why do you think people are so

curious about you? Well, I try not to be aware of that. I don't know

why. I think maybe... Have we "...one of our most foremost

writers, someone once described as a scandalous woman writing

scandalous novels." "Her books were instantly banned in the country of

her birth." "...a reputation for being something of a playgirl of

the western world." Ladies and gentlemen, Edna O'Brien. Hello, on

tonight's programme we go to Abu Dhabi with Edna O'Brien. "A

successful novelist, Ms O'Brien is full of frank and provocative

ideas..." "Ireland's top-selling lady novelist." Which personal vice

gives you most satisfaction? think occasional adultery. Like

once a year. I was longing to go with you, but I wasn't brought by

you. If I'm referring to my mum and I say, "Oh, she's writing a book or

something." People go, "What does she do?" And I say, "She's a

writer." Then they always go, "Would we have heard of her?" So I

say, "Well, it's Edna O'Brien," and they either go, "Oh right, or they

go no! No! You quite threw me by that for a moment. There's a

question lurking in the back of my mind. Usually, they ask me the

question and I say yes and then they look at me and they go, "Is he

I like this part of London, Chelsea. It's smaller. It's on a scale.

They're costly houses. I couldn't buy one, but they are costly houses.

But it's shabby enough as well. And you see people, older with walking

frames and small shops, it has that terrible cliche, it has the remains

of a village life. I know my neighbours across the road in No 1

and they come and have a little drink every four or five weeks. I

know a lovely neighbour next door to me who's quiet. Very important.

My mother had a great fear of landlords. Well, I have inherited

not only the fear of it, but the actuality of it. I believe there

are happy houses and unhappy houses. This is a very happy little house.

It's not that I have not shed the odd tear in this house, but that's

different. It's a little nest and the world outside, when I want to

meet it, I meet it and when I want I don't love living in London. I

feel lonely in London. I would perhaps feel lonely in Ireland, so

let me say that also. I don't feel part of any literary scene, to tell

you the truth. You see, literary scenes can be very over-rated, to

put it mildly. Joyce said it, "Don't talk to me about literature,

'They were driven a few miles north to where a group of young men were

digging a long trench for the electricity cables to be put in

later on. At first sight, it was hard not to imagine those young men,

young though they were, destined for all eternity to be kept digging

some never-ending grave.' I was given the inspiration by Sasha, who,

I suppose, knows me better than anyone in the world. And Sasha said

he thought I would have both a curiosity and an empathy with these

men who had come around the same time as I did, or a bit earlier or

a bit later. And lived in their own sort of ghettos and they also had

'I thought of the Shovel Kings and their names suddenly materialised

before me, as in a litany. Haulie, Murph, Moleskin Muggavin, Turnip

O'Mara, Whiskey Tip, Oranmore Joe, Teaboy Teddy Accordion Bill,

Rafferty and countless others, gone to dust.' I have to say that since

Sasha is an architect, I've taken The one thing I didn't want to do

was be a writer. When my mum moved to Ovington Street, there were a

great number of books. The books were all over the place, piled up

on tables, so I said, "Well, if you're moving into this house, what

you need is a library and so we're going to design you a beautiful

library." Then obviously we had all the shelves made and the walls and

the floor painted red. commemoration of Anton Chekhov and

Russia. I always hope and endeavour to work as soon as I get up. Once I

go to my desk, I'm there. And if I'm lucky, I can start. I write in

my little notebooks, this is Stage One, and then that is so illegible,

that is like... I don't know, as if it was written by an animal or

scrawl, scrawl, scrawl! I transfer that to the clean sheet of Merrion

Hotel paper. For a time, I used to take a few pages and eventually,

Bernie O'Meara, who is a wonderful woman there, she said, "Why don't

we give you a bale of it?" So I came home with the bale, and this

is true, the Merrion Hotel paper. I also have one from over in

Connemara, Ballynahinch, but I didn't steal as much of that. I

didn't get the chance, really! And that's very important. The paper,

the pen, the silence. When I do sit down to write, I am very tense.

An abiding memory of childhood is her writing by hand and talking as

she writes. Steps to Parnassus had The verbal articulation and the

transmission of material from the psyche out through the fingers and

onto paper are all inextricably bound up. Scarrup...that's the word.

Then revision takes place and she's a fiendish and obsessive reviser.

I remember lying in bed going to sleep when I was very small and I

could hear the clicking of the typewriter, and the ching! And it

always was a very comforting sound. Yes. Also, I cooked a bit of dinner

and things. Oh no, you did all that 'She wanted to go home, not to

London to the pipes of light, but home to the race to which she

belonged. And then she shivered uncontrollably, knowing that their

thoughts were no longer hers. She had vanished back into childhood

and the dark springs of her terrors.' I was born in a blue room

in our house, which is Drewsborough House, and it was equi-distant

between two small hamlets, or villages. One was Tuamgraney and

the other was Scariff, County Clare. I thought of Drewsborough as being

a bit of a mansion when I was growing up. They had been to

America, so it had some of those influences - the bay windows, a

vestibule. No-one else had a vestibule. I'm still not sure what

a vestibule means! And the tiled floors and stained glass. Oh, yes,

it was grand and it was also beautiful. In the house was my

mother and father, my brother, John. I think who saw himself as a bit of

a toff. My sister Patsy, my sister Eileen, me. I think I always felt

the ghost of a child that died before me who was called Mary. I

always felt she was somewhere, in a wardrobe or something. Well, I was

a bit loopy. But most lovingly of all, there was our workman Torpey.

And I loved Torpey and I used to say, at a very young age, "I'm

going to marry Torpey and we will live in the chicken run." I thought

our dining room, which, by the way, no plate ever was set down on the

table there, I used to call it heaven. I was very fanciful and I

would sit in that dining room. That was the happiest room, because no-

one ever went into it much. Then across from it there was what was

called the vacant room. My mother stored apples there, all along the

kerbs of the fire and the room always smelt that sort of cidery

smell, even when the apples were gone, of apple. Every room contains

I was with my agent, Ed Victor, one day and the question was what to

write next. I'd finished Saints and Sinners. And he said, "Why don't

you write a memoir?" A memoir is a hard thing to do. We'reloudly. No,

actually, try, "With triumph". Edna, it's all-consuming, really.

Oh, Edna will delete pages sometimes, paragraphs and

paragraphs and I'll say, "No, I want this," and she'll say, "Keep

going, keep going," and she'll just... You're very sure what

doesn't work. I think I'm probably very unsure, that I have to work so

hard to get it right. Yeah. These are photographs, a bit of a collage,

that Faber, my publisher, put together as to see what would be an

ideal photograph for my memoir, on the cover. I never look the same in

any single photograph, which must be an indication of a mental

condition. This one of Mama and Dada, as I called them, my mother

and father and myself, I'm delighted to have found. We found

it this morning. It is one of the few photographs I have of home.

Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling, from glen to glen and

down the mountainside. # The summer's gone and all the leaves

have fallen # Ah, my father. Who was my father?

A tall man, a wounded man and a yearning man, I would say. He had a

sort of wild streak and also an untameable streak probably. He did

not want to be tamed and was, all his life, a fanatic about horses.

He also was a drinker. He wasn't what you'd call a genial drinker.

He was a very angry drinker. I was afraid of him. I was the last child

and maybe because I was the last child, or maybe because of my

nature, my mother was almost affixed to me, if you know what I

mean. And I was her little protectress when there were rows or

scenes. And naturally, he hated that. And I think, if you were to

ask my sister, he was very fond of her, she was his favourite, he

called her Whitehead, my sister, Eileen. With me, he was harder on

me and maybe part of it was my character in that I saw everything

She was always very cute as a little girl. And would ask you a

lot of questions. She was very quick to spot anything unusual.

I think he did not like that. Ironically, when the books were

published and the brouhaha scenario came on, he wasn't particularly

cross about them at all. Because he wasn't as religious as my mother,

you see. And there's one story he was very proud to tell. He moved

from the horses to the cattle to make a few bob and this buyer said,

"Did your daughter write August Is A Wicked Month?" And my father said,

"Yes she did." And your man says, "I bet you had a page out of that,"

meaning a few bob. And my father said, "No, I had two." It was his

way of saying to me, "I stood up 'Suddenly one rainy day, as we

walked down the side of the Liffey towards the Customs House, he said,

"Have I ever kissed you?" And he kissed me quite abruptly. I felt

faintly sick and giddy and have no idea whether that kiss was quick or

prolonged. I loved that part of Dublin then, and forever, because

it was there that I had laid my lips to the image of him that I had

created.' Everyone moved to Dublin when they were 18 if they could, or

17 I think I was. I thought Dublin would open me up to all sorts of

excitements, giddiness and literature. I came to be an

assistant in a pharmacy. It was my parents' and my brother's decision

for me. In those days, you worked for free in a chemist's shop to

learn the trade. To learn to pack the shelves, put Glauber salts into

tiny bags, boric powder, weigh babies that were brought in. I was

always afraid I would drop these babies. So you learn that and you

go to lectures at night, where you are supposed to be really learning

about the medicines and the properties of the medicines. I was

telephoned by a journalist called John Ross. He said he was with some

people in a pub in Henry Street and one of them was a writer. A writer!

Oh, a writer? Meeting a writer was like getting a plenary indulgence.

You become a writer. And I went on my bicycle and Ernest Gebler was

there. He was a very engaging man, a very good-looking man. And a very

persuasive man. And, to me, he was a very...um... He was an

intellectual, that is the truth, he was, but he also seemed very

cosmopolitan. He'd been to Hollywood, he'd been to New York.

He'd been to places and he spoke very fluently. I was bedazzled, I

My mother was informed by an anonymous letter that I was going

out with a married man. He had been married. Who was also a communist.

And if you read the Irish papers of that time and the dictums of

Archbishop McQuaid, communism was mentioned every minute. Sex and

communism were the two things. So that I very hastily and nervously

left the chemist's shop in my white coat, with no money in my pocket. I

had qualified, so I could have taken my salary, but I literally

walked out of the chemist shop, down the back garden and out

through back streets to get a bus to where Ernest Gebler lived, which

I was with a man who was 20 years older, Sigmund Freud would say a

father figure. That would be true in some part. I was happy with the

man that I, in a sense, had run towards. But I was also frightened

of. He was a quite controlling man and I saw that very early on. He

knew that I wanted to write, but I don't think he thought I would

achieve it, because again I was a little bit flowery and quoting bits

of poetry and all that. But he gave me a subscription to a library,

which was in Switzer's in Dublin at that time. And that was the first

time I read Scott Fitzgerald, with It was a beautiful book, but sad.

It was called Tender Is The Night. I skipped half of the words in my

anxiety to read it quickly, because I wanted to know if the man would

leave the woman or not. All the nicest men were in books, the

strange, complex, romantic men, the ones I admired most.' My mother was

writing and sending people. My sister came to know when I was

going to get married. I was also pregnant. My son Carlo is not

ashamed of that. I'm his mother - whether I'm in marriage, in wedlock,

in or out. Well, it wasn't a white wedding! It wasn't a June wedding.

It was in Blanchardstown. There were men building, men on ladders,

they were doing the roof, and they were the witnesses. Then I went to

the Bailey restaurant with my husband and my sister Eileen came.

And he had invited Valare Monger and his wife, Sheila. So that was

Ernest was a writer himself and I think he felt he had failed or

disappointed himself in not becoming a more poetic writer.

Ernie was writing, or commencing, on a book called The Love

Investigator. And he wanted to come to England. Subsequently, he said

it was of my doing, but I had not really that much influence or

authority over him, and that is the truth. I was delighted. I mean,

when I heard we were coming to England, I envisioned Mayfair. Not

that I knew what Mayfair was but I did envision something a bit more,

My first memories of London were a crowded, hectic place, sooted,

because it was Waterloo Station and the glass roof was all sooted. And

even the pigeons waddling around, they were not sleek like birds in

the country. And it was November 1958. I was with my little children

and their father had come a few days earlier to install us in what

I call outer-outer suburbia, in SW20. It was called Cannon Hill

Lane and it was a little house, semi-detached, mock-Tudor I think

is the name given to it. The cut from Ireland was so fierce

internally. It was just like an inner cosmic loneliness of having

cut off from what I had been and where I had been. I was very helped

by a publisher, Ian Hamilton, who liked me very much, I can say that.

I did not have a love affair with him. I can also say that, it's the

truth. I liked him and I was grateful to him for giving me an

advance of �50 to write a book. I sat down in my children's bedroom

after I brought them to school each morning and began to write The

Country Girls. And felt more emotion than I realised I was

capable of. Yet the book itself - the language and the story - is

volatile and has an energy which 'The black underwear was Baba's

idea. She said that we wouldn't have to wash it so often and that

it was useful if we ever had a street accident or if men were

trying to strip us in the back of cars. Baba thought of all these

things. I got black nylons too. I read somewhere that they were

literary and I had written one or two poems since I came to Dublin. I

read them to Baba, and she said they were nothing to the ones on

mortuary cards.' I wrote the book very fast and in this severed state,

severed from all my previous associations of rain and wind and

smell and prayer and so on. And the book wrote itself. I gave him the

manuscript and he read it and he said, "You can do it. And I will

never forgive you." I didn't reply. My reply was that I remember it.

Even here in London, if I take a taxi, if I go out at night, which

is occasional, but I do seldom but sometimes, they always say, "Did

you write The Country Girls?" They never say they read it. It's always

their wife or their mother. It's usually their mother now. But it

was a bit of a success and my husband could not take it. It was

something, it was as if by doing it, I had taken his talents from under

his feet. And he was both very shaken internally by it and very

annoyed that, for all my flibbertigibet and idiocy or semi-

idiocy and my cowering, that I was able to do it. I walked away from

that marriage on that day, September 24th, 1962, because it

was undeviatingly punishing and grim. I suppose I had reached a

situation where I would either go 'She pictures her children, halved,

quartered, torn between her husband and herself, her children asleep in

her mother's house at that moment, oblivious of the rupture that is to

come and powerless to stop this influx. She gets out of bed and

kneels and prays. "Oh God, let me not crack. Oh, please God, let me

not crack." There was a lot of tears at railway stations, bus

stops, school gates, and fighting He asked me to sit down on the sofa.

He gave me a bit of paper and a pencil. "Now, write a letter saying

whether you want to go down the road marked Ernie or you want to go

down the road marked Edna. You can either go down this road, which is

the road of your father, which will mean you'll be normal, well-

adjusted, psychologically balanced and a number of other virtuous

things. Or you can go down this road, which is the road marked

'your mother' and you will be a liar, corrupt, weak, you'll have a

squint, you'll have no rigour, you'll be a mess. Those are your

two choices and this is the time that you're now going to make the

choice." Of course I want to be with my mother. It's much more fun

being with her in Putney. We just are able to be boys. Whereas, when

we were with my father, we were...erm... Well, there was an

atmosphere of control and coercion. I said I wanted to go to my

mother's house and be with my mother. There was no alternative.

Oh, I think he was furious. Coldly furious. I did get the custody and

I'm amazed I got it, because he had marshalled evidence against me that

was like a ton of bricks. When I left him, I left whatever money I

had earned - and it was quite a bit in those days. I never took it,

because I never was allowed to take it. I very seldom saw Ernest Gebler

after that. I saw him once in a taxi in Bond Street. And I saw him

and it took me a second to recognise him. And I saw him two or

three times in a nursing home in Dublin. And I wouldn't be phoney

enough to pretend that there was At that time, London, it was

actually the 1970s but it felt still like the 1960s. It was like a

village. I knew a few actors, TP McKenna from Ireland. He introduced

me to Sam Peckinpah. I go to a party of Sam Peckinpah's. I see

Judy Garland. I invite these people to my house and then they brought

other people. It was like a chain letter. It wasn't difficult at all.

In fact, too many people came to these Saturday night parties. Judy

Garland was brought by somebody, I can't remember who. She looked

around this room and Sean Connery would have been there and Diane

Cilento and RD Laing was there and Vadim and Jane Fonda. She looked so

scared. And she came in, she took one look at this gathering and she

put her arm on the escort who had brought her and they went out again.

From my mother, oh God, I inherited this thing that the whole thing was

best if I do it. I'd cook goose and make these things and blancmanges

and all sorts of wonderful things. And I loved it and Carlo and Sasha

loved it. They'd carry up these crates of drink. And I remember one

night, the Tynans, whom I knew, Kenneth Tynan, they brought

Princess Margaret and there was also another man with them. It

wasn't Alex Douglas-Home, it was a brother. And I was sort of opening

the door, seeing to two fires, opening bottles, having cooked all

day. And Douglas-Home was very offended with me for not curtseying

to Princess Margaret, because she did like being curtsied to, but

really it's not possible if your hands are full. And I also feel

that it's probably not necessary. I welcomed her and she had a lovely

time and came again. I felt very at ease with Richard Burton. He was

very engaging and he was a bard, there's no doubt about it. He was a

living bard. Elizabeth Taylor was more - she was quite formidable

with me. I was at a dinner of Leslie Caron's because she was

going to do August Is A Wicked Month, in fact, with Laurence

Harvey. Marlon Brando was at the dinner and he said he would drive

me home. And Marlon Brando dismissed his chauffeur and I said,

"Don't dismiss your chauffeur, you won't get a taxi back." He said, "I

don't want a taxi back." And Marlon Brando stayed, in my kitchen I

would like to say and not in my bedroom. But he was a magnetic man

and he was... So...animate. He was so full of stories and gifts and

anger and beguilement. He was amazing. He was an amazing person

to talk to. Yes, Robert Mitchum was also a wild man. I'm leaving it at

It's upon her novels that her reputation largely rests. We have a

unique introduction to her latest work published last month and

called Night. A 'trip' she called it, and it is very worthy, which

makes it all the more surprising a choice for a silent film, but

that's what her son, Carlos Gebler, has been making during the school

holidays. Night was a very deranged book, I think, for me to write. It

was the dividing line between a particular kind of writing and a

'The silences here are powerful. I can hear my own hair splitting.'

had taken LSD with RD Laing. He was a maverick as a doctor and very

gifted, but slightly mad himself. And I took the odd LSD with him.

That I would not call therapy. It was a jolt to the mind and that's

for sure. And to the brain. It was an axe going through the brain, it

'And another thing I can hear is the salt, the little shiver salt

gives as I sprinkle it onto my fork full of cabbage, or whatever I

happen to be eating. I'm a divil I would say I know the first person

that I was totally in love with was my mother. I was totally in love

with my mother. I thought she had the most beautiful face. When she

was young, I'd sit on her lap and write, because I thought the lines

on her forehead were like the lines of a ruled copybook. And I would

write little odes to her on her forehead. I mean, complete love.

Affixiated love, or is that the I remember once she said, after

coming from being out in the field, she says, "Oh, I was admiring those

cows," she said. "Why, I said, what do you see in them?" "Oh, I think,"

she said, "they're so happy. They have nothing to trouble them. I

wish I was a cow." Because my brother and my sisters were older

than I by a good bit, they were away at school when I was seven and

eight and things began to, if you like, hit home. I was very much

with her and I slept with her, in fact. We did have fear. We did have

this fear hovering over us. And I remember once when we felt in

danger from Dada and we went to her mother's. Rather stupidly, I went

around the bus telling people the trouble we were in. My mother was

furious with me. So she had that She was a quiet child, a rather sad

person, I would think, but a very observant girl. While I was

biddable and her child, she was... She was happy. But when I began to

show signs of wanting to break away, not that one every fully does, to

tell you the truth, she was very suspicious and prying. She felt,

with cause, because I was so close to her, that she owned me. She did,

till the day she died, love me so much. But she didn't understand

that love has to have, with your own child, also you have to let

them loose a bit. So that my subsequent history, like eloping,

da, da, da, was very much the result of that. When I wrote, began

to write, The Country Girls, of course it's set in that place. And

it's steeped in the emotions and the feelings and the soda bread and

the everything else of that place. Even if it had never been banned,

even if it hadn't been banned at all, she just didn't like it.

Because she confused openness with betrayal. She thought I had

humiliated them. And she never tackled me too much, although I was

very aware of it. I still went home, I'd like to just point out, my mum

never sought to impose either a nationality or religion. It was

like, "You decide". My grandmother was not quite like that and she was

a very devout Catholic. Very. We would go on Sundays. To Mass.

wouldn't go the twice a day that she went. No. And I would say,

"Don't go up to the front seat. We have to be back a few seats to see

when people are standing up and getting down," because they were

leaping up. Yes. And then, eventually, in her older years, my

mother mellowed and so long as I went to Mass with her. Part of it

was to do with neighbours as much as with God or Christianity. She

would say, "Ah, we'll let them sleep in, aren't they princes?"

She did like them very much and she allowed them not to go to Mass,

even while fearing that their souls Edna, your idea of a night out.

night out. A perfect night out. It would be to go out with the man I

love, who was quite generous and bought some champagne and didn't

say, "Oh, it cost 1.80 a glass," and, above all, didn't tell me how

much he loved his wife. The money I got from the movie that wasn't good,

Zee & Co, XY & Zee they called it somewhere else. I got �39,000 and I

decided to move. I lived in Putney at that time and I had a lovely

house on the river. But after Carlo and Sasha went away to school, I

felt very cut off. In short, I wanted to move to Chelsea. Not

because it was so fashionable, but because it was so full of life. We

drove around and I came to this house in Carlyle Square and I said,

"Ah, this is the house I want." And I lived there for 15 years and,

through my own improvidence, being a romantic in matters of love and I

think somewhat mentally deficient in matters of money, I lost that

house. And it was my stronghold. And every time I go by there, I

look in at it. Talk of exile! I look in at it with such yearning

and such passion and such anger and so on. So I did own that house. I

It takes one at least two years, but it's usually four, to write a

book. During that long and, for the most part, anxious stretch, there's

no income. Unless you win a prize. So I haven't been all that lucky at

winning. I did get one lately, but they haven't been showering in. I

need money and I love to have my hair done and I love a nice drink

and I love some of the things that money brings. Of course I do.

Unfortunately, my thinking isn't directed in that way and the only

things I can write are the stories that don't really have "Hollywood"

written on them. Oh! Thank you very much. Hmm, this looks peculiar.

Moscow! What can be coming from Moscow? But there's always these

lovely things. It's a fairytale moment. I often say to Nadia when

we turn on those old e-mails, or those new e-mails, "You never know,

this might be an offer, a movie, a prize, a play." But in terms of

just the everyday realities, it is hard. But then I say to myself, "OK,

you chose this life, now you make what you can of it, because

grumbling is no good." People say to me, "Well, your books have a

darker hue now than they had." I would have to agree with that. I

also find that you learn from each book you write. It's like a ladder

and you start at the bottom of the 'Gardai in the Killaloe and Scariff

areas are following up a number of reported sightings of Miss Riney.

She was seen driving through the village with a man in her car last

night' 'The wood is no longer the harmless place it once was, marked

now as a human can be, marked by its violation, its wood memory. The

habitation of their frightful pilgrimage, their hapless cries,

three bodies soon to be wrapped in plastic and brought down to the

waiting hearses. It was about eight years after the actual tragedy that

I sat down to write the book. Well, I went back and back and back to

that forest and imbibed what it would be on a warm day, carrying a

child with a gun to your head. I mean, it's Calvary. It is the story

of Calvary. And that's why I was 'I heard the voice of the devil

saying. "Kill her, kill her". I said, we have to go to the woods.

She tried to defy me. The gun was hid outside behind a tree. She

didn't like it. She didn't want a gun around the child. I said, I'm

only after getting it. I didn't think of killing her before that. I

had no reason to.' People had a great fear. They had a great fear

of the young man, as if somehow he had supernatural or demonic powers.

Rather like in Arthur Miller's The Crucible, where suddenly this

contagion of terror hits a whole I re-examined the wound and there

were many people who felt hurt by that. And there were many who were

not hurt by it within her circle, and that is the truth. The telling

of something, if you tell it with some, I hope, feeling and, forgive

the awful word but, some dignity about it, I don't think that's an

act of harm or villainy. I don't. I think what I did was to commemorate

something very terrible and not I love this street. Yeah? I love it.

I come many Saturdays and I sit here, so now we know each other.

Yes, I remember you. I had a burst appendix in the 1980s and I almost

died, in fact. In short, I was brought by emergency by someone in

the street and I was saved. I was saved. And ...touch wood. One of

the visitors who came to see me was Desmond Davis, who had directed The

Country Girls and Girl With Green Eyes. And he told me about Dr

Alexander Newman, who was a Jungian, although these terms Jungian and

Freudian are loosely thrown about. So I went to him and his very first

words to me, in his rooms in Primrose Hill, were "Why did you

burst?" And I said, "Probably rage, the rage of a long time." And one

day I said to him, "What do I most fear?" And he said, "What you most

fear is madness." And when he told me that, calmly and tenderly, I

felt... A great weight. As if a chain had been taken not off my

chest, but from inside my chest, and cast off - because I didn't

fear it any more. And that was something huge. Both that and the

experience of having sons changed my whole attitude to men. I wasn't

so afraid of men and I wasn't drawn 'Love is like nature in reverse.

First it fruits, then it flowers. Then it seems to wither. Then it

goes deep, deep down into its burrow where no-one sees it, where

it is lost from sight, and ultimately, people die with that

secret buried inside their souls.' People ask me, for instance, why

did I never marry again and my glib answer is, "Well, no-one asked me."

It's a glib answer, it's half-true. I am the wrong disposition for a

sensible marital love. I realise that now. I'm the wrong disposition.

Well, it's not the end of the world. What's your biggest regret around

love and in your life? That's my secret, which I'm not going to tell

When I go back to Drewsborough now, I think of the very early days. I

think of frightened days. I think of when my mother made jam and the

smell of it and licking the jam from the back of the wooden spoon.

I think of rows, scenes, in that house. I think of the excitement of

visitors. I think of when I left it and would go back on holiday. I

think of it when my mother died and her will was read out in the vacant

room. I think of my father too frightened to live in that house

after she died. And getting some boy to come up at night to mind him.

The father of whom I'd been so afraid. I think of the house shut

up and the house having to inhabit the ghost of itself. I think of it

deteriorating down the years. First wildcats and things came around and