After the War Is Over (31 page)

A Conversation with Jennifer Robson

Congratulations on all the success your first novel
Somewhere in France
has had! Were you surprised by the response from readers?

I have to admit I was! When you’re a writer, you spend years working more or less
alone, and so when you present your characters to the world it’s hard not to feel
a little bit anxious, even protective. I had become very fond of Lilly and Robbie,
and indeed of all the characters in the book (excepting Lady Cumberland, of course),
so it was terribly gratifying when so many people fell in love with them, too.

We first met Charlotte as Lilly’s friend in
Somewhere in France.
How did you decide to make her the heroine of your second book?

When I was creating her character, she kept reminding me of other women who have inspired
me, among them my grandmother, who spent her working life as a journalist, and my
late mother, who was a lawyer and, in the last years of her life, a judge. Both had
the courage and determination to work in fields traditionally dominated by men, and
they persevered in the face of what must often have been quite dispiriting working
conditions.

It made me wonder: although I grew up in a family where no one ever said I couldn’t
do something because I was female, what must it have been like for women such as Charlotte
and Lilly and their contemporaries? How would it have felt to live and work at a time
when so many doors were closed to women?

I also knew that I had to resolve the story of what happens between Charlotte and
Edward, for good or for bad, or else risk the wrath of everyone who had been waiting
to discover what becomes of them after the war.

During the war, many women did “men’s” work, and took on all kinds of new and exciting
challenges. Did that have an effect on their lives after the war?

It did, but in a pretty limited fashion. Yes, some women (though not all) received
the right to vote in 1918, and from 1919 onwards the Sex Disqualification (Removal)
Act opened the professions to women and also made it illegal to sack a woman if she
got married. In practice, however, high levels of unemployment after the war—levels
that were particularly dire in the industrial north—meant that virtually all women
who had been employed during the war were given the sack shortly after its end, and
few were then able to find positions outside occupations that had been traditionally
considered “women’s work.”

What the war did encourage, however, was a growing conviction among women that they
were absolutely able to do the same work as men, that they ought to receive the same
wages if they did the same work, and that they contributed just as much to society
as did men. They saw themselves as capable, as
able,
and that perception lingered. Their daughters picked up on it, and then their grand-daughters—and
so, while appreciable and measurable change did not happen until after the Second
World War, it did happen. And I would say that we all owe a debt of thanks to those
first women who had the courage to leave behind everything that was familiar and comfortable,
and do the jobs they were asked to do.

What was your favorite part of researching
After the War is Over?

Oh, definitely the portions that involved Oxford. I studied there in the early 1990s,
and it was great fun to send Charlotte and Edward along streets I walked as a student,
to put them in some of the same buildings I worked in and visited, and to describe
the splendor of a degree ceremony. Fortunately for me, the city itself hasn’t changed
all that much since the turn of the last century, and the ceremonial aspects of life
at the university have hardly altered at all. So it was mostly a case of re-acquainting
myself with smaller details that I had forgotten over the years, and brushing up on
my Latin a little bit!

Were there any historical details that were especially difficult to uncover?

So many resources are available online via digital databases that in most cases it
was simply a matter of digging and asking the right questions of the right people.
I did have to be very careful when I was describing the layout of certain neighborhoods
in Liverpool and the East End of London, however—large swaths of both were all but
wiped out during the Blitz, so I couldn’t rely on modern maps as wayfinders. Instead,
I turned to ordnance survey maps of the period, which showed me the streets as they
existed in 1919.

I will say, though, that if I know a street or building is largely the same as it
was a century ago, I find Google Street View a tremendously helpful (and entertaining)
means of putting myself in the shoes of my characters—just as long as I ignore the
modern signage, cars, and other evidence of the twenty-first century.

How did you research the details of Edward’s injuries?

I began by reading a number of books and articles from the immediate post-war period
that sought to explain and understand the phenomenon of what was then known as neurasthenia,
but today we would call post-traumatic stress disorder, or
PTSD. At the beginning of the war it was understood imperfectly, to say the least.
Though the number of soldiers and officers executed for cowardice—but who in fact
were likely suffering from PTSD—is often exaggerated, it was nonetheless a horrible
and tragic by-product of the lack of understanding that then prevailed.

By the end of the war, however, there was a growing consensus that a man might, through
no fault of his own, be so traumatized by what he had suffered that he was truly not
fit for duty. It was also the case that growing numbers of men were being diagnosed
with traumatic neurasthenia, which recognized that a man might be badly injured by
the concussive effects of shellfire, even though he bore no readily identifiable wounds.
In the case of many men, their concussions were overlaid by tissue wounds or fractures,
as well as PTSD, so it was difficult for their physicians to diagnose them, let alone
treat them properly.

For my descriptions of Edward’s concussion—its signs and symptoms, as well as his
recovery—I drew upon the experiences of a close friend. After suffering a severe concussion,
as well as a skull fracture, she was bedridden for many months and recovered only
after a frustratingly long period of complete rest and withdrawal from work and her
daily routine. I should add that most people who suffer from concussion do recover
fairly quickly, but a minority—like Edward, and my friend—suffer from post-concussion
syndrome. For them, recovery can take months or even years.

Do you have a daily routine for your writing?

I’d say that my routine is somewhat unusual, in that I have young children who have
only just begun to attend school full time. During the week I work from the moment
I drop them off at school in the morning to the moment I have to collect them, a little
less than seven hours, and I try to ignore emails and phone calls whenever possible
and just focus on my writing. After my children are home I’m busy with homework, after-school
activities, dinner, and bedtime until at least 8:00 P.M., at which point I fire up
my computer again and try to get in a few hours of research or updates to social media.
Fortunately my husband often has to work in the evening, too, so we keep each other
company! If I’m really pressed for time—if I have a deadline looming—I often end up
working through the night, since the wee hours are wonderfully quiet. But as I get
older I’m finding this approach tends to knock me flat, so I’m doing my best to put
work aside and go to bed at a reasonable hour.

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

The best piece of advice I have ever read is to simply sit at your desk and write.
Just write. You’ll never be successful if you don’t write—and I don’t mean writing
about
writing on social media. Social media is terrific, but it can only help you if you
first put in the work of actual writing.

Beyond that, I would tell them to press on in the face of rejection. I was told no
any number of times before I got my first yes, and like most writers I received enough
rejection letters and emails to wallpaper my bathroom.

What are you working on now?

I’m in the middle of working on a third book, also set in the same period, with a
protagonist who appears briefly in both
Somewhere in France
and
After the War is Over.
This time, however, most of the narrative will take place in Paris, in the world
we now associate with the “lost generation” of Fitzgerald and Hemingway. If my first
two books left you dreaming of a trip to England, this one will have you packing your
bags for the City of Lights.

I
N
C
HAPTER 13 OF THIS BOOK
, Charlotte spends a day at the seaside with her friends. More to the point, she travels
to Blackpool, that most iconic of seaside resorts, and takes in every delight it has
to offer. If you happen to be British, or have spent any amount of time in Britain,
Blackpool will likely be familiar, even if you’ve never holidayed there yourself.
But I suspect there will be a number of you who will have read this chapter and wondered
what all the fuss is about.

Today, many of us think nothing of hopping on a plane for a week’s holiday, or jumping
in the family car for a road trip to the nearest beach or national park. In 1919,
however, the days of cheap overseas travel were still a half-century away, and only
a wealthy few could afford to journey by ship to glamorous destinations such as Biarritz
or Saint-Tropez. As well, while automobile ownership became far more widespread in
the 1920s and 1930s, in the immediate post-war period only a small percentage of families
had access to a car.

This didn’t prevent ordinary Britons from enjoying their holidays: By 1911, historian
James Walvin has observed, a little more than half the English population was visiting
the seaside on day excursions and a further twenty percent was taking holidays that
required overnight accommodation. Their destination was the scores of seaside resorts
in England, Wales, and Scotland that grew and flourished from the mid-nineteenth century
onward.

Of the many seaside resorts in Britain in the early twentieth century, Blackpool was
by far the most popular. Other resorts—among them Margate and Torquay in the south,
Scarborough and Skegness in the north—attracted middle-class holidaymakers, but Blackpool
was happy to cater to its working-class visitors, and determinedly fostered a jolly,
old-fashioned, and often somewhat low-brow atmosphere.

In the early 1920s, despite post-war unemployment and economic malaise, Blackpool
attracted as many as eight million visitors a year. By the height of its popularity
in the 1950s, nearly 17 million visitors flocked to the resort each year.
These numbers were boosted considerably by the phenomenon of Wakes Week, when the
mills and factories of Lancashire closed and gave their workers a week’s holiday.
(The closures were staggered across different municipalities, so as to avoid the disaster
of hundreds of thousands of families all trying to go on holiday at once.) Although
most workers received no pay for their week off, many families saved their pennies
for the rest of the year in anticipation of a week by the sea—for it was often the
only vacation they received, apart from Sundays and bank holidays.

While train fares from the industrial heartland to Blackpool were relatively cheap,
the charabanc was an even less expensive option, though a decidedly dangerous one.
Little more than an open-topped wagon bolted to the frame of a heavy-goods vehicle,
the charabanc had a high center of gravity, no protection for passengers if the vehicle
tipped over or was in a collision, and of course it had no seatbelts. But charabanc
fares were cheap, and it was common enough for smaller workplaces, or large family
groups, to hire one for the journey to Blackpool.

Once at the resort, most families stayed in a boardinghouse; the hotels in Blackpool,
relatively few in number, catered to a more middle-class clientele. It was customary
for guests to be locked out for nearly the entire day, ostensibly so the landlady
(often of a fearsome and unyielding disposition) could clean, which meant that from
mid-morning to early evening families thronged to the beach and the many amusements
on offer.

At high tide, the beach at Blackpool was immensely wide and flat, and while it was
pleasantly sandy the water was never especially warm. Most visitors contented themselves
with a quick paddle, rolling up their trousers or holding their skirts high, and set
their sights on other pastimes. It’s worth noting that, in the early 1920s, people
were just beginning to feel comfortable wearing bathing suits in public; the bathing
machines that once sheltered people from censorious eyes had only recently fallen
out of use. It helped that most suits were extremely modest in design, covering their
wearers, female and male alike, from neck to knee, and (this was before the advent
of stretch fabrics) were typically made of thick serge, knitted cotton, or wool.

While Norma’s less modest suit would have raised eyebrows, it wouldn’t have been considered
scandalous as such, although she and anyone else wearing a bathing suit would have
been in the minority. While Charlotte and her friends had enough disposable income
to pay for such an inessential garment, many of Blackpool’s holidaymakers would not
have been able to afford their own suits, nor even the fee to rent one. While younger
children were often clad in homemade knitted suits—which could make for a miserable
paddle once the wool became sodden with seawater—contemporary photographs reveal that
most people on the sands of Blackpool beach were wearing their street clothes; indeed,
many seem to have been clad in their Sunday best. Today we might think it odd to be
by the sea and never go for a swim, but for many it was enough to be in the sunshine,
to smell the salt air, and be away from the factories, traffic, noise, and smoky air
of the cities where they lived.

Of course there was more to Blackpool than its beach. There were donkey rides for
the children, the rides and games of Pleasure Beach, the Winter Gardens with its Opera
House, and the genteel offerings of the great piers stretching out over the sea, though
the fees charged by all these attractions meant only better-off visitors could partake.
Each autumn, as well, the Blackpool Illuminations drew many thousands
of visitors with a dazzling display of electric lights, though the shows were halted
during both world wars.

Greatest of all the attractions, however, was the Blackpool Tower. It resembles (and
was inspired by) the Eiffel Tower, but where the latter stands alone on the Champ
de Mars, Blackpool’s tower rises from a large and rather squat brick building which
houses its admissions hall, ballroom, circus, and, for many years, a menagerie and
aquarium.

Today Blackpool’s glories are somewhat faded, although its Tower is being expensively
restored, and increasing numbers of families are traveling there rather than abroad.
Vacant storefronts dot its waterfront, but its beach still welcomes thousands of visitors
each summer, the donkeys are patiently waiting to offer rides to children, and sticks
of Blackpool Rock may be bought and savored, just as they were a century ago.

To learn more about Blackpool and its history, I recommend
Beside the Seaside
by James Walvin,
The British Seaside Holiday
by Kathryn Ferry, and
The British Seaside: Holidays and Resorts in the Twentieth Century
by J.K. Walton.