journalism
1979
Having drafted an overview of information so far on my big study of the historic Jesus, (phew!!) my brain was spinning so I needed some light relief.
International bestseller queen of crime Val McDermid can usually be relied on to keep the pages turning, but in this case it was much more the story behind her writing 1979 than it was the fictional tale of journalist Alison Burns – a woman in a man’s world, chasing big scoops to make her name in the newsroom – that grabbed my attention.
When the pandemic struck the UK at the beginning of the decade and life as we know it ground to a halt, Val was writing this novel, relying on access to people and sources to keep the historical detail authentic. She had herself been a journalist, living and working in Glasgow in 1979, and she knew she needed to study the archives of the main newspapers of that era. A lesser writer would have succumbed to the temptation to put it all on hold; take a break. Not Val McDermid. She pays tribute to the many people who supplied the information she couldn’t get for herself, who helped her get the detail right, and to her partner, Jo Sharp, who kept her sane and motivated when writing seemed impossible in the face of all that was going on in real life.
The result is an unusual-for-her tale; I didn’t recognise her familar brilliant prose. Alison Burns teams up with a new colleague, Danny Sullivan, to deliver a baby, investigate a terrorist threat, and pursue a case of money laundering on an eye-watering scale. Along the way they make powerful enemies and uncover information that could wreck careers. All does not end well, but Allie Burns is established as a principal character in yet another series of McDermid crime series.
Life, death and empathy
It’s a trite saying: live each day as if it’s your last, but when someone is handed a diagnosis of terminal illness it can become a dramatic reality. ‘Nowness’ – the heightened immediacy of each lived moment – becomes vivid and immensely valuable. How the person is treated, and by whom, matters enormously. This is the substance of the book, Dear Life, by Dr Rachel Clarke; a story of love and loss, both a personal journey and a moving analysis of what truly counts.
People frequently question her as to why anyone would choose to immerse themselves in the world of the dying, but for her there was a kind of inevitability about her decision, because of her natural inclinations and preferences; because of who she is. So who is she?
With a doctor for father and nurse for mother, Rachel had an early introduction to the reality of death, but in her teens she was more inclined to words than science, and she elected to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics. From there she went into journalism and documentary making. It was only when perfectionism and depression led to burn-out and suicidal thoughts, that she retrained as a doctor.
It took a further five years to achieve the transformation from journalist to medic, being tempered, toughened into hard doctorly competence, during which she tiptoed through a minefield – scientific curiosity vying with human kindness; detachment learned the hard way struggling with natural empathy.
… as fledgling doctors-to-be, our role required us to stifle, not voice, our feelings and instincts.
No; emotions were illegitimate and gauche, to be ignored and denied.
She could indeed see and appreciate the sheer necessity of putting emotions on one side to survive in areas like a busy A&E department crammed to the gunnels, with patients on trolleys overflowing down corridors, exhibiting a whole range of illnesses from cradle to grave, living to dead. There was no time to forge relationships or really engage with patients; it was a matter of prioritising the critical, clearing the trivial. Efficient use of time, saving lives. But this wasn’t for her.
I wanted the opposite. I wanted to retain my kindness, my impulse to care, not have it bludgeoned out of me.The spoken word, I had come to realise, could be as delicate and important as any physical intervention, and sometimes equally life-changing. Words are a means through which doctors build trust, assuage fears, signal compassion, resolve confusion, instil hope – and on occasion, remove it. But they cannot be rushed. Above all, when your focus is people, not body parts, taking time to listen to your patient’s words – seeking truly to understand what matters to them – can have astonishing potency.
And yet, even after all those years of training, she feels ill-equipped for dealing with patients in this way. The knowledge she has acquired relates to illness; she knows precious little about the people presenting with those maladies.
I may have filled my brain to bursting with names, numbers, drugs and diagnoses, but I was taught next to nothing about the muddled, uncertain, inconsistent, illogical, forgetful, fearful, frightened, doubtful, real-life flesh-and-blood people who, just like me, inhabited a nuanced world of endlessly shifting grey, not the black-and-white certainties of my medical bookshelves.
Personal experience of medical treatment teaches her a salutary lesson. She learns what it feels like to be vulnerable and what counts – the harsh and alien world of the unwell, the scale of doctors’ demands on them, the powerlessness of patients, the sheer force of small acts of kindness, and the capacity of simple human touch to transcend primal fear. And in so doing, she acquires something vital: a means by which she can empathise with her patients. She understands what really matters. So powerful is this lesson that she would prescribe a decent dose of temporary illness for every medical student – something sufficiently grave to stoke genuine fear, involving at least a couple of distasteful procedures …!
The deaths from cancer of her mother-in-law and her own beloved father also have a profound effect on her. She learns that in the last throes of life, superlative care is crucial: medicine at its best; the patient, not the disease, centre stage; every single person an individual each with their own history and dreams, likes and preferences, opinions and beliefs; e ach with their own views on dying. And she learns the true value of being with someone, responsive to their fears and grief.
… the act of being present – not walking away from acute grief – can be the best any physician can offer.
Small wonder, then, that this remarkable woman chose palliative care, and works in a hospice, where time and efficiency have a different meaning. Where sitting holding a hand, organising a wedding, providing a beautiful view, can bring peace and solace every bit as much as drugs and interventions.
Dear Life is a remarkable book at once tender and funny, full of joy and grief, kindness and sadness, triumphant and anguished. And beautifully written – as befits a journalist who has loved language since toddler-hood! Dr Rachel Clarke is exactly the kind of doctor we should all want to take care of our nearest and dearest in the event of their becoming terminally ill. Compassionate, generous, kind and caring. Ready to fight for the very best of care. And how the NHS needs people like that!
A Scottish mystery
OK, duty done! I duly persisted to the end of Georgette Heyer’s mighty tome on Lord John of Bedford. So I’ve earned the pleasure of reading the book I was itching to get into: The Woman who Walked into the Sea, bought in the Outer Hebrides last month. And memories of those endless golden beaches, turquoise seas, alluring bays, came flooding back.
The author, Mark Douglas-Home, – yep, he is indeed the nephew of the former prime-minister, Alec Douglas-Home – is a journalist turned author, with an interesting career start: as a student he edited a University anti-apartheid newspaper in South Africa and got himself deported! Now there’s tale to tell!! He now lives more quietly in Edinburgh and this is his second novel.
The story’s set on the North West coast of Scotland where, on 9 September 1983, a heavily pregnant Megan Bates walked across the sands of a remote beach into the cold Atlantic sea, and kept on walking. She was 33 years old and was wearing a loose white dress and a raffia hat with a broad red ribbon round it. Or so it was said. But the day before the sighting of Megan walking to her death, a baby girl was abandoned at the main door of Raigmore Hospital, Inverness, just before midnight, in a cardboard box, wrapped only in towels. There was no note, nothing to identify her apart from an envelope taped to the side of the box containing a brooch featuring violets, pinned to a small rectangular section cut from a green woollen cardigan. Could this have been Megan’s illegitimate child? Because of the brooch, the staff named the baby Violet.
26 years later, following a tip off from a social worker from Inverness, Violet Wells is searching for clues as to her biological mother’s life and intentions. Her journey takes her to the island where Megan lived and died. But the good people of Poltown give her a strange reception: there’s a local beach-combing farmer who says he loved Megan but who was accused by the police of killing her; a bitter elderly lady who was in service but has been soured by her treatment since the death of her employer; a stranger who attempts to abduct her. It seems the whole community is conspiring to keep its secrets buried and nothing is what it seems. Even Orasaigh Cottage, Megan’s rented home, is stripped of personality and bereft of any trace of her existence. And yet her possessions are preserved in a room in the ramshackle building belonging to a boy/man who believes her still alive.
Cal McGill is a private investigator and oceanographer brought in to locate things and people lost at sea, and currently not at all sure he does families any favours by doing so. He’s intrigued by this young woman who has suddenly left her flat in Glasgow and her four year old daughter, Anna, and come to this far corner, obsessed by her personal quest, reticent about sharing her own story. His knowledge of tides and flotsam makes him question the newspaper and police accounts of that time a quarter of a century ago. But his interest in this woman and her strange history soon leads to his personal safety being threatened as well as Violet’s.
Subtly, little by little, local characters let slip details and together Violet and Cal piece together a fragmented account – a tale of greed and jealousy, cover up and lies – until the pieces of the jigsaw fall into place and the ugly truth is revealed.
It’s been likened to a Ruth Rendell mystery. I wouldn’t personally rank it in that school of writing but I enjoyed the unravelling and of course, the exploration of the parent-child bond as well as the importance of knowing one’s roots; both slot neatly into my own current preoccupations.
A relaxing diversion before getting back into my own novel which is now on the downward slope to a conclusion. Very exciting to be counting down.
I may be mistaken …
I’ve been quite overwhelmed by the response to my new blog. Many thanks to all of you who have so generously commented. Writing can be a lonely occupation and it’s reassuring to know there are real people out there who read and who care. I even had one email this week from someone in Canada who shares the same unusual surname – a rare affliction!
Thanks
But special thanks go to Lindsay in Glasgow who challenged me in an unexpected way. The exchange went something like this:
L: ‘Would you say you’ve got strong views on ethical issues?’
H: ‘Well, I’ve got strong views on the importance of debate about ethical issues, but the longer I work in this area the more shades of grey I see.’
L: ‘That’s what I thought from everything you write. So why does your blog say you have strong views on the actual issues?’
H: ‘I didn’t think it did.’
L: ‘I think it does. At the end of that interview about “Who’s your favourite author?”’
Of course, I went hot foot to my blog and that link to the said interview (stories-of-my-life). After all, my reputation’s on the line here. Even-handed, that’s me. Leave-the-reader-to-form-their-own-conclusions: that’s my style. Had I really been careless enough to shoot myself in the foot here?
Whoops! There it was.
Q. Do you have strong opinions on the ethical questions facing your characters?
A. Having worked in the field of ethics for decades, the more I know about these complex issues the more I’m conscious of the grey areas. When I get inside the skin of my characters facing difficult choices I see different perspectives which may require different solutions, because our value systems, beliefs and experiences influence what we see as right or wrong. In Right To Die, Adam is an analytical journalist weighing up the value of his disintegrating life. His mother is rigidly religious, with hang-ups about suicide. His GP is influenced by a strong professional moral code. Who’s right? Who’s to say? So the answer is, yes (my italics).
My reaction evolved slowly.
Stage 1. Chagrin. Mortification. Annoyance (with myself I hasten to add).
Stage 2. Pause for reflection. I try to think myself back. Why did I say that?
Stage 3. Apology to Lindsay with promise to do better in future.
Stage 4. Good night’s sleep. Subconscious works on issue.
Stage 5. Revisit original interview.
For once I’m glad I haven’t had time to tidy up the files on my computer. Because there it is!
The answer
The set of questions I’d been asked during that interview had inexplicably changed when they reached the printed page. The original question was:
Q. As a medical ethicist, are there any issues you are still uncertain about?
A: As above.
And of course the answer to that question is emphatically yes!
So a big thank you to Lindsay for giving me the opportunity to right a great wrong. And for a timely reminder of that paragraph in the 17th Century Nun’s prayer:
‘I dare not ask for improved memory, but for a growing humility and a lessing cocksureness when my memory seems to clash with the memories of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be mistaken.’