One day last summer I did nothing except sit in the garden and read a book called The Faces of Hemingway by Denis Brian. Brian had the simple idea of interviewing everyone still alive who had known Hemingway and then transcribing the result. It sounds boring, but I was riveted by it.
The great question which seemed to exercise Papa's friends and relations was: at what point did he begin to lose his marbles? Some of those interviewed said that he never really got over being blown up by a trench mortar during the first world war, and that his story, A Way You'll Never Be, pointed to a nervous collapse as early as 1918 (aged 19).
Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway's third wife, thought that booze had sent him off his trolley by 1944. Others said he wasn't the same bloke after 1953, when he had to head-butt his way out of a crashed aircraft while suffering terribly from amoebic dysentery and then fell into an unrelated fire the following day.
The day after I read Faces of Hemingway, I went on a "writers' picnic"-one of the events at the annual literary festival held in the manicured grounds of Dartington Hall. Ten would-be writers-eight women and two men-assembled beside the medieval gatehouse; we then followed our lady tutor down the hill to a meadow beside the river Dart, where we made little nests among the tall, whispering grasses.
Our first assignment was to write about anything we liked for about ten minutes, ignoring our internal censors as far as possible. When the time was up, our tutor called us into a circle and made us read out to the rest of the group what we had written. As we listened, we lolled in the grass sipping elderflower champagne from paper cups and nibbling on salmon sandwiches.
Jenny volunteered to read hers out first. Jenny and I had chatted on the way down the hill. She was a former social worker: middle-aged, fattish, divorced; Rod Stewart hair style, canvas trousers, parrot earrings; and a brother called Julian who writes for the Guardian.
She had written about the meditation class she had attended earlier in the day. Meditating on her left foot for about 15 minutes, Jenny described how the word "meadow" had popped into her mind. Wasn't it a spooky coincidence, she said, that here she was, just three hours later, in a meadow? She felt it was a sign that she was meant to be here.
Next to read was Peter, the other male in the party. Peter looked like a sort of parody of Dartington Man: white linen jacket, white beard, straw hat, red cravat, gold-rimmed spectacles; myopic, cerebral, gentle, nice. His piece was an effortlessly erudite, inoffensive, rounded little piece of musing about art and nature which made me jealous.
If it had a fault, it was a bit too clever. If dead poets could be dragged in to it anywhere, they were. Peter's hills were predictably blue, his roads less travelled, his nettles dusty. In case anyone missed that last reference, he mentioned Edward Thomas by name at the end. When Peter had finished reading, there was an embarrassed silence, followed by a reverential "wow!" from our tutor.
Next to read was Louise. Louise was invisible, a disembodied voice. This was because she was lying on her back in the long grass. When she sat up she had a fatuous smile on her moon-like face and said she hadn't been able to actually write anything because she was "so entranced with it all." Then she flopped backwards out of sight.
Valerie spoke about "epiphanies" and about the times when she "feels all warm inside." Then an unhappy American girl with a pitted face read that she felt unwelcome: unwelcome at the picnic, unwelcome in England generally. She found the English cold and unfriendly. She wanted to go home. Her brow furrowed as she read.
Then it was my turn. That morning I had talked to my mum on the telephone about the picnic and, fearing that we would be required to write something, I had asked her to pray that I might be inspired.
I read out an account of my father's last days, when he was an alcoholic car park attendant at the local nudist beach, and how the nudists would give him small presents for letting them in when the car park was officially full, and how he still gets Christmas cards from some of them even though he's been dead for three years. I hadn't meant it to be amusing-quite the reverse-but to my surprise everyone, even the American girl, laughed so loudly that I had to stop before the end to give them a chance to recover. Testimony, surely, to the power of prayer.
After me there was this woman who said she was 93 and that we must call her Bender. She said it was a nickname she had acquired in Malaya when she lived on a rubber plantation. She was a sprightly old bird, but very deaf. She slithered commando style on her belly towards whoever was reading, and put her head in their lap so she might hear better. Unfortunately, when it was her turn to read she couldn't read her own writing and threw up her hands in a gesture of defeat.
On the way back up the hill after the picnic I chatted with Jenny again. She asked me what I was reading at the moment.
"Hemingway," I said.
"Hemingway?" she said, recoiling in disgust. "That sadist."
"He's a great writer though," I said apologetically. We walked the rest of the way in silence.
