I’ve always loved a bolter--Nancy Mitford’s perfect description of women who
make a dash for it. But strangely enough, until I was asked to write this blog,
it had not occurred to me that all of my heroines are, without exception,
bolters, or traveling women--either in the direction of a new job, or a new
life, a new country or some unsuitable adventure in a stranger’s arms.
The reasons why I am drawn to such women wouldn’t take long on the analyst’s
couch. I was an air force brat.
When I was a child, I changed friends, schools, houses, and often countries
every two and a half years. As children do, I accepted this as normal, and if I
was emotionally scarred by it, I’m not aware of it, but what it does mean is
that certain restlessness is bred in the bone.
Which is why I love writing historical fiction: it gives me a perfect grown up
excuse to scratch that itch periodically --roughly every two years come to think
of it.
My first book, THE WATER
HORSE, published in the U.S. under the title: BAND OF ANGELS, is a
fictionalized account of the life of a woman called Jane Evans. She lived in a
tiny town in Wales called Pumpsaint and, in 1853, ran away from home with some
Welsh cattle drovers in order to join Florence Nightingale and her nurses in
Scutari.
When I first found Jane Evans--on a small plaque outside a windswept church in
Pumpsaint--I felt a tingling in my scalp. I’d found my book and it was a
traveling book!
At first I planned a biography, but quickly realized that as most of the nurses
were illiterate, that would be next to impossible. This led to what felt like
my own leap into the unknown--a novel.
The first part of this journey involved a horse. In Wales, where I live, the
mountains and valleys are criss--crossed by wide green grassy tracks which were
once the only way to transport, cattle, sheep and even geese (with their feet
tarred and shod) to the meat markets of England. Outside our farmhouse, at the
end of our path, there are the two huge pine trees that used to signal to
drovers that they and their animals were welcome to stay here for the night.
I rode with an amateur historian and passionate horsewoman, Daphne Tilley, who
leant me her own retired show jumper, Fred. I wanted to imagine what it would
feel like to be Jane Evans and ride for miles and miles across Wales.
It was one of the best weeks of my life. It was tiring, yes, occasionally
scary--at one point, crossing the Snowdon Mountains, Fred and I nearly fell off
the side of a cliff when an electrical cable collapsed onto him and scared him
half to death. But mostly it was heaven--perfect summer weather, agreeable
companions, picnics in the wild with horses cropping grass nearby, and constant
changes of scenery: wild mountains, green tracks, the sea.
There is something incredibly soothing too about the rocking rhythm of a horse,
which takes you out of ordinary time, gives you space to dream and think.
The next trip for the same book was to Istanbul, this time with my 81-year-old
mother, another one with itchy feet. There, we took a ferry across the Bosporus,
to explore the gaunt looking naval barracks that was once the hospital where
Florence Nightingale and her nurses lived.
An armed guard agreed to take me up to what was once Nightingale’s bedroom.
This room with its green velvet chaise longue, its desk neatly arranged with
bottle of ink, note book, dip pens, felt almost spookily alive for me--she might
almost have nipped out in a hurry to supervise the making of beef jelly, or some
fortifying tea.
That night, to check out another scene in the book, my mother and I left our
modest hotel for drinks at what was once considered the poshest hotel in
Istanbul – The Pera Palace.
This was the hotel where passengers off the Orient Express used to sip
champagne, where Mata Hari and Rita Hayworth stayed, and where Agatha Christie
went to lick her wounds after hearing of her husband’s infidelity. For reasons
I can’t remember now, we ended up at a Turkish wedding in the main ballroom,
where there was a riotous band and we were taught to dance Turkish style and
drank raki the local tipple.
My second book, EAST OF
THE SUN, was another good excuse for bolting, now officially called
research. This time my husband and I went north to Rajasthan, where we took the
tiny little Noddy and Big Ears train up the foothills of the Himalayas to Simla.
The second time, I went on my own to Mumbai (Bombay), and then to an ashram near
Poona. In Poona, I went to see the hospital where my husband was born. (His
father was in the Indian cavalry).
In Delhi, I explored the old cantonments where the British lived; I went to a
shabby shop to talk to a beaming old man called Tailor Ram. When I asked him if
he remembered his British clients, he produced for me in a cloud of cloud of
dust an old pattern book full of measurements and orders for jodhpurs and shark
skin dinner jackets, and morning suits, made for the British Sahibs. These are
the moments that give you the kind of tingle you’ll never get in a library. You
have to go, or at least I do--the travel is the treat, the carrot and the
perfect excuse for catching a bolting heroine.
-Julia Gregson
Julia Gregson’s BAND OF ANGELS (Touchstone / Simon &
Schuster) is available wherever books are sold Learn more
10 comments posted.
What an wonderful adventure!! And how wonderful that you could share part of it with your Mother. Your book sounds interesting. I hope you keep getting those tingles that lead you to new adventures.
(Robin McKay 5:02pm May 24, 2010)
I used to bolt! I was tracing the family trees and would go where I thought I could get help. Now I try to do it through the Internet and it isn't the same at all!
(Karin Tillotson 6:19pm May 24, 2010)
I never knew research could be a new name for bolting. I thought it was an escape from the everyday and in a hurry to get someplace more promising. thnaks for sharing your ventures and wanderings relabelled as searching for research again.
(Alyson Widen 7:04pm May 24, 2010)
I love to travel but have not had too much of an opportunity to do so. I tell everyone that "G" stands for Gladys and "G" stands for go. I never miss an opportunity to travel and I love to read books that "take me some place I have never been."
(Gladys Paradowski 7:44pm May 24, 2010)
The fist time our family "bolted" was when we left Germany to come to Canada. Of course, here we had to get to know the new continent, and when I was 13, my father took his mother and 2 eldest children, (I'm no.1) on a sightseeing trip of over 1000 miles to Yellowstone Park. After I finished high school, I went to France and Germany for a year each, but not before our whole family, parents and 4 kids, took a tour from the prairies to California with stops in between. I bolted any number of times in France and Germany to investigate ruins and furnished castles. Then I returned to Canada and...
Well, I think you might get the picture. I just love traveling. Some I did solo, some with friends or family. I was never disappointed and hope to travel some more soon. I've always loved to learn more about other cultures and places, and books helped me do that as well. And I love hearing about other people's travels.
(Sigrun Schulz 11:42pm May 24, 2010)
I never thought that I would be a bolter, but after my husband lost his job and we lost our house and everything, I had no choice but to become a bolter. Fortunately we are now in a new area, and I love it. That bolting instinct never leaves your blood, and if the opportunity arises again, I could do it in a heartbeat!!
(Peggy Roberson 11:41am May 29, 2010)