'Summer's lease...'

It's that time of year at last when like the swallows we will soon be heading for the sun. The garden has become overgrown with the rain. While the unseasonable cold has held back the roses. But now they are blooming at last and the first of them is beside me on my desk. They will be gone, along with the summer itself by the time we return.

During these busy months I had not allowed myself to think of the little valley where we are going. Or the house that withstood the harsh winter of last year. Or the snow that piled up against the door, the ice that froze the pipes and the bats that nested in the roof. I did not think of the wind that would have lashed against the terraza, undoubtedly chipping off the paint and discolouring the walls. 
There will be work to do when we arrive; painting and cleaning and washing and ironing. The clothes line will flap with white sheets, the soot will be swept from the chimney, the cooker will splutter into use. I shall examine the larder, check out the tins, the dried pasta, the rice. 
On the way up from the airport we would have stopped to buy bread, butter, a few tomatoes, some mozzarella, a little piece of parmesan, some parsley, a few borlotti beans and a bottle of local wine. Although on arriving there will be a little cluster of presents awaiting us by the front door, Cargalla's way of welcoming us back.

We will see no one during those first hours for our friends in the village will tactfully leave us alone as we dust and shake rugs, sweep floors and make beds. The sun will turn slowly on the hillside shining dazzling pin pricks through the trees. And we will listen out for the nightingale in our Ulmo tree. While far above us on the Prati I will see again the place I wrote about in my novel The Road To Urbino. Then finally as dusk descends and the lights come out around the hillside and the smell of cooking fills the air, and the bats fly away to another deserted house in disgust, there will be the sound of footsteps on the cobbled lane outside before the first soft knock.   
'Benvenuti! Welcome back!'

P.S. As last year, share your summer photographs now on the theme of all things Green. I will post them up in September.

From London to Urbino via Sri Lanka

In the packed auditorium of the National Gallery in London people I did not know were taking their seats.

'Can you read your extract in six minutes, d'you think?' asked the organiser of the event.
Looking through the window of the projection room I saw members of my family wandering in.
No use looking for escape routes, then.

Where were all these people coming from? Why had we tweeted so madly, so foolishly? Why had we wanted a full house, anyway?
'Now just to recap on the running order...' continued the organiser.
But where was Jon Snow?
'He's going to Greece,' she told me with alarming confidence.
Not yet, I hoped.
'Relax! Enjoy the evening. It'll be fine.'
Whatever.
'You'll be great,' my editor from Little Brown agreed.
She looked rather too jolly for my liking-as did the others members of the Little Brown crew.

'It's all in the text,' cried Jon Snow coming in breezily, waving a dog-eared copy of my book as any man in transit might. 'So much to talk about. We'll show the film first, get the whole thing going and have the discussion afterwards. Okay? Let's go!'
So we did.
Had he grown taller or had I shrunk?




In the darkness, in the audience were my children who had as yet not seen the film. I wondered how they would feel seeing their immigrant grandfather on the screen, here, in the National Gallery. Unremembered by any of us was the fact that it was the anniversary of his death.

Afterwards, after the last notes of Wagner's opera Walkurie faded into black, Jon said something I had not thought of before.
'Those sunflowers. They look like human heads.'
Heads hanging under a blue sky, frail and vulnerable, waiting to be decapitated. Like the skulls of Rwanda from that other terrible civil war.
We talked about Sri Lanka, its unacknowledged skeletons buried in the deeply dysfunctional tropical paradise.
A place where love has died, its loss, discarded like old bones.
Where nothing is sacred any more.
Where memory is defiled and the teachings of the Lord Buddha long forgotten.
But talking in this way, openly, with such an outstanding British journalist as Jon, was progress in its own way. For until recently the issues of Sri Lanka  could only be addressed in whispers. The Sri Lankan's themselves, relatives of victims and journalists alike know the bully boys lurk in the jungle, waiting to pounce. But now the world was listening at last, thanks to  decent, courageous people like Jon, Callum Macrae, Frances Harrison and Jonathan Miller and others whose passion for justice continues regardless. So this was progress.

Later, as I signed copies of my book, the beautiful Tamil woman who had spoken so heartbreakingly at a Frontline event a month ago came bounding up to me. Tonight her face was aglow.

'Now's not the time to talk to you,' she said. 'But thank you! And I shall read your book.'

They ask so little, these people who have been hurt so much.

'Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.' Jules de Gaultier.

The Road To Urbino starts at London's National Gallery

Film screening, book launch and discussion with author Roma Tearne and Jon Snow.
Friday June 15th 2012 at 6PM
Sainsbury Wing Theatre
Tickets £6/£4 concessions


Roma Tearne's fifth novel published by Little Brown will be launched at this event.

For further details click here.

Letter From Urbino 6. 'After Rain the Angels come.'

So many people have supported this little project of mine that this post can only be dedicated to them.  I don't normally write personal pieces but touched by the encouragement and kindness I have received during this year I  feel somehow the occasion demands it. For, in spite of all that is written on the curses of the Internet, there remains a curious warmth when an unknown reader follows an unknown writer's blog. The novelist's lot, the loneliness that comes with the job, the uncertainties (does anyone even read your books?) is assuaged by such a practice. I know that my posts are read around the world in countries I have never ever seen, in places where the sun shines continously and a sea breeze springs up and in places where the summers are short. Places where wars have come and gone, where conflict remains and places where hope alone survives in a brilliant example of the human spirit. So for those of you who read these pages, this piece is for you.

Only a week to go now, before the film & book are launched at the National Gallery in London. If you are in London please come. It is a public event and the link for tickets is here.

It has been a long road and I have almost forgotten the beginning. Almost, but not quite. I still remember the day when my agent rang me having finished reading the manuscript of The Road To Urbino. I was in a bar in Milan with an old friend, drinking a strong black coffee. Outside on the pavement a tub of pink oleander cast shadows on the ground. And then amidst the hiss and steam of the espresso machine and Italian laughter all around I heard the voice from England telling me that yes, she loved the book.
'Brava!' said my friend when I told her, and putting out her cigarette, she added, 'now we have a glass of prosecco!'
Damn, there went the diet!

Another memory, this time in Jaipur, pausing between events at the festival, sitting with my wonderful editor beside the pool in her hotel, sipping tea and talking about the text.

Re-reading the manuscript, correcting, discussing character and plot.
'Why would he do that? What drives him? Would she really say this?'
To have a sensitive, caring editor is the one blessing a writer must have. Someone who gives you the time to develop your craft, who guides but does not dictate. The editor after all is the conductor who views the whole when you, the writer become too close. My characters and I are lucky to have her.
In this way the book wound its slow way into production. Copy editing, checking, changers, re-changers.
'You're just fiddling now, not improving,' my husband said.
'It's good, ' my children told me, with all the authority of being my children.

By now the year had turned and turned again and the kittens we had acquired in January snow had grown into large cats that prowled the garden. Time was passing swiftly as I set to work on the film, Letter From Urbino.
Another six months of solid work from morning until late at night with a different kind of editor.
'My job,' Conrad told me firmly, 'is to make your vision happen.'
But did this involve the vast number of chocolate cake we consumed on those long hours into the night?
'That's your choice,' he said. 'You should be concentrating on the screen.'

Winter turned to spring and the sky lightened. Stories from my homeland in Sri Lanka filtered down to me. I was appalled anew by the brutality of what was going on. Such ugly viciousness from people who were my countrymen. The only thing left was to bury myself in my work. Night after night I stared at the images on the flickering screen, discussing, changing, finding just the right music that conveyed the mood I wanted. And then, the voice of the wonderful actor Rob Mountford and suddenly there was a shape to the film. So it was off to London to check the film on the equipment at the National Gallery, not once, not twice but in all three times.

'Here it is,' said my editor at Little Brown, handing me the first copy of the book, smiling encouragingly.
She is a woman with the knack of making every author feel important, I thought.
I hope Urbino will do her proud.

So now all is done and I can only wait. A first review of the novel was out yesterday in the Morning Star. I believe it is a good one, but dare not look.
Next Friday the whole village of Cargalla is coming to my launch. Some of the villagers are quite old and have never been further than Genova, leave alone on a plane. But they love their country and want to see how it is represented on a screen. Since they do not speak English I have had a translation of the script made especially for them.

In my rain-swept garden, although the Albertine roses that usually cascade against the wall have failed to appear, the foxgloves seem to be withstanding this unseasonal rain. I see them through my study window, bending with the wind. Surviving.
 'After rain the angels come!' someone once famously said.
I hope they will.

The trailer for Letter from Urbino is here.