When I was writing Uncle Jack certain memories surfaced, as happens to most novelists. The trailing roots of my own background and experience frequently come into the story. I recollect my mother wondering what to do with certain gaudy red uniforms, ceremonial swords and plumed hats. Eventually they would be dispatched to a regimental museum in the north of Ireland. Why were my parents invited to the coronation of King George VI in 1937? When did my great uncle obtain those dreadful ivory figures of Japanese being tortured? “Not everybody’s cup of tea” said the antique dealer when I tried to sell them. I wonder what has become of them.
Other things and other people were not always related to my own family but turned out to be useful in the plot. The house in the wood empty except for a grand piano; the tiger skin sent back to Ireland after the animal had eaten a relative; the aunt who took her harp up the slopes of Tara and played it every St Patrick’s Day; the cousin whose family was so poor it could not afford gun dogs; they dressed her in a bathing suit and used her instead to venture into the bog after dead snipe. Hens waiting to be slaughtered, cats, the dog’s graveyard, swathes of flowers, Purdey guns, and race horses play a part in the story of Mount Jewel, Uncle Jack’s big house.
Arising from a number of visits to Australia, my experiences down under are recalled fairly accurately, not forgetting my encounter with a remittance man, (no relation), dressing up as Santa Claus with white beard in the heat of December, and the episode of the horse that did not quite win its race.
Uncle Jack evolved, his horizons limited by a loyalty to the big island across the water. Like so many of his contemporaries he had taken no part or expressed little interest in Ireland’s recent history and its progress towards independence. The name de Valera was seldom mentioned in his household. He was not quite forgotten, however. In my own lifetime a relation observed: “When de Valera came to power all the fairies left Ireland.”
It is natural that Uncle Jack should be a colonel. So many of those of his generation actually were ex-officers of the British army that military rank came to be associated with a vanishing class. The philosopher Arland Ussher was perhaps the first to discover a collective noun for many of those gruff old veterans who continued to live in Ireland after independence, and were happily associated with the big house – the Colonels. Ussher even became fond of them. “When I meet any of them today, I love them tenderly, but only because their circumstances are reduced.”
But this was not always the case, and Uncle Jack seems to be exceptionally lucky. Although the horizons of this difficult old man are limited by the past and his military experience is long over, he is in a world where the traditional background of fishing, shooting, hunting and rearing race horses still have a major role in his life. He likes things to remain the same – hence his anger at the appointment of a woman clergy person and his attempt to burn down her rectory.
During the course of the novel his estate, together with his crumbling, cold, uncomfortable house, is transformed. To his regret and fury fine old trees are sacrificed in the process of making the golf course, even though he tries to torpedo future plans by ploughing up one of the precious greens.
Not far from where I live I have been able to observe at close hand a similar transformation of a house like Mount Jewel, which has been turned into a luxury hotel with a golf course. The timing of the plot is the 1990s, in a world where the punt was important, and the millennium loomed; a period where one by one the colonels mellowed or vanished. Will Uncle Jack be a lone survivor?
More personal observations arise from the old people’s home in which he is confined, and its proprietor, the terrifying Mrs Freebody. At my age – I am approaching my ninth decade – encounters with such homes become frequent. Most of those who live in them seem happy enough, and this I have tried to convey. Silver Meadows, inhabited by rich old women, knitting, playing bridge and trying to read heavy volumes of Maeve Binchy’s novels. and one or two tough lucky old men, is an amalgam of care homes I have visited over the past few years. Alas one cannot escape the apprehension of dementia or forget that the hearse is waiting outside on the tarmac.
However, I set myself the task of injecting humour into the existence of Silver Meadows with the aid of Uncle Jack, an enraged misfit among all those women. The proprietor, Mrs Freebody, is a malicious invention created to move the circumstances of the plot. I hope no one like her is in charge of any old people’s home.
The Filipinos also came out of my head; I have not come across any like Maria and her family, and have found them by background reading. Some of the information was provided by the new friend of the biographer and novelist, the internet. Some members of Maria’s family created themselves; in particular, her disagreeable son, the small boy, Marco, behaved badly before I even began thinking about him.
Maria, the nurse at Silver Meadows, who aspires to be Uncle Jack’s true love, and plans to transform Mount Jewel, threatens to take over the story – from time to time she has had to be pushed to the background. Does she dominate the novel? Will Uncle Jack’s nephew, David, the observer of his uncle’s misfortunes, abandon life in Australia? Or will a miraculously mellowed old colonel win happiness in the final pages of the story?
