'There was so much to explore and discover.' Photo: Joe Dunckley / flickr CC.
Love to the loveless
David Matthews describes the Quaker background of his novel
It probably would not be allowed now. The safeguarding implications would be horrendous. But when I first boarded at Sidcot School in 1968, aged eleven, it was the rule that all pupils not engaged in sports fixtures should be off the premises and roaming freely on Saturday afternoons. Some would gravitate to the village and loiter in Winscombe’s shops. Others, whether permitted or not, would slink off to the delights of Weston-super-Mare. For many of us, it was the fields and copses of the countryside which beckoned, whatever the weather.
I was a townie, having been brought up on that semi-urban stretch of coastline between Portsmouth and Southampton. To be obliged to play in the relative wilderness of the Mendips was an extraordinarily fresh experience. There was so much to explore and discover.
I cannot remember when I first encountered The Chimney, those two boulders buried in the scrub near the summit of Callow Hill. I do, however, recall the sense of adventure pushing through them for the first time to emerge on the open hilltop with an autumn wind causing the grass to buck and ripple. That memory stayed with me, but it was only recently that I found a use for it.
That They Might Lovely Be is my first novel. Set between the two world wars, it is a story revolving around the family of a village schoolmaster in rural Kent. The cataclysm of war defines the men but it is Anstace Catchpool, a friend of the schoolmaster’s daughter, who resists the brutal influence of conflict and offers an alternative. She is a Quaker with a cousin teaching at Sidcot in the 1930s. It is Sidcot that provides a haven for a young boy (his true identity only emerges as the novel progresses) in need of rescuing from the savage dysfunction of his family life. And it is those two boulders on the side of Callow that provide the significant setting for the novel’s final scene. I am indebted to Sidcot for showing me this place.
Writing this book took me a long time. As headteacher of a South London comprehensive school, the last eleven years of my career gave me little time to write and even less to refine and polish what I had written. Only when I left education two years ago did I have the time to knock the draft of That They Might Lovely Be into shape. During the process of redrafting and refining the text, it was interesting to stand back and view objectively those influences, often buried deep from childhood and adolescence, which crept – sometimes unbidden – into the writing.
I am not a pacifist but the Quakers’ stand against war has certainly shaped my thinking and, whilst the world still turns on a bloody axis, how we confront the tyranny of aggression remains of fundamental importance.
In my novel I do not explore the rights and wrongs of military service so much as the emotional motivation which nudges a man to choose a particular path. Service and sacrifice are potent concepts. They are central to a Christian perspective and they can be appropriated by both the warrior and the pacifist. We should not be surprised: Christianity has never shied away from paradoxes. Perhaps its only constant is the paramount significance of love.
I was prompted to write about what is truly lovely in a brutal world. To do that, I have shaken up notions of what love is and how it should be expressed. Relationships are far from conventional but nevertheless something emerges from my characters’ interaction with one another, which, in the words of Samuel Crossman’s beautiful seventeenth century hymn, is ‘love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be’.
That They Might Lovely Be is published by Top Hat Books at £15.99 and is available as an ebook at £4.99. ISBN: 9781785356230.
