In My Wildest Dreams (45 page)

A great deal of suburban controversy was provoked by
Tropic of Ruislip
(this aided by a television series). Some of the reactions were quite remarkable. At Ruislip itself (some miles to the west – tropic being a line of latitude and only intended to indicate an environment) a public meeting was called to discuss the book. I attended and faced a crowded audience in the fine old barn that serves as the local library. One uncontrolled woman jumped to her feet and shouted: 'This book has blackened Ruislip in the eyes of the world!' (An exaggerated criticism, I felt, particularly as the Krogers, the infamous spies, had been resident just down the road and the local police had one or two murders on their books.) Later I heard that one lady resident was so ashamed that she might be associated with a book about suburban fornication that she ceased asking for a ticket to Ruislip when she returned by train from London each evening. She asked for a ticket to Eastcote and paid the extra on arrival.

But, when I lived in the 'Tropic'; when
I
was Andrew Maiby, the flat-roof man, who heard the warning of death approaching like the sound of distant thunder at a summer picnic, all those events were some years into the future. As a newspaperman I continued to travel to many parts of the world. In Tokyo I stayed for a week during which my elder brother Lindon, whom I had not met since childhood, died in a hospital all but next door to my hotel. In true Thomas tradition I did not know of his death for a year or more.

Constable, who had published
This Time Next Week,
confidently expected, I believe, that this was somebody's one-off book and that nothing more would be forthcoming from the same source. Desmond Elliott, I think, was also doubtful of the longer-term prospects of my writing. Although I desperately wanted to write a novel and I instinctively realised that the moment was right, I shied away from the obvious notion of using my national service time as the basis of the story. After all there had been an abundance of war stories, too many in fact. What would make this better, or indeed any different? For some time I dithered and thought. The final decision was made because I could not pay my rates.

My income from the
Evening News,
as I have said, continued modest despite the onerous, even regal, journeys and stories upon which I was sent.
This Time Next Week,
although critically successful, serialised, and purchased for paperback, was not the sort of book to make an author a fortune (the paperback rights were sold to Pan – an act of faith on their part – for three hundred and fifty pounds). Expenditure continued to be tantalisingly ahead of income and when the rates bill came I did not have the money. I had lunch with Desmond at the Carvery at the Regent Palace Hotel in London, from which both of us graduated later, but fairly quickly, to the Connaught. The Regent Palace has important connotations for me because my then wife and the lady with whom I was hopelessly in love once had dinner there together to discuss what they should do about me. The earlier occasion was also to prove something of a catalyst.

Throughout lunch I told my new agent of my financial problems. Needing the rates money was not unusual – the rating officer at my previous address had been called Mr B. Quick. Now the Watford and District Council was demanding its just pound of flesh and I had no money.

As we parted outside Swan and Edgar's now-closed store, Desmond, whom I suspect feared that I might be trying to borrow the rates cash from him, said without any conviction: 'Well, I suppose you had better have a try at writing that novel.'

Thus it was the surburban householder's requirement to pay his due towards refuse collections, tree-lopping and the resurfacing of the roads, that set me on my way to write
The Virgin Soldiers
which went to the top of the bestseller list and sold millions. By the same token, when eventually I began to collect the royalties, I was politely and admiringly informed by the power board that I had paid my electricity bill twice.

I wrote my first novel in the evenings on my return from work, a conscientious nine until midnight routine. For several months I was not called on to make prolonged absences, although I was due to go to Russia for the trial of Gary Powers, the U–2 spy-plane pilot. For reasons known only to themselves the Russians refused me a visa. Other correspondents were granted immediate entry but after going through a tangle of literally red tape (and spending a lot of time in the public house opposite the Soviet Consulate in Kensington) I was confronted with a cartoonist's Russian: a square, bear man behind a desk, who announced simply, 'The Consulate of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is closed.' To reinforce his point he put up a sign in English which said: 'Closed', just like a tobacconist.

It is difficult for me to remember how long it took to write
The Virgin Soldiers.
It was published early in 1966, two years after my first book. Something I do remember, however, is that until it was almost in the hands of the printer it was called
The Little Soldiers.
The word 'Virgin', with its connotations, had crossed my mind but it seemed a touch blatant; catchpenny. The eventual Dutch title had the best of both worlds. It translated as
The Little Green Ones.

When I had finished the manuscript and delivered it to Constable, who then began to become doubtfully excited, I was travelling on the Metropolitan Line, returning from work, when I met John Millard, a studious man, who, as fiction editor of the
Evening News,
had bought my first, and many subsequent, short stories. When I told him of my indecision with the title he frowned. 'I don't like the sound of
The Little Soldiers,'
he said. 'It sounds too much like a children's book.' He smiled wisely. 'Virgin has a better ring, don't you think.'

And so it was. It was not a difficult book to write. It was almost an extension of
This Time Next Week,
a chapter or two on. The single word 'Virgin' gave it a spurious reputation as a novel of sexual explicitness. Two elderly ladies who ran a bookshop in Chichester told me with charming bluntness: 'We did not
want
to stock it – but we simply
had
to.' Considering that it is of the same vintage as such American novels as
Last Exit to Brooklyn
and
The Naked Lunch
1 think it is the mildest of love stories. On the other hand it was an exceptionally lucky novel. For all my inhibitions, the fact was that no one had written a novel about national service, as distinct from
wartime
military experience. Since hundreds of thousands of young men underwent that nominally peacetime obligation in all parts of the world, it has always surprised me that no other successful novel has appeared. It was, I truly believe, a beginner's book that arrived at the right moment. It was written from the heart, without subtlety, and perhaps that was the very reason for its success.

It also had a hand from that wry little god of luck who had been so amenable to me throughout my life as a journalist. On publication day I went to Alexandra Palace which, in those times, was used by BBC Television. In the magazine programme after the six o'clock news, one of those I had helped to establish in my Exchange Telegraph days, I was interviewed by Michael Aspel. There was nothing very unusual about the interview but, when I had departed, the rules and worries of Auntie BBC surfaced and someone voiced doubt about transmitting – at six in the evening – an item about a book with 'Virgin' in the title, and with a story about failed virgins between the covers. Rather than scrap the interview, however, they decided that Aspel should record a rider, a warning. 'The book,' he said solemnly, 'is called
The Virgin Soldiers
by Leslie Thomas, and it is published by Constable at twenty-one shillings.
Don't leave it around where the children can pick it up.'

Human curiosity being what it is, the publishers were sold out by the next afternoon. They had to empty their own window display to provide emergency copies for the bookstall at Waterloo Station. I had a bestseller.

Carl Foreman, the great producer and film writer, responsible for
High Moon, The Guns of Navarone,
and
The Victors,
bought the film rights of
The Virgin Soldiers
immediately upon reading the book. He then bludgeoned the dithering executives of Columbia Pictures into making the film which is still a success today. Carl became a friend and a mentor and we saw each other when I was in Hollywood or he and his English wife Eve were staying at their quiet thatched house in Hampshire. As I write this I have just heard of his death.

The film version of my novel was directed by John Dexter and produced by Ned Sherrin, who describes its making hilariously in his autobiography
A Small Thing Like an Explosion.
It had a fine cast. Brigg, the young conscript, was played by Hywell Bennett, who got so close to the part that I could see myself when young; T'sai Chin, who played Juicy Lucy, Lynn Redgrave and her mother Rachel Kempson, who played her mother in the film. At the premiere Lynn introduced me to her famous father, Sir Michael, with, I felt, exaggerated enthusiasm. 'Daddy,' she exclaimed. 'Here is the Creator!' For once I felt slightly inadequate.

Wayne Sleep, who has revolutionised ballet, and Christopher Timothy, who became James Herriott's television vet, were also in the film with Nigel Davenport and Nigel Patrick. The actor who, when
The Virgin Soldiers
is now shown on television, attracts most attention occupies less than thirty seconds on the screen.

This story goes back to Barnardo days. A Mr Jones was the publicity man for the Homes and, when I reached Fleet Street, he would sometimes call me with some item of news about Barnardo's. One day he had something different to offer: 'My son, David,' he said, 'is a pop singer.'

In those days most young people were. 'I think he sounds terrible,' confessed Mr Jones, 'but he must be some good because he's made a record. Do you think you could give it a mention in your column?' Those were the days of my incompetent record reviewing and I agreed to listen to it, which I did and, I believe, wrote a couple of paragraphs about it. Some time, perhaps three years, went by and one day I went to the auditions for
The Virgin Soldiers
film and there was young David Jones waiting to read for a part. He did not get the role but he was offered another, a brief appearance, and he accepted.

It was not until some years after the film had appeared that I realised who our bit-part actor was . . . David Bowie. Young people now watch the film just to catch the most shadowy glimpse of the man who has grown into a great international star. Recently a youthful lady said to me: 'You're the chap who wrote David Bowie's film, aren't you?'

On a hot August night in 1966 I was alone in my house at Carpenders Park. Recently, I had bought a second house, a neat place with bow windows at West Wittering on the Sussex coast, near Chichester. My wife and three children were down there that night.

I had only returned to London for twenty-four hours, intending to go back to the coast for the whole of August. The object of the brief visit was to see the preview of the film
Georgie Girl;
it could easily have cost me my life. Otto Plaskes, who produced the film, had asked me to see it. There were plans that I might write a script for a project he had in mind. That evening I returned to my house in Hertfordshire and went to my in-laws' home nearby to make the final arrangements for taking them down to West Wittering the following morning.

It was a close evening and I went to a public house and then a restaurant where I ate alone. At midnight I was in bed in my son Mark's room since the bed in the main bedroom had not been made up. I opened the big swinging window and went to sleep. An hour later I awoke and smelled smoke. Going downstairs and into the other rooms I could see nothing amiss and I thought it must be the scent of somebody's garden fire which had smouldered on into the night. I closed my eyes and then heard breaking glass followed by a deep thump. Hurrying to the window I saw that a house about a hundred yards away was on fire.

What happened over the next few minutes is starkly clear to me, even though it was eighteen years ago. My actions seem to be like those of someone in a slowed-up dream. Wearing pyjamas (Marks and Spencer, non-flammable) I ran down the stairs and around the garden wall of my own house. I had nothing on my feet and the grass was dewy. For some reason I imagined that someone
must
have already telephoned the fire brigade and, indeed, that a crowd of neighbours would already be at the house. When I arrived I found myself alone, with a naked and dead man lying face down on the paved patio. Smoke was pouring from the upper window through which he had jumped or fallen. I had no idea who he might be.

The blaze seemed to be confined to the top floor. Almost casually the lady who lived there, undoubtedly in shock, approached me. She was wearing her dressing gown and she said calmly, 'I've telephoned the fire brigade.'

Knowing that she had three small children I asked where they were. 'They're still inside,' she answered.

At that moment the little girl, about seven or eight, appeared at the upper window. Her hair seemed to be on fire. She was crying with fear.

Her mother and I moved below her, by the body lying on the ground. Quite composedly her mother told the girl to jump. She did and we caught her safely and put her on the ground.

Another man had appeared, a neighbour who was walking his dog, a languid Great Dane. Everything seemed to be happening so naturally and slowly, as if were were going carefully through a rehearsal of some play. 'Where are the twins?' I asked the mother. She had twin boys, about four years of age.

'They're inside too,' she answered.

I went into the house with the man who had been walking the dog. The ground floor was wraithed in smoke but there was no fire down there. Even the electric lights were working. We looked up the stairs; oily smoke was billowing on the landing. I picked up a tea-towel, put it under the tap and held it across my mouth. Then, stupidly still bare-footed, I ran up the stairs.