The Dead Lie Down (43 page)

 

Though Pippa resolutely refuses to talk about where she wants to end up—‘outcome goals’, as she calls them—I put it to her that the ultimate accolade for anyone in a band is to have one of your songs playing as background music in
EastEnders
. ‘I don’t think so,’ she says dismissively. ‘Not until they upgrade to a more salubrious setting. Have you seen the hideous wallpaper in most of those houses? I don’t want my songs associated with that.’ That’s me told!

 

Martha Wyers, 31, author.
Fiction writer Martha Wyers has more awards and accolades to her name than most people twice her age. She won first prize in a children’s short story competition at the age of 11, and has been bagging prizes ever since. How many in total? I ask her, and she looks embarrassed. ‘I don’t know, maybe thirty?’ she says, blushing. These include the prestigious Kaveney Schmidt Award and the Albert Bennett short story prize. Now she’s branched out into full-length fiction, and her first novel,
Ice on the Sun
, was published in hardback last year by Picador, and is now out in paperback. Editor Peter Straus describes the book as ‘A stunning debut, the best novel by a young author that I’ve read in a long while.’ ‘I suppose it’s a literary novel, but I hope it’s readable too,’ Martha says. ‘I was gripped by the story while I was writing it, and I want readers to be gripped too.’ She is keen to talk about the book, and admits she became ’comprehensively obsessed’ with it while writing it. It’s the story of 27-year-old Sidonie Kershaw, who falls insanely in love with the enigmatic Adam Sands at an interview for a job they’re both after (a job Adam eventually gets). Sidonie can’t get him out of her head, even though she doesn’t know him from . . . well, Adam! She pursues him relentlessly, ends up frightening and repelling him, and driving herself into an abyss of despair. Sounds a bit depressing, I dare to suggest. ‘The only depressing books are bad ones,’ says Martha firmly. ‘Look at
American Psycho
—it’s uplifting because it’s art, because it’s so brilliantly written, powerful and memorable. There’s so much pain and horror in the world—emotional, physical, you name it. It’s the writers who don’t tackle these issues that depress me.’

 

Born and brought up near Winchester, you might say that Martha was born with an entire silver dinner service in her mouth. Her father is an investment banker, and Martha describes her mother as ‘an aristocrat who wouldn’t ever have had to work if she hadn’t wanted to’, though as it happens she always has and she now runs a T’ai Chi school that she set up herself. The family home is an eighteen-bedroom Hampshire mansion. The grounds are regularly used by touring companies for open-air productions of Shakespeare and opera. Martha’s mother is passionate about the arts, and always wanted her only daughter to do something creative. An ex-pupil of Villiers, the exclusive girls’ boarding school in Surrey, she sent Martha there too, in keeping with family tradition. ‘I love Villiers,’ says Martha. ‘If I ever have a daughter, that’s where she’ll go.’ On a novelist’s income? I ask. ‘I’m lucky,’ Martha admits. ‘Money isn’t a problem for me, because of my family. But it annoys me when people assume my life’s always been easy because of this. Financial problems aren’t the only kind. I know other writers who are always flat broke, but they’re happier in themselves than I am.’ Isn’t she happy, then? Most people would be, with a two-book deal from one of the country’s finest publishers and an ecstatically reviewed first novel already out. ‘I worry compulsively about the next book—I still don’t know what it’s going to be about,’ Martha admits. ‘What if it’s no good? I’m scared all I’ll do is write another version of my first book except worse. I could end up being a very public failure by the time I’m thirty-five.’ I ask her about her love life—does she have an Adam Sands equivalent? ‘If you’re asking if I’ve got a boyfriend, the answer’s no,’ she says. ‘But in the past I’ve been through hell as a result of loving a man too much, so in that sense the novel’s autobiographical. See what I mean?’ She smiles. ‘There are some situations where money’s no use whatsoever.’

 

I have one last question that I’m bursting to put to all of these rising stars, partly inspired by Martha’s closing words, so I round them up for a group session. I ask them what they’d do if they had to choose between professional fame, success, plaudits, fans, applause—all their wildest career dreams come true—but an unfulfilled and unhappy personal life,
or
a personal life full of love and happiness and all things good, but total lack of recognition professionally—a career down the tubes. ‘That’s an infantile question,’ says Pippa. Aidan is shaking his head. ‘You haven’t asked it right,’ he says. ‘It’s not about fame or success.’ ‘Speak for yourself!’ Doohan quips. I ask Aidan if he’d care to rephrase my question. ‘What matters to me is being able to do my work, not how well it does commercially,’ he says. ‘Yes, it’s great if other people appreciate what I do, but all that really matters to me is being able to paint.’ I ask if it matters more than personal happiness. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘If I had to choose, I’d choose my work over anything else. Creative satisfaction, feeling like I’m achieving something substantial with my art—that’s the most important thing, whether the world notices me doing it or not.’ On the other side of the coin, though, we have Kerry, who is laughing uproariously at Aidan’s response. ‘What, so you’d turn down a rolling programme of bliss from dawn till dusk, even if no one took the blindest bit of notice of your paintings? Not me, mate. I’d choose a happy life over my work any day. No offence to your arts supplement, and obviously I’m pleased to be in it, but I’m only a comedian, for f***’s sake. It’s not like my work’s that important—I’m not some brilliant doctor finding a cure for cancer.’ Doohan refuses to choose. ‘I want it all, me,’ he says. ‘I can have it, too, according to the terms of the dilemma you’ve set out for us. If I’m ecstatically happy, that has to mean I’m happy about all aspects of my life, which would have to include my work. Therefore it must be going well. Right?’ He’s a cheeky boy, that Doohan!

 

Martha is the only one who seems unsure. ‘Work,’ she says eventually. ‘That’s my official answer.’ She won’t say any more. Obviously, I’m intrigued. I’ll certainly be having a read of her novel, as well as immersing myself in the powerful and varied talents of her four fellow fame-seekers, all of whom are sure to become household names in the very near future. Remember, you heard it here first . . .