Tishman Auditorium.  Presented by The New School at New York University, New York City, July 27, 1999.
 
 

Announcer:     Good evening.  I'm the director of the writing program at the New School and it's my immense pleasure to welcome you to this special reading in celebration of the writing of Jennifer Lash, particularly two powerful and beautiful books, "On Pilgrimage" and "Blood Ties."  The reading is cosponsored by the New School writing program for Creative Writing and Bloomsbury USA.

Bloomsbury representative (Lisa Gallagher):     Good evening ladies and gentlemen.  I'm from Bloomsbury USA, the American publishers of "Blood Ties" and "On Pilgrimage" by Jennifer Lash.  I'd like to welcome you all here this evening, and in particular I'd like to thank the New School for hosting this event.  It was our editor in London, Liz Calder, who first met Ralph on the set of "The English Patient" and subsequently fell in love with "Blood Ties."  As such, Bloomsbury became its publisher, both in the U.K. and here in America.  The Wall Street Journal has said that "Blood Ties" is "compelling and satisfying.  A vivid, frightening story of cyclical neglect, told with a delicate hand.  Though her subject is harsh, her writing never is.  "Blood Ties" is a careful rendering of the emotional damage inflicted by families and especially by parents."  "On Pilgrimage," a work of nonfiction, is Lash's account of her pilgrimage through France, ending in Santiago de Compostela.  Without further adieu, I'd like to extend a warm welcome to Ralph, Sophie and Joseph Fiennes.

(applause from the audience.)

Ralph Fiennes:  Good evening.  We're going to read extracts from two books,  "Blood Ties" and "On Pilgrimage."  First we're going to read extracts from "Blood Ties."  And I think, just for, to help you, for clarity's sake, I'll try to give you a brief synopsis of the story of "Blood Ties."  It begins by savaging the character of   Violet Farr, Anglo-Irish lady, gentry, living on quite a substantial estate in Ireland with her husband Cecil.  Their marriage is not truly functioning. He is a repressed homosexual, and she has retreated her life into the ritual of running the estate and the house.  But they do, against the odds, father -- sorry, conceive -- one son (laughter from the audience), and the description of their lovemaking is "always an uncertain meeting, always an uncertain meeting, where each explored the other, by the device of being mentally somewhere else."

          Their son, Lumsden, is rejected by them, especially by Violet, not so much by Cecil.  He's an unwanted child, his mother finds him repulsive.  He grows up to be a  charmer, an opportunist, amoral, a lost -- a lost person, and he, as a young man, seduces a young barmaid in London called Dolly, and she becomes pregnant by him.  He leaves her.  She's depressed and unhappy, carrying a child that she doesn't really want a lot to do with, and in a way she rejects her son, called Spencer, in a state of postnatal depression, I suppose, and her friend takes Sencer back to Ireland, back to Violet Farr's house, and leaves this young toddler on the steps of the manor house and says to Violet Farr "This is your grandson, it's your blood -- deal with it."  And she doesn't.  She is even more cruel, in a way, to the unwanted offspring of her son, and Spencer is, in a way, the, I think the focus of the story.  His final journey from being a detached.......person who can't speak, who can't express himself, locked up inside himself, a lonely young boy, it's his final journey which is  the focus.  The first extract I'm going to read describes an encounter between  Violet and her teenage son, Lumsden:

    "Violet had been watching him for some time.  She was standing on the nursery landing.  She was standing in the open doorway of Lumsden's room.  For several seconds she remembered the calm, controlled days of Nurse Biddy, when this room was cheerful and clean and bright, and a soft-skinned, sweet-smelling child had slept in the narrow, blue painted bedstead.

     Now, hard-skinned yellow feet pushed through the single sheet.  The room was stuffy.  It smelt of sweat, not the sweat of a workman, a different, cloying sticky sweat.  Everywhere there were piles of clothes and belts and papers, magazines and mugs, with congealed dried-up coffee or cocoa in the bottom, precariously placed on top of them.  On the bedside table there was a dirty plate, with an utterly unmistakable cigarette butt on it.

         Violet spoke:

         "We've had enough of you.  Enough of your sloth, your greedy insensitive use of everyone and everything."

    Lumsden stirred.  The stag still had the weight of its hoof on the foul-smelling fleece, which Lumsden could see was crawling with shining milk-white maggots.

       "We've had enough.  Do you hear me?  Don't fake this sleep to me.  I know your deceits Lumsden Farr.  I know Lumsden how utterly dishonourable you are.  You lie.  You lie.  Now get up.  Get up out of this foul bed."

    As soon as she said this Violet tugged on the crumpled sheet and Lumsden  woke as the fleece fell from the hoof of the stag.

       In the instant of waking, Lumsden realized that the great shadow at the end of the bed, blocking out all the light, was his mother.  He realized that her eyes, rather than the stag's, were beaming down on to him.  He realized also that he must, whatever else happened, he must get to the loo. (laughter from the audience.)

   "This sheet is filthy, like everything else about you."

       Violet tugged as she spoke, wrenching, as if she might peel and then discard the whole tiresome, unwholesome experience of her son.  She must pull him out from this place, out from her mind and out utterly from her heart.

       "Not only do you completely disregard the household, just using it like a cheap hotel.  You haven't even any common decency left in you.  You lie as and when it suits you.  Everything has to be for your pathetic convenience, your whim, your pleasure.  You're without fiber of any kind.  I despise you."

    Violet tugged again at the sheet which Lumsden desperately clung to.  He was immensely curtailed from any real action by the pressing condition of his need to urinate.  He had on the flimsiest par of underpants.  The sheet was his guard now, his real lifeline.  Lumsden tugged against Violet.  There was a moment of tension.  The sheet was pulled as smooth as glass between them; then it gave way.  Dirty and old, it murmured, then with a roar it tore completely in two.  Violet fell back banging her head against the door.  With a torn half of the sheet clasped to him, Lumsden leapt out of the bed, past his moaning mother, into the sanctuary of the large, sunny, nursery bathroom.  He shot the bolt and stood at last, with a relief beyond description, in front of the white lavatory pan.  As he relieved himself of the bulk and pressure of the urine, as it bubbled into a fine froth in the pan, he gradually because aware again of Violet's moaning and cursing on the other side of the bolted bathroom door.

    For an instant, as Lumsden pulled the plug, he felt unease.  A niggling press of real worry.  He had taken some loose change from her bag.  He had taken a packet of Sweet Afton from one of the men's jackets hanging up in the stables.  But surely in a real, adult world, anywhere civilized, surely these would not be crimes but simply a case of poorly organized logistics.

(laughter from the audience)

        Violet banged on the door.

       "Jesus wept," she screamed.  "My head's bleeding and all you can do is lock yourself in the bathroom.  You should be thrashed.  You should be thrashed."

        Lumsden did feel uneasy.  But this woman was no longer his mother in the manner mothers sometimes seemed to be with their sons.  She was huge, she was animal, she was at bay, bellowing her own mad pain at him and he simply would not receive it.  He would never receive it.  He would never allow himself to be a receptacle for the frantic, hopeless, shrieking pain of women. Never.  Not in any circumstances."

(applause from the audience.)
 

Sophie Fiennes:     "Sid and Ruth Frampton did not consider it a blessing when their daughter Dolly was born.  Thin as a rail, a chain-smoker who suffered from severe bouts of depression, Ruth Frampton felt nothing but dread, confusion and shame when the doctor told her that she was in fact expecting a child.  Her two sons were grown up and away in the Merchant Navy.  The small sub-post-office, village store and bakery were run down and dismal.  The only thing that kept Sid going at all was the idea of retirement.  To sell up.  To have a bungalow.  To be in spitting distance of the South coast.  For them both the conception of a child in middle age was nothing short of a catastrophe.

          Through the pregnancy, Ruth said very little to anyone.  She was glad when the shop was empty, glad when each day was done.  Glad most of all when Sid's alarm went off at five in the morning and she had the creaking, soft bed to herself.

           In the bakery amongst the heat and white and wood, the heaving and pounding, whisking and pulling and shoving, Sid felt as if for some reason not known to himself he was being punished, pinioned, pressed down in the dry cast of his wife's unending gloom.  Her sharp stare seemed to fill every canary yellow space in the small house.  Only in the bakery could Sid be free from it.  Poor Ruth, she tried.  He knew she tried.  Every night after she had put on the thin mauve nylon nightdress and the worn misshapen cream cardigan she would go into the bathroom and dampen the ends of her dull black hair.  She wound the ends in tight pin curls which she kept in place by a crisscrossed pair of kirby grips.  She smeared Ponds cold cream into her sallow cheeks, and every morning after she had tied her overall and eaten her toast she took a lipstick from an ashtray on the kitchen windowsill and staring menacingly at her sad frantic reflection in the small square mirror by the kitchen window, she drew a long sharp cupid's bow of brilliant red over the thin crimped lines of her lips.  Sid never liked to say how sad it looked, it seemed to be something she needed to do; it seemed to give her the confidence to go out there into the shop and face the stares and nudges of the customers.

            In fact Sid and Ruth said very little to one another, various voices from the radio programs were almost more familiar to them than their own.  The actual conception of Dolly was almost as much a mystery to them as it was to everyone else." (applause from the audience.)

Ralph Fiennes:    This next extract (from "Blood Ties") describes Lumsden's seduction of Dolly.  (Certain passages have been left out of the reading by Ralph Fiennes, that are present in the book.  These will be apparent by the use of periods to symbolize the deletions):

            Maybe because Lumsden's grounding had been in female fury, violent pent-up passion; maybe passion unleashed, violent uncontrollable emotional disorder run riot, maybe it had for him a certain attraction.  He was not sure why, but in that second Dolly ran past him, all sobs and screams, he had sensed an energy there that had certain, fleeting, bizarre attraction. . .

           The loud dramatic sound of the rain, the huge quiet of the barn itself; the rafters covered with cobwebs, fine rolled lengths of dust, sacks, implements, a large glistening damp oil stain on the concrete floor, the stack of bales, both hay and straw; it was such an unexpected environment for either Lumsden or Dolly.  It was as if they had both been catapulted by the racing, uneven drama of their personal lives in this timeless place. . .

      Lumsden, as he ran through the wood, had no other thought but simply to get to Dolly first, before she got anywhere else.  He wanted to assure her, to assure himself.  He realized vaguely that the manner of it might very well be a demonstration of some kind of care.  He would certainly have to approach her in a way she wanted, would understand, and would respond to.

      Dolly, for her part, felt the miserable, total exhaustion of a child.  In her nights and days of careful work and fearful, jumpy sleep, she had, she knew now, she had imagined too much.  She had thought so many times of Lumsden, his laughter, his easy manner; she had seen him there, night after night in her mind; careful and tender towards her.  It was the shame of so much foolishness that made her bite her nails and sniff again and again, wiping her nose on the back of her hand.  Where could she go now, without any money; and so wet, and her arm still bleeding from the wire?  He'd said. . .go.  You're fired.  He'd said that.

             (Interruption as the school security guard tries to remove people who had walked into the auditorium and were now lining the entrance to the auditorium by the back wall and doors.  Ralph Fiennes hears the commotion and halts the reading.  He looks down and waits until the noise has abated, then continues once it is again quiet.)

           Lumsden came slowly towards the back of the barn.  He sat down on a bale of straw, more or less opposite where Dolly was sitting.

            'Brilliant storm,' he said.

            Dolly paused in her sniffing.

            'Come on, Mrs. Noah, it's not that bad.  We could get afloat on some of those old doors.  We could certainly feed the animals.  It's good hay.

           (Ralph Fiennes pretends to sniff the air.)

             'Fresh.  This seasons'.

           Dolly attempted a sort of sniffing smile.  She wanted so much to say to him that she loved him.  That she hadn't minded the work, or the muddle about the money.  She wanted to say she was sorry for looking in the car.  Sorry for whatever it was that she had done.

              Lumsden was not quite sure what he should do next.  There was certainly no chance of moving out for a while.  The rain was still a blinding drench of throbbing, racing water, filling every hole and gully, every slit or space in the dry ground, until it stood in great grey puddles.

           '"What did you do to your arm?"

            "Dunno."

            "You couldn't have done that on a bramble."

             "I think it was wire."

              Lumsden moved a little closer.

             'Let's have a look.'

             'It's all right.'

             'C'mon now. . .come on. . .Noah knows best.'

            This time Dolly grinned, and put out her cold arm, where the warm blood had dried into a scab and smear, with small, bright, pinprick beads of fresh blood oozing upwards now and again.

              'Poor you.  It looks horrid.'

              It was the fact that he suddenly sounded kind, after all the mad fury and shouting.  It was that edge, or real quiet in his voice that set Dolly off again.  She turned away from him.  She fell sobbing on to the straw.

             'I should never have come.  Tug said I was a fool.  She was right.  I am.
I'm an idiot.'

             And she was away again, good loud sobs more or less in competition with the downpour outside.  Lumsden knew he had to rein it all in; all those sobs and tears were definitely a backward step, and a dangerous one, towards  possible disaster.

             'Come on.  Come on.  Things aren't that bad.  I mean. . .we haven't drowned
 yet.' . .

            Lumsden's hands were firmly there on her shoulders.  His hair was wet, it seemed to hang down longer than usual.  She hardly dared to look directly into his eyes, they were closer to her now than they had ever been.

           'Look, Dolly, there is this bit of a muddle, but just give me a few days.  Trust me.  Trust me.  I'll see us through.  We'll get by.'

           The way he said 'us' and 'we.'  It was enough.  It was enough for her to trust him forever.  And in that second Dolly felt safe again. . .

           'I love you, Lumsden,' she said.

            'Idiot.  Poor old idiot person.' (laughter from the audience)

            Dolly had never heard him so gentle before.  Very quietly he slipped his    hands down there into her shirt.  He eased her breasts upwards; cold from the rain, the nipples were sprung, very forward and firm towards his hands.

             'May I kiss you?' he said.

             And it was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her, when his mouth rested, gently at first and then more firmly on her right breast.    She lay back down against the straw.  She dared to let her square hand, with the chipped nails, she dared to let it run through his long, dark hair. . . .

             Lumsden seemed taller without his clothes.   He took hers from her. . .

           (laughter from the audience erupts at the humour that is to be found in this part of the reading.  Ralph Fiennes sees the jocularity too, laughs, and has to start over again.)

              He took hers from her, one by one; the shoes with their broken heels, just fell on to the concrete floor.  She thought she would be shy of herself, so quietly stripped, so completely bare.  But Lumsden peeled her clothes from her so carefully, as if they were really never meant to be there at all.  Like sun moving its way round a garden, he found her and loved her. . .

              Later, when the storm had ceased, when a keen yellow light glazed the  puddles and the bright green blades of corn, when there was no longer rain or wind, simply the sound of water running from gutters into oil drums and drains, then he handed her back her crumpled clothes, and when they were both dressed he held her very firmly against his own warm body and simply said, very quietly this time, 'Trust me.  Trust me, Mrs. Noah.'

(applause from the audience)

 Joseph Fiennes:     This next passage (from "Blood Ties") focuses on Spencer, who is the illegitimate son of Lumsden and it focuses on a meeting with a psychiatrist:

               "There were many people who tried their best.  But Spencer's continual lack of response forced them to consider his condition as psychiatric, seriously disturbed.  He was sent back to London. . .   He was passed like a signal in a game.  He was passed from priests to psychiatrists, to social workers, to hostels, and to foster-parents.  His name was on a riverbed of forms.  But with the strength of his silence he was able to remain apart.  He waited    in dull corridors, or on the edges of broken beds, he waited in overheated clinics.  He was driven and checked, picked up and dropped off.  But the weight of him slipped down always below the level of their care and control and understanding.  They tried different schools, different homes, but without his cooperation they were made to feel foolishly inadequate.

               Very occasionally he would speak.  It was often nothing more or less than a murmur of politeness.  'Thanks'  'No thanks' 'Sure' 'No' 'No way' 'Dunno.'

                In the beginning he kept his eyes downcast.  He scrutinized their feet and his own, black scud marks on worn linoleum, thick dust, watery stains on wood or concrete or stone, swirling sick orange and brown on thin carpets.  In the shapes and mood and smell of the surface into which he stared he began to see creatures; ants, lizards, moles, even now and then a damsel fly.

                What he saw engaged his attention; in some way it fed him.  And so he thought, if he saw a little earth or water, or weeds or springy bank ground with furze  and crippled roots and heather, if he saw a little like that, definite and keen, then surely if he looked up, if he raised his eyes, he might see the forest; the giant hide of Maura's open grounds; the wide pounding drive of the ocean.  He might see rocks and pools and the streaming emptiness of the sky.  He thought carefully of this, but it was some time before he had the courage to dare to do it.  He felt if he looked up too soon, before his silence had grown into even greater strength, he felt he might become impaled on their stares.  He might become scared by their frenzied pens on the paper forms with his name; their folded, pale fingers, their waiting, waiting,  waiting.  They might close in round his breath, they might move in and destroy the safety of his silence.

           Eventually he did look up.  It was a bright morning in a very warm clean  space.  There was a man in the room with him.  He had been waiting a long time.  To begin with, he had simply said 'Well, you seem to be giving everyone a lot of trouble...'  Then he waited.  There was a small high window behind his head.  There was the branch of a tree with birds on it.  Spencer saw the warm square of sun on the brown carpet.  And he heard the birds.  The birds were sparrows.  The word 'trouble' stayed in his mind.  It grew like dark gnarled branches.  It grew into a rough, contorted, creeper shape.  It grew so that it took all the space.  Only the smallest fragments of space were    left between the rough winding limbs.  But Spencer thought when it is spring and there are buds and leaves, then the dark difficult sinews will become hidden.  Their patterns then will not be half so bold.  There will  be space then between the leave and the leaves will be light and fresh, not heavy and dark like the trunk and the branches.  He was seeing all of this when the soft large hands pulled out these cards and put them down on the table.  Spencer could just see that they were blot marks, rather like the mess of blood in the folded corners of newspaper, after plucking a bird.  Donal plucked birds so fast.  He never damaged the flesh.  He knew how to pull the feathers without tearing.

           The marks on the cards were not unlike branches, but they were softer.   They were not unlike blood.  They were liquid anyway.  Spencer looked up, enough to see the stains on the cards and the clean square fingernails of the hands that held them.  Then the man said 'What do you see?'  Spencer thought of Donal plucking birds.  He thought of the soft flight of the smallest, nail-paring, moon-curved feathers that flew out so fast into the dust at the edges of the room.  And he thought of the shapes of blood under the carcass on to the paper.  He said 'Blood.'  The man said 'Anything else?'  And Spencer said again 'No.  Blood.  Just blood.'  The man shifted the cards.  The blood on them was like butterflies and bellies and limbs; the blood was like Violet's hair strands, and the pierced, coiled knot at the back of her head.  Spencer had not thought of Violet for a long while.  Any thought of her might impair the silence.  He was afraid to disturb the silence.  These cards, these blood   shapes might seep into it.  They might take the silence from him.  He tried to see the branches again instead of the blood.  Something made him feel he must fight.  He the strength of the silence to remain.  To do this he might have to look up. He might need to stare face to face and then build the forest between them.  So he looked up.  He looked up at the man with the cards and the clean fingernails.

               It was a very careful face.  It was a man with cheese smooth skin and damp clean strands of hair.  The eyes were ready like spikes to catch him; to impale him.  To avoid the eyes so directly towards him Spencer stared at the forehead.  He stared at the point between the eyes where nothing was, and as he stared, he remembered the unicorn that rested within Maura in the candlelit chamber.  He remembered that the hooves of the unicorn are soundless; without sound the unicorn is suddenly there in a forest clearing.  As Spencer thought the man stared.

          After many sessions and much waiting, all he had from this boy was  'blood.'  It was not much, but it was enough to be uneasy with.  There might well be a predisposition to schizophrenia.  Certainly, the boy was dangerously withdrawn.  Dangerously out of touch with the real external world, and any practical sense of himself.

         Then Spencer saw for the first time the lump on the clear forehead.  Then from the lump he saw a brightness.  The brightness grew outwards and upwards.  It was a shaft of strong light.  Then Spencer no longer saw the clean waiting man or the empty desk, or the blood-run cards.  He saw the unicorn.  A giant white beast with the body of a deer and gentle oval eyes and the bright horn of power; a driving power to keep all intruders from the weight and cloak of the silence.  In the presence of the unicorn he was safe.  He could look up.  He could stare because they were nothing.  They were no presence.  There was only the white flanks, the strong quarters and the silent hooves, and a glow of moonlight and power; it threaded into the silence as small different leaves thread into the wide foliage roof of darkness that is the height of the forest.

          Spencer stared.  He was sitting upright.  He was looking directly ahead, directly ahead at the tall clean man, but he felt quite comfortable because there was no one there, only the light and the strength of the unicorn.  His breathing was deep and regular.  The clean man noted it.  He said 'Spencer.'  He said it several times, but it sounded less than a name each time he repeated it.  Eventually, he said 'Right.  I think we'll leave things for today.'  The clean man stood up.  Spencer remained seated.  He smiled.  The clean man made a note of it.  Spencer smiled because he was safe.  He had mastered something.  The unicorn was there.  The forest was there.  The emptiness, the tin sounds and bright shapes were theirs; they need not intrude on him."

(great applause from the audience)
 

Ralph Fiennes:      "On Pilgrimage" is an account of a journey our mother made to centres of pilgrimage, medieval centers of pilgrimage, in France, and finally one in Spain in 1990.  Two years before, she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and I think she felt inspired to make this journey as a result of that experience (of being diagnosed with cancer) and I'm just going to read you the beginning of the book:

               "Poor cancer, the word is dark and terrible, full of fear to the medical profession as much as anyone else.  I believe it is a constellation; you become simply one of thousand and thousands of stars within it.  It is a common, everyday disease.  A star may be sharp, and full of pain, but it may also be a guide, a useful companion on a dark night.

               There is a hidden current within every individual.  It seeks and stirs, hides and yearns.  Sometimes it is bewildered, a mixture of anger and pain and certainty.  It may recede, but it never escapes.  In moments of crisis, it is often full of voice.

               Make a Pilgrimage.  Go to ancient places.  Go wherever there are contemporary seekers.  Go in whatever way it works out.  Just go!"

(applause from the audience)

 Sophie Fiennes:     This extract (from "On Pilgrimage") that I'm going to read is from a place in the south of France called Le Puy:

         "Just past the Auberge I heard the sound of water coming from inside a building.  A sign outside said 'Car washing absolutely forbidden.'  I peered in.  It was a public laundry.  Two huge stone sinks ran the length of this cellar-like stone space; streaks of brilliant green broke the dark of the curved ceiling. Various women, many colourfully dressed and surrounded by bright, plastic buckets, slapped and scrubbed their sheets and clothes against the broad edge of cold, sparkling stone.  A high, single brass tap, continually poured clear water into the vast, soapy, grey mass  in the sink.

             The women seemed very cheerful and in good heart, they were getting the kind of whiteness Persil has never seen. (laughter) What an old rhythm:  scrub, float and slap down; roll and fold and wring, again and again and again.  I thought of women throughout the world, kneeling or squatting or bending by some edge of water and following these same gestures.  There are so many strong marked, carved continually into the space of each day; digging, sweeping, scrubbing, stirring, rocking, wringing; the mudra of mankind.  A simple scale of gesture that creates a continual chord of strength and purpose.

             I came up to the basilica from the East entrance which opens out from a narrow, dark, cobbled street into a small patch of ground beside the bell tower. . .  Pushing its heavy doors, I eventually found my way into the cathedral itself.  A very dark, mysterious place, utterly unlike anywhere I had been before.  The ceiling of the nave is a series of stunning, twelfth-century, brick cupols between the arches.  There was to me this giant, waiting, cave feel.  Gradually your eye is drawn to the dark, secret space beyond the high altar, here, amid hanging sanctuary lamps and several lighted candles, high up under a white gilded canopy, is the tiny black  Madonna.  Her face and the face of the child, are glistening ebony, that is all the black there is to see.  A stiff white robe and veil accentuates their small, staring faces.  There is something hypnotic about them.  They are so small in this huge dark space, and yet you feel compelled to keep looking back to them.

        There are many legends about Le Puy and the Virgin.  Sometime in the fourth century there was a widow, who lived near the stream of Borne, she was suffering from a malignant fever.  It is said that the suffering widow saw the Virgin, standing on a large, flat stone, surrounded by angels.  The Virgin told the widow, that if she were simply to come and lay herself on the stone, instantly, she would be cured.  The widow went and found the stone, and was instantly cured.  A bishop, presumably excited by the vision and cures that followed it, ran to the holy hill (the legends vary, but all say that the bishop ran) and he saw a stag come out from the nearby forest.  Running in the snow, the stag traced out the plan of the basilica that should be build, according to the wishes of the Mother of God.  . . .

        Black Madonna's abound in France.  Again and again you hear guides and sacristans or priests saying to groups of wide-eyed children 'Ah black, Why black?  We don't know.  Maybe it is years of burning candles, or that they have been hidden in the ground.  We don't know.'  Once again, c'est un mystére.  There is various contemporary literature suggesting links with Isis, Artemis, Esoteric Schools of Initiation, the Dynasty of the Merovingians, Alchemy etc.  Some wise, necessary anima image anyway.  All of it is tantalizing conjecture.  . .

         As I sat in the great cave of the basilica at Le Puy, I thought that maybe this tiny, black stub of face, in her white robe, maybe she is some kind of plug, keeping in place the strange, hoarded energy that very ancient places accumulate.  The Madonna's role is as an intercessor for mankind towards the Divine.  Darkness, its possession of us, seems to be an essential part of the spiritual route.  To the Sufis blackness is the final stage before the beatific light.  Maybe the black Madonna demonstrates for us the wisdom of this bridging darkness."

(applause from audience)

Joseph Fiennes:  This is an extract from the chapter on Lourdes, famous for its healing water, so much so that a lot of the nuns have become bath addicts (laughter from the audience):

       "One morning there was a blustering north wind between heavy showers.  The domain was practically deserted.  No one was queueing for the baths.  I paused by the sign.  I was promptly ushered in through the blue and white curtains.  There was the sound of piped music.  More blue and white curtains and then into the waiting cubicle, which takes six bodies at a time.  A pilgrim from Kildare was bathing, so the helpers were all speaking English. There were one or two strays, not from the pilgrimage.  I was assumed to be a stray.  'Dutch or German most probably, she can't understand a thing,' (laughter) I heard one of them say of me.  'Petticoat and bra on,' they yelled, 'everything else off.'  (laughter from the audience) Dazed women peeled down their clothes.  One elderly woman was busy unwinding bandages from a raw, superating wound.  But you could hardly look, speed was the whole thing.  Another curtain, and there was the bath!  (laughter) like a narrow, stone cattle trough, just a step down. Utterly paralyzed, and very grateful to be assumed to be Dutch, (laughter) I stared for a second into the clear water.  Then the ladies, one at each side, with horrifying speed, yanked off the bra and petticoat, and threw a large, wet length of mutton cloth over the body, presumably in the interests of some kind of modesty. (laughter)

             'In now, sit down, sit down, not your head.'  I suppose for speed they pushed on the shoulders.  I felt as if I had gone through some fairground curtain, into a ghost train, where things flapped at you, and voices called.  One of the women grabbed up a small, white statue from the end of the bath.  'Kiss our lady and say your prayer ... now.' (laughter) The statue was put to my lips.  It was all over in seconds.  A dunking.  Mutton cloth off.  Clothes on.  No towels.  (laughter)

                Seconds later, I was beside that marvelous, loud, pounding river.  There  was a curiously warm feel on my wet body.  Water and stone once again.  A place of water and stone.  For me, some sort of atrophied sadness; something frozen in time; something beyond any coherence I could tap into.

              The last day was glorious, with a really warm sun.  I met many English people at the café tables.  Pilgrims for Catford, Croydon and Carnavon.  All were thrilled with Lourdes.  For most of them, it was a longed-for visit.  'She'll get you back if you ask her, she'll always find a way,' one man said from his wheelchair.  They talked of peace of mind and spiritual healing.  Rita, one of the helpers, described how suddenly, many years ago she had decided to take a child suffering from Down's Syndrome to Lourdes.  She had cashed in all the family savings.  Her husband had been furious.  But from that beginning, they now had a regular business, taking the sick to Lourdes.  They had a special ambulance vehicle, with a lift for wheelchairs.  Rita said that the benefit for those, isolated by disease and disability was incalculable.  Suddenly on the pilgrimage, in a group, they were wanted and loved.  They were the priority.  It was often hard for them when they had to return home.

        In Rita's party, there was a very charming Yorkshire man -- Bill Alexander.  He was over eighty.  He had been to Lourdes four times.  I asked him what Our Lady meant to him?  He was eager to reply.

        'She's the love of my life, Jini.' (laughter) "It's like this.  In the war we'd have photographs, wouldn't we, the wife and kids.  And we'd look at them, and feel close to them.  That's how it is with Mary.  I have her there, at home, up on the piano.  I took up the piano when my wife died.  A bit of Beethoven.  A bit of Scott Joplin.  I'll turn to her when I'm playing...  What do you think Mother?  How is it?  It's all right lad... Carry on, carry on. (laughter) Lourdes is sad.  Of course it's sad, but it's wonderful.  I'll tell you this, Jini, if they don't feel it when they come, then there's something wrong with them.'

         I was glad Bill felt so certain and so happy.  I was glad also, that I had my ticket for Spain, booked to Irun for the next morning.  (laughter) From there, as soon as I could, I would make my way to the far west of Galicia.  To  Santiago de Compostela." (applause from the audience)

(note:  There is another small interruption when the Bloomsbury representative, Lisa Gallagher, thinks that this is end of the reading by the Fiennes children.)

"Thank you very much, and thanks to. . ."

Ralph   (smiling at Ms. Gallagher) :   "There's more."

Joe   (smiling also and holding up two fingers):  "Two more."  (applause)

Sophie   (smiling also):   "There was more to see..." (laughter)

Sophie Fiennes:  ("On Pilgrimage," extract from chapter on Le Puy):

           "There was more to see.  There was a Salle d'Echo.  I still felt in the grip of some palpable awfulness, which even the watery sun couldn't dispel.  In the old building, just beyond the abbey church, there is a hospice for the elderly.  Apparently there are three echo rooms, but only one is open to the public.  I followed the signs, and found myself in a large, fairly low-ceilinged room.  A decorated boss in the centre, gathers up at various, curved segments of roof.  The walls were not high.  The notice said...  Go into the corner and with your back to the room, whisper into the wall.  I began to do this, saying bonjour to myself and certainly the whisper came back to me very clearly, as if you were speaking on a telephone.  Then suddenly someone tapped me on the shoulder.  It was Juliet.  'No.  No.' she said, 'You can't play alone, you must play it with me.'  And Juliet ran across eagerly into the opposite corner.  Juliet was full of life and warmth.  She had a blue felt hat pulled down on her head, which gave her a schoolgirl look, bright rosy cheeks and a  marvelous smile.  Her skin was brown and soft, although it was very wrinkled.  She wore a wrap-over blue apron and blue slippers.  We played together with great success, speaking at length via the wall, without any sound heard in the centre of the room.

             Juliet lived in the hospice now, having spent a lifetime on a small holding, high in the mountains.  'Juliet as in Romeo and Juliet?' I asked.  She was delighted and clasped my hands.  'Exactly.  Exactly.' She said laughing.  At that moment a stiff, very thin man walked across the room on two sticks.  Juliet smiled and touched his arm.  He didn't seem to see her or take any notice.  'Romeo?'  I asked when he had gone.  'Yes, Yes.  Romeo,' she said, thrilled that I understood.  'It is sad,' she went on, 'because here the men and women must live separately.'  She sighed.  'But  it had to be ... it had to be.'  Then she came very close to me... 'But I have freedom.  Freedom.  I can sit and walk about how I choose.  I can do anything I wish.  Oh my dear, every woman should know a little freedom once in her life.  Such freedom.'  She clapped her hands together with the joy of it all.  At that moment a nurse came to call her for coffee.  She kissed me, patting my cheeks.  'Freedom. . .such a gift.'

              I went away happy to have the truth of Juliet in my heart.  She was such  a star.  I will never think of freedom again without thinking of Juliet.  People like Juliet, just sitting in the sun.  Without wealth or brilliance or religious mystique, they probably experience a peace of mind, beyond most people's understanding."

(applause)

Joseph Fiennes:  ("On Pilgrimage", another reading from the chapter on Le Puy):

             "While we were standing at the back of the basilica, there was suddenly a tremendous gust of wings.  Sparrows and pigeons were continually flying around, but this gust of bird was mighty and different.  We looked up, and there, high above the narthex was the unmistakable, compelling face of a barn owl.  Again and again it flew and paused, frantically crashing its white body with terrible hopelessness against the dusty windows.  Every so often it would fly the whole length of the church, only to soar up again into another barrier of light.  I cannot describe how unbearable it was to follow the flight of that bird, knowing that we were quite incapable to give it its freedom.  There were holes and spaces, if only it could see them.  Each time it failed, and paused and the stillness became longer, and the fearful despair of that bird felt greater.

              We left for the library.  We couldn't bear to be there. Later, the whole experience haunted me.  The gaze of that particular bird is so involving.  I suddenly thought, what if God witnesses in every man a divine spark, which flies within us blindly, like that bird, crashing in terror, punched and pounded from wall to wall, blinded by obstacles and dust, and yet, God knows, that there is a way for natural freedom and ascending flight.  That an extraordinary pain that witness would be."

(great applause from the audience)

Bloomsbury representative: I'd just like to thank Ralph, Sophie and Joe, and apologize for my not-so-silent echo. (laughter from the audience) Now we have time for a very short, ten or fifteen minute question and answer session.

Questions from the audience (repeated by the Bloomsbury representative, Lisa Gallagher so the audience of more than 500 people could hear what was being asked of the Fiennes children):

Question (to Sophie):  Since you're a documentary film maker, have you  ever thought about taking On Pilgrimage and your mother's words to make a film of it?

Sophie Fiennes:  Yes I have actually, and I think it's just one of those things that has to cook a little bit with an idea until we find a way to pursue it.  I think that her descriptions of places are very particular to her experience, But so I'm not quite sure how that would translate in her absence.

Follow-up question:    Have you made that pilgrimage yourself?

Sophie Fiennes:    I haven't, no.

Question:   Having a creative parent, do you think it was harder to find your own creative path, or was it easier?

Ralph Fiennes:   Well I suppose it could be, but with our mother -- while her passion for her children's awareness of her creativity was very strong, and though it was sometimes hard for her to know how to divide her time between her children and trying to write -- I don't think any of us ever felt that she was unstinting in her . . . commitment in encouraging us to find ... the thing which would allow us to create . . .whatever we were gonna create. (laughs, throws his hands up and covers his face, a great deal more laughter)

Question:    Was your mother's writing process a private one, or something that she shared with you as an ongoing process?

Joseph Fiennes:  It was almost certainly private, but it was trying to find that private time and space, outside of her role of mother to seven children.  It was finding her moment within the day to lock herself away . . . so that was really her main purpose, was just to find that space and time, that was the main agenda (behind keeping it private).  Sometimes she would go and exile herself for periods away from the house in order to write.

Question:   I found the book very compelling, beautifully written, and brilliantly conceived -- why did her first publisher not want to publish it?

Bloomsbury representative: Sophie's actually the executor of Jennifer Lash's estate, so perhaps she wants to answer. . .

Sophie Fiennes:  Yes, I I think really that, umm ... there is a way in which her work is out of its time, it isn't... She, as Joe said, and I think there was a surprise in the audience, she actually had six children in seven years, and had fostered a son.  So when she came out of that experience, she wrote Blood Ties and she found it very difficult to navigate her way back into the publishing world because she devoted so many years of her life to rearing children and she hadn't been working intimately (within the publishing industry) within those years.  I think it was very distressing for her not to not find an audience for her work, which is why it's very o be able to find an audience for her.

Question:   A lot of writers feel that once they're into their work, they start adopting the personalities of their characters.  Some of your mother's writing can go to some very dark places -- do you feel that with her sometimes she was going to these dark places, or maybe her writing was taking her to them. Did it come through in her regular character?  (Ralph Fiennes starts to answer before the Lisa Gallagher has a chance to paraphrase for the audience -- more laughter)

Ralph Fiennes:   She had quite an unhappy childhood, and I think sometimes there was a tension in her that surfaced, in particular while she was writing.  She found it very hard to write, to actually do the writing, it was quite stressful for her.  I wouldn't go as so far to say she took on the dark aspects of her characters, but I think the stress of writing was quite acute and sometimes that would make her quite volatile.

Question:   When in your lives, your early lives, did you become aware of your mother's voice as a writer, as opposed to a mother's voice?

Sophie Fiennes:  Well she published two-first novels before she even married -- she published her first novel when she was 22 -- so she was already a writer before she was a mother so we were always aware of that aspect.

Ralph Fiennes:   She would read her work for us sometimes, and she actually wrote a book for children, which is not published, which she used to read extracts from as she was writing.

Follow-up question:  How old were you all?

Ralph Fiennes:   At that time. . .eight.

Joseph Fiennes:  Wasn't here (he smiles slyly).  (laughter from the audience at the joke.  There is some banter back and forth between Ralph, Sophie and Joe about who was there at the time and who wasn't.)

Ralph Fiennes:   You were just born (he smiles).

Question:   Is it very odd to read your mother's writing as a reader as opposed to as her children.  How does it feel to have that sort of detachment to your mother's writing?

Joseph Fiennes:   Speaking for myself, I feel completely as her child, and so there's no detachment and there's great involvement.  I find great humor in the work and also in dark passages.  So it feels very intimate, and privileged to be a part of her voice.

Ralph Fiennes:   I think we all feel that we hear her voice, her physical voice reading this or thinking or reading it aloud it so clear her face, certain observations, she is very present.

Sophie Fiennes:  And it's also worth saying that she was someone who lacked confidence in her own work, and in a funny way for us it's great to read her work and to be able to really enjoy reading it and not having the vulnerability of having written it.

(laughter and great applause)

Bloomsbury representative: I'm sorry we weren't able to get to everyone's questions, but thank you all very very much for coming.  We'll now have a book signing. . .
 

                          THE END . . .