helen sandler | journalism

Sarah Waters

War of Words

Sarah Waters tells Helen Sandler about the frustrations and delights of setting her latest novel, The Night Watch, in the 1940s

The top floor of a 1790s house seems a suitable residence for a historical novelist, and Sarah Waters' south London flat is satisfyingly garret-like. Its small rooms are crammed with books and quirky old decoration: a glittery picture of the Madonna and Child above the fireplace; a fringed lampshade that might have come out of a sÈance scene from her spooky second novel, Affinity.

The writer herself sits with a cup of tea on the sofa. Although articulate and chatty, her speech is diluted by the words 'like' and 'you know', as if she may not be entitled to hold a strong opinion. When she relaxes, she tucks up her feet and releases the sense of humour familiar from the books, from Tipping the Velvet onwards.

And she has earned the right to relax. Her fourth novel, The Night Watch, is about to come out when we meet, and it is one of her best. Set in London during and after World War II, it moves backwards from 1947 to 1944 and finally to 1941.

'That structure has always struck me as a way to capture the tremendous poignancy of relationships - that they start out so hopefully and often end up so dismally,' says Waters. She came to this novel with three characters, Helen, Julia and Kay, two of whom were a couple having difficulties with jealousy. 'But I couldn't see what would happen. And then I suddenly thought, what if I made this into a backwards story?' Within 30 seconds she had jotted down the plot. But trying to write the whole book around these characters proved claustrophobic.

Fortunately there were others waiting in the wings - Helen's colleague Viv and Viv's brother Duncan - and the story expanded to include their pasts and their crises. The backwards chronology made perfect sense. 'When you meet people in life,' Waters points out, 'you don't want to know about their future, you want to know about their past and what has brought them to where they are.'

She was alarmed by how much there was to learn about the period and spent several months on research. Her parents were children during the war (mother in Pembrokeshire, Wales, where Sarah grew up; father in Leytonstone, east London) and were able to fill in some of the gaps. Her dad described his working-class family's kitchen, with a bath in the corner for which his father had made a cover to use as a work surface. 'It sounds Dickensian now,' says Waters, 'but it's only 60 years ago.'

This was not just a historical exercise. The 39-year-old author needed a setting that would allow her to explore her own emotions more closely than she could in her Victorian novels. 'Because it's that bit closer to us, I could identify with the women and the lesbian subculture,' she says. 'So I feel there's more of me and my friends in there. I wanted to explore jealousy because I'd had phases of jealousy [in relationships] and had a horrified fascination with it. But that ended up being a relatively small bit of the book and the characters just became themselves.'

Still, she expected to identify most with Helen, the jealous one, but became irritated with her. Instead it was ambulance-driving Kay who ended up closest to her creator. 'She's like my inner butch,' she laughs. 'My idealism went into her, just as my teenage sulkiness went into Duncan.'

Asked if she understands jealousy any better now, she sighs. 'No, I'm just sick to death of thinking about it.'

She had to live with the sadness of the book over the four years it took to write, but there is also a lot of excitement in there. 'I have become more interested, from Fingersmith onwards, in the different ways you can tell a story,' she explains. 'As a reader, or watching films, I can still get very excited about narratives that surprise you. That's what keeps me wanting to write.'

The thrills in The Night Watch arise partly from illicit relationships, and there is a heightened eroticism as a result. Waters' girlfriend of four years, Lucy Vaughan, was the first to point this out. 'Lucy feels the book is ruder than the others because there is an intensity to it,' says the author. 'It did feel different to the sex I've written before, about younger women coming to it for the first time. That's always been fun to do, but this was about desire in people who know what they want.'

Her only worry was whether the heterosexual sex was believable. She has experience in that department but, she laughs, 'So long ago it hardly counts.' But her agent and editor are both straight and haven't raised any objections. 'I always enjoy writing about sex,' says Waters. 'It's so easy to make it cliched or corny; it's a challenge to talk about it in a way that feels authentic but fresh.'

There is actually less sex in the published version of The Night Watch than in previous drafts. The author has cut scenes where Kay picked up young women, because they slowed the story. She has even cut a chapter at the end (from which she read in York at 2004's Libertas Festival), where all the lesbian characters were at the same party. She lowers her voice dramatically. 'The Lost Chapter! It's all gone!'

But why does she keep choosing periods when lesbian lives were hidden? 'It's historical difference that has always attracted me,' she explains. 'I know people will say: "It's easy to write about lesbians in corsets, it's all nostalgia." I think they're absolutely right, that is why they've made it into mainstream TV -' Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith have both had the full BBC costume treatment '- but it has never been an agenda of mine to make lesbianism acceptable by dressing it up in a petticoat. I want to explore a world that's fascinating because it's different.'

There is a moment in The Night Watch where the author seems to be joking with her readers about the leap forward in time from the previous books. Helen doesn't want to be seen embracing another woman in public and is chastised with the words, 'It's not the bloody 19th century.' Was Waters laughing when she wrote that?

'I was a bit, yes,' she answers, chuckling naughtily. 'But there was a serious side to it. In the 1940s, the Victorians and Edwardians were the old-fashioned people that nobody wanted to be like.'

There is another moment that may be an in-joke: when Helen is looking at her girlfriend Julia's photo in the Radio Times and thinking of all the grubby fingers of the public pawing over it, never knowing the real woman behind the famous crime writer. This reads like a reference to Waters' own media profile.

The adjustment to her increasing fame began when her third novel, Fingersmith, came out. The shy, modest author realised that from then on, a large part of her work would have little to do with writing. She would be giving interviews, fielding inquiries, going on tour. 'It freaked me out.' The Night Watch took longer to write because there were more demands on her, and now things have stepped up again.

'Virago are planning a bigger publicity campaign and I'm getting more requests. Just finding a path through those requests takes time and energy. If I'm feeling fragile or tired, that can be overwhelming.'

Asked if there is anything she enjoys about the hubbub, she answers, 'It's nice to feel in demand. But I'm always imagining the time when it will stop and I'll be saying to Lucy [comedy wistful voice], "Do you remember when I used to get 32 requests an hour?"'

She is about to embark on a mammoth world tour, despite severe reservations. 'It's amazing how much pressure publishers can exert on you. The nicest kind of pressure... Or maybe I'm just too willing to please. I'm too obedient.' She laughs before remembering what it's like. 'I've been in tears in all the major cities of Europe, wandering along going, "Why am I doing this? This is horrible."'

I suggest she needs a clone to carry out her engagements. 'Yes, like Monty...' General Montgomery had a double during World War II '... or several.'

As an article in the Independent (see box) has recently made her out to be rolling in dough and accumulating property, we discuss her financial affairs. The books and the foreign rights bring in a steady income and she has been able to buy a second flat nearby, where Vaughan lives.

'It solved an awful lot of problems. Lucy wasn't especially happy where she was living, she was miles away and we weren't at a point where we wanted to move in together. And I certainly didn't want to leave my flat, which I love living in on my own, part of the time. It has been a really good solution, although it won't be forever.'

She anticipates that they will live together one day, but they have no plans as yet for a civil partnership. In the meantime she spends weekends at Lucy's and often a night during the week, and the flat is also home to their trio of cats. Sarah's two are Tink and Trilby, while Lucy's is called Atkins. 'That's after Yvonne Atkins in Bad Girls, I'm ashamed to say. A thoroughly lesbian household.'

Despite her new-found financial security and a string of awards, Waters is still nervous about money and career. 'I worried when I didn't have enough money and now I worry that I've got too much - that I'll get used to it and then when it dries up, I'll be out in the street with a tin can.'

But then, she is quite an anxious person, especially when the writing is going badly, as it frequently did with The Night Watch. 'It was awful and it spilled over into my relationship with Lucy and cast a cloud over everything. And then the next day it would start to go well again and I'd think, "Oh, everything's fine."' Once she is deeply into writing a novel, that vision takes over. 'The anxieties, excitement and pleasures all come from that.'

With The Night Watch, the process was harder than ever before, but there is now something reassuring about having come through it. 'I wrenched it from chaos,' says Waters, 'and if I can do that once, then hopefully I can do it again.'

If only we can all leave her in peace for long enough to get on with the next one, up in that room of her own.

--

BOX:

Sarah Waters' all-time media lows

Ä The San Francisco newspaper that thought the character of the Fingersmith baddy, 'Gentleman', fed into gay stereotypes. 'That was quite upsetting. Your own community is much harder on you than anyone else - they have more invested in it.'

Ä The Independent on 'Power Lesbians', depicting Waters as part of a rich coterie of property-tycoon sapphists, makes her shudder. 'It was a ridiculous article: "Lesbians are so fab these days that they are even Tory MPs." Ohhh, no.'

Ä Little Britain: 'I don't want to get into slagging things off, but I don't think it's very funny. It panders to conservative images of all sorts of people, including gay people.'

Ä A piece in the Independent on celebs' fave gadgets, which pictured a doe-eyed Sarah with her Sky+ machine, fuelling remarks from friends about her support for the Murdoch empire. 'But I do love my Sky+.'

The Night Watch is published by Virago and available from Libertas

This piece first appeared in Diva, March 2006

© Helen Sandler 2006

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