A mother’s lost love.
A daughter’s forbidden desire.
A tale of obsession inspired by true events.
The above three sentences are from the taglines of my latest novel, INFINITE STRANGER, to be launched later this month. And it’s the last line, inspired by true events , that is the key issue.
As with any work of fiction, the pressing question from the reader is always going to be: but WHICH were the real events? Did that part really happen? And that? Did he/she really exist?
Well, the words in the above clipping, For ever remembered, from his beloved Chubs, certainly existed, as did the character of Peter D. Fox and his beloved Chubs, by the real name of Molly Williams. Molly never did like the nickname of ‘Chubs’ that her former fiancé bestowed upon her. ‘For goodness’ sake, Peter, I am NOT chubby!’ she used to chide at him, adding with a hint of pride, ‘I’m just a bit on the Marilyn Monroe side.’ And then he’d wink at her, and she’d giggle, and all would be forgiven. By the time Peter died, she’d got well used to the name Chubs, whether she liked it or not.
I know all this, because Molly Williams was my mother. And Peter Donald Fox her fiancé, murdered by a terrorist in Cyprus in 1956. An event which changed her life forever.
And – ahem – I have to say this to you, Mother, if you’re listening from heaven: your tragedy changed my life, as well as your own. And that is the whole basis of my story. It’s Leah’s story, not yours. Sorry, but you and Peter are only a backdrop, albeit a crucial one.
I should imagine that all authors base their novels on some level of personal experience, whether it be real experience, or just titbits they’ve been told by family and friends. Titbits of things that find themselves in the pages of the writer’s next book. And then, lo and behold, the word is made flesh. Characters are immortalised.
So is that what I set out to do when I started writing this novel? Did I want to immortalise the memory of my mother and her tragically killed fiance? Especially her tragically killed fiance. The doomed Peter Donald Fox, who died at the age of thirty – single, childless, leaving behind only a grieving fiancé by the name of Mary Williams. Mary, nicknamed Molly, and later, as we know, Chubs.
Ah, Peter! I was brought up on stories of you, did you know that? You were almost like a father to me. Dead before I was born, but forever remembered.
In many ways, I believe that this is what makes a novelist’s world so fascinating. We, the godlike creators, can decide what we want to keep as bona fide fact, and what we want to utilise – exploit, you might say – for the greater good of literature.
In the case of INFINITE STRANGER, fact and fiction converge along quite perambulatory routes. I’ve already disclosed that the backdrop story of Molly and Peter Fox is entirely factual. But this is not the main thread of my novel. The main thread is seen through the eyes of my protagonist Leah, who, on the eve of her wedding, tries desperately to figure out why things turned out the way they did. Why she ended up where she is now, about to marry a man she’s not at all sure she wants to marry. And why such a loving mother-daughter relationship as the one she had enjoyed, could turn so toxic. Was it really the murder of Peter Fox that did it, back in the mother’s youth? Was this bitter blow the reason why, later in life, the mother began to dream her dreams of love through her daughter, rather than live them in the real world through herself? Was the mother too scared of being deprived of love, yet again?
But it was the daughter’s own dream of love that was the crux of everything. A dream she followed obsessively; a dream for the love of an unavailable man. A tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed, charming monk, no less! A Benedictine monk, tied to vows of chastity, but torn apart by human frailty and desire. Oh, how mother and daughter loved that particularly romantic, forbidden tale of love! Oh how they dreamed on and on! So is this also where fact and fiction converged? And if so, how closely?
I’m afraid the answers to such questions will have to remain safely hidden in the pages of Leah’s diaries, all of them stuffed away in a large wooden chest, together with the countless letters she and the torn-apart monk exchanged over the years. Forever wrapped in secrecy.
Peter Fox died in 1956; Molly Williams in 2012. I decided to keep their real names, as can be seen in the article clippings. But when it comes to Leah and Brother Matthew, as they’re both still alive (though getting a bit long in the tooth), I’ve had to be more careful. (Duh, as Leah’s best friend would say to her.) Molly and Peter’s truth is already known; but perhaps Leah and Matthew’s never will be.
Or perhaps, after Leah’s death, when her children or grandchildren break the code to the lock on the wooden chest in her bedroom, and read her diaries from that mystical time, perhaps then the real truth will at last be revealed.
Come to think of it, perhaps Molly should have done as Brother Matthew advised her. Burn the diaries!
———————————————–
If you would like to know more about my novel, follow this link:
https://booksirens.com/book/STL68AF/ZTTVNEL
Wendy Skorupski 