The Friday Tree (44 page)

Thinking again about the creative aspect, are your characters entirely fictional, or based on people known or encountered?

We did have a green budgerigar called Dicky. He was exactly as described in the book, and he did once fly up to the Friday Tree, underneath which my eldest brother sat patiently until Dicky felt like coming down. It took some time. For the rest, they take their characteristics from a number of people. I had three brothers, two still living, and I have a sister; I have a son and daughter, and eleven nieces and nephews. Brigid’s character began through observation of quite a few small girls, including, here and there, my remembered self, though I am certainly not Brigid. I would never have got up to half the things she does, however much I might have liked to. The character of Francis, though indeed drawn from more than one source, is largely based on that of my eldest brother Seamus, who was as every bit as clever, good and kind a brother as Francis. Ned Silver walked in one day – from nowhere – when I had finished the first draft. He was called Harry in those days, until A.M. Homes used the name in her recent novel
May We Be Forgiven,
and he had to become Ned. His opening line, “Why don’t you kill her then?” was directly borrowed from a casual remark made by one of my siblings’ children to another. It was so casually shocking – and so wickedly funny to those who heard and related it – that it lodged in my mind. The other characters are largely composites. I did once know an enigmatic man who, in his own words “fought with Collins, then fought
with
Collins”, and had a fund of extraordinary stories about the past. Remembering him gave me the idea for Cornelius Todd.

Did the fictional creations become real in your mind?

They did, and those who made it to the end are still there, getting on with their lives.

Did they act unexpectedly or did you always know what they would do?

Well, Ned, as I mentioned, walked in fully-fledged one day. I never quite knew what he would do until he did it, which is a wonderful feeling when writing fiction. To me, it means the thing is working, really alive. As the book progressed, I found they all had their own agendas, to a certain extent, and I began to sympathise with Flann O’Brien’s beleaguered author in his
At Swim-Two-Birds,
whose characters don’t want to do anything he has planned for them, and go off in all sorts of directions every time he goes to sleep. I had quite a job bringing some of them into line; sometimes, though, like Ned, they knew better than I did what they were going to do.

Do you have any favourites among the characters?

Francis has to be a favourite for me, and that scapegrace, Ned, who is, under it all, a rather lonely and neglected child. I think Rose, the children’s aunt, is the quiet heroine of the book.
She never falters, and she puts everyone’s welfare before her own.

You said that, now the book is finished, your characters are still “getting on with their lives”. Do you intend to write up their later history?

I do know their later history and may write it up at some point, though I think not straight away.

Do you have your next project in mind?

I do, and am working on it even as we speak – but I think it’s best not to talk too much about plans until there is something to show for them. Someone, I can’t remember who, once said “You can talk it or you can write it”. I think, in my case, it’s generally better to write it first.