This blog contains spoilers, so if you haven't finished reading Severe Discomfort and Continual Supervision, you might want to look away now!
Once upon a time, an under-employed gardener and former benefits adviser resolved to write a book. An old-fashioned sort of book, with a chronological storyline, a big cast of characters and a strong message about justice and fairness. And, because that threatened to be very heavy going for anyone not already prepared to die for The Cause, it needed some laughs and a love story...
However, while Tom tells Hilary she's his 'Bathsheba Everdene' - the proud and spirited heroine of Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd (and one of my all-time favourite books), it would be fairer to say Tom is her Gabriel Oak - patient and constant through the years while she dallies with far less worthy suitors. And he's 'no Angel' in the penultimate chapter heading of Continual Supervision - a reference to the faithless Angel Clare who deserts poor Tess Durbeyfield when she confesses her (supposed) shame. Hilary's late brother Aidan's old schoolbook is deliberately A Christmas Carol as she confronts the 'ghosts' of her past.
As Hilary takes centre stage on her return to the Solent Welfare Rights Project, there's more than a hint of the diva in her first appearance, and that was the cue for an operatic sub-plot. It's no coincidence that her fateful night out at the theatre with Tom is to see Tosca - the melodramatic love triangle tale of the beautiful actress, her artist lover and the dastardly chief of police who desires her. Hilary's seduction of Tom in her garden has deliberate overtones of the ill-fated Caravadossi's poignant aria at the beginning of the final act of Puccini's tragedy, but while Dr Appleby plays his part with due devotion and passion, Gary Pike is an unpleasantly twisted but spectacularly incompetent Scarpia. Like his operatic counterpart his lust is his downfall, though not by a knife in Hilary's hand - that does no more damage than to cut her wedding cake.
On a lighter note, there are the team's Lady Chatterley jokes. When I first drafted the story, Hilary's relationship with Tom was conceived as quite gentle and possibly entirely platonic, with the joke being that her team assumed otherwise. But this seemed at odds with Hilary's forthright personality, and it turned out to be much more fun inverting that theme to give Hilary and Tom a thoroughly steamy romance. Influenced by the very 'bodice-ripper' novels she derides, Hilary has a tendency to perceive their affair in somewhat Mills-and-Boonish terms, but she's the complete antithesis of the naïve and submissive leading lady of the typical 'romantic' novel, and of course modest, warm-hearted civil servant Tom is a far cry from the brooding mill-owners and multi-millionaires that traditionally cause our heroine's bosom to heave. But the biggest break with tradition is that they are - however Hilary might perceive herself - middle-aged!
Tom's artistic talents determined how another cheeky in-joke played out. Someone was always intended to have painting and decorating skills as a nod to The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, the ultimate tale of ordinary people's lives told for a political purpose and very much an inspiration for Severe Discomfort. Tom was obvious candidate after the Tosca theme arose, although Toby was originally the nominee. The change of trade for Mr Novak allowed for Terry Walker's clumsy comments to him about 'Polish plumbers', and giving Tom the paintbrushes sets up a truly dreadful pun from Hilary.
It's no accident that tomboyish Sally Archer gets to quote To Kill a Mockingbird' in her first scene, since the nearest any of the team get to an 'Atticus Finch' moment in their tribunals is Sally's cross-examination of Andy Burrows. She's a 'chip off the old block' in this respect. Meanwhile, Daphne in Staffordshire had to be a fan of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. That's a nod to the benefits team at Staffordshire North and Stoke-on-Trent CAB where a colleague joked (some years ago now) that you couldn't put two of the team together for more than five minutes without someone making a Tolkien-related remark. That was true, especially if you added beer.
One literary link slipped in quite by accident, though. I discovered only after publishing that Richard Parker, the captain who often seems at odds with his crew, shares his name with the Tiger in The Life of Pi. I gave that name to my Project Manager as it sounded uremarkable and - with all due respect to any actual Richard Parkers out there - a good name for a 'pen-pusher' (more on naming characters another day). But Richard's tendency to use nautical similies may suggest a sub-conscious recollection that I had heard it before. After all, a memorial to a local lad called Richard Parker stood in the churchyard of the chapel where I was married about 400 yards from my former Southampton home. The ill-fated cabin-boy of the Mignonette has an unfortunate place in maritime law and history as the victim of his shipmates' cannabalism after an 1884 shipwreck. No wonder his namesake is such a worried man!
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