BEHIND THE BOOK WITH
EM M A R O U S
What inspired you to choose the Fens as the setting for The Perfect Guests? When I graduated from vet school back in 1997, I began working for a friendly veterinary practice in Huntingdon, in the east of England. It wasn’t long before they sent me to cover a shift at their smallest branch surgery, which they described as being “out in the Fens,” in a little town called Ramsey. The vet nurses had already discovered from accompanying me on home visits that I had no sense of direction, so they sketched me a map on the back of a lab results fax and assured me the route was quite straightforward. I flung my stethoscope and drugs formulary onto the passenger seat of my battered old Volvo, and off I set. I soon found myself in distinctively wide-open countryside. Long, straight roads. Flat fields of crops stretching to a featureless horizon. A huge dome of washed-out blue above. And on all sides— in ditches, in reed-lined channels, in silvery sheets on the fields themselves—the glint of water. I got lost, of course. In my defense, there aren’t many obvious landmarks when you’re a newcomer driving among endlessly similar fields. In any case, I’m perfectly used to being lost, so it didn’t trouble me; instead it gave me a chance to appreciate the striking sense of space and solitude offered by the rural Fens. I paused at signposted junctions and studied village names that hinted at a preoccupation with the contours of the land: Ramsey Heights, Ramsey Hollow, Ramsey Mereside, Ramsey Forty Foot (which I later learned took its name from the Forty Foot Drain). In the end, by approaching Ramsey from the “wrong” direction, I found myself driving in on the very road I was aiming for, which bore the rather intriguing name Great Whyte. Even with my new-graduate brain distracted by the imminent prospect of meeting new colleagues and clients,
Author photo © Brian Rous 2017
I was surprised by just how wide the Great Whyte was—a remarkably broad street in this otherwise small and unassuming market town; twice as wide as the roads I was used to back in Huntingdon and Cambridge. I was even more startled when I discovered what lay beneath the Great Whyte. But to explain that, it helps to know a little of the history of the Fens. The term “the Fens” is used to describe a low-lying region of around 1,500 square miles in the east of England, encompassing parts of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk, with its easternmost boundary along the coast. Once covered by ancient forest, it was reduced to peat bogs and marshland when the sea began to encroach upon it, and for a long time these wetlands were deemed inhospitable by all but the hardiest of folk. Those tough few inhabitants built their homes on scattered “islands” of slightly raised ground and traveled in boats through shifting marsh channels and across lakes, which they called meres. They lived primarily off the abundant fish and waterfowl—pike and eel, crane and heron, bittern and egret, and many more. Then came a profound discovery: that the peat-rich earth lying just beneath the shallow waters was impressively fertile. And so began a series of attempts to drain the Fens. The Romans made a start on it. Efforts continued through the Middle Ages. In 1620, King James I called in the expertise of Dutch engineers, including Cornelius Vermuyden. Water channels were dug and widened, coastal walls were built, and—despite bitter resistance from local residents—slowly but surely, wind-powered pumps drained the
THE TERM “THE FENS” is used to describe a low-lying region of around 1,500 square miles in the east of England. Once covered by ancient forest, it was reduced to peat bogs and marshland when the sea began to encroach upon it, and for a long time these wetlands were deemed inhospitable by all but the hardiest of folk.
marshes to expose a vast plain of rich agricultural land. Later, the wind pumps were replaced by Victorian steam technology, then diesel-fueled engines, and finally modern electric pumps. Meanwhile, the crops that thrived on the black, peaty soil earned the Fens the nickname “the bread basket of England.” As I drove my beloved Volvo down the surprisingly wide Great Whyte in Ramsey that day, I was only vaguely aware of this watery fenland history. And it was a fair while longer before I discovered that the word “Whyte” here is believed to come from the Anglo-Saxon “Waite,” meaning dock. Before the Fens were drained, Ramsey was one of these “islands” that could be reached only by boat, either via channels through the marshes or along a river called the Bury Brook. In medieval times, the town of Ramsey flourished, not least due to the Benedictine Ramsey Abbey which was founded there in AD 969. Goods were delivered to the townspeople along the Bury Brook, and the section of the river where the boats docked was called the Great Whyte. But when the drainage of the Fens began in earnest in the seventeenth century, the very shape of the land and water courses changed. As the land area increased, the town of Ramsey was able to expand, and the Great Whyte now flowed not along the edge of an island but down the center of a broad street. Road links sprang up across the region. The “island towns” in the Fens were no longer wholly dependent on their waterways. And by the mid-nineteenth century, with the additional promise of the railway soon to come to Ramsey, the much-reduced Great Whyte had fallen into redundancy. So in 1852, engineers built a set of brick tunnels to enclose the water that flowed down the middle of the street and conceal it underground. After that the townspeople no longer needed a bridge to cross the Great Whyte; they could stroll back and forth between shops, banks, public houses (with names like the Boat Inn, the White Swan, and the still-open-today Jolly Sailor), and eventually, of course, the veterinary surgery.
Here a child could grow up roaming freely but still be hidden away from the world.
I continued to work at that surgery on Great Whyte, on and off until 2016, when I left veterinary practice to start writing fiction. During that time, I learned about some of the other side effects of fenland drainage, both on the region’s threatened wildlife and on the land itself. Year upon year, as the water continues to be drawn out, the peaty soil shrinks and the land itself sinks still further. In recent years I’ve taken my children to Holme Fen to visit the lowest point in Great Britain, where a four-meter high iron post marks the fall in land level between 1851 and now. I’ve explored some of the nature reserves in the region, and I’ve read about schemes to re-flood parts of the Fens in winter months, not least to lock carbon into the peat to prevent its release which contributes to global warming. I’ve even tried a bit of wild swimming in the chilly fenland waters. Little wonder that when I started mulling over ideas for the setting of The Perfect Guests, it was a patch of fenland that sprang to mind: an isolated house next to a remnant of what was once a great lake, surrounded by fields and water channels in every direction. Here a child could grow up roaming freely but still be hidden away from the world. Here no one could approach without fear of being spotted. Here a fire could take hold without alerting the neighbors… Raven Hall is a fictitious house set in a very real landscape. I hope if you haven’t already you might one day get the chance to visit the Fens—to marvel at the richness of its wildlife and its wonderful conservation projects, to catch a fascinating glimpse of its history, and most of all to soak up the glorious sense of open space under that huge dome of a fenland sky.
DISC U SSIO N QUESTIONS 1. In the early stages of Leonora’s relationship with Markus, she worries that she’s a bad person, and she hopes that Markus might help her “to change, to improve, to become more like him.” Do you think Leonora’s desire to be a good person counts for anything? Is it fair to say that, in the end, it’s Markus who becomes more like her?
2. Who was responsible for the cracks that
formed in Beth and Nina’s friendship? Do you think it was inevitable that things would go wrong?
3. Nina
tells Beth, “My mother always loved this house more than she loved me.” Do you think that’s true? Does it fit with Leonora’s behavior when she ignores Markus’s instruction to phone the fire brigade and rushes upstairs into thick smoke to search for Nina?
4. Stephanie
tried to be a good friend to Leonora, protecting Nina’s identity and warning Leonora about Hendrik’s visits. Do you think Stephanie did the right thing? If she’d decided not to keep Leonora’s secrets, might the outcome have been better for Nina?
5. Do
you feel Leonora and Markus bear equal responsibility for the initial “game?” Was it reasonable for them to assume it would be harmless for Beth?
6. If
you could explore the life of one of the minor characters, which would you choose?
7. How do you feel about the choices Caroline made, both before Beth was born and afterwards? Do feel any sympathy for her?
8. In
the aftermath of the 2019 events at Raven Hall, Beth says about her childhood there: “Most of the time—it was a pretty wonderful place to live.” Does this statement surprise you?
9. Near
the end, Sadie wonders whether it’s worse to be a targeted victim of a crime or to be thought of as collateral damage. What do you think?
10. What
would you like to see happen at Raven Hall in the days and weeks following the final chapter?