Questions About At the Stroke of Nine O'Clock

by Jane Davis (Goodreads Author)

Reader Q&A

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Answered Questions (13)

The club that all the women end up in is a central setting in your book. Why did you choose this place as a focal point for the novel and what parts of life at the time do you think it allowed you to explore?

Jane Davis Ruth’s sister Muriel Jakubait wrote a book about her sister’s life. In it is a list of members of the club that Ruth managed. One of Ruth’s later biog…moreRuth’s sister Muriel Jakubait wrote a book about her sister’s life. In it is a list of members of the club that Ruth managed. One of Ruth’s later biographers, Tony Van Den Bergh, appears. Also featured were royalty including King Hussein of Jordan, King Farouk of Egypt, King Feisal of Iraq, socialites such as the Duchess of Argyll and Lady Docker, film stars such as Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Victor Mature, Burt Lancaster and Diana Dors, stars of the racing fraternity such as Donald Campbell and Stirling Moss, photographers Anthony Armstrong Jones (who later married Princess Margaret) and Anthony Beauchamp (who was married to Sarah Churchill), and Stephen Ward (who, ten years later, was a central player in the Profumo Affair), as well as notorious London landlord, Peter Rachman, and ‘Dandy’ Kim Caborn-Waterfield, described by Jakubait as a ‘better class of criminal’. But London’s drinking clubs were also places of refuge for ex-servicemen and travelling salesmen. They were places where blind eyes were turned (homosexual acts were still illegal in the UK, London’s black market economy was booming), the kind of places a duchess and an actress could meet without having to worry that they were attracting attention. The setting also provided a direct window into Ruth Ellis’s life and much of what that entailed. (less)

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In your recent blog you spoke about how you move between contemporary and historical fiction in your writing. Which came first for you and which do you prefer writing?

Jane Davis The truthful answer is that I don’t consciously differentiate between historical and contemporary fiction. I go with the subject and see where it lead…moreThe truthful answer is that I don’t consciously differentiate between historical and contemporary fiction. I go with the subject and see where it leads me. My first, second and third novels all had contemporary, although not bang up-to-date, settings. (I’m not a techy person, and wouldn’t want to write a novel which has characters texting each other.) Then came I Stopped Time, an homage to both my grandmother who lived to the age of 100 and the pioneers of photography. It spans the Victorian era to the present day. I also incorporated a dual timeline, using my Victorian character Lottie Pye and her estranged son, Sir James Hastings in the present day. I played with the juxtaposition of my Victorian character being very modern for her time, and her son being quite old-fashioned. As a writer, I enjoy exploring cause and effect, and in some cases the cause is discovered in the past. (less)

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Do you find it difficult to let go of a book, or are you already thinking about the next one?

Jane Davis I do find it hard to move on, but I’ve been working away at this project for over two and a half years, so once publication is out of the way, I think…moreI do find it hard to move on, but I’ve been working away at this project for over two and a half years, so once publication is out of the way, I think I’ll be ready to move on. The question is ‘What to?’

I have an idea for a novel, but the other project that I’ve had on the go is the diary I kept about caring for my father who had dementia. (He passed away in April.) I’m not quite sure what to do with it yet, except that I’d like it to be meaningful.

One in fifteen adults over the age of 65 suffers from some form of dementia. By the time you reach the age of 80, the odds increase to one in six (and for many of these people, dementia will be one of several health conditions they suffer from). And yet talking about dementia seems to be taboo.
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Having published nine novels, can you describe your writing process? Do you find it gets easier over time?

Jane Davis I like George R R Martin’s quote: ‘I’ve always said there are two kinds of writers. There are architects and gardeners. Architects do blueprints befor…moreI like George R R Martin’s quote: ‘I’ve always said there are two kinds of writers. There are architects and gardeners. Architects do blueprints before they drive the first nail, they design the entire house, where the pipes are running and how many rooms there are going to be, how high the roof will be. But the gardeners just dig a hole and plant the seed and see what comes up.’ Personally, I think there are more than two types of writers. I want to be Mary Anning scouring the beaches at Lyme Regis for dinosaur fossils, or Howard Carter discovering the tomb of Tutankhamun, or metal detectorist Terry Herbert digging up the Staffordshire Hoard. What I don’t want to be is a parent deciding on my child’s future, telling my son which subjects he will study, arranging my daughter’s marriage.

Once I have self-edited the manuscript to the stage where I can’t be objective, I send it out to beta readers. The importance of this stage in the process is clear. The aim is to road-test the story by giving it to people with a wide range of life experiences. It’s said that the reader finishes the book, so I’m keen to know how they react to it before finally letting it off its leash. Then come more changes, the copy edit and several rounds of proof-reading.

I’m afraid that anyone who imagines that words show up in the eventual order that they appear on the page of any novel is (in the majority of cases) mistaken. In some ways, the novel in its final form is an illusion, the rabbit pulled out of the hat.

As for whether it gets any easier, if anything, I think the reverse is true. Once you’ve established a loyal readership, whatever size that readership may be, you don’t want to let them down!
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All stories need an angle. In writing about the aftermath of a fictional disaster, how did you choose to tell this story? (I’m thinking characters, point of view, etc.)

Jane Davis I think it would have been difficult to write about such recent history from Ruth Ellis’s perspective – added to which, what I wanted to write about w…moreI think it would have been difficult to write about such recent history from Ruth Ellis’s perspective – added to which, what I wanted to write about was people’s reaction to her conviction and sentencing.
The 1950s was a decade when dual standards were still very much at play. Women were punished for daring to step outside the restricted confines that society had decided they should remain within. Sex outside marriage, divorce, and children born outside wedlock were huge taboos, but there is no doubt that things were happening.
I chose to use three very different women to tell the story, all of whom would have their own personal reason to say, ‘There, but for the grace of God’.

The first character to make an appearance is Caroline Wilby. She’s seventeen years old, and like many seventeen-year-olds of the day, she’s expected to contribute to her family’s income. Pressure is ramped up by the fact that her father has left them – although Caroline’s mother has insisted that she keep this fact secret. For Caroline, this means leaving the family home in Felixstowe and moving to London. She soon discovers options for a young woman with little education are limited and, where work is available, the wages barely cover her own keep, let alone leave her with money over to send home. We quickly see her putting herself at risk, accepting invitations from men she barely knows, and following much the same route that Ruth Ellis followed – firstly working as a photographer’s model and then as a hostess at a private members’ club. The dangers of being alone in a strange city are amplified by the frenzy the press has created around John Haigh, the so-called Acid Bath Murderer, who invented plausible stories to explain the disappearance of his victims.

Then we have Ursula Delancy, an actress who has scandalised the world of filmdom by leaving her husband and daughter for Hollywood film director, Donald Flood. This is the era when studios ‘owned’ their signings, dictating how they should look and behave, even how much they should weigh. Up until 1934, Hollywood had been relatively liberal, but along came William Hays, a government-hired Presbyterian pastor, who laid out a strict moral code dictating how Hollywood – and America – would behave for generations to come. Ursula is one of those who made it onto Hays’s Doom Book of blacklisted actors – those considered ‘unsuitable’. Still, she firmly believes that when she marries her Hollywood director, the public will see that theirs wasn’t some sordid little affair. Unfortunately, that isn’t to be. She has returned to England for a season in the West End (where, again, she is playing the part of a saintly figure) and is already under siege by the British press when she discovers that she has been usurped, and the ‘other woman’ is not just anyone but Donald’s ex-wife, Lindsay. And in an added twist, Lindsay is also pregnant with Donald’s child.

My trio is completed by a duchess. Patrice Hawtree has already suffered her fair share of scandal, but is rather more practised at managing the press than Ursula. She and her husband Charles came close to ruin when Charles lent his name to a conman named Davenport who set up a fake investment scheme and absconded with the investors’ money. To save their social standing, the Hawtrees compensated those who lost their life savings, including some of their closest friends. Doing so cost them dearly, but they expected a line to be drawn under the matter. Instead they’ve been ostracised. Aware that Charles’s judgement cannot be trusted, Patrice believes that she’s kept him on a very tight rein, but I’m afraid she’s about to be disillusioned. And the extent of his deception is something not even she will be willing to believe.
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