After writing two novels based in South America I was reluctant to change location. My grandmother was Anglo-Argentine and grew up in the English colony of Hurlingham just outside Buenos Aires. In those days it was a town in the countryside, now it’s very much part of the city. I returned about eight years ago with my mother and tried to find the house where she grew up. She used to talk of a beautiful garden, but when we found the house the garden was only half the original size, the other half was taken up by a big, modern video store.
My grandmother used to tell me stories of her days growing up in the Argentine and after she died my mother and her sister, Naomi, helped me with my research. I was fascinated by this lost world and the stories of Eva Peron.
The Hurlingham Club was built by a group of Englishmen frustrated that there was no sport in Argentina. The Brits taught the Argentines how to play football and polo – only to watch them grow better at both! My grandmother spent most days at the club playing golf, swimming and enjoying the endless round of parties. It seemed idyllic. Then, because of my grandfather’s job, they moved to Brazil and my grandmother was devastated. My grandfather believed that the only education worth having was an English one and my mother and her sister were packed off and sent to boarding school in England where they only returned home once a year at Christmas. My mother was eight. It’s unimaginable now. My grandmother must have been heartbroken, not only losing her beloved Argentine, but her daughters as well.
I decided on a theme I could get my teeth into: enduring love. It is possible to love someone one’s entire life and never have them. I got talking to an old lady at a wedding who confessed that although she had been married for sixty years, she had never stopped loving, and pining for, her first love. I thought that very romantic and tragic and my mind started whirring with possibilities. I used to look at old people and assume they could barely remember their youth, now I know that time passes so swiftly, changing us on the outside, but inside we are the same people and our memories of yesterday are as fresh as when they were first created.
I’m very sentimental and love to keep everything of significance in boxes, scrapbooks and diaries. The Ombu tree had letters, The Butterfly Box had a special box, and The Forget-Me-Not Sonata has music. There’s nothing like a piece of music to take you back….
