The Best Year Of Our Lives: The Characters - Alan Webb

Alan Webb is the only character I am profiling who is not a member of the eight. The reason will be immediately obvious to anybody who reads the story: the gang's enmity for Paul Adams' erstwhile mucker is the chord which binds them together during this their second rideout. He alone had been the reason for the gang's demise the first time around, of which we know only a limited amount, and he is equally the cause of its coming together for a second time – older, wiser and rapt by the most beautiful summer that living man had encountered before or since.

But there is another reason why I feel the need to grant special status to Alan Webb. When discussing The Best Year Of Our Lives with friends and acquaintances who have been kind enough to read it and offer me feedback I have been overwhelmed, if not entirely surprised, by the amount of sympathy that this character in particular has provoked. "I feel sorry for that person you bullied," said one, confusing me as author with the lead actor. "I liked Alan Webb much more than I liked Paul Adams," admitted another.

NOT UNINTENTIONAL

I have to confess this wasn't entirely unintentional on my part. The negative portrayal of Alan Webb throughout most of the book was only ever intended to reflect the view of him taken by the one through whose eyes the story was told. He begins the tale as Alan, is relegated to Webb before becoming Alan once again with a handshake and an awkward reminisce. But through it all he is stoical, courageous and admirably defiant in his predicament. He has to suffer, in order that the gang might thrive. He is the blood sacrifice of a halcyon adventure. That is the simple dynamic, the reader was never meant to hate him.

Alan Webb brings out the leader in Paul, the loyalty in Jim, the affection in Tina and the infant heroism in Pete. Unwittingly he is the catalyst for great things, for an explosion of love made magnificent by a common if oft exaggerated hatred. Some would see him as one of the most noble characters in the book, and I always intended it that way.

Alan doesn't leave the story in as dramatic a style as he first entered it, but he is thematic to it throughout. Wherever he is today, I wish him well and I'm sure Paul Adams would feel the same.

The Best Year Of Our Lives: The Characters - Tina Wilson

It is probably not a question that would spring immediately to the mind of the casual reader, but one of the biggest challenges I had to face when creating and developing the dynamic of the gang of eight was to what extent it functioned as a net and not as a spider's web.

Let me put that another way. With Paul as the focal character, at the centre of everything that takes place, the story is inevitably structured in such a way that without him there would a gaping hole at the centre, and nothing would make very much sense. Like a spider's web, in which every strand leads inevitably to the spider in the middle and the whole thing is constructed around it with the spider being the only rationale for the web's existence.

CONNECTED CLOSELY

A piece of netting, on tbe other hand, comprises a series of interlocking strands with none conspicuously more important than any other. Cut a strand or two away and a net becomes a damaged net, but remains a net all the same. With a stitch or two it can be repaired, and can continue to do its work as it did before.

If this all sounds a bit hypothetical, consider the relationships between the various members of the gang – for the early part of the book at least. Choose any member of the gang and he or she is connected more closely to certain other members than to others, whether by blood or by affection. Jim is Debbie's boyfriend, Paul's best friend and Colin's brother. Colin's girlfriend is Beverley, whose brother is Steve, while Debbie's closest friend is Alison. Only when we get to Tina do we depart from this general rule.

OUTSIDER OR SPIDER?

Unlike the others Tina is introduced into The Best Year Of Our Lives as Paul's enemy, and by association Jim's too. With no peacemaker to heal the rift, one is left to assume that its duration had been considerable. Only with the break-up between Paul and his erstwhile pal Alan Webb is the ground laid for a reconciliation with Tina.

With no sibling in the gang, no best friend and no partner Tina is ostensibly the outsider, but as her relationship with Paul becomes tentatively closer that fact is not always obvious. The reader is invited to anticipate the day when Tina and Paul will draw inexorably nearer but fate can be unkind, and the cult of self certainly no less so.

Tina was a difficult character for me to get entirely right. I'm not sure I managed to do so. But far from being the outsider she for me was actually much closer to being the spider than a mere link in the net. She was ever there in Paul's thoughts; in his calculations and his aspirations, in his ideas and his dreams. None of it would have happened without her.

The Best Year Of Our Lives: The Characters - Jim Gray

The grey-haired man whom Paul encounters during the Epilogue describes Jim Gray as Paul's "deputy", but then I guess he would. The Best Year Of Our Lives is, of course, Paul's story, which lends some explanation to this assumption.

Jim is just a little bit younger, and just a little bit smaller, than Paul, and at their age this may indeed count for something. But these slender margins of seniority should not be permitted to obscure the seminal role played by Jim in making this story work. He is at the centre of it all - his father runs the club, his girlfriend is Paul's closest competitor, his brother has an integral role to play and, perhaps most importantly, his sense of perspective more than once keeps Paul treading the straightest path.

CREATING THE CORRECT DYNAMIC

Creating the correct dynamic between Jim and Debbie was one of my most difficult challenges during the writing of this book. Whilst Debbie's oozing charisma and cool bravado threatens to overwhelm all in her path, there always had to be a sense that Jim in some way retains dominance within the relationship. Being older and being male, he can level with Paul in a way that Debbie cannot and one is allowed to feel that to some extent at least Debbie only gets away with what Jim permits her to, for the sake of a quiet existence.

At the same time of course Jim has the added responsibility of keeping his brother Colin in his box, as the latter's more or less similar size and stature enable him to assert a degree of sibling rivalry which defies the age difference between them. Add to that his oft-expressed exasperation with Steve and emotionally Jim is fighting on every front, whilst being the cog at the epicentre of the mechanism which turns the gang sans Paul.

AN ESSENTIAL LINK

Beyond the genuine affection that Paul has for his closest friend, Jim provides an essential link back to the younger members of the gang without which Paul might well have felt estranged. Generally fourteen and fifteen-year-olds aspire to be seen stepping out with the bigger kids, but Paul is able to move in the preferred company of the younger ones because his sidesman, with the slightly younger girlfriend and the still younger sibling, is from his own stable.

Jim Gray is an important, essential component of the complex intersection of personalities which is the Aitston eight. I don't think the story would have retained any credibility without him - indeed I fear Paul would have been left without much kudos and looking a little, well, strange, and set adrift. At the very least, for Jim the right to wear the lumber jacket is one that has been thoroughly earned.

The Best Year Of Our Lives: The Characters - Beverley Turner

If Steve Turner is oafish, so his younger sister Beverley is sardonic. She may only be eleven, or twelve as the story progresses, but her innocence is only compounded by her unique and lovable wit. Loyal to Paul, proud of the gang, she is there till the last when most of the others (even Paul) have wandered at least on occasion. Only twice do we see her entirely serious - once with the self-induced, but thankfully temporary, loss of her relationship with Colin Gray, the other as the curtain descends, in Chapter 61.

As far as the aforesaid "relationship" with Colin goes, Paul himself finds he reflects on quite what that means when both parties to it are eleven. But that brings us inevitably to consider what any relationship entails. Or as Bowie might have put it - we're just older children after all.

WITH A WINK AND A SMIRK

Just how central is Beverley to the plot? In my view, very much so. The point of the gang for Paul is that it represents his last shot at childhood, and to hang on to that he needs the gang to stretch backwards, not forwards, just as far as crediblity, and credulity, will allow. As a settled couple who are by no means immature for their ages, she and Colin provide that much needed link back to earlier years without being entirely detached from the where the older ones are with their lives. They are the smallest of the bigger kids that feasibility will allow, as it were.

Beverley is too young to be scary like Debbie, or sensual like Tina, and yet she carves her own niche quite effortlessly with a wink and a smirk.

Time to Reflect

Fate has a funny way of intervening just when you’d thought you would never find the time to get that second book under way.

One of my most stubborn enthusiasms has long been working out at the gym. Not that I was ever some Herculean, muscle-bound type but rather, at the age of 56, I simply refuse to grow old any faster than is absolutely necessary. I push a fair weight for an old fellow if I must say so myself and nowhere is this more true when I’m doing legs, which have always been my particular strong point.

I say always, because that rapidly changed the Wednesday before last when my right foot inexplicably slipped off the plate just as I was in the middle of my third set of calf extensions, the resultant sudden trauma to my left leg leaving me with a ruptured Achilles tendon and the prospect of spending the next five weeks in a hospital cast boot which, most irritatingly of all, I must wear even in bed.

SECOND BOOK

Many things that I had intended to do must now fall by the wayside. My expedition to Snowdon, planned for two weeks’ time, is still to go ahead but if I even go near the mountain it will be with a view to catching the passenger train up to the top, and then back again to the bottom. And whilst the need to earn a living dictates that I still find myself struggling up to London on my crutches two to three times each week, most of the other things I’d planned to do which cannot be done from a horizontal position have been shelved.

So it’s on with my second book, which I’d hoped would be on its way to the publisher by now but which is alas still in the very formative stages.

I can’t give much away, but there won’t be much to compare with The Best Year Of Our Lives. It’s of an entirely different format and genre, and much less exciting but is one which nevertheless has to be written before I can hope to progress with my new-found vocation. More on this anon.

The Best Year Of Our Lives: The Characters - Alison Summerfield

Alison has been described as "sweet", and she is, but she is not by any stretch of the imagination a shrinking violet. Yet her friendship with Debbie Stone, whose boldness is striking, coupled with the fact that she is one of the youngest members of the gang, a year Debbie's junior, inevitably creates a suggestion of such a contrast.

I decided not to "partner" Alison with any of her male counterparts, because there was no partnership to be had. Colin is with Beverley, Paul is by some distance too old, Jim is also too old and in any event goes out with Debbie, and Steve just isn't serious enough to have made for a convincing match with her. Alison is pretty, endearing and smart - she will find love, just not in this particular tale.

THE NEBULOUS BRIDGE

As the story develops and Alison and Debbie to a degree find themselves on opposite sides of the nebulous bridge between childhood and adolescence, it was inevitable that they would drift apart, not necessarily in terms of their friendship but in their interests and associations. That is why as Tina wanders inexorably into Debbie's orbit, so Alison identifies more closely with Beverley before introducing an entirely new acquaintance, Jackie, late into the story.

Alison and Jackie would have been an interesting pairing for any sequel, or indeed had the best year of their lives gone on to become two. Alas it wasn't to be, but more than one reader has pointed out to me how Alison grew on them, considerably, at the second reading. I don't wish to sound boastful, but that was precisely the intention.

The Best Year Of Our Lives: The Characters - Debbie Stone

Debbie is Paul's only realistic challenger for the leadership of the gang. Although younger than himself, Jim and Tina the power of her personality and the extent of her self-belief lead her inevitably to test Paul's resolve, and to probe his weaknesses. And despite the fact that he wins on those occasions when they do go head to head, he never quite manages to put her back in her box.

I worked hard on developing the contrast between Debbie and her best friend Alison, because they are not entirely opposites. Alison is not altogether retiring, simply less outward than her slightly older friend. The challenge throughout The Best Year Of Our Lives was to make them the same, but to such a varying degree that they were at the same time different.

ANOTHER LEADER

Debbie is Jim's girlfriend, and though unlike Paul and Tina they are unambiguously joined I felt the need to overshadow them as the senior "item" within the group by the implied, almost-relationship of their respective elders. And yet when Debbie and Tina get together, it is the former who if anyone is in charge.

In a story which centres around the ego of one individual it is not easy to create and develop another leader, someone who is subordinate to the lead character yet at the same time so obviously free-spirited and instinctively dominant. Only by her being two years his junior could I manage to perfect the hierarchical balance.

I think that casting Debbie was my most challenging assignment, aside of course from Paul himself. The fact that my daughter captured her to a tee with her cover artwork before she had even read the book tells me, I think, that I managed to pitch her as I had intended.