Author Robert Lyons reveals how his own dealings with a “wolf pack of professional bullies” served to inspire his brilliant novel about City scandals in London in the 1970s.
The Shell Collector
Writing The Shell Collector has been an on-and-off affair for more than twenty-five years. For long periods I was either preoccupied with other matters or I set aside what I had written for personal reasons. But I was never able to ignore the story’s call. Completing it in the difficult circumstances of my wife’s ill-health was a dream finally realised. Publishing it means that readers can join in my dream, as it will only prove truly worthwhile if it is shared and enjoyed by others.
I first wanted to write a novel a few years after I left public company life in 1984. I set out to write a story based on my business experiences. I knew it was a flop the moment I took a chapter to Derek Jacobi in his dressing room at the Theatre Royal and watched his face as he politely read it: no deadpan could have been more expressive! Without regret, I binned it. Next time I would leave my own professional experiences aside.
So how did I come to write a tale of the City of London? My experience of the City had been when the public company in which I had been working for seventeen years was taken over by a well-known asset stripper. This had left a bitter taste. Each morning during the takeover battle my board colleagues and I would read stories planted in the press by our merchant bank telling us what we were going to agree to that day. Each afternoon we would go over to its offices to be told, yes, what we were going to agree to.
I recall one day in particular when, as the director responsible for our company’s property management, I sat alone surrounded by a wolf pack of professional bullies as they attempted to force me to agree to a false valuation of our property portfolio so it could be sold off cheaply. And they were supposed to be on our side, not the opposition’s. Thank God, I refused to accept the professional advice they suborned from our own official valuers. When we finally lost the battle for our company’s independence, my colleagues and I felt sullied by our experiences.
The best I can say of our merchant bankers is that they were no doubt trained to do their jobs and carried them out to the best of their ability. But they were very different from the people I worked with in our own business. I loved my career in retailing, most of all because of the relationships developed first-hand with colleagues and at one remove with customers. We were taught by example to be honest and show respect for others, especially those working down the line. It was a policy that brought its own rewards. Suddenly our fine company had been taken over and I was surplus to requirements, binned in mid-career because I had been successful enough to be appointed to the group board. So I have to admit that when I came to write The Shell Collector there was probably a fair backlog of bile around, and a wish to get my own back.
In the back of my mind I had been aware of a financial scandal that had taken place in the City of London in the early 1970s. The matter had been the subject of a public investigation and an official report had been published. I hadn’t known any details at the time, even though I had known some of the people involved socially, because I was working my way up my own ladder and was out of the country at the critical time.
Some years later I was told of the report and asked someone who had been involved in the affair where I could find a copy. He told me it wasn’t worth bothering with, and anyway no criticism had been made of any of the parties. Curiosity got the better of me, and I took steps to obtain a copy. As I read it, I could see why he had not wanted me to. I couldn’t put it down: its revelations were a treat. This was the story I had been looking for.
I saw instantly that there was no way I could write the story as fact, as the people involved were unlikely to be willing to talk to me about their role in it. However, the story as it stood made brilliant fiction: as the saying goes, “You couldn’t make it up!” So I did. I imagined how the goings-on described in the report might have taken place and took great delight in setting my version down.
What I wrote is as much fictional as factual – although I used the right numbers, for fear of otherwise getting into a twist, and tried to describe the events as they had been reported. But I did not attempt to use the “right” people. Most of my characters are creations. Their conversations are made up. Their behaviour and motives are figments of my imagination. I didn’t think of them in similar terms to the dreadful people I had come across many years before. For me there were no heroes or villains, simply people who got in way above their heads and didn’t know how to extricate themselves. “Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.” In any case, I saw the book as one in which the story was more important than the characters; character development could not be allowed to slow down the telling of such an extraordinary tale.
I don’t know what kind of people are running around in the City of 2019, but I imagine the increased proportion of women in banks and legal firms will have changed much. In the early 1970s there were few women in these roles, so I was unable to create a gender balance in my book; these were very different. I hope the paucity of female characters will not deter female readers who make up the majority of the reading public from trying a book about what at the time was a male-dominated world. I hope to persuade them that the tale is worth the trouble.
Going back to the time I was working in our department stores business, we discussed the appointment of women to senior roles on a number of occasions. My colleagues and I were agreed that as most of our customers were women, it would do nothing but good to have some on the board. However, we generally promoted from within, and this limited our choice. Back in the 1970s women proved to be excellent buyers and personnel managers, but more were clerks and secretaries. Were we men entirely to blame for this? Not intentionally. But there was no firm agenda for change.
Coming back to The Shell Collector, why, when I had completed the first draft in the 1990s, did it take so long to emerge from its crysalis? In truth, while I never lost confidence in the story, I did lose confidence in my power to tell it. I took it out from time to time, unsure of how good it was, and fiddled with it. Then, for entirely private reasons, I set it aside for more than ten years.
Last year my wife and I entertained a published American author who teaches creative writing. In conversation I mentioned my story. She asked to see a copy of what I had written. I sent one to her by email, and she replied a week later telling me I must have it published. So I found publisher, spat and polished it under an editor’s guidance. Above all, I have wanted to tell a good story well. And here I am, possibly the oldest debutant novelist in the world: but better that than to be published posthumously!
The Shell Collector by Robert Lyons is published by Clink Street on September 26th, RRP £10.99 paperback, £3.99 ebook.