Description
Story Origins:
When I met the real Hilda Smith in 1980, I had no idea she would become one of the most important characters I would ever write.
Hilda was eighty-three years old, a widow, and the keyholder of a church that I attended in Southampton, close to where I lived. She had spent all her life in the city and delighted in sharing stories of her childhood, her marriage to Albert, and the generations of Sunday School children she had loved as though they were her own.
Yet she always carried one quiet regret. She longed to live in the countryside, but Albert was a stevedore in Southampton Docks and could never imagine making a life anywhere else.
As I listened to Hilda, I made her a promise: if she could not live in the countryside in real life, I would find her a home there in my stories. At the time I was outlining stories for Stephen Lodge, thinking how easy it would be to write his story, and Hilda agreed to become part of his world. I imagined him living in Great Ashfield, a Suffolk village I knew well, but Hilda quickly put me right. If she was to live anywhere, she wanted it to be Dorset, where her parents had taken her as a child and where some of her happiest memories had been made.
Years later I discovered Okeford Fitzpaine, the beautiful village north of Blandford that appears on the cover of my first full-length novel. From my first visit I knew I had found Hilda’s village. It had everything she had ever wished for: a village shop and post office, a church, a school, a pub, a thatched cottage, and even a railway station nearby on the heritage line at Shillingstone.
Sadly, Hilda never lived to see the fulfilment of that promise. It took me another forty years, and four attempts, before I finally completed the story I had always wanted to write.
The Journal of Mrs Hilda Smith became the foundation stone of all my Lodge stories, and it remains my favourite of everything I have written. I wove Hilda’s story into the final Lodge Looks Back novel, The Fifth Man, before returning to it as a standalone book. By then, the people of Okeford Fitzpaine had generously shared their knowledge of the village’s history, while authentic illustrations drawn by a local resident brought an added sense of place, allowing me to make the story richer and more real than I had ever imagined.
I hope I have captured not only the history of a remarkable village, but also the heart of a remarkable woman. I like to think that somewhere, Hilda knows I kept the promise I made to her all those years ago.
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