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WINNER OF THE VIRGINIA PRIZE FOR FICTIONAs young children, Rudyard and his sister 'Trix' flourished in the brilliant warmth and colour of India. Their happiness ended abruptly when they were sent back to England to live with a strict and god-fearing foster family. Both became writers, although one lived in the shadow of the other's extraordinary success. The name Rudyard Kipling is known to millions, but what became of his talented younger sister? She was careful to hide her secret life even from those closest to her.Mary Hamer's fascinating novel brings both Kipling and Trix vividly to life. In this fictionalised account of their lives, she goes to the heart of the relationship between a difficult brother and his troubled sister. Hamer peels back the historical record to reveal the obsessions which fuelled Kipling and his sister. Was he really better equipped to deal with conflict, heartbreak and loss than his beloved Trix?Review'A historical delight' -WaterstonesHamer's book opens up the complex world of the Kiplings, moving between continents and momentous world events' -Daily MailIlluminating new study... She writes clearly, pleasantly, and with a blessed absence of jargon.' -Times Literary Supplement'Mary Hamer'sKipling and Trixelegantly walks the borders between fact and fiction in her retelling of Rudyard Kipling's story and his relationship with his sister Trix' -Historical Novel SocietyThe childhood scenes are particularly compelling, revealing how brother and sister, though dependents, were gradually becoming rivals....The book is a rich collage of potent scenes - you shift viewpoint and we see Rud and Trix through the eyes of many others.' -Pam Johnson, Words UnlimitedAbout the AuthorMary Hamer was born in Birmingham. After reading English at Oxford she taught for the next twenty years and published works of non-fiction, before embarking at last on the adventure of imaginative writing.Kipling and Trix is her fifth book and first novel.Mary travels widely and has lectured in many countries. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the Guardian and the Independent. She has contributed to television and radio programmes, such as 'In Search of Cleopatra', Women's Hour and Night Waves. Mary is the Chair of the Kipling Society in London.

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Historical fiction

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Publié par	Distributed By PublishDrive
Date de parution	21 novembre 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781906582463
Langue	English

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M ARY H AMER
Mary Hamer travels widely and has lectured in many countries. Her work has appeared in The Economist, The Guardian and The Independent . She has contributed to television and radio programmes, such as In Search of Cleopatra, Women’s Hour and Night Waves .
Mary began her career teaching at Cambridge University but soon found that research was her real passion. Ever since Rudyard Kipling lit her imagination as a child, Mary had wanted to write about him. Later, she realised that the story of his sister, Trix, was just as compelling.
To explore the impact of their daunting early experience on their lives and work as adults, she set out to research the facts in libraries and archives. But it was visiting the places where they lived, from Mumbai to Cape Town, that brought them closer to her. In Naulakha, the house Kipling built in Vermont, Mary slept in his bedroom and soaked in his own bath. For the intimate story she had to tell, she decided it had to be fiction.
Kipling & Trix is her fifth book and first novel.
First published in the UK in 2012 by
Aurora Metro Books
67 Grove Avenue, Twickenham, TW1 4HX
www.aurorametro.com
info@aurorametro.com
Kipling & Trix © 2012 Mary Hamer
With thanks to: Lesley Mackay, Ziallo Gogui, Neil Gregory, Simon Smith,
Jack Timney, Richard Turk, Alex Chambers.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

We are grateful to ea Consulting Group for the sponsorship of The Virginia Prize. www.eacg.co.uk
All rights are strictly reserved.
For rights enquiries contact the publisher: info@aurorametro.com
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
In accordance with Section 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the author asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of the above work.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Cover design: Alice Marwick www.alice-marwick.co.uk
Printed by Ashford Colour Press, Gosport, Hants UK
ISBN: 978-1-906582-34-0
eBook conversion by Swift ProSys
ISBN: 978-1-906582-46-3
KIPLING & TRIX
Mary Hamer

AURORA METRO BOOKS
Acknowledgements
I couldn’t have written this book without the generous support of many individuals and institutions around the world. Not all of them can be named here but I particularly want to thank Henry Louis Gates Jnr. for keeping a welcome for me in Harvard and David Page, John Radcliffe and John Walker for giving me a home in the Kipling Society.
The staff in the Houghton Library and in Widener, like the keepers of Sussex University’s Kipling Archive, have been unfailingly helpful. I shall always be in debt to Tanya Barben of the University of Cape Town, for sharing her exhaustive knowledge of Kipling’s time in South Africa and to Barbara Fisher, for allowing me access to her own research on Trix Kipling.
I owe the Clink Street Writers’ Group for astute feedback and for the constant friendship that kept me on track as I was writing.
Most of all I am grateful to my husband, Nick Cumpsty, for his backing.
Note about the book
The story I’m telling in Kipling & Trix follows the historical facts very closely. But in bringing it to life, I had to draw on imagination for scenes and conversations and to explore the inner thoughts of my characters. It was because I wanted to make emotional sense of these lives that I chose fiction rather than biography.
This book is for my brothers
Christopher and John
and in memory of Michael, 1947-2011
S ONG O F T HE W ISE C HILDREN
BY RUDYARD KIPLING
WHEN the darkened Fifties dip to the North, And frost and the fog divide the air, And the day is dead at his breaking-forth, Sirs, it is bitter beneath the Bear!
Far to Southward they wheel and glance, The million molten spears of morn — The spears of our deliverance That shine on the house where we were born .
Flying-fish about our bows, Flying sea-fires in our wake: This is the road to our Father’s House, Whither we go for our souls’ sake!
We have forfeited our birthright, We have forsaken. all things meet; We have forgotten the look of light, We have forgotten the scent of heat .
We shall go back by the boltless doors, To the life unaltered our childhood knew — To the naked feet on the cool, dark floors, And the high-celled rooms that the Trade blows through:
To the trumpet-flowers and the moon beyond, And the tree-toad’s chorus drowning all — And the lisp of the split banana-frond That talked us to sleep when we were small .
The wayside magic, the threshold spells, Shall soon undo what the North has done — Because of the sights and the sounds and the smells That ran with our youth in the eye of the sun .
And Earth accepting shall ask no vows, Nor the Sea our love, nor our lover the Sky. When we return to our Father’s House Only the English shall wonder why!
The Times January 18th, 1936
MR. RUDYARD KIPLING
_____
STORY-TELLER AND POET
_____
AN INTERPRETER OF EMPIRE
One of the most forcible minds of our time has ceased to work with the death early this morning of Rudyard Kipling.
Whether the mind of Rudyard Kipling was a great mind; whether he could be called a great man; whether he lacked in width of vision what he had in intensity; whether his achievement in self-expression will tend in the future towards the good which he ardently, single-heartedly, desired for the world – all these are questions which it is impossible to consider under the blow of a great loss.
P ROLOGUE
Carrie Kipling ran her fingers over the page where she had pasted in her husband’s obituary. This was one scrapbook that Rud would never take down from the shelf. She looked up at the row of tall green volumes that housed his newspaper archive, then round at the packed bookcases, the bare plain of the desk. His briefcase appeared absurdly small, like a child’s toy, propped against the vacant chair.
Two years on, she was almost used to missing him. But today, as January 18 th came round again, she’d had Rud in her thoughts ever since waking. It was the anniversary of their wedding, as well as the day of his death.
They’d lived together forty-four years.
Reading the column from The Times once more, she felt a gathering indignation.
‘ A great mind ? A great man ?’
‘ Impossible to tell under the blow of a great loss.’
She let out a scornful laugh.
How could they know anything, these men who only took account of scenes played out on the public stage? The world’s honours, even the Nobel Prize, had meant little to Rud. ‘What does it matter, what does it all matter?’, he used to say.
She shifted in her chair, under the weight of his sadness.
For Rud, children were always the thing. And childhood. If they wanted to ask about minds, surely, childhood was the time when minds were formed? Or deformed. That certainly was the case for Trix. At the thought of her difficult sister-in-law, Carrie sniffed.
She turned back to Rud’s obituary.
They were not asking the right questions.
‘“Loss” is the word that really applies,’ her voice was harsh in the empty room. ‘Why don’t they ask what Rud himself had lost?’
It was only after they lost Josephine that Rud changed.
Remembering, Carrie’s breath came short, she flinched, hearing the echo of that high child’s voice, gasping through fever.
‘Give my love to Daddy and all.’
And what had it done to Rud to receive that message, to learn those words were all that was left of Jo?
She could do no more than guess. Too frightened of giving way completely, of a weeping that would never end, they’d clung together wordlessly. Later, when John was killed out in France – her eyes closed for a long moment – they’d been able to talk about him. But through all the years after Jo died, she was never mentioned between them.
Such a terrible mistake. Rud must have longed, as she did, to hear Jo’s name spoken.
Forty years on, Carrie could look back on those dreadful months of 1899 with a measure of calm. She also thought she could understand more about Rud himself. His whole character seemed to alter that year.
The war in South Africa had come at just the wrong time. She was certain Rud would never have taken up with Mr. Rhodes otherwise, never have been so angry and so blind.
She found herself speaking aloud, her right hand with its swollen knuckles beating the table.
‘If you want to make out what kind of man Rud was, why he acted as he did, try looking at all that he lost.’
Set it out, year by year, as in these scrapbooks, she thought fiercely. See the pattern.
Begin with his childhood, when he left behind in Bombay a whole world that loved him…
The light was going. She switched on the lamp.
* * *
Ruddy was crooning to himself as he laid out the stones. Two by two he set them down, smooth and dark on the dulled figures of the Turkey carpet in the Bewdley dining room. He liked the freckles on the stones. The game changed. There was a stone with an empty face. Still on his knees, he moved over to the door which he had pushed shut earlier and set that stone down there on its own. His singing grew more urgent. He was standing over the stone now with his hands stretched out, so intent that when the door opened sharply the brass knob landed a punch against his temple, knocking him off balance.
His grandmother let out a scream that was cut off as the domino cracked beneath her black kid boot.
‘You naughty, naughty boy. Who said you could come in here? These dominoes aren’t toys to thr