Mother’s Boy: Author Patrick Gale’s new novel about Launceston poet Charles Causley

Commonly described as “the best Poet Laureate” we never had, poet Charles Causley (1917 – 2003) spent his life in Launceston. Cyprus Well, the tiny twobedroom terraced house where he resided with his mother Laura (and latterly alone), looks much the same as when they lived there, right down to the furniture. Too small to be a museum, it is now made available to writers-in-residence, and it was only right that author Patrick Gale should spend a week here while researching his latest novel: Mother’s Boy, a fictional account of Charles’ childhood and his relationship with Laura.

“It was strange, and powerful, to be sleeping in Laura’s bedroom, looking at pictures she would have looked at, knowing I would be writing a deeply intrusive novel about her life,” Patrick admits. “I didn’t dare sleep in Charles’ bedroom - as it was, it was quite funny coming out of Laura's room to be confronted by his portrait. I felt I had to tread carefully.

“I could feel the ghosts of them and their cats and dogs. I imagined them winding up the grandfather clock whose tick I could hear while writing. I’ve spoken to other people who stayed there, and they say the same – it's a bit like being inside Charles’ head. Although he moved there after the period in which the novel is set, it’s easy to imagine the way he and Laura would have lived there – as soon as you walk through the front door, you see Laura’s armchair next to the telephone table.”

Patrick committed himself to honouring the facts he unearthed about Causley - although these were “quite thin on the ground at a certain point in his life”, and were supplemented by the memories of those who met him and extracts from Causley’s own writings: sketches, articles and, of course, poems, some well-known and others markedly less so. “At every stage, I’ve used hundreds of bits of material – what he left behind.”

The book explores the period from Charles’ conception to the start of his career as a schoolmaster in Launceston, wending its way through childhood, school days and his wartime years as a coder. Causley had started out as a playwright, and Patrick has a theory that his wartime experiences influenced his direction as a poet. "The discipline of being trained as a coder, working very fast in tiny amounts of words in code - it’s very close to how he wrote poetry, and he intimated that he found it much easier during the war to hold four or five lines of poetry in his head and work on them,” he explains.

Causley was famously private, so how does it feel to be imagining scenes from his life, and presenting them for public consumption? “Extremely cheeky,” grins Patrick. questions, and it seems to me that the biggest question with Charles is what made him tick emotionally. In many ways, the public version he chose to present, especially later in life, was quite forbidding. He was friendly on the surface, but intensely private, which is very unfashionable these days, when everyone is examining themselves on social media.

“I wanted to examine the construction of the public persona of Charles Causley, and worked back from that into his vulnerable boyhood. I think he would have made a very good spy, because he realised he needed to compartmentalise his life, and put his emotions and vulnerabilities into a locked and very well-guarded box.”

Waterstones describes the novel as “tender, compassionate and rich in psychological truth”, while referring to “the secret desires he must keep hidden”. It’s not a huge leap from this to speculating on Causley’s sexuality at a time when homosexuality was some way off being legal. But Patrick, who lives near Land’s End with his husband Aidan, is quick to see where I’m going and heads me off at the pass. “I don’t want anyone saying ‘He’s making Causley out to be gay,’” he says, emphatically.

But he continues: “It’s safe to say that in his private diaries from his teens and 20s ... he never gives a physical description of a woman, just simple names. If he mentions a man or a boy he has met, you get a vivid physical description.

Kirstie Newton talks to Patrick Gale about his new novel exploring the youth of poet Charles Causley, who lived in Launceston with his mother

“Homosexuality was illegal then, and it would have been a very frightening thing to admit to himself. Some people say he was just waiting for the right woman, but I think he chose to live with his mother, who was the ultimate shield to hide behind, very respectable. Anyone who visited him said you had to get past Mother before you got to Charles. In a way, she protected him, and when she died later in his life, he had a breakdown – he must have felt very exposed suddenly.

“So I’m not painting him to be gay, but I am exploring things that he found uncomfortable to talk about.”

Care has been taken, given Charles’ living relatives; these include Devon folk singer Jim Causley who has previously recorded a CD of his distant cousin’s work set to music. “He has read it – my heart was in my mouth,” laughs Patrick. “I’ve also had nice feedback from people who didn’t know Charles’ work, and who were keen to read it after finishing my book, which was very satisfying.”

Mother’s Boy is as much Laura’s story as Charles’. A Cornish lass, she met her husband (also Charles) in 1916 when both were in service in Teignmouth. Their son was born the following year, but Charles Sr returned from the trenches a damaged man and ill with tuberculosis. Soon widowed, the fiercely independent Laura raises Charles alone in small, classobsessed Launceston, working as a laundress, gradually aware of his genius. Patrick examines their relationship with interest: “How he and his mother got on each other’s nerves, and how she shaped him. A lot of the characters I’ve extrapolated from his poetry – this wisdom had to come from someone.”

Unlike Causley, Patrick is very sociable and is active on the literary circuit of Cornwall, where he has lived since 1987. He is the artistic director of the North Cornwall Book Festival, a director of Endelienta at St Endellion, and a patron of Penzance LitFest and, of course, the Charles Causley Trust.

“When I started out, I was grateful when older writers gave me a hand. Writing is a very precarious business, and we need all the help we can get. It's a duty of the successful to help others up the ladder. Festivals are one way of doing that, and we are lucky to have so many writers down here who can be persuaded out of their hidey-holes, like Cathy Rentzenbrink and Nina Stibbe.

“Twitter is also a very powerful tool. If I like a book and tweet about it, it makes a big, big difference.”

He was knocking at an open door when seeking support for his new release, marked by the Charles Causley Trust with a three-day festival in Launceston from March 4 to 6. Events included workshops, book signings, the launch of the Causley Young Person’s Poetry competition and a special evening event at the Eagle House Hotel with Patrick, Jim Causley and documentarian/filmmaker Jane Darke.

Whether or not you attend the festival, Patrick urges people to read Causley’s work in the context of its setting. “There is something powerful about going to a place where a poet lived his entire life. People often talk about Betjeman in Cornwall, but he wasn’t born here. With Charles, you can read an incredible body of work describing Launceston in specific detail, then walk the streets where it’s set.” l

Mother’s Boy was published on March 1 by Tinder Press.

For further information about the Charles Causley Trust, causleytrust.org