DA Swain on his last book Tom Spicer: A Still Small Voice

The publication of Tom Spicer: A Still Small Voice, a sweeping novel set in both Cumbria and colonial India, was never seen by its author DA Swain, the penname of businessman Vijay Daswani. Sadly, Vijay died suddenly in India, the country of his birth, just before the book came out. In a posthumous tribute, we share his story, written in his own words, about his inspiration for it, and his love of the Lake District

One of my favourite books as a child in India – after I’d got past The Famous Five, The Wizard of Oz, Swallows and Amazons, Just William, etc – was David Copperfield.

I didn’t finish reading this coming-of-age novel until some years later, during my own passage across youth into adulthood. But I did read the early chapters when I was about ten. And I can never forget the pain I shared with young David, when he learned of his beloved mother’s death, on his ninth birthday.

He was far from home and family, his heartless stepfather Mr Murdstone (what a fitting name) having torn him from his mother to cast him into stern and unforgiving Salem House boarding school.

I, too, had been separated from my own mother (and father) at a similar age. They’d emigrated to England, to work and establish a new life, which they hoped their children would eventually integrate into.

Vijay with his wife Jeannie (Image: Supplied) With them had gone my aunt – my father’s sister – who had ‘adopted’ me since my birth as her own son, and who was an integral member of our extended family.

So, bereft of my two ‘mothers, I cleaved to my grandmother. She was my protector, a titanic and grand-matriarchal version of the wonderful Peggotty, who gave David Copperfield so much succour during his fraught childhood.

A little after this first encounter of mine with Dickens, I arrived in the country he wrote so acutely about, the land whose novels and poems had forged my imagination like no other.

In London, I became reunited with my dad and two mums. My aunt, whose life seemed lit up by my presence, showered me with more love than I could comprehend. And I contentedly reciprocated much of it.

In the meantime, my biological mum, who had never relinquished me as one of her five precious progeny, carried on being mother to all her children equally, gazing upon my aunt and me with (mostly) benign amusement.

This relationship I had with my two mothers lasted until the very ends of their lives.

In latter years, I’ve realised how blessed I was to be a son to two devoted mothers. A unique phenomenon, triggered by two quite disparate circumstances colliding and fusing.

Firstly, my mother pregnant with me, yearning for a daughter after she’d already produced two boys. Then, my aunt, suddenly rushing into our household just before my arrival after a dramatic separation from her husband in a far-flung corner of India.

She’d also recently suffered a miscarriage, which had contributed to her marital breakdown. And she needed the support of her mother (my grandmother).

A critical event takes place at Castlerigg Stone Cricle, near Keswick, in the book (Image: Supplied) When my biological mum delivered me – a boy, not the desired daughter – my grandmother had an inspired idea. To let my aunt ‘adopt’ me. Legally.

My mum didn’t mind my aunt being a sort of nanny to me, but she flatly refused a formal adoption. So I received this remarkable gift of having two mums, not just one.

Readers of Tom Spicer will see family circumstances/dynamics such as these being replicated. Tom, after losing his birth mother, also ends up with two mums – Guni, his adoptive mother, and Ada Tavender, his link with his biological one and with the culture of his birthplace.

Since childhood, the Lake District has been a treasured place for me. My imagination had visited it countless times long before I actually went there.

It was always the setting in the back of my mind whenever I read one of my favourite poems, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, first as a schoolboy then as a university undergraduate and later, out loud, as a teacher of English literature. I would visualise the fells and lakes beyond the Banqueting Hall in front of which sat the Ancient Mariner, as he “stoppeth one of three” wedding guests who were trying to enter to join in the feasting.

Imagination turned into equally enchanting reality during the numerous times I visited. On one trip, in 2007, after staying in a charming hotel between Windermere and Ambleside, I decided to make a counter-intuitive return journey to London, by heading not south, but north to Keswick first.

It was one of the most momentous decisions of my life. I was smitten by this user friendly-sized market town, one of the most ‘real’ places in the entire Lake District, with an identity and history beyond its attractions as a tourist hotspot.

Amongst the soaring fells surrounding it and Derwentwater at its southern end, evidence is found everywhere of the town’s origins as a site for graphite mining and slate quarrying. Together with many trades and much agriculture all around which provides valuable employment, Keswick retains its persona as a working town.

Vijay giving away his daughter, Kate, at her wedding (Image: Supplied) A few months after discovering Keswick’s surprising delights, I was alerted to a business opportunity in the town. The Millfield Retirement Home was up for sale. I already had other care homes that lay along the M6 corridor and was instantly interested in the prospect of owning this one, despite its distance from London and my other homes.

I acquired the Millfield in 2008 and so keen was I to have a place for myself to stay in, I bought nearby Easedale House B&B a year later.

Latterly, I upgraded Easedale into seven holiday apartments with an eighth exclusively for me to stay in whenever I’m in Keswick. It is very much my second home.

Though I visit all the residential care homes in my group regularly, I always find reasons and excuses to stay on for as long as possible in Keswick. My wife and I love walking to and around the lakeside crags on Derwentwater, the nearby villages, and we also regularly drive to hostelries all around the northern Lake District for walks, lunches and teas.

The landscapes wear many varying and beautiful coats during the different seasons, with spring having a particular charm. We love watching the baby lambs emerge in April, and the swathes of bluebells spread across Rannerdale in May are an exhilarating sight to behold.

When arriving from and returning to the south, we usually take the ‘lake road’ (the A591) rather than the faster M6. Our trip takes us past some of the most beautiful lakes in the area: Windermere, Rydal Water and Grasmere, past Thirlmere to Derwentwater.

This route also gives us panoramic views over Bassenthwaite Lake. Another drive we love doing is around nearby Ullswater – the second largest and arguably the most beautiful of the lakes – on a journey that takes us over Kirkstone Pass (and the second highest pub in England) to the picturesque town of Ambleside.

Thirlmere and Helvellyn, both of which feature in the novel Tom Spicer (Image: Steve Barber) On a clear windless day driving past Thirlmere on the A591 is like driving past a vast mirror reflecting the banks and tree-lined fells (mountains) all around. The fictional lake Burrowmere in the novel is based on this lake; I had to change its name because fictional activities take place on and around this body of water that couldn’t happen in real history.

There are, though, some true reference points in the story. One of these is the landing of a biplane on Helvellyn on December 23, 1926, witnessed by Professor E R Dodds. I love recounting tales like this one, and facts such as Thirlmere having been the main reservoir for the water supplies of Manchester (over 90 miles away) for more than a century.

I feel a profound affinity with the Lake District, which is why it figures so significantly in this novel. It will be even more prominent in the second volume of the Tom Spicer trilogy. I’ve provisionally titled that tale Tom Spicer: The Day Before Tomorrow.

My wife and I are constantly discovering more sights and places in the area, tiny hamlets tucked away off back roads, hidden single track roads over moorland where not only the ubiquitous sheep, but also fell ponies, roam.

So there is a wealth of beauty and emotion to mine here, and who knows what may end up featuring in the rest of my trilogy.

FOOTNOTE: Tragically, Vijay’s life was cut short while on holiday in Goa with his wife in March. He was 72.

Tom Spicer: A Still Small Voice by DA Swain (Image: The Book Guild Publishing) TOM SPICER: A STILL SMALL VOICE

D.A SWAIN

The Book Guild Publishing, £10.99

The novel opens with the arrival of 11-month-old ‘Tom Spicer’ at the door of the upper class Pelwani family in the city-state of Sajjan. The toddler has been delivered by Jeremy Crow who has returned to India a year after “slunking back” to England discredited and penniless.

Tom is Jeremy’s nephew, the son of his late brother, Barnaby, Squire of Thralwyche in Cumberland.

Guni, the only daughter, of Pelwani patriarch Dada Vada has lost a baby and her husband and sees hope and a future in Tom. She wishes to adopt the boy but her eight brothers – who live in the family compound with their wives – fear danger and shame.

Guni is supported by Ada Tavender, a British woman who sends fresh clothes for Tom up the tunnel that links the compound with the British colonial enclave of Crabtree Hill.

Ada is also keen to find out the truth behind Tom’s arrival and his uncle Jeremy and an investigation of old newspapers reveals information about a family drowning in the Lake District.

In part two, the action goes back in time to Cumbria where the family's fortune has been built on Barnaby investing his inheritance in forestry to sustain the building boom in 1918.

Having lost trust in the concept of family, and being a bitter second son, Jeremy leaves to try his luck in South East Asia but loses much of his fortune in poor investments. He then heads to India and within 18 months even has to pawn his suitcase in order to raise the money to return to Cumberland where the birth of a baby boy, Stephen, has brought joy to Barnaby and his wife Isobel.

Danger looms, however, as the forces of greed, corruption and criminal activity draw closer. The threats that forced Tom’s removal from England soon catch up with him, far from his birthplace and, supported by a cast of colourful characters, eventually these two worlds collide.