Rewriting Billy Budd from Benjamin Britten’s hometown

August 20, 2024

The stories in Martin Goodman’s new collection Lessons from Cruising come from across the globe, a couple stemming from Covid and the year of lockdown. ‘We locked ourselves away in Britain’s most easterly point, and different aspects of Lowestoft life sparked a pandemic story. Things like the kittiwakes nesting on the window ledge of a top floor apartment. The queue of people socially distanced outside Iceland. The men from the council appearing in full isolation gear to strip old asbestos from allotments. The story ‘Queenie and the Boy’ is about an unlikely friendship between a haggard old woman and a lone teenage boy.’

Stories are set in different coastal spots in England as well as India, Turkey and the United States, but generally, they start from time staring out of the window. ‘A lot of a writer’s time is spent staring out the window. The Suffolk Coast is perfect for that – look out over the sea and it’s a huge and changing blank canvas. And when you’ve stared through the window long enough you take a walk. Stuff is happening in your head. I’ll walk the beach toward Kessingland and coming back, approaching the pier, is where ideas for a story tend to fall into place.’

‘Benjamin Britten grew up in Lowestoft with the same sea view. It must have helped him write his opera Billy Budd, taken from Herman Melville’s classic novel

Benjamin Britten’s House in Lowestoft

about a handsome sailor. There’s a chapter missing in the novel, and in the opera too, where the ship’s captain tells Billy Budd he is to be hanged. I wanted to know what happened in that missing scene. So I read and re-read the book, stared out at the sea and its horizon that was filled with tankers waiting to dock at Felixstowe, and then rewrote it from the captain’s point of view. We have the entire story, ‘Billy Budd: Captain Vere’s Account’, which complements Melville’s original while adding those elements he missed.’

All the stories in the collection are gay themed. Are there more in the works?

‘I’ve a big nonfiction book My Head for a Tree about India coming out next year. Short stories are more intimate things. Sometimes they are a way of finding answers to what puzzles you. This collection is my way of quietly exploring who I am.’