P. D. James1:Inside the Head of a Criminal Mastermind

Kate Kellaway

At 10 o’clock P. D. James—or Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE—walks into her sitting room.2. baroness： 女男爵；OBE： Order of the British Empire，大英帝国勋章。We last met almost 20 years ago in the same room and there is, along with the deja vu3. deja vu： 似曾相识的感觉。, a sense of wonder at seeing her again. At 91, she is remarkable4. remarkable： 卓越的，非凡的。. She is looking marvellous in an elegant powder-blue jacket of oriental cut, offset by a narrow silk scarf decorated with flowers.5. marvellous： 绝妙的；powder-blue： 粉蓝色；oriental： 东方的；cut：（衣服的）款式，样式；offset： 把……并列以衬托。She is frailer than when last we met (she has survived heart failure and had a hip replaced in 2007) but otherwise is unchanged and in no way extinguished.6. 相比上次见面，现在的她显得有些虚弱（她从心力衰竭中逃过一劫，2007年时还经历了髋部置换手术），其他方面没什么变化，还是那么神采奕奕。frail： 虚弱的；extinguished：（生命等）消亡的。She is as kind,civil and forthright as I remember.7. civil： 有礼貌的，客气的；forthright： 直率的。Her secretary, friend and all-round prop8. prop： 支持者，拥护者。, Joyce McLennan, has tea and biscuits ready on the table. Everything is in order—above all,P. D. James’s shipshape mind.9. above all： 尤其是；shipshape： 井然有序的。Incidentally10. incidentally： 顺便提一句。, P and D stand for Phyllis and Dorothy.

It is splendid11. splendid： 极好的。, she volunteers, to be answering

questions from readers and fellow authors. She avoids being insulting yet her view is implicit: journalists are less likely to be armed with surprising questions.12. 她没有使用侮辱性的字眼，表达的观点十分含蓄：记者很少会提令人惊讶的问题。insulting： 侮辱的，无礼的；implicit：含蓄的。As a crime writer, surprise is P. D. James’s forte13. forte： 长处。. Her ability to keep readers guessing has not failed her in half a century. And it is characteristic that, towards the end of her writing life, she should elect to spring a new surprise on us.14. elect to do sth.： 选择做某事；spring： 涌出。It would have been pardonable—admirable indeed—to have published another novel starring policeman poet Adam Dalgliesh.15. 这也难怪——也的确让人佩服——她能以警察诗人亚当·代格里斯为主角，又出版了另一部小说。pardonable： 难怪的；star：v. 由……主演。ButDeath Comes to Pemberley(now out in paperback) is a plucky new adventure, a sequel to Jane Austen’sPride and Prejudicethat doubles as a murder novel.16. Death Comes to Pemberley： 《彭伯里谋杀案》，号称是《傲慢与偏见》的续集，讲述达西与伊丽莎白结婚6年后发生的故事。paperback： 平装本；plucky： 大胆的；sequel： 续集；Pride and Prejualice：小说《傲慢与偏见》，是简·奥斯汀的代表作。小说生动地反映了18世纪末到19世纪初处于保守和闭塞状态下的英国乡镇的生活和世态人情。

2014年11月底，英国著名犯罪小说家P.D.James与世长辞。消息一经传开便引起轰然。一位才华横溢、传奇卓越的女作家就这样离开了我们。除了其经典小说外，你可曾真正了解她？就让我们通过这篇英国《观察家报》的专访，走进P. D. James的世界。

P. D. James has been an Austen devotee17. devotee： 爱好者。all her life.She can hear Austen’s voice with her inner ear, become her echo on the page.Death Comes to Pemberleyis a masterly pastiche.18. masterly： 巧妙的；pastiche：（文学、音乐或电影的）模仿作品。It is more streamlined19. streamlined： 精简的。than her other fiction,involving only one murder and one suspect, but it fills us in on Elizabeth and Darcy and their marriage and satis fies that curiosity one has as the reader of a classic romance: did they live happily ever after?

《彭伯里谋杀案》封面

And what of P. D. James’s own happiness? Everything about the room and its occupant has a secure, reassuring feel: the William Morris upholstery, the trusty fireplace,the sage green walls, a flourishing orchid and statues—some of them religious.20. 威廉·莫里斯风格的室内装潢、给人以可靠感的壁炉、灰绿色的墙面、盛开的兰花和雕像（部分宗教雕像），屋里的一切，包括屋主都给人一种安全舒心的感觉。occupant：居住者，William Morris： 威廉·莫里斯，1 9世纪英国知名设计师；upholster y：室内装潢；sage green： 灰绿色；orchid： 兰花。She has a study lined with poetry,a garden busy with geraniums,21. study： 书房；geranium： 天竺葵。but the metal security bars on the windows introduce a different note. She prefers not to dwell on22. dwell on： 细想。her earlier life’s dif ficulties. But it is interesting that, asked about what matters, she talks—in a manner of which Jane Austen would have approved—about the importance of security and a good marriage when, for a while, she had neither.23. 但有意思的是，当你问她什么比较重要时，她会以一种简·奥斯汀可能会认可的方式告诉你——是安全感和一段美好的婚姻，她曾有那么一段时间两者皆无。

She was married to Connor Bantry White, an army doctor, and had two daughters by him: Clare and Jane.Tragically, her husband returned from the war mentally ill—and she had to support the family single-handedly.24. tragically： 不幸地；single-handedly： 独自地。He died, aged 44, in 1964, two years after her first novel,Cover Her Face25. Cover Her Face： 《秘密杀戮》，P. D.James所著，全球最畅销悬疑推理类小说。, was published. It must have been extraordinarily hard. But P. D. James is, one surmises26. surmise： 猜测。,the sort of person who would only be made more determined by misfortune. Besides, she was not unused to being pitched into27. pitch into： 迫使处于。helping a family out. For, in a sense, history was repeating itself. She left school at 16 and helped bring up her younger siblings28. sibling： 兄弟姐妹。. Her family was short of money and her father, a tax inspector, did not approve of higher education for girls. And there was another reason too: her mother had been admitted to a mental hospital.

P. D. James has always been a powerhouse29. powerhouse： 精力旺盛的人。. As if it were not enough to be a living legend as a crime writer,she also worked (until 1979) in the NHS30. NHS： National Health Service，英国国民医疗服务体系。and Home Of fice police and criminal law department. She is a Conservative life peer and has been a magistrate, a BBC governor, on the board of the Arts Council, a chair of the Booker prize, a lay patron of the Prayer Book Society.31. Conservative： 保守派的；life peer： 终身贵族；magistrate： 地方法官；Booker prize： 布克文学奖；lay： 非专业的，外行的；patron： 资助人。Idleness is alien to her.32. 她十分勤快。idleness： 懒散；be alien to： 与……相反。But P. D. James is, above all, an independent thinker.

On New Year’s Eve 2009, she attracted widespread attention by giving that independent thought air time. It was while guest editing the “Today” programme that she took on the BBC’s director general, Mark Thompson, and politely asked him bullseye33. bullseye： 击中要害的话。questions. She wanted to know why the BBC’s middle management were paid such overblown salaries and why creative people were not better recompensed.34. overblown： 过分的；recompense： 酬谢，付给……报酬。Thompson was not ready for her. The interview won the 2010 Nick Clarke Award35. Nick Clarke Award： 由BBC创立的新闻类奖项，以纪念已逝的英国著名广播和电视节目主持人Nick Clarke。.

P. D. James has a special place in her readers’ lives.When I explain to a friend we cannot meet because I am interviewing her, his response is: “Excuses don’t come any better.”36. 没有比这更好的推辞了。And I feel hugely indebted37. indebted： 受惠的，感激的。to her because it was the Dalgliesh novels that saw me through the sleepless months after my first son was born. That magni ficent narrative grip, the Victorian and the visceral together: the capaciousness coupled with violent detail… her books were powerful enough to keep even a shattered new mother reading.38. grip： 吸引力；visceral： 发自肺腑的；capaciousness： 容量大；shattered： 极其烦躁的，极度疲劳的。I had such an appetite for P. D. James’s novels at that time that I did not want to read anyone else. I am still grateful now.

I think I am ready for her. She watches with concern as I turn on the tape recorder, explaining that she and machines do not get on. As we sit side by side on the sofa,she is completely engaged: warm, careful and deliberate39. deliberate： 不慌不忙的，沉着谨慎的。.She speaks as if she were dictating to a secretary. She turns each answer over, sometimes returning to it for tailoring—to add an extra twist or subtract where necessary—but always determined to do each question justice.40. 她仔细考虑每一个问题，有时候还要返回修改——在必要时添加一些转折或者做出删减——但总是公平对待每个问题。 turn over： 仔细考虑；subtract： 去掉。

Ask PD James: readers’ questions

Jeffrey Archer:Are you a lark or an owl?41. lark： 百灵鸟；owl： 猫头鹰。

PD James:I am a lark, we get up early in the morning,don’t we? I always have woken terribly early. Usually about 5a.m. I can—and do—work as early as that but then I sleep for an hour in the afternoon. I am a siesta42. siesta： 午睡。woman. I suppose you could say that, although I am a lark, I go back to the nest again in the afternoon.

JA:How many rewrites do you do?

PDJ:This is quite easy to answer: with some passages,absolutely none, whereas with others, I may have to rewrite a considerable number of times before I am satis fied. I know when a thing is not as good as I can make it. That is the point. Other people might be able to do it better but I have to make it the best I can do. And I sometimes feel it is not as good as I can make it. But when it is right you know.It is like with a painting: you know, don’t touch it again.

Paula Byrne, author of Jane Austen and the Theatre:With which character in Jane Austen do you identify yourself?

PDJ:It has to be Elizabeth Bennet. I share her humour and irony and interest in other people and her wish to be well married. I have a similar enthusiasm for the security that is offered by family. Because we are always aware inPride and Prejudicethat although Mrs Bennet is, in many ways, a dreadful43. dreadful： 糟糕的。mum and embarrasses her elder daughters to a terrible extent, she is absolutely right that if Mr Bennet were to have got pneumonia44. pneumonia： 肺炎。—which they often did, the elderly—and if he had died of it in the winter or had fallen off his horse, the Bennets would have been thrown out of their house by the Collinses and would have had to live in a cottage on the estate. Mrs Bennet was absolutely right about security. I think I should also want the security of a prosperous marriage.

Nicci French, crime writer:Do crime novels always have a moral impulse45. impulse： 推动力。?

PDJ:No, not the most violent and sadistic of the crime novels but detective stories do af firm the sanctity of each individual life and the possibility of human justice.46. sadistic： 残酷成性的；sanctity： 圣神。

Peter Lant:What is the best thing about being a nonagenarian47. nonagenarian： 九十多岁的人。?

PDJ:(There is a prolonged48. prolonged： 持续很久的。silence during which she admits that her silence might serve as an answer in itself.)Oh dear, what can one say for it? One has learnt what is important and what is unimportant. At least, I hope I have learned the difference. I agree with Keats49. Keats： 济慈（1795—1821），英国诗人，浪漫派的主要成员。that the most important thing in life is the “holiness of the heart’s affections”.