Not just cricket (From East London and West Essex Guardian Series)

Not just cricket

10:09am Thursday 15th July 2010 in

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Ed Hillyer talks to Nick Elvin about his first novel, based on the true story of an Aborigine cricketer and a British convict

When Ed Hillyer saw an article in his local paper about a man who was buried in the area, a ten-year journey began culminating in his debut novel.

The Clay Dreaming tells the story of an Aboriginal Australian cricket team who came to England in 1868 to tour. However, the book is not so much about cricket, and its author is not a big fan of the sport, it is more about the people involved, how they are overlooked by society, and the circumstances in which their lives intertwine.

The book focuses on the unlikely friendship that forms between one of the cricketers, Brippoki, also known as King Cole, and Sarah Larkin, the daughter of a preacher. Sarah helps Brippoki to research the fate and fortune of convict Joseph Druce, who had died decades before.

Ed says he was living in Mile End when he was first inspired to write the story.

"There was a feature in my local paper in about 1997, about an Aborigine cricketer, Brippoki, and how he was buried in Bethnal Green. A year later there was another feature in the same paper about Joseph Druce, who was born in Stepney who was transported as a convict. We had an Australian native coming here and dying, and a man from Stepney going the other way to Australia.

"The only things that are really known about King Cole is he was brought here and he died here. There's nothing about how he lived. With Joseph Druce, he was a very ordinary fellow. He couldn't read or write but he did dictate his life story."

The story uses those factual elements as a spine around which the fictional story runs.

"It was the first tour of any sort by an Australian team," says Ed. "Until recent years it's been forgotten. Everybody talks about the Ashes, but it predates them by about ten years.

"The team was brought over here mostly as a sideshow, but they played the best teams in the land. They drew with the MCC at Lord's. The team did remarkably well, given that they were far away from their normal lives and it was four months of playing back-to-back matches."

While Brippoki and Druce were real people, Sarah Larkin is an invented character.

"She's my way in to tell the story of the other two," says Ed. "She becomes the third linchpin. She's overlooked because she's a lower middle class woman. She has no role in life and is not really allowed a job. In a sense it's the same way I'm trying to tell the story of two other overlooked characters. Her function is to copy out scripting for her father's sermons. Her father is dying, so her work is futile.

"Brippoki is an Aborigine in Victorian London, out of place. He's meeting a woman and Victorian society doesn't usually allow this. She acts as his guide, it's like an alliance. She gets to have a life and be useful and she finds a role."

Ed spent about three years out of the last ten writing the book, mixing it with his day job as a graphic artist. It took him four years to find the grave of King Cole, who is buried in Meath Gardens, and five years to find Joseph Druce's life story, which he tracked down to a library in Australia. Interestingly, Druce travelled to New Zealand after his incarceration, where he became a Maori warlord. He came back to England and died here.

Ed, who now lives in Wapping, has produced a number of books including the award winning graphic novel series The End of the Century Club. However this is his first attempt at a novel, and it has already met with success, being selected for Waterstone's New Voices 2010. How difficult was it to adapt?

"Not hugely, apart from the fact it hasn't got my drawings in there," he adds. "It's all telling a story. I can take skills from what I do normally."

The Clay Dreaming, by Ed Hillyer, is out now, published by Myriad Editions. Ed Hillyer will be talking about the book at the Shoreditch Festival on July 18, and at Walthamstow Library on Wednesday, July 21, 7pm.