Betrayal - The Best Thing That Can Happen on a Saturday Afternoon

I know that in my Alphabet of Better Writing I should be tackling the letter F, but I keep getting sidetracked by literary lessons that can be learnt elsewhere.

To whit - on Saturday afternoon I listened to Betrayal by Harold Pinter, dramatised on BBC Radio 4 - if you didn't hear it, reach for the I-Player button here. Last year I saw the London production with Kristin Scott Thomas, Douglas Henshall and Ben Miles, but in fact I was infinitely more gripped by this radio version. The play comes across as a chamber piece which the medium of radio compresses and intensifies.  The setting was minimal -- the sounds of crockery and cutlery in a restaurant provide a slight yet glacial orchestration to the action.  With no visuals to divert the listener, the voices of the actors, speaking Pinter's pared and meticulous prose, chart the casual repression of intimacy, revealing how practical and brutal dismantling a relationship can be.

The play is a beautifully constructed triangle, exploring the complications of friendship between Robert and Jerry: Robert is married to Emma, with whom Jerry has had a seven-year affair.  The action begins two years after the affair has finished and reaches back into the past, year by year, articulating the longing for what has been lost.  Betrayal begins at the end and ends at the beginning, anatomising the journey  from disillusionment and unhappiness to the first, guilty flair of desire.

Given how self-preoccupied the characters are, it's amazing that any of them manages to form relationships at all.  The key issue that exercises them is not what happens between Emma and Jerry, but who knew what was happening and when they knew it.  Ownership of knowledge is power and remaining in ignorance (however blissful) is by definition ignominious.

Andrew Scott as Jerry,  and Olivia Coleman as Emma perfectly capture the necessary narcissism of lovers and Charles Edwards' Robert colludes in the affair, undermining his friendship with Jerry by failing to reveal that he is aware of what's going on.

I listened, rapt,  for seventy-five minutes; the performances perfectly pitched and the suffering of the three characters no less acute for being stifled.

Literary Lessons to Be Learnt:

• When you are structuring your work, be bold.  Try not to go the obvious route from A to B, experiment with a more lateral approach.  Use form to put pressure on content - you'll be amazed at what effect this can have.
• Make sure that your narrative and the themes which underpin it are well integrated.  Every phrase in Pinter's Betrayal is inflected with deceit and perfidy, with the result that listening to the play becomes a more concentrated and intense experience.
• Provide your readers with enough materiel to do the emotional work for themselves.  The scene in which Emma tells Jerry she is pregnant by her husband is almost unbearably painful, in spite of the fact that practically none of the pain is actually articulated.

A Master Class from Twenty Twelve

For a consummate example of how to hit a number of creative writing buttons all in a one-er, I suggest you - read Dorothea Brand's excellent book Becoming a Writer?  No, (but you should). Join an evening class? No, (but it may not be a bad idea). Work your way through all the great writers from Austen to Zola to try and fathom their literary mysteries? No, (although it's a great plan for the summer).

I recommend that you sit down and watch an episode of Twenty Twelve,  BBC2's pitch perfect comedy drama about the coming Olympics. Setting aside bravura performances from Hugh Bonneville and Olivia Colman, there is much you can learn from the flawless writing:

• It is understated.
• It is deftly, panifully observed.
• The characterisation is extraordinarily subtle - each person is recognisable, empathetic, irritating, amusing -- in other words, utterly human.
• The relationships it explores are fractious, misconstrued, unrequited and irresistibly fascinating.
• It deals with a familiar subject, something we all think we know a little bit about, so we are able to bring our own impressions to bear upon it, we can make a connection easily and that way half the author's work is done.
• Although it is written to be funny, the pathos and poignancy of every situation and in every personality is fully explored, giving each episode depth as well as humour.
• It has a David and Goliath feel to it -- the flawed, ordinary guy taking on big issues and overcoming them.

 So curl up on the sofa next Friday at 10 p.m. and turn on, tune in, and see what there is to learn...