One Small Thing: Jane Johnson

When Kate asked me to think of a special object, I looked around me in the house in Cornwall where I'm in lockdown, and I couldn't think what it might be. I am not a great collector of objects. I have precious books and paintings and favourite scarves and pottery; but most of my true treasures are on a different continent. And then I looked down at my hand and saw the ring and smiled. It's a very fitting choice, for in the culture that made it, the women wear their jewellery everywhere they go because, like me, they live peripatetic lives and must be able to carry their precious things with them. This little ring is probably the most precious thing I own, and there's a wonderful story to go with it.

In 2005 I travelled to Morocco for the first time to carry out research for THE TENTH GIFT, my first historical novel. I was accompanied on the trip by my friend and climbing partner, Bruce: the agreement we made was that he would come with me while I trawled museums, interviewed academics and visited locations associated with the Barbary corsairs who had abducted my family member in 1625; and then we would go climbing in the south-west of the country. Which is what we did. Way down in the Anti-Atlas Mountains, 700 miles away, where we had an epic adventure and ended up getting stuck on a climb overnight. This is well documented elsewhere, so I won't spin out the detail other than to say, I thought I was going to die: but didn't! It's said that your life flashes before your eyes in such circumstances, and perhaps it does in split-second emergencies: but when your near-death experience spins itself out for a very dull 10 hours in the freezing darkness, your mind wanders all over the place. I made myself three promises that night: that if I survived I would finish the novel I came to Morocco to research; that I would quit my day job in publishing because life was too short to commute to an office and sit behind a desk every day; and I would get to know the strikingly enigmatic man in the turban who had presided over the best meal I'd ever eaten the night before.

In fact, that striking man threw a big party for us when after 5 hours of desperate abseiling and scrambling we made it back down the mountain: he invited musicians and made a feast and we were feted. It all went by in a whirl of sensation - wonderfully spiced food, throbbing drumbeats, voices chattering and signing in a language I couldn't understand at all - and through it all the steady gaze of Abdellatif, with his razor-sharp profile, his neat, precise movements around his restaurant, his vivid eyes.

The next morning Bruce and I were leaving. We wandered the little bazaar, selecting gifts to take home, and while Bruce was choosing some CDs by local musicians, Abdel appeared like a djinn out of the shadows and - daringly, for a culture in which women are never touched in public - took me by the elbow and slid a ring onto my finger. "This ring is shaped like a tent," he told me in French, "and it was made by the Tuaregs, the desert men, who were my mother's people. It represents shelter and if you wear it you will always be protected." My knees trembled: I had no idea what was going on, except that it was significant. I babbled some sort of thanks and we exchanged numbers and then Bruce and I drove to the airport. When I told Bruce what had happened and showed him the ring he said, "You're probably his third wife now!"

Well, I wasn't Abdel's third wife: but later that year I would become his first and only wife; and here we are 15 years later, sheltering in place in my homeland of Cornwall. 

Jane's forthcoming novel THE SEA GATE is set in Cornwall in 2015 and during the Second World War. It's about a house full of secrets, about hidden love, art and family and murder, and it's coming out on Kindle and Audible in June, and in physical hardback in September.

You can find out more about Jane's work here.

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