BBC Radio 4, 22 November 2013
Set in a cottage hospital in Somerset
in November 1963, The Levels had two parallel plot-lines - a wife lying pregnant in the hospital, and her husband
carrying out his job as a sales person, and being waylaid at one of his regular ports of call by a love-sick widow.
The husband's name was Jack, a deliberate reference to the assassinated President and his similarly voracious sexual appetite.
Ashley Pharaoh's story put a
localized spin on the material: while the assassination obviously had an impact - even in rural Somerset - there were other
things happening at the same time. Where there was death, there was also life - the wife eventually had the baby, even
though the morphine led her into some rather bizarre fantasies about seeing her husband and (imaginary child) on the seaside
while she was drowning. This imaginary fantasy also drew attention to the
ways in which the 'truth' of the assassination has often become obscured by fantasy and speculation - so much so that it's
difficult now to work out what 'really' happened.
Read by two readers - Hugo Speer narrating the husband's tale, and Natascha McElhone the wife's
tale, The Levels revealed the polysemic meanings attached to the event on 22 November 1963.
