13 APRIL 1985, Page 30

Unhappy families

Harriet Waugh

The Governess Patricia Angadi (Gollancz £8.95) Every Day is Mother's Day Hilary Mantel (Chatto & Windus £8.95)

patricia Angadi and Hilary Mantel are both talented, first-time novelists. In Mrs Angadi's book, The Governess, there is an ease and maturity that is lacking in Every Day is Mother's Day — which is hardly surprising, as Mrs Angadi has waited until her seventieth year before taking the plunge into print. She might well have drawers full of less considerable stuff such as conventionally makes up the babbl- ings of most novelists' first printed efforts.

The Governess, set just after the First World War, shows a middle-class family in disintegration. Why it disintegrates is the haunting question left unsettled by the novel. The story opens with the hiring of a governess by Eleanor Lane-Baker. Miss Herring is to take charge of a pair of blissfully emotionally entwined identical boy twins, aged seven, their unhappy angry, older sister Helen, and Margaret, the plump baby of the household, aged four. Two older brothers, Miles and Jus- tus, have already started boarding school. Miss Herring, known as Herry, is a para- gon of virtue, being pleasant to look at, sensible and loving. Since the children's characters are already formed before the story opens, it could be argued that the seeds of their fates have already been planted before Herry's arrival. The action covers 20 years, and is moved forward by each member of the family in turn. The only character not given a voice is Miss Herring herself.

With the exception of Justus, who is horrid, and Eleanor, the mother, who is jealous, every member of the family, in- cluding Father, agrees that Herry is wonderful. Each believes that they have a special relationship with her. As Herry gives love and admonishes with an even hand, she never utters an untrite senti- ment. She is, in fact, everything a family governess should be. Why, then, should each child's life — with the exception of the cold-hearted Justus — be blighted

before they are safely launched on the world? Is Herry an evil woman, as Justus — who sums up his family's history — believes, or is she — as I believed on closing the book — too good?

Parents are rarely ideal. It is possible to argue that children discover their own strengths and weaknesses by contending With the natures of their parents. It could therefore follow that if the central force in a child's life was all wise and loving, the Child might suffer an identity crisis and find it impossible to turn away from the hearth- side paragon to embrace a less than ideal World. That is what I considered to be the theme of Patricia Angadi's novel, and very entertaining it is too.

She writes with a fine recall of the minutiae of nursery childhood with its Pleasures, unhappiness and security, but her skill lies in undercutting the sentiment With an indication of the abyss round which the family hovers. As Justin sees it, bottled happiness is dispensed by Herry long after the natural variety of mother's milk has dried up in Eleanor. Without being aware of what is happening, the children gradual- ly turn the light of their regard and expectation away from their mother to- wards Herry. One of the tantalising ques- tions left unanswered is whether Herry knows of the effect she is having. Dis- appointment in her, if you can call it that, comes too late to save them. Left to the selfish love of their mother at an earlier age, they might have done well enough.

This is the most enjoyable new novel I have read this year, and it is considerate of Mrs Angadi, who is married to an Indian, not to have launched her talent on yet another Anglo-Indian masterpiece.

Every Day is Mother's Day by Hilary Mantel, although less dismaying, is con- siderably more gloomy. The gloom comes from the fact that the situation of each of the characters is dire and the characters themselves never, for one moment, sup- Pose it can be anything else. The lack of dismay in the reader, given this situation, is accounted for by the fact that none of these charmless characters is likeable. They are an emotionally impoverished lot, making the worst of their lower-middle-class life- style. Madness and badness lurk just below the surface despair, and become personi- fied in the forms of an elderly widow and her retarded daughter who live a fearful life in a decaying house in a middle-class street. Evelyn, the mother, whose dead husband preyed on little girls, is slowly going crazy. The rooms of the house threaten. Things gibber in the wainscoting. Her half-witted daughter has secrets — she can write, for instance, but Evelyn does not know this. Strange, hateful messages are found in unlikely places. She is also Pregnant. The girl from the social services fails to cope with, or comprehend, the situation. She has her own problems — a drunken father and a depressing affair with a depressed married schoolmaster.

Although this is a comedy, the humour, Which is bleak, never lightens into fun. It relies for its effects on shock and carica- ture. The world that Hilary Mantel pre- sents is a claustrophobic, unenticing one. However, once one's resistance to entering

it has been overcome, some of the scenes are good, even funny, and it has a nicely creepy climax.