Whether the writer be a black man or a fair
man
Gabriele Annan
MR BARRETT'S SECRET AND OTHER STORIES by Kingsley Amis Hutchinson, £14.99, pp. 224 The undergraduate heroine of the sec- ond story in this collection describes a meeting of City gents as `strangulatingly boring'. You might feel the same about the title story, which trudges over the familiar ground of Mr Barrett's opposition to his daughter Elizabeth's marriage with Robert Browning. What makes it particularly boring is the portly idiom of Mr Barrett's first-person narrative — a sort of 19th- century Amis-speak — but necessarily duller because more restrained and gentle- manly. Still, it's worth plodding on: the story ends with a revelation. Mr Barrett's secret and the reason for his objections turn out to be that he believes he may have African Creole blood and that the dark-complexioned Browning may do too; so Elizabeth could end up with a black baby. The story finishes with a note by Amis. He thinks that Barrett saw some- thing un-English not only in Browning's skin, but also in his diction: and he quotes the whole poem, Nationality in Drinks, as an example of what that something might be. He adds that he himself doesn't believe Browning had
`Creole' blood, though, if he had had, Victo- rian literature and the world in general would have been that much more interesting.
Dumas pere and Pushkin each had a black ancestor, he points out, before going on to describe how in 1972 he gave a lecture on Tennyson. Afterwards a lady in the audi- ence asked to be introduced on the grounds that she was descended from Browning's brother. Browning had no brother, and the lady was black. An idiosyncratic ending, which tells you more about Amis than about the Brownings or even about Eng Lit. It's hard to tell exactly what it tells you, though — except that Antis doesn't consider himself a racialist.
Several of the stories in this volume are mysterious — even a bit obfuscating — in a defensive kind of way.
The best one is 'A Twitch on the Thread'. It is about a Doppelganger, and Doppelgangers are reliably spooky and unsettling, as James Hogg, E. T. A. Hoff- mann and Karl Miller have established. This one stands watching the Rev. Daniel Davidson's flat from the pavement oppo- site, his face classically hidden behind shades and a newspaper. When he drops the paper, Daniel catches sight of himself. The shock is considerable — for the reader as well as for Daniel. It turns out that Daniel and his double are identical twins, separated at birth. Daniel was brought up in an orphanage, Leo adopted by an Amer- ican couple. Again, there is a note at the end, this time referring the reader to scien- tific publications on monozygotic twins. Both Daniel and Leo are reformed alco- holics who found God through praying for strength to kick the habit; both were ordained in the same week; both married women called Ruth. Daniel is undone by the discovery of these facts. Describing his conversion, he says:
I knew I had a personal understanding with JC that said as long as I went on really trying he'd see me right . . . it was a special one-off agreement between him and me, run up for the occasion, absolutely not any kind of stan- dard contract . . . because I was me, I was unique, I was an individual.
Leo has the opposite reaction. He is delighted:
For Leo, it was a kind of final proof of God's greatness, that in the universe he made there could be two or more things that were unique and identical at the same time.
Leo goes back to the States, Daniel back on the bottle.
It's a good theme and a good storyline, expertly worked out. It's just a question of whether you can stand doggy Daniel enough to empathise with him — or Ruth, for that matter. She's as much Antis woman (the good, not the bitchy kind) as Daniel is Antis man. When he pours out his woes, she makes cups of tea and holds his hand 'without any sign of wanting to speak'.
Previous page
