The hand of God
Byron Rogers
THE REVENGE OF MIMI QUINN by Shirley Conran Macmillan, £16.99, pp. 560 here are three-and-a-quarter pages of acknowledgments, starting with the author's editor and ending with God: all played their part in the three-and-a-half years it took Shirley Conran to produce these 500,000 words. Two Roman Catholic priests (also Lord Longford) helped with the revenge and the forgiveness. Theatres invited her backstage, archives opened like roses. Old debutantes remembered, Mr Roger Seelig taught her all he knew about finance, Miss Sian Phillips all she knew about early theatrical make-up. Drafts were sent around the world, couriers wait- ed at London airports until four in the morning, hairdressers called on Miss Conran at home ('whenever my fringe obstructed my vision'). God, once an ener- getic copy-editor on Mt Sinai, seems to have been an absent, if favourable, influ- ence.
The result is that if you read the acknowledgments first you come away with the expectation that what you are about to read is not a work of fiction at all, but seri- ous social history, the researching of which took Shirley Conran a year-and-a-half alone. And there is a great deal of very interesting social history:
Over a hundred years before [it is the year 1901] canny tavern landlords had noticed they sold more ale if there was a sing-song, so they provided free entertainment to pro- mote profitable bonhomie. Then they built a stage for the performers at one end of their supper rooms. Now the variety shows had pushed the bars to the very back of the hall, and the music-hall stars had become the pop- ular folk heroes of the day: everyone loved their raffish, carefree zest for life, as much as their performances. Apart from the pubs, the halls were one of the few places where the poor could go for a bit of cheerful company, light and warmth on a cold winter's night — often the only way they could briefly escape a home which might be one, bleak, freezing, vermin-infested slum room housing an entire family.
Drawers are crotchless, giving a whole new perspective to the can-can, as the author, relentless as an adult extension lec- turer, explains, 'At that shocking moment when each dancer clutched an ankle, held it high above her head and hopped round in circles.' But the garment, she goes on, did mean women in heavy skirts could use chamber pots. Actors were not allowed Christian burial in France until 1900, MoHere, apparently, having to be buried at night in unconsecrated ground (Miss Con- ran adds an indignant exclamation mark). We are told what dockers earn, and early film stars, the latter being obliged to work 24 hours non-stop. Brassieres get invented, and rubber girdles (`She enjoyed the free movement of a waist no longer nipped in but ignored'). In London and Paris and Hollywood interior decoration changes ('donkey beige, mouse-back grey, dead rose-petal').
But on political events the author's touch is less sure. The Spanish Civil War comes along. 'Nick wished he found foreign poli- tics less confusing; why were Democrats called Republicans, and Republicans called Nationalist, in Spain?' Then there is Munich. 'Despite wide condemnation of Mr Chamberlain's gullibility, his little bit of paper had given Britain an extra year in which to prepare for war.'
But then her research kicks in like a turbo:
Literally a town within a town, Portsmouth dockyard was a thriving community with fac- tories, stores, houses, schools and a church. It had its own police force, fire brigade and railway to haul heavy loads from shops to workshops, or to the slipways.
Is there anything else? Not really. Apart from incest, that is, and bisexuality, and one woman taking against another who locked her in when a theatre went on fire, hence the revenge of the title. But none of this matters, for the characters are mechan- ical toys. When they appear a label is attached to each, listing their physical char- acteristics and certain attitudes; they are then wound up and let loose to be endless- ly themselves. There are many adjectives.
'She hadn't yet put up the thick fair hair that fell on either side of her creamy oval face with the innocent stare of a gold, unattainable angel . . Or 'Once tall, dark, slim and vain, Sir Octavius was now thin, stooped, grey and still vain. His pale, heavi- ly lined face had a tight, mean mouth and watery blue eyes. 'This sort of stuff gets in the way of the neat academic work the book might have been, and it is a shame. God has a lot to answer for.
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