FICTION
By FORREST REID Grand Master. By Stephen Hockaby. (Michael Joseph. 7s. 6d.)
I HAVE, I must confess, no great love for topical fiction ; I am, in fact, all against it, and Mr. Emmanuel is no doubt a topical novel. Yet it conquered my prejudices ; I found it an
original, powerful, and moving book, alarming at times, grimly outspoken, but with a light shining through, a sense of moral values, a tenderness and compassion. Of these last two qualities Mr. Emmanuel himself is all compact. He is an old Jew who has retired from the Board of Guardians, where he has worked for many years. He has just decided to go out to Palestine, to join his son and grandchildren there, when he
gets a letter from Rose Cooper, whom he had known and befriended in her childhood in Magnolia Street. Rose, now married to a sailor, and living in the New Forest, wants him to pay her a visit. She has children of her own, but.she
looking, after five young refugees from Germany, boys of the upper class, ranging from fourteen to eighteen, and very different in temperament, so that their management is by no means easy. Her husband is away on a voyage. Mr. Emmanuel, innocent and kind, fond of Rose and interested in the boys, at once agrees to go, and thus, instead of peace and quietness, finds their opposites, is plunged, unwamed and very much unarmed, into an adventure that is like a nightmare. But this does not happen at once. At his journey's end he is introduced to the refugees, four of whom are politely indifferent, while, with the fifth, Bruno, he is immediately in sympathy. The boy is reticent and intensely unhappy. His father has been killed ; from his mother, to whom he was passionately attached, no letter has arrived for months, and he does not know whether she is dead or alive. He divines in Mr. Emmanuel somebody in whom he can confide, and they become friends. All seems well, indeed, until, with the other boys, Bruno is sent to camp at the seaside. It is while he is there that, because he has received no letter from his mother on his birthday, he tries to commit suicide. Mr.
Emmanuel is summoned ; finds him obstinate in his deter- mination ; and they make a pact. Bruno is to carry on as before, is not to give up hope, and Mr. Emmanuel will go himself to Berlin and discover what has happened.
Mr. Golding's treatment of this introductory theme has the kind of beauty that is truth, and the truth that is beauty. Though the unhappiness of the child permeates it, it is idyllic in comparison with the second act of the drama, which is staged in Berlin. It is to be remembered that Mr. Emmanuel is a rather feeble old man, temperamentally incapable of harm- ing a fly ; also that he is a Jew, and arrives in Berlin at a time when the anti-Semitic mania is at its height. He proceeds to make inquiries—fruitless, of course—and so brings suspicion upon himself. In Switzerland a Nazi leader has been assassinated by a foreign Jew ; Mr. Emmanuel is another foreign Jew, and for this reason suddenly is arrested by the Gestapo. The scenes that follow have a cold brutality that is appalling. For there is no evidence, unless, by third-degree methods, a confession can be extracted from the prisoner himself. I shall not trace the story further, and I cannot say whether the picture Mr. Golding draws is accurate or exaggerated. I believe it to be accurate, though such cruelty and wickedness seem insane. Perhaps in this may lie a certain hope, for human nature turns instinctively to happiness, and in such conditions, one imagines, there can be no happiness even for the aggressor. It is a mere chance that saves Mr. Emmanuel, but we believe in the chance, we believe in the whole story.
The epilogue is brief, and again we are in England. Oddly enough, with this return to safety the effect becomes almost unbearably pathetic. But " pathetic," I feel, is not the right word, nor is " tragic "—for, after all, have we not the reunion of friends? And has not Mr. Emmanuel brought with him a white rabbit—purchased in Southampton—as a present? It
is not Jo, the white rabbit Bruno used to talk about, but still it is a white rabbit. And whether it is to the point or not, I cannot help remarking that -Mr. Golding always writes charmingly about animals. Its qualities of warmth and emotion, of a sympathy at once passionate and restrained, place Mr. Emmanuel on a different plane from our remaining tales. Nevertheless, Mr. James Miller's Three Women is a good novel, and if it is a first one, remarkably promising. It is a story of rural life, well observed and well written ; not particularly dramatic, perhaps, but moving steadily forward from start to finish. Essentially it is a study of defeated ambition, the three women of the tide forming the milestones in Neal Palmer's life. There is a Chaplin film in which, at the end, we watch the hero, his back turned to us, walking off into the unknown. So Mr. Miller's novel ends. At the age of thirty, the three women having played their parts in his life, Neal simply leaves them behind him and moves on, looking " like a man with nowhere to go." Nor has he: henceforward he will drift with the tide. Yet as a young man of twenty, son of a farm labourer, he was filled with the determination to make a career for himself. He studied, passed an examination, got an accountancy job in the neighbouring town. It is his weakness for and dependency on women, that is his undoing. The first woman, Rachel, marries him, though he has no wish to get married, and she merely wishes to get away from home. When the situation becomes intolerable he leaves her, moves on, without explanation or goodbye. These is a child, but neither in it, nor in the child he has later by Alice, does he feel the slightest interest. He drops back into farm labouring, his studies are forgotten, he meets Alice, the second woman. Presently he moves on to another farm, where he meets Stella. But Alice joins him there, her child is born there, and, as happened with Rachel, this seems to mark the close of their intimacy. Once more he moves on, leaving behind him the three women and two children—in fact, there is no need for Mr. Miller to carry the chronicle further, we can do that for ourselves.
It is a strange book, and Neal is a perfectly convincing character. Yet for the reader, as for the three women, he remains tantalisingly secretive. Is there anything to know, and if there is, does he know it himself? The English country- side is vividly described, the minor figures are clearly drawn, and the whole has a certain solidity, a richness of material, that promises well. What is lacking is the establishment of any vital sympathy between the reader and the characters. Stella one likes best, but this is not Stella's story, it is Nears. Nevertheless, the book produces the impression that Mr. Miller has a genuine talent and may do something very good indeed.
Mountain Flat also is a novel of farm life. Not English, however, but Australian. It is the tale of a small community, with its school and schoolmaster, its children and its grown- ups, its loves and quarrels. In style it is much inferior to The Three Women, but it is well constructed. Struggle against poverty is here the main subject, for actually there is not enough land to go round, and the book opens with the exodus of one family who have recognised defeat, and closes with the exodus of a second. Amidst conflicting interests of a more mercenary nature, Mr. Mann has set a love-drama, which is as realistic as all the rest. The picture is drab, and its harshness and crudity are ungraced by any charm of treat- ment, but one feels that it is authentic.
Mr. Hockaby's Grand Master is an adventure story of the past, when Moslem was struggling against Christian in the lands round the Mediterranean. There is a great deal of fight- ing in the book, and the incidents are not always probable. It is hard to believe that John, aged twelve, and Francis, aged nine, captured by pirates, should escape by swimming out to a little ship, slaying the one man left on board, and setting sail. Children do not do these things, but John is a marvel, always getting into tight places, and always getting out of them again. He has many adventures—in Algiers, in Constantinople, in Italy, in England—before finally he is made Grand Master of the Knights of Saint John. Some of his exploits appear to be borrowed from history, others invented. Yet, in spite of changes of scene, the book becomes a rather monotonous chronicle of violence, while a most unsavoury atmosphere of sex makes it unsuitable for such younger readers as might have enjoyed it as a yarn.
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