Loss and Gain
Terence de Vere White
Tempting Fate Michael Levey (Hamish Hamilton £7.95) Tempting Fate Michael Levey (Hamish Hamilton £7.95)
The idea of anyone so eminent as the Director of the National Gallery Publishing a first novel is calculated to make his friends anxious on his account, while enemies (if he has any) prepare to gloat. There is a time for everything, and illanY Latin tags advise against enterprises °tit of season. Newman did it, but before he was a cardinal, and novels were different then. Mr St John Stevas could have written the novels of Mrs Humphry Ward and be none the worse, but in the manner of the moment? No.
Friends may take heart and enemies scat- ter — Sir Michael has pulled it off. He can i 00k anyone in the eye. This novel makes Nth better reading than the run-of-the- nlill product of today's professionals. For °Ile thing, it is the child of some compul- s,!°n. The writing of it obviously fascinated min. The Stylistic combination of Byron and a gossip writer for the Evening Sian- qard sometimes defeats credibility; but this is Possibly inevitable in a first novel written by a man of experience. There is ample precedent for novels in Which the narrator is a self-confessed rogue, and takes the reader into his confidence 'tom the start. His shamelessness is intend- ed to charm. Thomas Mann springs to mind. In creating Nicholas, who is 16 and an experienced homosexual seducer, the author might be said to be sending a boy on ,a Mann's errand. (If that sort of smart talk ttlesn't appeal to you, be warned, Nicholas 13 a dab at it.) Is the name Nicholas signifi- „e4°, t? Are we to think of him as a relation 'r Old Nick? Or is the clue to him in the He'vel's title? Does he light the fires he plays with? He is attractive-looking, knowing, in more than the street-wisdom meaning of the word, too cultivated to be quite convin- 'n8 in his childish aspect, a New Wave Lord Alfred Douglas. His story is an elaborate card game in which the reader takes a hand willingly. Nicholas is dealt the Joker and all the knaves. A civilized diver- !(:41; but if I have mistaken the writer's in- tention, if this is meant to be the story of a damned soul, then Nicholas has played his
last trick at his creator's expense.
This hero is an only child. His sportsman father is dead, his mini-star mother an actress who upsets him by taking lovers closer to him than her in age. She is in Portugal when the novel begins, making a film. He is staying with an aunt, and out when the curtain rise with a former teacher who was 'asked to leave' Nicholas's school when he fell victim to his charms. He took it well, and bore no grudge. His house-mate is taking photographs of Nicholas and pay- ing him £30 for the privilege. This is the scene. Surprisingly, the lad is in a state because Mopsa, his cousin, insists on going out with a muscular beau of more ap- propriate age instead of accepting Nicholas's invitation to supper. Worse, she gets herself engaged and laid on that outing. Nicholas is inconsolable, or thinks he is. He sees himself as a magnet, and has no experience of any other form of attach- ment.
The scene shifts to the depressing residence of his batchelor godfather, a vicar. He takes in his godson with an understandable lack of enthusiasm. Nicholas, who is having a lacklustre time, sees very little of his host. One day he finds the vicar dead in a vandalized room and, after some delay, rings the police. While they are investigating the cause of death, as Nicholas is homeless — he will not join his mother — the police arrange for him to be put up by Sergeant Parrott. Bob Parrott is in the Forster-Walpole police tradition: manly, silent, gentle, married, childless; I stared back into his brown eyes, under the faintly crinkled forehead, thinking that now he might almost be a giant toy lion, blond, big but soft, standing on his back legs and clasping the jug in those slightly furry front paws, one of which shone the broad gold band of a wedding ring.
Nicholas warms to the atmosphere of the house. Edna is so comfortable; Bob takes him fishing. This is the home he never had.
Nightly I should go to bed a little before Bob and Edna did, entering that blue- painted room that seemed to require py- jamas and some sort of fawn dressing- gown, trailing its cord, hung on a hook behind the door. Had I come to kiss them both goodnight before going ustairs? Climbing into my narrow bed I would feel reassured hearing them, as I had, unhurriedly locking up, switching off lights, barricading the household against the force outside...
The vicar is buried. Mother, a stock figure (mini-stars must be) comes to the funeral, but Nicholas refuses to go back to Portugal with her. He forces himself on to the Par- rotts after some resistance on Edna's part. When she has to go away to see a dying father, Nicholas arouses in decent Bob the impulses that cost his schoolmaster a job.
To prove the depth of Bob's affection and justify the book's title — Nicholas gives him a third version of the vicar's death. The first is in his narrative; the se- cond, a police reconstruction; the one for Bob's benefit involves Nicholas himself. He dressed up as a girl (the vicar had a weakness for girls) and his antics when on the vicar's knee brought on the fatal coughing fit. After the death he smashed up the place. Or so he says.
The unsleeping policeman in Bob insists that Nicholas must report the matter. Nicholas refuses, threatens; Bob is That- cherish. It would be mean to spell out the ending. The first time round, I said when I came to it, 'Oh, no. He can't hope to get away with that'. When I met it again on a second reading I was not so sure.
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