Too many doors and corridors
A. A. Gill
THE BLACK BOOK by Sara Keays Doubleday, £15.99, pp. 313 The chap in my local bookshop set out a pile of Sara Keays' first novel, The Black Book, between towers of Edna O'Brien and Beryl Bainbridge. 'Bitter woman', he said. `Shame, a bitter woman.' There was no need to ask which one he meant. It is Sara Keays' lot to have been the recipient of one of the most distasteful and vituperative character assassinations in a spittle-flecked, gloves-off age. 'Bitter' was the sobriquet, rather than 'wronged'.
The scandal now seems an age ago. It belongs to another time. Remember those grainy, black-and-white, first-administra- tion Tories — Neave, Nott, Joseph, weakly simpering Parkinson? They seem as distant and starchy and irrelevant today as Bald- win's cabinet. And think of all the scandal that has floated down the public gutter since — Diana, Camilla, Fergie, Norris, Mellor and all those three-in-a-bed, under- the-doctor Hampstead Heath sinners whose names escape in a crowd of shifty, tabloid faces. If the Keays/Parkinson pregnancy had become public last week, it would have been fighting for newsprint space with the crossword. Bitter? Sara Keays had every right to feel bitter, and as motivation for a roman a clef, bitterness isn't a bad place to start; it may be hell to live with, but bitterness and revenge read well on the page.
Happily for Miss Keays but unfortunate- ly for The Black Book, there is precious little rancour or vitriol and the only charac- ter who appears to have been drawn from life is Miss Keays herself. If there are oth- ers, then the veils are too thickly woven for me. So readers hoping for the fury of the scorned will be disappointed.
Which leaves us with a straightforward political thriller. Jo, a young army widow, joins the Chief Whip's office as a tempo- rary secretary. She becomes increasingly alarmed at the cynicism and bullying of politics. Then, by chance, she discovers the apocryphal black book — the index of MPs' peccadillos and weaknesses that the whips use to keep order and fill the lobby. Horrified and disgusted, she decides that Something Must Be Done.
The doing of something is the bulk of the plot. There aren't enough twists to tie a shoe-lace. The thrills rely on the 'will she, won't she?' be caught type. From the style and decently sensible moral set of the writ- ing, the ending is never in doubt. The story takes a long and leisurely run-up to deliver- ing the drama: The first 100-odd pages are stodgy with introductions and atmosphere. We briefly shake hands, wave at and nod to a bewildering number of one-line, faceless Tories and salt-of-the-earth servants who don't make any further contribution. This may well be what the House is like, but it's exhausting and confusing to read. The atmosphere is wholly topographical. A trip down a lot of corridors and through far too many heavy, oak doors. Stone and wood have more life than the MPs, but then again that may be perfectly authentic. This isn't a procedural book; there is surprising- ly little behind-the-scenes politicising or Machiavellian shenanigans, none of that knowingness that we have come to expect from recent political thrillers.
And, unbelievably disappointingly, no sex, none. I had to keep reminding myself that it's supposed to be contemporary. The dialogue has the brittle, jolly, matter-of- factness of Fifties British films. Jo, our heroine, reminded me eerily of a young Joyce Grenfell. Kenneth More and James Mason could easily have been in the cabi- net. Perhaps Leslie Phillips might have been one of the dim young thrusters. The plodding, moral Edgar Lustgarten tone of the telling makes it sound as if Miss Keays has turned her back on current affairs and not read a newspaper for a decade.
There is nothing here that will cause a shiver in Brighton this week compared with the front page of the Guardian. Sadly, it must be said that this is a dull book but dull for the right, worthy, moral reasons. It's a spare-bedroom thriller that's unlikely to be stolen. The best thing about The Black Book — and I don't mean this to sound facetious — is what isn't in it. It's not a Parthian shot, a belated dark dirk in the ribs, or a dish eaten cold in public. And that shows a remarkable and admirable depth of character in Miss Keays.
There are many reasons for buying books — to impress, to fill shelves, to prop up wobbly furniture. You might consider buy- ing this one as a show of support for a mother and daughter who were one of the first casualties of conservative family values.
A. A. Gill writes for the Sunday Times. His novel, Sap Rising, is published by Doubleday at £15.99.
`I'm sorry we can't choose the baby's gender, but for a private patient I can genetically alter its colouring to match your decor.'
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