Top' Fiction

By VICTOR ANANT

`Love you?' Danny smacked his forehead. `Take Romeo, Tristan, Marc Antony, and the first Boy who met Girl, mix them all up, pour their love into a suitable container, and it won't come up to Danny Sims' love for Carol McElroy. Furthermore—'

Carol held up her right, hand like a policeman on point duty. 'You make love sound as if you're trying to advertise a new soap.'

THE author of `Cross My Heart' (Woman's Own, November 6, 1957) is in a psycho- logically interesting mood of chest-beating. In a Weekly dedicated to one blind purpose—the pro- Motion of a single,' gimmick-geared pattern of love and marriage—this dialogue' reveals a tor- tured conscience. But the author's mood does not last long. Danny silences Carol with a kiss on the mouth. It ends her hysterical demand for 'the absolute truth' and signals the wise suppression of the author's honesty.

Danny is an advertising executive. He cannot afford the foolhardy gestures that Carol wants him to make. Doesn't the scatter-brained girl realise that you cannot now hold up the traffic? And can these streamlined vehicles which pro- Vide weekly transport for nearly 10,000,000 readers in the country be kept off the highroads that lead to the copywriter's Promised Land? It is no accident that the majority of heroes in these stories are engaged in 'creative' commercial jobs, such as advertising, designing, modelling, public relations, TV production, or on a 'glossy' news- magazine. Any poignancy the authors may feel is reserved for the success of the actress, the best- selling author, or the famous film star who (in the three stories in which they occur) remain tragically single, trapped in their own accursed, neon-lit achievement : How could they know that in the darkening theatre they had just left behind Sally Ayers was speaking the words which, for her, were inevitable? . . . All my life, ever since 1 was a stage-struck kid, I've worked to be a success in the theatre. I can't throw it away. . . . This was for her the most cruel reality of all. They couldn't know; it was better they didn't know.

No pity is shown, however, for the stenographer WhO has talked about being jilted to a friend : Why is it, Julie wondered, that having told another girl about a man always gives one a certain small feeling of cheapness? . . . When you tell you lose identity. . . , She was aware,

too, of how badly one always told these things; how untruthfully.

Reading twenty-six consecutive issues of Woman's Own, from July 4 to December 25, 1957 (it is advertised as the largest selling of women's weeklies : the rival publication, Wqman, carries stories of a stupefying sameness), shows the kind of crises now assumed as decently permissible in a man-woman relationship. The basic themes are conveyed in three typical titles : 'This Time It's Love'—single girl faced with the crisis of getting a husband; 'The Honeymoon'—just-married girl faced with the crisis of adjusting to her husband; `Love Is The Answer'—long-married woman faced with the crisis of keeping her husband. All the stories formulate the questions that arise out of these crises and give answers to them. They may loosely be translated as : Which man should I marry?—You need our advice. Now I'm married what am I to do?—You need our strategy. What should I do to• prevent my marriage breaking up?—You need to re-create our kind of enchantment. The responsibility in any man-woman relationship should belong entirely to the woman. The man is left free to make the wheels of commerce turn, by acquiring property, fathering children, pursuing his hobbies, and never indulging in politics.

To make their readers accept and conform, the promoters of 'pop' fiction must ruthlessly wipe out any tragedy that remains unique and personal, must create a featureless face for ex- hibition in the shop-windows of romance. They project this face on a wide screen. Each issue of the two weeklies publishes two stories of an average length of 3,500 words and an instalment of a serial on the same lines. The entrepreneurs of 'pop' fiction have cornered nearly half of the reading matter of these publications. They write for a much-battered audience, because advertise- ments take up 50 per cent. of the pages in each issue. While serious journals writhe and die these weeklies gain in circulation. Indeed, a new one, Woman's Realm, is to appear this month. As they gather momentum, will sin come to mean only that which is commercially forbidden?

'Pop' fiction writers work on the assumption that our society is moving towards a wholly middle-class destiny. Each story is a microcosm of the model they have in mind. What are its values? What is proclaimed as good, and what is their concept of evil? All virtue necessarily begins at home, with a strong sense of inviolate Englishness. They have never heard of the Commonwealth, except Australia and South Africa, and even these are treated as unknown dangers best avoided :

Arnold, he thought irrelevantly. I always thought Australians had names like Tom or Jed or Digger.

'He lives in South Africa. He works in a big diamond mining business out there. It's his whole life; he couldn't possibly leave it. He wants me to go and live with him there.' [She turns him down.]

Colonials are natural outcasts. A girl who has lived in Rhodesia falls ill on her first holiday in England :

. . and this the first time she ever came out of Africa, and away from all yon blacks.'

Scandinavians, Europeans, even the Swiss, pre- sent a more formidable, immediate threat, and are therefore mentioned ;

'She's a dancer. Her name is Ingrid or some- thing. A Norwegian.' [Ingrid is a girl 'with flamboyantly long hair.'] 'Simone was rich, she followed me around,' [Simone is Swiss.]

In any mention of Americans, who appear when a violently flirtatious crisis has to be quickly conjured, there is an ambiguous attitude of inferiority combined with admiration :

He danced many times with the blonde, American, dynamic, Irvington girl; they were flirting quite openly.

'I know what I want, Lisa. I want you.' His voice was no longer gentle but ruthless . . . and yet Lisa felt only compassion for Paul. [Paul Fenman, American author of best-sellers, sits 'untidily' in a deep armchair in a Park Lane hotel, wearing an 'unbuttoned' white nylon shirt, and thinks, 'To hell with you, my prim English miss.') The good, unmarried girl will get married be- tween' the ages of twenty and twenty-five. 'Mostly secretaries, they are closely described in 'Day Of Decision' (July 18): Living in small London flats; with good jobs but always short of money. Not the real career girls—they are a different, more deliberate breed —but girls who want to marry and grow a little afraid as the years gather speed towards thirty. Not plain Janes either. I thought of how we follow fashion and have, if not beauty, a gay contemporary air, Of how we live off salads, eggs and coffee . . . we are waiting for the beloved man who will make sense of each of our lives. . . . We are afraid of searching too deliberately and appear casual rather than eager. We know that we must keep in circulation; we accept all invitations. Going to a party, those quick, hopeful steps are ours.

Even though she has to act quickly, always on summer days when the 'temperature is near breaking point,' when the evenings are 'velvety, with gentle insects in the air,' she will not allow pre-marital intimacy. If such a demand is made of her she knows the man is not 'upright' and will not make a good husband, and she will find peace in a swim : 'the cool green water to drown her senses, to wash away humiliation, to cleanse her.' Christine rejects Luke's proposal to go away with him to Paris (`Set My Heart Free,' August 29): 'It's no use!' she had whispered, white-faced. 'I can't, Luke. It hasn't any permanency, any meaning. I'm afraid!'

'So you're conventional, after all l' he had sneered. She hated herself, afterwards . . . slept badly; in the morning she went early to bathe, finding a fierce pleasure in the icy shock of the water over her body.

She will choose not a stranger but someone

working in the same office, living in the same neighbourhood, or a childhood friend. (The proper place to meet such a person is at a party.) A typical example is the air-hostess who chooses the pilot; not the businessman who reads the Financial Times, is a regular passenger on the London-Vienna flight and offers her 'security and stability.'

Pre-marital kissing is not taboo. But when the wrong man is involved it must be accompanied by a feeling of vivid guilt : She remembered Owen, with a small stab of guilt. . . . The taste of Johnny's kiss was still on her lips. . . .

After the first kiss, which is never passionate, the 'good' man usually apologises : 'I'm sorry. . . . It was just that suddenly you—well, I wanted to—to kiss you. I'm sorry.' It is inevitable that the crisis of the 'good' just-

married girl is the crisis of the first sexual contact. In The Honeymoon' (September 18) it is ex- plicitly stated that she must show her husband how chaste she is :

Tom said abruptly, `Angel, go to' bed. We'll both go to—' and stopped. She began to blush painfully, Virginia, who had been thoroughly and unselfconsciously instructed from an early age.

She said, 'Tom, I—Tom—' and went quickly as if she were running away from him. . . .

He might as well admit it to himself—he hoped she would go to sleep because, if she did not, he would have to make love to her, and he was not sure he could. . . .

She said, 'Tom, I didn't mean—darling. I'm sorry . .

She said, 'Tom, I was scared. I never—I never—' The words used to describe the newly-married are always the same : 'She wondered in panic'; `clumsy'; 'her whole body became tense at the touch of his fingers.'

After a few years of marriage (usually between the fifth and the tenth year) the crises occur with a refusal to take roots with the husband; not sharing in his business or his hobbies; or due to hostility towards his parents. The married woman is represented as an ex-stenographer who has be- come a drudge through hard work or being tied down by children (never more than three), or one who has lost personal charm which another woman (usually a model) teaches her how to re- capture. Stories dealing with married couples can afford a more leisurely pace (in the other stories the action takes place in a few hours, one week- end, at the most a week). Another difference is that married couples are permitted to live in' new residential areas, or London suburbs; whereas the single man or woman lives usually in South Ken- sington or in Chelsea. A renewal of enchantment may be achieved by the following device : She was wearing a new striped swimsuit that her sister had sent her from America, and that she had been afraid of wearing before because it seemed too daring. Her hair was briskly curling . . . and her face was as carefully made- up as if she were going to a ball.

Parents are always depicted as calm, uninter- fering, and on the side of the husband. There is never any mention of insecurity, illness, or sexual incompatibility.

The 'good' male is between the ages of twenty- five and thirty. He is in the income group £1,500-£2,500; has a car; a flat in Chelsea; some- times a house by the sea. None of the men are lawyers, civil servants, or bank clerks. They are fond of sailing, swimming, driving, and wear

the casual, elegant dark grey suit, the dazzling white shirt, striped tie.

If he is young and has a good job, but wants to put off marriage till he has made more money, the girl will not wait for him. The ideal man is represented as valuing his freedom, stubborn, proud, but at the same time desperately desiring marriage; such characterisation increases in frequency in stories published in the winter months : 'Time's slipping past, Janet. We can't go on like this for ever, you know' . . . 'You may be prepared to wait for ever, Janet; but I'm not. I want a loving wife. . .

Even the high executive is lonely in November : I'm tired of it, that's what's wrong, he thought, savagely lathering his chin. Tired of this com- fortable, furnished flat where nothing is my own. Tired of solitary meals I've cooked for myself, holidays with no one to share things, pay days with nothing to celebrate . . . by the time a man's my age [twenty-nine) he needs someone, it's no good being alone.

In a good man there is bitterness towards those who are born rich : Why did he dislike him so much? . . . He'd had to struggle to get where he was now, struggle to help a widowed mother and make his own way; and in the course of the struggle he'd had no time for all the things people like Brian West so thoughtlessly enjoyed—girl friends, parties, dances and theatres.

Even if they are Londoners these males are uncorrupt; indeed, they find the rich young man in the country forbiddingly a man of the

world: He talked casually of the places he'd hce1 to abroad, earlier in the year, of the shows he seen in London, shows that Brian couldn't afford to go to. He paid Marion extravagant, half' joking compliments. . . . Next to him, Brian felt young and inarticulate and stupid. . . .

Unlike the women, whci sin only because theY cannot make up their minds, are clumsy, or pay no attention to themselves, their husband's in' terests or their in-laws, evil men are those MI° are cynical about sex. Such men 'kiss fiercely,' hold women 'tightly by the wrists,' push 'her ori to a sofa,' sneer' and have 'mocking eyes.' They are usually richer than the ideal male and have jobs that take them abroad—Rome, Paris, America. Their love is egocentric, unlike true

love :

Luke didn't love me like this, she thought; with a detachment that was the beginning 01 self-honesty; Luke's love was light and gay and demanded nothing of himself.

Once married the sound husband will display no sexual avarice. He will be 'fond of his wife in a quiet, undemonstrative sort of way.' In bed she will derive satisfaction from 'listening to his deep, heavy breathing with intense relief.' If he turns in his sleep it will be `to kiss her on the shoulder.'

Where does 'pop' fiction go from here? It cart- not achieve greater innocence or solemnity. Per- haps it will have to try sin.