Two working class novelists
Auberon Waugh
Josh Lawton Melvyn Bragg (Secker and Warburg £1.95) Body Charge Hunter Davies (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £2.00) On several occasions in the recent past I have had to complain that the workingclass novel had fallen into a stereotype. Writers fortunate enough to have a working-class background on which to draw for their material had developed a formula: the ritual gloat over Mum's delicious working-class cooking; the simple acceptance of working-class folk back home in the village community compared with the false values and ruthless competition of smart London life; the danger that working-class lad will be corrupted by London values; the return home to be accepted back (or not, as the case may be) into the fold. Neither of the authors under review is guiltless and both have drawn loud complaints from this page. It would be nice to think that the marked improvement shown by both writers owes something to my complaints. Certainly there is a note of defiance in the way Mr Hunter Davies describes an evening meal shared by the hero and his grandmother: We had porridge to start with and then stovies, which is a sort of hot-pot dish . . I've had all that smoked salmon and Mediterranean wine. I've been through it all. For a cold London night you can't beat porridge and stovies, made the way Gran makes them.
Porridge for dinner! Ugh! And I don't care how Gran cooks her stovies, hot-pot is made from left-overs and twice-cooked meat is never so good as the first time round. But in fact this is an uncharacteristic relapse. Both novels show a distinct improvement, and Mr Bragg's treatment of life in a Cumberland village is mercifully free of both the faults most frequently found in the modern working-class novel — an aggressive sentimentality about retnembered childhood delights and a phoney indignation about the discomforts of those left behind.
Josh Lawton is a golden boy in the Cumbrian village of Ullaby. He never complains, is always smiling and happy and sweet. Loved by everyone, he never lets it go to his head. His beauty and charm attract the attention of Cedric Tyson, a middle-aged emotional cripple retired from the army who trains him as a runner and, grows jealous when he meets and falls in love with a neighbouring beauty. Maureen Telford comes from a violent and unpleasant family of Irish immigrants, and Mr Bragg's new book is particularly good at conveying the violence which lies beneath any working-class culture.
Soon after the birth of their daughter, Maureen finds herself sexually attracted to Blister, the local bully. Comparing his violent and unpleasant manners to the saintliness of her golden husband, Josh, Maureen finds Josh wanting and becomes Blister's mistress. Josh is heartbroken by her desertion, and a scuffle begins for custody , of the child which ends, melodramatically, with the stabbing of Josh and Cedric in a fight with Blister.
Although the melodrama may be distressing to people of delicate sensibility, it is not incongruous against the background of a Cumbrian folk yarn. The story is told with admirable simplicity, without any of the coy self-consciousness with which tales of northern working-class life are usually served to a predominantly middle-class, southern reading public.
Mr Bragg gives us one glimpse of another social order, when Cedric and Josh meet some people of the upper class in a pub. There is no reason to suppose that these people are particularly unplea sant, but Cedric and Josh are so outraged at meeting them that they slash their car tyres outside, This episode struck me as a significant insight into one of the great social truths of our time. It has often seemed to me extraordinary that so few members of the old bourgeosie — of public school education and accents — have any idea of the extent to which they are hated by everyone else in England nowadays.
We can take the exaggerated rhetoric of working-class exhibitionists like John Osborne but we shrink from any recognition of the quiet loathing we excite among quite ordinary people wherever we go. , If asked to rationalise his instant dislike, the average man in the street would probably say that he is reacting against the social assumptions which he deems inherent in the possession of a public school accent. But the chief value in Mr Bragg's book, at any rate from the sociological point of view, is in its portrayal of the alternative order — the society which the working classes will build for themselves if left to get on with the job. Needless to say this society is raw, lusty, authentic etc, but it is also extremely unpleasant. Mr Bragg describes the slow ponderous dialogue beautifully and also — something which never shows in the television advertisements — the underlying violence which takes the place
of intelligent conversation and creates a background of uncertainty and tensions in which the bully always comes out on top.
So far as this reviewer is concerned, the evidence of Josh Lawton will confirm and
strengthen a resolve to sell his life dearly whenever Jack Jones looks like coming to power in the land. One has a vivid glimpse of the cruelty and stupidity of any society organised by the workers for their own benefit. For those novel-readers who are not so much interested in the social studies aspect, I can report that the story is beautifully told and even the most brutal and inarticulate characters somehow manage to engage our sympathies in a way which many people will find enjoyable.
Mr Hunter Davies, too, shows a development in his attitude to the working-class society which he seemed to adulate in his last novel. Regular readers will remember it was about an abject cringing husband trying to reconcile his middle-class libido with austere socialist commitment. Once again he shows us the corrupt world of media whizz-kids who betray their working-class origins — no doubt familiar to Mr Davies from studying his colleagues on Mr Harold Evans's Sunday Times. This world is personified by a BBC executive called Jonathan Howard, who changes his name from Bates. We all know that Clive Irving, the newspaper executive and distinguished protege of Mr Harold Evans, changed his name from Bates and I think it tasteless of Mr Davies to allow this coincidence to creep into his description of a character of whom he says: "If it moved, Jonathan Howard laid it, male, female or animal."
But apart from these lapses of taste, Mr Davies has written a much better book than we had any reason to expect. His hero is a rootless figure who drives pirate mini-cabs — symbol of the swinging future — and whose rootless state is illustrated by a sexual ambiguity. Compulsively camp conversation may be banter, but in fact, of course, it hides his true urges. The other passion in his life is football, representing true workingclass values, and his best friend for football is Ginger. It transpires that Ginger, like so many members of the working class, hates Pakistanis and enjoys even more than football the traditional working-class sport of queer-bashing. So our hero has to decide where his loyalties lie.
He only decides against Ginger and football after Ginger has murdered a friend called Zak and very nearly murdered the hero in a traditional queer-bashing episode. Meanwhile Franko has married an old lady (also called Bates) who has died and left him money, which removes him from the pressures of Ginger's society, and his inability to make love to Zak's wife helps to tip the balance.
The story may not be quite so well told as Josh Lawton — Mr Bragg wins his first gold medal for a novel which is faultless apart from a few embarrassing relapses into baby talk — but is much more honest and unusual than A Very Loving Couple. Perhaps in time these two novelists will come to recognise that there are some virtues in the middle-class society whicb has adopted them so kindly.
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