Men without women
Anita Brookner
A RATHER ENGLISH MARRIAGE by Angela Lambert Hamish Hamilton, £14.99, pp. 295 Arather English marriage' is the way in which Mary Conynghame-Jervis describes their union to her husband. It is a union in which neither knows the other's thoughts, in which the wife can make a series of killings on the Stock Exchange without telling her husband, and in which mention is never made of the secret they both share. By contrast, Roy Southgate and his wife Grace were devoted partners all their lives. When both Mary and Grace die on the same day in the same hospital, the two widowers are brought together by well- meaning and officious outsiders, and in the end, or rather for the greater part of the book, they are forced into a marriage of quite another kind.
This is a charming novel, and I had better state at once that I enjoyed it greatly before pointing out certain anomalies that worried me. It would seem to me beyond the call of duty for a social worker routine- ly to call on the bereaved, although this may well be the norm in Tunbridge Wells, where the action of the book takes place. The vicar, too, seems to me to be chancing his arm by suggesting that the widowers move in together. Above all, the class dif- ferences between the two seem to me monstrously overstated. Would any work- ing man, in the 1990s, be so humble as to call his companion — companion, not employer — 'Sir', to wash and iron that companion's shirts, and cook and serve his dinner? Would any supposed member of the upper classes insist on being addressed as `Squadron-Leader' 50 years after the end of the second world war? And is it possible not to be irked by the servility of the one and the brash imperturbability of the other?
It is, just. The narrative is so fluent that one ignores the inconsistencies, although these are irritating. Within their stereo- typical boundaries the two men are well drawn. Roy Southgate, devoted husband and retired milkman, lives an orderly and decent life, as enjoined on his generation by parents, school, and Sunday school. Tending his allotment, working at his carpenter's bench, and constantly in his wife's company, he is a convincing figure' and a tender one. Conynghame-Jervis is more complex. Overweight, blustering, and far from personable, he is the relic of once daring pilot in the Battle of Britain; his speech patterns are frozen within that period, just as his thoughts and behaviour remain fixed in an unalterable time-warP. The only times when he comes to life are when he describes his former flying missions, and Angela Lambert has done some curious research into Royal Air Force history and slang in order to make credible what was once perceived as all authentic aphrodisiac. Conynghame-Jervis was once a young hero; at the age of 70 he simply comes across as juvenile. Yet he retains enough hauteur to address his hapless companion by his surname, to patronise a high-class prostitute, and to drink himself into oblivion. Southgate is much more sympathetic. His behaviour, however, is less than praise- worthy; humble by nature, he humbles him- self still further on every possible occasion. Yet this man, too, went through the war, but as a private; conceivably he saw more of the enemy face to face than did Conynghame-Jervis in the cockpit of his plane. The post-war years, which did so much for so many, appear to have left biro untouched. His son is in prison, his daughter-in-law mutilates herself, his grandchildren are savages. He continues to, do his best for everyone, moving out or Conynghame-Jervis's house in order to make a home for his reduced family, at great sacrifice to his personal comfort. He is loyal and faithful; he is, in fact, the true hero of the novel, although as a type he seems to have sprung from Love on the Dole rather than anything nearer in date to the present day. So awful is the real-life fate of the old and the lonely that the author is to be congratulated on having provided us with smooth, agreeable and intriguing read without going overboard into either carica- ture or misery. There is a touch of acid 10 the portrayal of the woman with whorne Conynghame-Jervis falls in love, but on the whole the tone is affectionate. We at dealing here with a popular novel, on' which demands a certain indulgence on the part of the reader. But it is skilfully done, and will give genuine pleasure.
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