Rapture in Happy Valley

Nichol Fleming

PARADISE POSTPONED by John Mortimer Viking, f9.95 Hats off to John Mortimer. He's gone and done it again! His new novel is a hugely enjoyable saga set in the four decades since the end of the war. The plot fairly canters along at a brisk pace and it is rare to find a page which is not enlivened by a sample of the author's genial wit whether a sharp piece of observation or a humorous exchange between the charac- ters, and anyone who is a fan of Rumpole on television will know this is an area where Mortimer excels. Paradise Post- poned is a roman a clef of an unusual variety in that it is not the characters to whom one may require a crib to enjoy the story to the full — no one for instance turns out to be based on Cyril Connolly or Brian Howard. The key here belongs to the setting. We are in the Thames Valley. Hartscombe equals Henley, the author's home town. It all fits: the brewery, the regatta and the Leander Club — here named the Hellespont — where 'white haired ex-oarsmen, wearing . . . bright green socks and schoolboy caps . . . together with yellowing flannels and blaz- ers which no longer button across their stomachs, sit on the lawn drinking Pimms and lamenting the decline in rowing.' It is frustrating to try and identify other places. Worsfield seems to be Reading with its biscuit factories but, hang on, it also contains furniture manufacturers and so perhaps Mortimer means High Wycombe. Suffice it to say that the author scans the area with a perceptive eye that is both amused and affectionate.

The principal protagonists are the Rec- tor of Rapstone Fanner, Simeon Simcox,

his wife, Dorothy and their sons, Henry and Fred. The Rector is an enchanting Mortimer creation, a fervent socialist who sees not the slightest contradiction in being well-off thanks to his holding in the brew- ery and his somewhat muddled left-wing views on urban poverty, South Africa and the bomb. The man is an absolute poppet and therefore everyone is dumbfounded not least his family — when on his death it transpires he has left his fortune to Leslie Titmuss, the odious local Conservative MP and minister in Mrs Thatcher's cabinet. Titmuss, in the words of his future mother- in-law (a prize bitch herself) is 'an oik'. As a youth he worms his way up through the Young Conservatives by that old ruse of making himself indispensible, then effects a shrewd marriage and so on up until the oik blossoms into the pompous, self- satisfied minister with a ready line in platitudes to match every occasion. But let his drawing-room speak for the man: it

looked as though everything had been ordered in one lot from Harrods. On the gold striped wall paper there were oil paint- ings of watermills and cardinals drinking wine. On the copy antique console table stood signed photographs of the Queen visiting [his] department, President Reagan, Mrs Thatcher, Lee Kwan Yew and the Pope.

So why has dear sweet old Simeon Simcox left his fortune to this card-carrying stink- er? It's a whydunit.

The mystery of the will — increasingly perplexing as the book progresses — is merely a plot which Mortimer spins in order to subject post-war England as rep- resented by the area around Hartscombe, its inhabitants and their antics to his wry but not entirely unkind scrutiny. It is of course done with skill. Here we are back in the Fifties: we take our seats in

a dimly lit jungle of rubber plants, among a lot of people wearing duffel-coats, scarves and beards, listening to the muted music of Cliff Richard and the Shadows, with the photographs of stars on the walls, Tommy Steele, Alma Cogan and Dickie Valentine, and [drinking] `froffy' coffee out of see- through cups.

Rapture! Again, take the hotel in Harts- combe — before the war a raffish haven for illicit liaisons. Come the Eighties and it has been

taken over by a motel chain, re-christened Ye Olde Swan's Nest and given piped music, colour TVs in every bedroom, Teasmades instead of discreet rustic chambermaids in black bombazine, an enlarged carpark and the Old Father Thames Carvery.

This is so engagingly written and the reader so keen to hasten on to the next gem that he does not pause to ponder if it is not also perhaps a shade over the top.

We observe in flashback the careers of the two Simcox brothers, first as children, then as pupils at their freezing public school — though not so cold as to deter the inmates from 'the usual thing' — known in the school's jargon as 'jumping too low at leap frog'. Henry's first novel, The Greasy Pole, becomes a 'property' and carries him to Beverly Hills ('. . . a title like that must give serious offence to an ethnic minority,' remarks his producer.) His brother, Fred, after early sexual success in the back of a car in which

he felt himself dragged down, below the level of the windows, and was conscious of the taste of her mouth, a vague worry about villagers peering out from behind lace cur- tains and the inconvenience of a gear-stick in the groin

settles down to playing jazz and to becom- ing a doctor.

The brothers fall out over whether to contest their father's will, Fred being against on the grounds that they will have to prove their father to have been insane. Your reviewer aches to be able to claim to have twigged the motive behind the will but, in spite of the clues scattered by the author, has to admit to having flunked it.

We have another treat in store. The book is being filmed for television — in and around Henley; naturally. But here in the Thames Valley it's back to the clef: presumably Rapstone Fanner is Turville Heath, and so which place is Nettlebed?