Active and passive
Anita Brookner
WINTER JOURNEY by Isabel Colegate Hamish Hamilton, f14.99, pp. 200 Isabel Colegate has proved herself to be thoroughly at home with the deceits of time and has in fact written an unsettling novel under that title. In Winter Journey she has come resolutely up to date, but in a reserved and contemplative manner which has little to do with our disillusioned decade, even if her story manages to encompass the Lloyd's fiasco and casual corruption as a matter of course. At the same time she incorporates interesting comparisons between the commercialism of the early 1960s — badly made clothes and youthful entrepreneurs — and latter- day schemes promoted by people whose main interest lies in expansion.
There is quite a lot of forward planning in the entirely respectable late middle-age of her two protagonists, Alfred and Edith Ashby, a brother and sister who remain on convincingly affectionate terms, even when Edith prepares to inflict her language school on the quiet Somerset landscape, encroaching stealthily on her brother's ter- ritory in order to do so. And her new friend, Charles Warburton, with his cheery mixed metaphors, sees part of her brother's private road as an ideal track for his car rallies, having many friends who would be enthusiastic competitors, as he would him- self. Perhaps Edith could teach her stu- dents during the week, leaving the weekends for Charles and his friends?
The only obstacle in their paths is the dreamy Alfred, who uses his time to walk his dogs and reflect on his past life. Devoid of his sister's restlessness, Alfred sees no reason for change of any kind. Alfred, rather surprisingly, has had a hippy period, for which his nature hardly prepared him. A famous fashion photographer in the Six- ties, he was the lover of a fey model named Lydia who jumped off a cliff when blissed- out by drugs. Even less straightforward 'Nice dinner jacket.' than Lydia's death was her life: she was an East End girl, protected, or rather owned, by a dubious tycoon called Babbington. All this sounds so convincing as to be almost libellous, but Isabel Colegate is mainly con- cerned with the effect of Lydia's death on Alfred, a disarming character who occupies himself by filing his negatives and musing on landscapes past and present.
The reader, too, must absorb much visu- al data, presented in such detail that one vista tends to encroach upon another, depriving them all of definition. The author has a particularly keen eye and disdains the pathetic fallacy. The second chapter is an example of this tendency. The approach to Alfred's house is described so meticulously that the effect is both patriarchal and con- fusing. Much more acceptable to the read- er, and indeed beautiful, are the descriptions of the winter climate and tem- perature, and their transformation of this stretch of the Mendips, which Isabel Cole- gate knows well: familiarity may have led her to overestimate her readers' ability to absorb information, which as she says 'lies in the consciousness, much deeper than appearance'. She is speaking of Alfred but she might be describing herself.
Edith is much easier to grasp. She is not entirely deplorable, but too much activity has left her a little short of reflection. Edith has been married twice, once to a drunk, the second time to a crook. She might yet marry a third time. She has been a local councillor in North Kensington, and briefly a Member of Parliament. Edith needs pro- jects the way other people need exercise: hence the language school. The jacket copy states primly that 'Edith is forced to ques- tion her own motives and in doing so to reconsider her past'. This is entirely wrong: Edith's muddled memories are all of a piece with her imperfectly considered enthusiasms. No ages are given for Edith and Alfred, but it is to be assumed that they are on the wrong side of 60, in which case Isabel Colegate has employed her acute insight on their behalf. Even Edith is occasionally visited by the distressing reali- sation that others perform rather better in situations she once patronised. After the playgroups and the management commit- tees in which she was so decisive her only possible challenges are a ruined outbuild- ing and a dubious partnership.
Isabel Colegate lends her habitual dis- tinction to a fine novel remarkable for its even temper. If it lacks tension this may be appropriate to the age of the protagonists and their geographically protected situa- tion. What is surprising — and this is just as even-handedly dealt with — is the fact that these ageing people were once so fash- ionable, Edith a prototype Margaret Thatcher, Alfred a famous landscape photographer, living in a farmhouse above Siena, or visiting ruined courtyards in the Punjab and recording them for Japanese travel magazines. Their ruminations are beautifully differentiated, Alfred's uninter- rupted, Edith's confessional. Almost imper- ceptibly Isabel Colegate sheds an oblique light on the past 30 years of our history, and in the course of one winter visit brings her characters effortlessly to their present condition. She has always been a historian; her strength lies in the fact that she sees her characters as emblematic of the period in which they are active. Entirely lacking in explicit fine feelings, which are neverthe- less intuited by the reader, Winter Journey, like its author, is imperceptibly instructive. Behind the lineaments of this brother and sister lies an age.
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