Pirates in loco parentis
Christopher Bray
The first time I read A High Wind in Jamaica was a bit of a cheat. I had worked my way through The Mayor of Casterbridge in less than the 20 weeks my English teacher had allotted, and she forced Richard Hughes's book into my hands. We are talking of the late Seventies here, but even had I seen Alexander MacKendrick's film of A High Wind (which stars a teenager by the name of Martin Amis) I doubt that I should have been much interested. All I wanted to read was a set of books highly recommended by Amis'
father: Ian Fleming's Bond oeuvre. Suitably rcwrappered in the Hughes dustjacket, the 007 books formed the main part of my level Eng. Lit. education. Now Harvill have rewrappered Hughes's books. Like most of the books on Harvill's list, they look good, but it is a pity that they haven't been reset. The type has been rephotographed so often that sonic of it is beginning to break up.
Coming to Richard Hughes now, I can't say I'm sorry I took time out for Fleming. A High Wind in Jamaica is a wonderful book, but I'm glad I didn't read it at school. While it is a novel about children, it is not a novel for them. Certainly it's a rip- roaring good read that can be polished off in a Sunday afternoon, but in a world where the film Child's Play III is said to have a deleterious effect on the young, I wonder what baleful influence this novel might have. What might they get up to, having learned of 10-year-old Emily, who stabs someone to death and gets away with it by blaming it on a pirate.
Richard Hughes was no Rousseau. Like Freud, he had seen through our culture's naive belief in the innate goodness of youth. To him children were no more noble than savages. He didn't see civilisation as a contaminant. He saw it as the way we become human beings. The children in A High Wind, though, get little in the way of civilisation. Instead they get, first, Jamaica, where all is barefoot negroes (this book is not going to be taught in Hackney), earth- quakes and ruin, and, second, a pirate ship, where all is, well, not quite what you'd expect. They are on their way to school in England, but the pirates turn out to be more caring for them than their parents ever were. When they are restored to 'nor- mality' in the courtroom scene at the end of the book we aren't really meant to buy it. This civilisation is a sham.
It should be stressed, though, that this is not a novel of ideas. Arid, humorous, deli- cate and transparent, it is alarmingly well written for a 29-year-old's first novel. Hughes is particularly brilliant on the first tremors of the earthquake. Unfortunately, as his career progressed, his descriptions not only became more abstract, they also got more long-winded. There is an imper- meable air about The Fox in the Attic (1961), the prose is tortured and floating — frequently, it seems not to relate to any- thing. The symbolism is heavy-handed and Hughes's recurring interest in the loss of innocence seems forced. Anthony Burgess included the book in his selection of the 99 best novels in English since 1939, but his short essay on it — more summary than criticism-- sounds neither convinced nor convincing. At a Foyles luncheon in the mid-Seventies Hughes said that you should `do your bit to save humanity from lapsing into barbarity by reading all the novels you can'. His point was well made, but start with A High Wind in Jamaica — The Fox in the Attic can wait.
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