Put it down in writing, Dad

J. L. Carr

THE MAKER'S MARK by Roy Hattersley

Macmillan, £13.95, pp.558

This is a long novel, a family's everyday history which, like any West Riding pro- nouncement, carefully weighs its words (250,000 of them). Its author is date-shy, but Chapter One perhaps begins during 1933 — anyway, when a Singer motor-car could be bought for £150. A Roman Catholic priest has taken a letter from beneath his pillow, burns it and pulverises the ashes. From this, the civvy clothes stuffed into a fibre-board suitcase and addressed envelopes propped upon his mantelpiece, one supposes that he may be burning his boats and about to abandon both Nottinghamshire pit village and priesthood.

But Chapter Two pushes the clock back to 1867, and the priest's Wesleyan grand- father, a domestic tyrant in a small way of business, is driving his horse and cart, bent on the delivery of one gross of best spades. The remaining 40 chapters unravel his family's fortunes until these arrive back at Chapter One.

Give or take a day or two Down South, the action moves between Nottingham and Sheffield, here very respectable places indeed and faulting my wartime recollec- tion of the latter's blackened railway sta- tion, its astonishing concentration of seedy pubs and journeys lit by the muffled glare of furnaces like a nightmare of hell.

By and large, the story's domestic ups and downs have passed into entertaining myth and its chief concerns are business and religion, with a seasoning of football, mild politics and love affairs, plus the odd sing-song. Now and then, there is mention of national events but these do not overly disturb the even tenor of the family's ways.

Business is the forging, grinding, setting and selling of scissors. Religion is mild Methodist expectation of a New Jerusalem (either now or hereafter) and dampened directives from Rome filtering down back streets. In fact, the sort of indoctrination which converted cheerful Yorkshire folk into sanctimonious humbugs and brought about the worst excesses of Boycott's remorseless centuries, Henry Moore's big- bosomed pinheaded women, Harold Wil- son's Farewell Honours List, Leeds United and the bass section of Huddersfield Chor- al Society.

Well, The Maker's Mark is a good read and packed with detail, an exemplar for those domestic histories urged by families upon their patriarchs to still incessant maunderings about early struggles and hard times. 'Put it down in writing, Dad.' And Mr Hattersley has done just that. He has put it down in writing. Those nameless sepia photos of wooden-faced ancestors have prised themselves from inherited albums (with gilt clasps) and stir them- selves around us.

Its writing must have been an awesome effort. A quarter-million words! Small wonder the natural cheerfulness of its author's essays and weekly columns has suffocated beneath this heap of uncles, grandmas, cousins and aunties. But then, doubtlessly, he is admirably equipped for so massive a feat. One doesn't rise through the ranks to the general staff of a political party without stamina enough to sit through a thousand committee meetings.

And, anyway and admirably, he has done much more than give us a family saga.

Good novelists, by the very name of their trade, should be expected to make a gesture towards novelty. And this Mr Hattersley has done. He has pushed for- ward the bounds of novel-writing by three notches. Even as early as p.16 he signals his intention to advance not just novels but nature itself by having a rabbit, pursued by the necessity of the plot, hurdle a high stone wall. Even the clever Watership Down rabbits must admire this unpre- cedented feat.

Then, daringly, he has given almost all the dramatis personae his own name. There is Frederick Hattersley (Senior), Frederick Hattersley (Junior), Emily Hattersley, Au- gusta Hattersley, Bert Hattersley, Roy (rechristened by private baptism, Rex) Hattersley. And numerous others.

This move confirms beyond doubt that Maker's Mark must take its place with John Braine's Room at the Top and Harold Wilson's favourite book, The Crowthers of Bankdam, as a true regional novel. For it perpetuates the West Riding belief that invention of a variety of names is a froward depletion of imaginative energy. Thus, travellers between Leeds and Bradford come across rows of back-to-back houses labelled Ada Street, Ada Road, Ada Grove, Ada Terrace, Ada Place and so on.

But the author's third advance of the novel's form threatens the very roots of literary tradition. For, whereas Sir Walter Scott brought each of his novels to an end which, at least, satisfied himself, and whilst Mr Anthony Powell hints that further news of his characters may be obtained by purchasing his next novel, Mr Hattersley's final page (p.558) continues on to Page 1.

I was stunned by this exciting innova- tion. Why had not earlier writers disco- vered the device? And, particularly, why had no one employed this circular narra- tive shape and confirmed its acceptability during my mother's lifetime? For she would take so long getting through Mrs Henry Wood's East Lynne that, reaching its end, she had forgotten its beginning. With Mr Hattersley's seal of approval, she could have begun to re-read a novel immediately without shame.

In fairness, one must point out that if Mr Hattersley's idea catches on it will devas- tate the book-trade. It would bankrupt booksellers, diminish libraries and libra- rians, cause severe distress to the families of book reviewers and literary editors. It would even rebound on Mr Hattersley himself. For it would make unnecessary the purchase of Volume II of his double- decker (In That Quiet Earth), promised for 1991 by his publishers.