She can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth
Anita Brookner
THE LAUGHING ACADEMY by Shena Mackay Heinemann, f13.99, pp. 136 Shena Mackay's world is peopled with eccentrics, but they appear so normal that one might be sitting next to them on the bus without noticing their anarchic impuls- es, which are usually well hidden behind a façade of suburban normality. In her extraordinary novel Dunedin characters with unattractive names did unaccountable things in an overlooked area of south-east London, the once genteel districts of Nor- wood, Streatham and Brixton. She is an invigorating writer because her creations never count the cost of their eccentricity, which is described with unsparing acuity. She gives the impression of being a slightly case-hardened child observing off-beat rel- atives who will invariably let her down. There is nothing winsome or juvenile about such a child: on the contrary, it is entirely possible that she might turn out to be the biggest wrecker of the entire family.
What this ageless person, half innocent, half knowing, likes to contemplate, in these stories at least, are the jumbled contents of dejected second-hand shops, cluttered with frilled bakelite lamp fittings and three- tiered cake-stands. Even when the relics are more distinguished, like the Meissen figures appropriated from an abandoned house by the two Lesbian antique dealers in 'A Pair of Spoons', they will be itemised by a glance as sharp as its owner, who is invariably a woman subject to an array of urban discomforts. For the most part the setting is a dystopian London, echoing with a mother's admonition to her child — 'I'll give you something to cry about!' — or menaced by angel-faced raptors on the tube between Hyde Park Corner and Gloucester Road. The cataloguing style is catching. Sometimes it travels along too quickly, so that one longs for an interval in which to catch one's breath. It seems angry, energetic, although the world view is glum.
She is also nostalgic, even if her reminis- cences are too spiky to be entirely comfort- able. Of a retired bus conductor now given over to charity work, in the story 'Cloud- Cuckoo-Land', we read:
There were traces in him still of the little boy in the balaclava waiting for the library to open, and the skinny eager student at the
WEA.
Of a young girl, out of place at a dignified memorial service:
All black lycra and lipstick, with long fair hair that required to be raked back from her face every few seconds; the sort of girl seen at the cinema with a giant bucket of popcorn, climbing over people's legs, drawing atten- tion to herself.
One knows the type, just as one knows the cheery care assistant in the retirement home, with her miniature bottle of Tia Maria and the fifty or so fluffy nylon toys (`the Cuddlies') on her bed. All this is served up with a full complement of television catch phrases, lines from popular songs, brand names, and references to bottle banks, cash points, and other urban detritus.
She packs a lot into her small space. Of the nine stories in this collection only two seem to have been allowed to spread them- selves: the above mentioned memorial ser- vice in 'Angelo', and 'Shinty', in which a couple of women turn up at a reading given by an old school friend, or enemy, now a best-selling novelist, and turn the occasion into an experiment to discover whether the old team spirit still obtains. Others are abrupt: indeed abruptness is their out- standing characteristic, with something morose but combative just below the sur- face. She has a nice line in old resentments, as well as an unforgiving view of the com- placently incompetent. One will no doubt encounter the like of that care assistant in the old people's home in due course: bring your own Tia Maria.
At 136 pages this volume relies some- what on the reader's good nature, but so distinctive is the author's voice that one will incline to indulgence. There are indica- tions here that more time and less speed will be needed if another Dunedin is to be written, but until then one is happy to be reminded of Shena Mackay's harsh words and uncompromising talent.
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