Harriet Devine's Blog

Caroline Miniscule

"Typical", William Dougal thought, "How bloody inconvenient". 

He was standing just inside the door of his supervisor's room in the 

history department. Three yards away, a corpulent, tweed-covered shape sprawled on the oatmeal carpet to the right of the desk. The eyes and the tongue protruded from its bloated face towards Dougal in the doorway. No doubt about it -- the life had been sucked out of Dr Gumper. 

Dougal soon realises that Gumper, far from having died from a heart attack as he first assumes, has been garrotted. Now most people in that situation would call the police, but Dougal, basically, can't be bothered. The thought of going into the office, trying to explain it all to the secretaries, and in the process missing his girlfriend Amanda's Boeuf Strogonoff, seems far too much trouble. This proves to be a really bad decision, and soon he and Amanda find themselves caught up in a hunt for a hugely valuable cache of missing diamonds which takes them to a remote Cathedral in Norfolk, an even remoter village church, to Cambridge, and finally to a burnt-out manor house on the shores of a Suffolk estuary. Pursued by two highly professional crooks and urged on by the suave, untrustworthy James Hanbury, they follow clues supposedly embedded in a page of medieval script (the Caroline Miniscule of the title), in the process getting themselves deeper and deeper into lies, deceit and worse. 

This is a truly delightful book, originally published in 1985 and the first of many by that talented and versatile crime writer Andrew Taylor. While this is clearly a crime novel, as several crimes take place during the course of it, it's unusual in that while the protagonists Dougal and Amanda are immensely sympathetic characters, they act in ways that can only be described as reprehensible. When it was first published, the New York Times Book Review thought it had

 "a rather shocking amorality", and you can see what they meant. But that is exactly what is so likeable about it. 

The Changi Quilt

In yesterday's post about the quilt exhibition I forgot to mention one of the most moving of the quilts on show -- the one made in Changi prison camp in Singapore in the 1940s by a group of girls aged between 10 and 18. At least one of the makers is still alive, and here is a video of her talking about the experience. You can see the quilt itself in the background.

A Passion for Pattern

For as long as I can remember I have had a passion for patterned textiles. I can't think of any reason why this should be, but so it is, and I can spend much happy time gazing at them in museums or fingering them in shops. Imagine, then, what patchwork does for me, and you will get an idea of the pleasure I've had today at the V&A Quilt Exhibition.  There was so much to look at here that my eyes and brain were quite tired by the end of it -- I took an hour and a half to go round, much of it spent stationary in front of various intricate coverlets, trying to work out how on earth anyone ever managed to plan the thing, let alone actually make it. 

I thought it would be the antique ones I would like the best and in general this was true, but there's an interesting mix throughout the exhibition of contemporary pieces using quilting and patchwork techniques, and some of these are lovely too. And, of course, the historical dimension is interesting, too -- people stitching contemporary political messages into their quilts, like the Wellington one at the top, or adding squares with uplifting moral messages for quilts to be used in hospitals. A glorious, huge quilt -- the Rajah Quilt -- was made by the women prisoners on a convict ship going to Tasmania in the mid-nineteenth century.  And one of the most moving comes right near the end -- a quilt made specially for the exhibition by the inmates of Wandsworth Prison, who have their own embroidery class. Each of the members had designed and made their own square, some embroidered with messages or images of locks, keys and bars, others with delicate, intricately pieced floral motifs. 

Of course the V&A entraps you with a most delicious shop through which you have to pass to get out. It would be a strong minded person indeed who did not succumb to the display of traditional printed fabrics (which you can buy online here). I strong-mindedly bought just one piece, which perhaps may form the basis of a patchwork to while away the long winter evenings. This is what is looks like -- the pattern dates from the 1830s:

 

And I'm afraid I also bought a book -- full price, and of course I could have got it for half on Amazon, but too late to worry about that. Kaffe Fassett, whose amazing knitwear patterns I used to follow in the 1980s, has published several books on quilts and quilting, and here is the one I bought:

So roll on the winter so I can get started (well, not really, but you know what I mean).  

 

Woman Peeling a Turnip

Well, we've had plenty of women reading, women writing, women painting, women playing various musical instruments, but this is a first (and probably a last, though possibly someone will point me in the direction of another woman peeling another turnip). Anyway this is the artist's mother, and the artist is Emile Friant (1863-1932). Actually Mme Friant was a dressmaker, but obviously she also did her own cooking.  More of Emile's delightful paintings in the coming weeks.

Sad Cypress

Yes I know it's fashionable to knock Dame Agatha for her clunky writing, poor dialogue and unconvincing characters. But my goodness can that woman construct a plot. In fact I am not offended by any of the above -- I admire her tremendously and, though I don't exactly seek her books out, I'm always ready to give one a go if it comes my way. This one did, as a freebie in a copy of the Times -- not my usual newspaper, but it was on sale at the Oxford Literary Festival and its other free gift was a very useful book bag. Sad Cypress has been sitting by my bed ever since, and I picked it up in an idle moment a few days ago -- and then found I had to keep reading till I'd finished it. 

Written in 1940, Sad Cypress begins in court, where a young woman, Elinor Carlisle, is in the dock accused of murder. Shell-shocked and confused, she does not appear to have any defence, and it is clear that she did have reasons for disliking the girl, who died of morphine poisoning after eating sandwiches made by the accused. Everyone seems to believe that the case against Elinor is more or less watertight, but a young local doctor, her ardent admirer, is determined to prove her innocence and hires Hercule Poirot to investigate.

I am not, in fact, such a huge fan of Poirot -- I prefer the wonderful Miss Marple. But of course his methods are fascinating and his ability to work out what really happened is unsurpassed. Surprisingly for me, I did more or less guess the identity of the murderer before the end -- I actually hate it when this happens, and it almost never does with Dame A. But I still needed Poirot's explanation of the motive and the method, which makes much use of Christie's famous knowledge of the characteristics of poisons. Perfect for a few hours in the garden or on the beach!

Typepad on my ipod

I am on London for the night and just discovered I can get typepad on my iPod touch. So that's where this is coming from. On the bus I was listening to an audio book (Caroline Miniscule by Andrew Taylor, his first book, I think) and playing solitaire -- in a minute I'll be checking my emails and later I can read one of my ebooks -- something by Trollope, maybe, or Thomas Hardy. And all thanks to a little item that sits so comfortably in the palm of my hand. Amazing.

Sisters by a River

My pursuit of Barbara Comyns continues unabated. You may be getting sick of hearing about her but I have got into this mode which sometimes overtakes me where I have to just keep going, reading everything I can lay my hands on by and about the author I'm obsessed with. Very good when you're doing a PhD or writing a book but I am not doing either of those things. Anyway --

Like Out of the Red, into the Blue, which I wrote about a few days ago, this is actually an autobiography, though you can read it as a novel, if that makes sense. Either way, it tells a most bizarre story, and tells it in a bizarre fashion. Comyns apparently wrote it to amuse and entertain her children, and it is, of course, about her own childhood. The middle child of a family of six -- five girls, and a boy who is never mentioned in this book ("because I know they would hate to appear in it") -- Barbara was born in 1909 in Bradford-on-Avon, more or less in the centre of England,  into a terrifyingly dysfunctional family. Her father, almost always furious and increasingly drunk, sinks further and further into despair as his business fails and his bills mount up, while her mother, struck with deafness after the birth of her last child, hates her children and retreats into an alcohol-infused fantasy world of phantom lovers. Granny lives in a smelly bedroom, shouts a lot, and treats the servants like slaves. Governesses come and go, the maids tell dreadful stories, the house runs to rack and ruin and the children run wild. Sounds appalling, doesn't it. But this a really funny and delightful book, or so it seemed to me. Here's an episode to give you an idea of what it's like. This happened when Barbara was four and had been put to sleep, for some reason, in Granny's bed (spelling and punctuation Barbara's own):

I woke up and found she wasn't in bed but walking up and down the room with her jaw all sticking out muttering to herself, she kept saying "I won't have it, I won't have it" I sat up in bed and said "what won't you have a jam tart" in my imagination I could see a criss cross raspberry one, but she said "Don't be so impertanant" so I didn't like to say anything else, but she kept marching up and down in her long white nighty and it got rather boring, I was almost asleep again, when there was a most frightful din in the room, Daddy, Mammy and Granny were all shouting and moping and mowing, then Mammy and Daddy started to push the poor old thing out of the window, Mammy got a bit frit and started to scream, but it was dreadful to see Daddy pushing and heaving away and Granny getting more and more out of the window, there were awful ghaspings and groanings going on from Granny and her flapping white nighty was all up at the back which seemed to make it worse somehow, Mammy looked quite sad, I guess she felt sorry for her when she was half in and half out like that, then she got stuck, it really was a mercy her hips were so wide and the window rather narrow...Granny did not appear till lunchtime, and everything seemed the same as usual then, her eyes were rather red maybe and she didn't talk quite as much as usual but she eat masses of chicken and it was only boiled, when Daddy said "Have a little more Nance" she handed up her plate quite happily. 

I could honestly go on endlessly about this book. There are so many wonderfully horrific stories: the dreadful relations ("We had an aunt who went mad, Aunt Minnie was her name, she was Daddie's youngest sister. She had a square face and thought everyone was dirty, and wouldn't touch anything anyone else had touched..."); the children's appalling mistreatment of animals (hanging caterpillers, trying to ride on rabbits with predictably disastrous results); being made to wear awful clothes; Daddy and Mammy's dreadful rows, often culminating in Daddy throwing Mammy's clothes out of the window and Mammy threatening to throw herself in the river, Daddy throwing a beehive over Mammy, and much much more. It's a miracle really that any of the children managed to survive with any degree of sanity. But through it all, though they were not always exactly harmonious, the sisters seem to have managed to support each other. And Barbara herself is sustained, I think, by her ability to snatch moments of intense happiness, rowing alone down the river at dawn, cherishing her much loved dogs, even seeing God in the billiard room ("I knew it was God although he looked like an enormous parchment coloured bag drawn up by the neck with cord, I had been expecting to see Him for a long time but I couldn't help being rather overcome and fainted"). 

The saddest part of the story is the end, when Daddy dies and the debts are found to be so enormous that the house has to be sold, Mammy is left with hardly any money to live on, and Barbara, aged just sixteen, goes off to be a kennel maid in Cornwall. Astonishing, really, to reflect on the way her life would develop later. Amazing, wonderful stuff. 

Troubles

It's Ireland in 1919. Major Archer, his nerves shattered after his experience in the trenches, has arrived at the Majestic Hotel in County Wexford to claim his fiancee Angela, who he barely remembers, having met her, and kissed her briefly, one afternoon when on leave in Brighton. The hotel is huge, gloomy, crumbling and apparently deserted and there is no sign of Angela or her father Edward Spencer, the hotel's owner, so the Major is reduced to seeking out a room for himself. The room is dirty, there are no sheets, and a peculiar smell proves to be a rotting, maggot-infested sheep's head which has somehow found its way into the bedside cabinet. At last he finds Angela, looking  tired, and older than he had remembered, in the Palm Court, 

a vast, shadowy cavern in which dusty chairs stood in silent, empty groups, just visible here and there amid the gloomy foliage. For the palms had completely run riot, shooting out of their wooden tubs (some of which had cracked open to trickle little cones of black soil onto the tiled floor). Here and there between the tables beds of oozing mould supported banana and rubber plants, hairy ferns, elephant grass and creepers that dangled from above like emerald intestines.

 The grand old days of the Majestic are long gone, and its only regular guests are a troop of impoverished old ladies, attended by disaffected servants. Edward Spencer hates and fears the Irish, who he sees as little more than animals, fair game to be shot at if they impinge on his property. Staunchly Protestant, he also hates and fears Catholicism, though he seems extremely (to the Major, worryingly) friendly with beautiful, skittish Sarah Devlin, the Catholic daughter of the bank manager, with whom the Major is soon desperately in love. 

Of course the rapid and terrifying decay of the hotel parallels the decay of British rule in Ireland. The novel is punctuated with news reports both from around the country and from elsewhere in the world -- unrest seems to be rife just about everywhere. Angela's ninety year old blind grandmother takes to wearing a leather holster round her ancient waist, and by the end Edward insists that the place settings in the dining room should include a revolver beside every plate. Meanwhile the Major moves from room to room seeking some degree of comfort, the roof of the servants' quarters falls in and the servants are forced to move into the guest bedrooms (much to the horror of the old ladies), Edward's teenage twin daughters are expelled from school and run riot among any available young men, Edward's crops are burned and his beloved piglets murdered, a grand ball ends in disaster, leaving the caterers who have come to provide breakfast standing forlornly on the deserted terrace surrounded by rapidly cooling dishes of bacon, eggs and kidneys...

And of course everything ends disastrously and tragically. But in this truly magnificent novel, disaster and tragedy are equally mixed with frequently horrified laughter. The Major, handsome, humourless, trying to keep things together at the Majestic and in the family in the face of overwhelming odds, is lovable and sad, his unrequited passion for Sarah almost threatening his reason. Edward meanwhile, increasingly mad, rages through the house like a whirlwind, sometimes disappearing for days at a time to carry out his scientific experiments -- one of which involves threatening his ancient butler with death in order to measure the subsequent absence of saliva in his mouth. 

It's interesting to compare this novel with The Glass Palace, which I wrote about a few days ago. Both are essentially political, anti-colonialist novels. But while in Ghosh's book the politics swamp the characters, here the balance seems to me to be perfect -- the political themes are perfectly clear, but they are mirrored through characters who, though extreme to the point of grotesqueness in some cases, are entirely believable and strangely sympathetic.

As I'm sure you know, this novel was the winner of the Lost Booker Prize this year -- an administrative glitch having excluded from the Booker all the novels published in 1970. JG Farrell went on to win the Booker three years later with The Siege of Krishnapoor, which I am going to read soon. Sadly he died in a fishing accident a few years later, just four months after he had moved to County Cork. 

Musical meme

On Cornflower's  lovely blog yesterday was a musical meme, or what she called an alphabet of songs. The rules are simple:

Comment on this post and I'll assign you a letter.

List (and upload if you like) five songs which begin with that letter.

I commented and got the letter S, so here are my songs:

Summertime 

Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves

Someday My Prince Will Come

September (Richard Strauss, Four Last Songs)

Sketches of Spain (Miles Davies) 

Way Out West

You might have read that Tilda Swinton is organising a group dance in Edinburgh next week: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article7150035.ece
Here's the Laurel and Hardy dance they are recreating. Really sweet and funny.