
For some inexplicable reason, nearly all the novels I've read and enjoyed in the past month or two were written in or around (and in some way about) the second world war. I certainly didn't set out with this in mind, it just happened, so is it just a coincidence? Or is there something about the period and its literary expression that is chiming with me at the moment? I think there must be. Whatever the reason, it does seem to me that there was an extraordinary flowering of talent around this time. Just to name a few, all of which I've read recently -- there was The Blank Wall (1946), The Moving Toyshop (also 1946), The Slaves of Solitude (1947), Celia (1937), At Mrs Lippincote's (1945), and now I'm embarking on Henry Green's Loving (1945). Weird or what?
This one, Little Boy Lost, was not published till 1949 but the war and its after effects dominate the plot. It's the third of Laski's novels I've now read, starting with her other wartime drama To Bed with Grand Music (1946) and, more recently, her later (1953) Victorian Chaise Longue.
I've known about Little Boy Lost for a while as it often gets mentioned on people's blogs, but I had actually been sort of avoiding it because I'd heard it tended to put people through the emotional wringer, and the subject matter sounded so painful I wasn't sure if I could bear it. But not long ago Simon posted an article by Annabel Walker about the novel, and I knew its time had come.
It was on Christmas day, 1943, that Hilary Wainwright learnt that his little son was lost.
Does that opening line make you want to read it? I'd be surprised if it didn't. Such a simple sentence, suggesting such huge depths of mystery and emotion, and the novel certainly lives up to this promise. Hilary is a poet and an intellectual, outwardly dry and repressed, inwardly grieving desperately for his beautiful French wife, murdered by the Gestapo in Paris a few years earlier. Through the description of that Christmas day we learn of his yearning for the little boy who he has only seen once, just after his birth, but who, he believes, is living with his wife's friend Jeanne. But the evening brings shocking news -- Jeanne has also died and her fiance Pierre arrives to tell Hilary that the child, initially handed over to a local priest, has now disappeared. Two years pass before it is possible for Hilary to visit France, and there he learns that Pierre has found a child in a provincial orphanage who may possibly be little John. Soon he finds himself in the small, unattractive, war-damaged town, staying at an unpleasant and expensive hotel, and making daily visits to the convent where the little boy is living. Allowed to take the child, known as Jean, out for two hours a day, he hopes that after a few days he will know if this is indeed his son. But things are not that simple.
There are so many things to admire about this wonderful novel. The handling and development of the plot is extraordinarily well done, and the suspense is absolutely killing. Of course I can't tell you what the final outcome is, but the emotional switchback that gets you there is truly intense, and in fact it is not until the final sentence of the novel that the truth is revealed. Even re-reading it just now has brought tears to my eyes and if it doesn't bring them to yours I will be very surprised.
But there's much more here than just the plot. Although we are aching to know if the child is really John, and if Hilary will take him even if he can't decide whether he is or not, this is also the story of Hilary's inner journey, and Hilary is an exceptionally well conceived character. An unhappy childhood, and the loss of Lisa and the boy, have left him emotionally battered and outwardly cold. He's full of prejudices and preconceptions, and quick to make judgments of the people he encounters in France. He rejects loyal and warm-hearted Pierre when he discovers him to have joined the party of General de Gaulle, and finds it hard to understand how M. Mercatel, once a lecturer at the Sorbonne, can be contented as a mathematics teacher at the orphanage -- he immediately decides that 'Monsieur Mercatel could not be as intelligent as he had supposed, that he must be a man who was good on his subject and negligible outside it'. He soon learns that the hotel where he is staying is shunned by the locals on the grounds of probable wartime collaboration, but he not only tolerates it, he starts to accept the shiftily offered Black Market food, telling himself that he will not be helping the poor if he refuses it. He's a man of strong sexual passions, which have led him to misread certain aspects of his marriage ('Did I give?, he wondered wildly, Did I give? Was I ever capable of giving?') and also have a bearing on the way the story develops.
However, despite all this, the few short hours he spends every day with the little boy are a tremendous learning experience. He has fantasised about being a father but has never had any real contact with children, and he quickly discovers how delicately he must handle his communication with this deprived, damaged child. As he is telling Jean about a toy lion he had as a child,
the boy started as if he suddenly remembered something. He laid his red gloves carefully on the table and began fumbling under his overall.
Hilary broke off. 'What is it, Jean', he asked.
'I've got a toy, too', said Jean. 'Would you like to see it?'
'I'd love to', said Hilary, and after frantic searches in a ragged pocket the boy at last pulled out the little bandaged headless swan that Hilary had last seen tumbled among the guilty pile on the grey blanket.
'This is my toy', he said proudly, and his eyes searched Hilary's face.
Hilary's first impulse was to say quickly, I'll get you a better toy than that. Then he realised with surprise that the motive that restrained him was simply politeness. How queer, he thought, that I must let politeness, such as I would offer to another adult, take precedence over my natural wish to give.
He had waited too long. The boy's hand closed over his rejected toy. Hilary watched his lip tremble, and then, with great respect, heard him say, 'I like him, anyway'.
'So do I', said Hilary quickly. 'He's just like the one I used to have in my bath'.
'Is he really?', asked Jean doubtfully. He took his hand off the battered swan and looked at it critically. 'Did yours have his head off too?', he asked.
'Yes he did', lied Hilary, 'but I loved him just as much'.
Jean smiled tenderly. 'I love my swan better than anybody in the world...'
Really I cannot fault this novel. If you have read it, did you love it as much as I did? and if you haven't, I suggest you do -- you certainly won't regret it.