It all started with a lovely short history of Soho where the book is based. "Luxury flats stood on crumbling slums like shining false teeth on rotten gums". There are many interesting inhabitants whose stories alternate in short sharp chapters. We hear a lot about Precious and |Tabitha who reside in one of those older tower blocks owned by rich Agatha Howard. She wants them out. Among the down and outs are Paul Daniels and Debby McGee, not their real names. In the later chapter "Debbie McGee: Redux", Cheryl Lavery (her real name) has disappeared. We knew she found a deep opening in the ground and thought the worst. But these few pages were brilliant, on their own, worth reading this book.
There are other characters whose stories seem detached from the main narrative, only to make connections towards the end. Bastian, Rebecca, Glenda and Laura could be from another story entirely, but their twenty something relationships are well told. This is a really entertaining book, sharp and clever once you get used to the prose. I found it absolutely stunning.
Having read all of Jane Gardam's novels, I am going back to her short story collections. These are not included in her anthology "The Stories" and are much older works.
BLUE POPPIES
Lillian's mother is in her nineties and accompanies her daughter to Clere, the home of the duke and duchess. Witty and sensitive.
CHINESE FUNERAL
An Englishwoman and her husband are in Hong Kong and join a trip into China. Not what they were expecting.
ZOO ZOO
Another nonagenarian, Sister Alfege, is a German nun in a convent in Kent. All about how she left her homeland before the war and stayed. She is on her way to a place that can nurse her poor legs. But the nuns who accompany her there have a shock on the way back.
THE MEETING HOUSE
The Quakers have an old building in a deserted place, high up in the hills of the far north west, only visiting in the summer. New arrivals seem to torment them. But is this a ghost story?
THE DAMASCUS PLUM
An introduction to the gourmet food and fish of the East Kent coast. A visitor is young Klaus, very intelligent but with no imagination. Treating him to a dinner of many courses that he enjoyed but never remembered.
DEAD CHILDREN
Ancient Alison Avery is meeting Pete and Annie, her two grown up children to talk about her will. But for various reasons that doesn't happen on this particular day. They walk on the common that is still home to the old lady, her remembering when they were children. But remember the title?
BEVIS
The longest of the stories by far at nearly 40 pages. Our narrator is 13 and his ma a widow. That leaves Auntie Greta Willis and her huge daughter Jilly. The young ones are off to see their frail grandmother in a care home that becomes a surreal adventure. Jilly hopes to meet Bevis, a much older man, the object of her affections. Thwarted by a big twist at the end.
TELEGONY
Three short but connected pieces.
1: going into a dark house
Molly, who we have met before, is now 94 and the narrator's "mother's friend". Molly says she "is frightfully mean" but is the opposite. (Once buying the narrator a car). Her investments are amazing, but she she lived in a house that has no heating. Now in a little house on an estate for retired people, but still driving her own car.
11: Signor Settimo
He is that new photographer that has opened for business in Shipley of all places. Mrs Ironside persuades him to take a photo of her daughter, here is Molly as a schoolgirl.
111: The Hot Sweets of Cremona
We know this is where Settimo came from, but here is Molly's daughter Alice (now herself a grandmother) with a friend talking about Molly, her mother and all that family history. These three short stories are a kind of experiment, but for me, the least successful of all.
It's 1990 and Tom Hargreaves, a youngish reporter on the make, stumbles upon the story of a missing girl. Is this his big break? He muscles in on the residents of the Skyler Estate. Here we find the main character of the story, Carmel living with her elderly father John and brother Richie. But it's her young daughter Lucy who the police think is involved and taken to the station. As a result the family are hidden away in an old empty hotel by Tom's newspaper. Richie "could have cried with relief at the smell of whisky and spilt beer on the carpet".
Tom wants to get their story but all he gets, as we do too, is their background. Nolan brilliantly describes what is going through the minds of the three as they consider their lives. Richie's is particularly well written as we hear about his twenty one year old self and the mistakes he made. Throwing away the chance of something good. His father's story about his marriage to his first wife when both so young is equally good. But the main thread belongs to Carmel, her relationship with an older man, becoming pregnant with Lucy with whom she is almost estranged. It's her stepmother Rose who was the backbone of the family. Her loss is always there.
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