Shooting Pheasants...

Well, despite my best endeavours, I’ve been busy over the last week or so (Oxfam bits and pieces, and an unexpected visit from my Younger Daughter), so I’ve not been looking at anyone else’s posts, or checking my own, and consequently missed seeing that I had been selected by Jane and Briar, over at Fleur in Her World, as a participant in their Who Reads these Books quiz! I was mortified at not spotting it the day it was published, because I love these posts, even though I am so rubbish at guessing. In fact, I have to admit I don’t think I would have realised this was me, because one of ‘my’ books selected by Jane and Briar was well outside my usual enthusiasms!

If you’ve never visited Jane’s blog, and don’t know how the game works, she chooses three bloggers (but doesn’t name them), and posts up pictures of five of their favourite books, and readers have to guess who owns the volumes shown… It was lovely being featured, especially as it came hard on the heels of Simon T’s invitation for me to take part in his latest round of My Life in Books. For those who haven’t seen the first part of Jane’s quiz, you’ll find it here, while a follow-up post, revealing the answers, is here.

Anyway, I feel very guilty at not posting new anything new for more than a week, so anyone dropping by has only been able to look at my old stuff. I will try and do better in future! 

The Shooting Party.

So, an overdue book review! When I wrote about my thoughts on JL Carr’s A Month in the Country, Helen suggested that Isabel Colegate’s The Shooting Party would  make an interesting comparison, so I added it to my Wish List, and forgot all about it until I realised it was last month’s choice over at Cornflower Book Group. I ordered a second-hand copy online, but it didn’t arrive until the end of the read!

It does make an interesting companion piece to Carr’s book, however I’m not raving about it in quite the same way, although I did enjoy it. It’s a very slender novel which takes place over a very short time period – roughly 24 hours. And it portrays a small, enclosed society, a kind of golden age when everything seems perfect, when everyone knows their place, but there are cracks just below the surface. There’s a feeling that things are changing and will never be the same again. But that sense of loss seems to relate to the world outside the characters, not to the events in the novel or the people themselves. I don’t think they are changed by what happens – in fact some of them end up pursuing a different course in life which turns out to be the right path for them, so the book lacks the feeling of blighted lives and missed opportunities which suffuses Carr’s story. 

The Shooting Party is set in October 1913, October, less than a year before the First World War, as a group of aristocrats gather at Sir Randolph Nettleby’s estate for a shooting party. We know from the outset that someone will lose their life, but who, and how are not revealed until later. And there isn’t really a why… the death is senseless and pointless; coupled with the slaughter of all the game birds (bred just to be shot), it foreshadows the tragedy of the forthcoming war when a generation of young men were killed, just as senselessly, and just as pointlessly. 

A pheasant. I think they are such beautiful, exotic birds.

The scale of the shoot is astounding. On the final day there are just eight men in the party, and well over 40 beaters(all clad in long whitish smocks, so interloping poachers can be identified) to scare the birds into flight and certain death. On gthe final day the bag for the morning (not counting the afternoon duck shoot) totals 504 pheasants, as well as hare, rabbits, and woodcock. All shot by eight men! Whatever did they do with all that meat? I know game has to be well hung and, presumably, each man took his own kill home with him, but there must have been more stuff here than could ever be eaten. But I suppose eating it wasn’t important – it was sport, and showing your skill at shooting, and behaving in the right way that were important.

Colegate’s research is meticulous, and her portrayal of the lifestyle of the upper classes on the eve of the First World War is excellent – food, manners, clothes and relationships all come under her scrutiny. And I was fascinated to see how the behaviour of these wealthy, leisured people is reflected in the attitudes of their servants and lower classes. There’s intense rivalry between the men attending the two best marksmen: they acquire a glory of their own through the achievements of their masters. And the relationship between maid Ellen and footman John echoes the much more idealised love between Lionel Stephenson and beautiful, married Olivia Lilburn. Indeed, John even steals Lionel’s unsent love letter, hankering after noble thoughts about truth and beauty – but in so doing he loses his loses his own true voice.

The only person who seems free from the pressures imposed by society or the need for other people is poacher Tom Harker, who is satisfied with his life and the company of his dog. And yet Tom is the one doomed to lose his life when the man acknowledged by all as the best marksman lets off a careless shot, desperate to retain his reputation and keep the crown he is losing to a younger man.

Even Socialist, vegetarian, animal rights protester Cornelius Cardew aspires to be part of the magical circle he professes to despise. He interrupts the shoot with his ‘Thou shalt not kill banner’ and his views on Universal Kinship – but he dreams of being invited to tea. Actually, he is such a crank that I felt quite angry with Colegate for making him a caricature! Surprisingly, his confrontation with the shooting party gave me much more sympathy with Sir Randolph, who was able to diffuse the situation by agreeing with some of Cardew’s views (everyone else would have run him off the estate). Ironically, it is Sir Randolph the landowner, rather than Cardew the campaigner, who has a clearer grasp of the issues involved, and who cares most passionately about the countryside and the people who live and work in it. He is also the only person who sees that the way of life enjoyed by his class is changing, and can never be recaptured.

But it is Cornelius who sums up my response to the novel. When Tom is killed Cornelius is:

… frozen by his own helplessness and by the curious sensation he had as if he were watching the whole scene reflected in a mirror or through a window he could not open.

There are lots of good things about the novel, but I didn’t quite connect with the characters, and felt as if I were viewing them through a telescope, so they were distant, and rather untouchable.

Small but Perfect - a Gem of a Book

At some point, I don’t know where or when, I read a favourable review of JL Carr’s A Month in the Country, and it obviously made an impression on me, because I remembered it when I came across a copy while I was sorting through donations in the charity shop, so I had to buy it, and I’m very glad I did, because it’s an absolute gem.

This is a very slender novel – just 111 pages in my 1982 Penguin edition – but every word really counts: it’s a beautifully crafted little masterpiece, which should appeal to anyone who loves those understated, between-the-wars, English novels, where the focus is on thoughts and feelings rather than action. In fact, if the words ‘Winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1980’ hadn’t been printed on the front cover, I would have assumed it was from that earlier period but, surprisingly, it was written in 1980.

But it’s set in 1920 as Tom Birkin, his marriage on the rocks and his nerves shot to pieces by the war, arrives in the Yorkshire village of Oxgodby to uncover and restore a long-lost medieval wall painting in the small, unassuming church. He sleeps and cooks in the historic building, while in the field next door Charles Moon, another scarred survivor of the conflict, has set up camp while he searches for a long-lost medieval grave. Both men are damaged, not just by their experiences in the war, but by life and love, and they seek healing from the horrors of the past.

They are being paid thanks to bequest left by a local spinster – though the Vicar, the chilliest clergyman I’ve encountered outside the pages of ‘Middlemarch’, is less than enthusiastic about the projects, believing the money could be better spent. And, just like George Eliot’s narrow-minded, mean-spirited Casaubon, this cleric also has a beautiful, young wife who is warm and caring, full of life and laughter, who befriends and beguiles Tom.

Gradually he makes friends and gets sucked into village life when the stationmaster (a leading light in the local chapel), his wife and their young daughter take him under their wing. But he becomes more and more obsessed with painting, which turns out to be a huge mural of the Day of Judgement, and is of the very highest quality. As he uncovers the picture, the vision of hell reflects the horrors and carnage he saw on the battlefields of Flanders, and more mysteries are revealed, for it was painted over within a few years of its creation (long before the Reformation) and one figure – a man with a crescent scar falling into hell – was covered earlier than the rest.

The painting inside the church becomes more real to him than life outside, and there is a link between the mural and the skeleton found by Moon, but when his quest ends Tom must move on – and, as you might guess from the title of the mural, there can be no happy ending, although he dreams of reaching an understanding with Alice.

He never returns to Oxgodby, never knows what happens to the friends he made while he was there, but many years later he looks back on the long, hot, golden summer, recalling the heat and the haze, the lazy days, the sights, sounds and smells of the English countryside. It was perfect, a rural idyll, and Tom remembers this period in his life as something whole and good, when he was happy and at peace with himself, while the village remains unchanging.

But there is nostalgia and regret for missed opportunities and a life that might have been different. In the end he makes to move to move his relationship with Alice beyond normal friendship – due, perhaps, to a kind of inertia or fear rather than any conscious desire to ‘do the right thing’.  And if things had been different, would he have been happy? That we will never know, but there is also the possibility that Tom has misread the situation, so by not acting or expressing his emotions he cannot be rejected.

In some ways ‘A Month in the Country’ reminded me of LP Hartley’s ‘The Go-Between’. There’s the obvious parallel of an older man looking back on his younger self, but I think it’s more to do with the feeling of nostalgia that suffuses the novel, and the sense of loss - loss of a place, and a time, loss of a more innocent past, and a future that never was. We never really learn what Tom makes of his life after Oxgodby, but you get the impression he is not happy, and that he never fulfils his potential.

A Tragic Tale from WWI

One of the most heart-rending tributes at the National Memorial Arboretum is Shot At Dawn, which commemorates the men executed for cowardice or desertion during the First World War. Altogether more than 300 members of British and Commonwealth units were shot, with little or no chance to defend themselves. Many were suffering the effects of what was then known as shell shock (today we call it post traumatic stress syndrome), and some had been accepted as volunteers even though they were under-age. A memorial statue of a blindfold soldier, with his hands tied behind his back, stands in the easternmost part of the arboretum, and is the first area to be touched by the light of dawn – the time when the executions were carried out. Surrounding the statue are stakes, each bearing the name of one of these men.

Their tragedy, and the effects on those who knew them – their family, friends, Army colleagues and, especially, the firing squads who were ordered to carry out the killings - inspired Elizabeth Speller’s first novel, The Return of Captain John Emmett. Her tale is loosely based on the executions of Temporary Sub-Lieutenant Edwin Dyett, a Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, and Lieutenant Poole, of the West Yorkshire Regiment. Set in 1920, in the immediate aftermath of the war, it is peopled with characters with damaged minds and damaged bodies. No-one has come through the conflict unscathed. Those who fought, and those who stayed at home, have all been changed.

Laurence Bartram has survived, but while he was fighting his wife and young son have died. Now, back home in England, he is trying to pick up the pieces and find a new purpose in life. He turns amateur detective after receiving a letter from the sister of an old school friend who has, apparently, committed suicide.  John Emmet returned from the war a broken man, but was responding to treatment in a clinic – then he absconded and was found dead. The sister cannot understand why John should take his own life at the point when he was recovering, and she wants to know what happened to him. Laurence is also puzzled by the death, which seems oddly out of character for the confident boy he once knew, so he agrees to investigate.

He has little to go on: old letters, poems, a mystery photograph, and sketches of ‘nightmare images’, including one with a blindfolded man and six soldiers with guns. Then there are the bequests in John’s will: money left to three strangers who prove difficult to track down. Indeed, all the people who knew John in the last years of his life are elusive and reluctant to answer questions or talk about the past, including staff at the sinister clinic where John was treated. 

As Laurence tries to gather testimonies to build a picture of his friend’s last days, witnesses disappear, and there are strange deaths, but gradually the fragmented story comes to light as memories and secrets are revealed. I am not sure whether Laurence would have uncovered the truth if he had been alone, but Charles Carfax, another old schoolfriend, takes it upon himself to help. Charles, who ‘seemed to have regarded his military service as a bit of a lark’, proves surprisingly resourceful. He knows everyone, uses his wide circle of acquaintances to gather information, is very capable and practical, and shrewder than he appears – he’s the one who gets them out of trouble. He’s the perfect foil for Laurence, who is more introspective and finds it difficult to cope with the ghosts of the recent past.

It is that past which haunts the book. There are moving accounts of the war as various characters recall the traumatic events, and Speller’s sense of time and place is superb, but above all it is a story about people and how they deal with life and death, with love, grief, friendship, revenge, forgiveness and renewal. Speller writes beautifully, with great sympathy, always maintaining the dramatic tension, which is important in any kind of detective mystery. 

By the way, if you’re reading anything about the First or Second World War, and you’re near Lichfield, the National Memorial Aboretum, is well worth a visit. The focus is very much on the pity of war – it doesn’t glorify war at all. It is very beautiful, very peaceful, and very moving. You’ll find the website at http://www.thenma.org.uk

*This was posted for a WWI book challenge at http://warthroughthegenerations.wordpress.com/2012-challenge-info-and-sign-up/