Let's Hear it for Older Women (The Winds of Heaven)

I’m still with Persephone, but today’s thoughts are about a novel rather than a short story. I’ve been reading The Winds of Heaven, by Monica Dickens, which meets my current craving for happy endings. But don’t get the idea this is fluffy, because it’s not. Dickens highlights the difficulties faced by an older woman, her role within the family, the way she is perceived by others – and the way she sees them.

Recently widowed Louise Bickford has been left homeless and almost penniless following the death of her domineering husband. With no skills, and no means of earning a living, she must now divide her summers between her three daughters, staying with each in turn, while in winter she has a cut-price room in a hotel run by an old schoolfriend. Then the friend suffers a heart attack, Louise is forced to leave, and it seems no-one wants her...

I think they all see her as a bit of an encumbrance – they certainly make her feel that way – and they have a tendency to ignore her, which is easily done because she is so self-effacing. She has absolutely no confidence, and no self-esteem. She has few friends, hates social occasions and meeting people, and rarely expresses an opinion on anything. She’s been squashed by life or, more likely, by her husband and is so anxious not to do or say the wrong the thing and not to cause any bother to anyone that she seems almost to have erased herself. She is one of the most unnoticeable people you are ever likely to meet in literature or in real life.

Monica Dickens

Louise sounds an unlikely heroine, but it’s her very ordinariness that makes her so appealing, and she doesn’t deserve to be overlooked, and should never be under-estimated.  As the story progressed and I got to know her thoughts and feelings, her likes and dislikes, her fears, the things that make happy, I warmed to her because she’s kind and caring, and has her own views, but few people take the trouble to listen to her. Those who do value her tend to be other outsiders, like her eldest grandchild Ellen, or Gordon Disher, the fat, quietly spoken, unassuming bed salesman who leads a double life as author Lester Drage, penning thrillers which are full of shocking crime, sex and violence – which are, surprisingly, exactly the kind of novels that Louise enjoys reading.

I liked the way a tentative friendship grows between Gordon and Louise, and I liked the portrayal of her relationship with her daughters, who are not really cruel or heartless, just thoughtless, and unable to see their mother as a person in her own right, or to understand how she has reached this point in her life, or how she feels about it.

Endpaper from a 1950s furnishing fabric in
a private collection.

For they are young, and have their own problems. On the face of it they seem very different from each other, but beneath the surface all three are dissatisfied with their lives. There is Miriam, tall and slim, well dressed and well organised, with her three children, and her nice house, but she’s as brittle as her marriage. Then there’s Anne, who doesn’t seem to care about anything or anyone, and especially not her house and her kindly, market gardener husband. And finally there’s Eva, a bright, bubbly actress who is in love with a married man. I found their contrasting relationships with their menfolk interesting, especially in the light of Louise’s unhappy marriage, and deepening friendship with Gordon. ‘The Winds of Heaven’ could be seen not just as a novel about the way women age and how they cope with changing roles and circumstances, but also as a novel about marriage, and the dynamics between the various couples. In that sense Dickens reminded me a bit of Jane Austen, and there’s the same attention to the small, everyday details of life, and ironic comments about social pretensions and aspirations. I’ve read reviews which compare Dickens’ work to that of her great-grandfather, but personally I think she’s closer to Austen. And, like Anne Elliott, Louise is offered a second chance at life and happiness – but only after she’s dealt with a near tragedy. 

PS: I'm adding a postcript, with Links of the Day, because older women seem to be on my mind at the moment, what with my mother's move and my recent birthday. I really enjoyed a Saturday Sally from Nan, over at Letters from a Hill Farm, which is a brief but lovely celebration of three amazing women who have tremendous zest and enthusiasm for life - writer and activist Maya Angelou, novelist Edna O'Brien, and an amazing lady who was still driving her car at the age of 101.

And today  Dove Grey Reader (aka Lynne Hatwell) has written a thought provoking piece where she takes a more serious look at the issues surrounding aging and the way we care for our elderly and deal with dementia. She touches on grief and loss, and the nature of memory,  as she explores Melvyn Bragg's 'Grace and Mary', considers the BBC TV series 'The Village', and thinks about her own experiences working with  elderly patients during her nursing career. 

Guard Your Daughters

My copy has no dust jacket, and is plain red,
with no title on the cover, which doesn't make
for a good picture, so here is a nicer cover!

I'm very fond of my new friends, but I do get angry when the tell me how dull my life must have been before I came to London. We were queer, I suppose, and restricted, and we used to fret and grumble, but the thing our sort of family doesn't suffer from is boredom

I think I'll start with the afternoon when I introduced Gregory to the family. I'd been into Wools for the rations, and I took a short cut home across the Common, that had seemed so big and wild when we were children. It had a few patches of ling, and used to play the part of the Heather when we were being Alan Breck and David.

I just love the opening to Guard Your Daughters, by Diana Tutton, especially that second paragraph. You know you are in the presence of a pretty special writer, who not only pays tribute to Stevenson, but creates a landscape and plants to stand in for wild Scottish moorland in a game of make believe.Who else would do that? And in just a few words she manages to tell you so much about the Harvey family.

Everyone else who read this (thanks to a recommendation from Simon at Stuck in a Book) seems to have already reviewed it, and since it's been universally praised, I feel anything I say only repeats what has already been written. But that's not going to stop me from having a go! According to Simon, if you like Dodie Smith's 'I capture the Castle' then you will like this, and I do, and I did (if you see what I mean). It's way up there on my best books of the year: amusing, literate, well written, witty, warm - and ever so slightly off-kilter. There's a dark edge here that is not immediately apparent.

It's set in the late 1940s, or early fifties – butter and eggs, which they buy 'illicitly' from the farm, were still rationed when the book was first published in 1953. The Harveys are one of those middle-class families who seem to have fallen on hard times and now live in self-imposed exile from the rest of society, whilst maintaining their superior taste and intelligence. They live in genteel poverty, leading a somewhat eccentric life in a rambling old house which is falling into disrepair. That may make them sound rather horrid, but the five daughters of the house are absolutely delightful.

And another one...

Pandora, Thisbe, Morgan (who is writing the story and is called after Morgan La Fée) and Cressida were named by their mother, whose mental state seems to be very fragile. Teresa, the youngest, was named by Father, because Mother was tired by that stage. Only Pandora, the eldest, has escaped their enclosed life: after a whirlwind romance she is now living in London, married to a man she met at Sunday School. The others seem happy with their lot – apart from Cressida, who grows vegetables, does most of the cooking, and yearns for normality. Thisbe, who is rather waspish, wants to be a poet, Morgan hopes to be a concert pianist, and Teresa doesn't know what she wants to do. She appears far younger than today's 15-year-olds (how the world has changed) but is precociously well read.

I thought the relationship between the girls was really well done -Tutton was spot on with her description of the the bickering and sniping that goes on (sister talk, as my own daughters always tell me) but at the same time they are very supportive of each other, and they do have a lot of fun.

Father is an author: not just any old author, but the 'only, really, great, detective writer there has ever been'. However, he is famously reclusive, for when he is not writing he is totally wrapped up in ensuring his wife's comfort and well-being. He has little time left for the girls, and their world is centred on their home. Visits, and visiting, are frowned upon. They've never been to school, although at some stage in the past there was a governess, appear to have no friends of their own age, and few opportunities for meeting young men.

But there is Gregory, who is totally overwhelmed by the sisters when his car breaks down outside their home and they invite him in. He is obviously surprised by Mother's snowboots, 'huge things of black cloth and rubber to pull on over our shoes', her wet stockings steaming by the fire – and by the girls themselves. While he is there Thisbe, clad in eye-catching tight ski-ing trousers, proceeds to do the ironing (including a 'dreadful torn pair of cami-knickers'), and as he leaves he bumps into the grandfather clock, the door opend, and dozens of wet stockings fall out. On his return visit there's an equally hilarious scene as Thisbe desperately tries to pull metal wavers from her hair, without being the noticed.

And there is journalist Patrick True who, strikes up conversation with Morgan and Teresa in a cafe, visits the family at home, encourages the girls' to tell him tales of family life – but fails to explain until much later that he wants to publish an article about their father.

And another!

The girls' seclusion is brought about by their mother's delicate condition. She mustn't be upset, or she will be ill again – and it seems she is upset by any attempt at independence on the part of of her daughters, or any intrusion from the outside world. She may be obsessively over-protective, and fear for their safety if they are away from home or exposed to outside influences, but it is her own safety and comfort that she is interested in. As the novel progressed I began to wonder if she is mad, or manipulative. Her condition seems to work to her advantage. When she doesn't want to do something she takes to her bed; she has the best of everything, and everyone falls in with her wishes. She really is a monster, and it's hard to know if her the Harvey daughters should be protected from the outside world – or their parents.

My copy of the book was published by The Reprint Society in 1954, and seems to have faded from view fairly quickly. 'Guard Your Daughters' is a forgotten book by a forgotten author: I couldn't find any information about Diana Tutton, but she deseves to be better known, and there must be some publisher out there prepared to reissue this wonderful novel - it would fit very nicely into the Persephone canon of work.

Mother's Day with Milly-Molly-Mandy

Well, it’s Mother’s Day, and I’ve had a bouquet of roses, some rose petal handcream, a beautiful bar of soap – and The Daughters also left messages on Facebook about two of their favourite childhood books, Joyce Lankester Brisley’s Milly-Molly-Mandy, and My Naughty Little Sister, by Dorothy Edwards, reminding me how I used to read to them and ‘do all the voices’.

Simon, at Savidge Reads, must have been thinking along similar lines, because he wrote a wonderful post, thanking his mum for making him read, and it set me thinking about my mother, who says she held me in her arms when I was a baby and wouldn’t sleep, and read aloud from whatever she happened to be reading at the time – novels, plays, poems.

And, of course, she read me children’s stories (doing all the voices), including those delightful tales about Milly-Molly-Mandy, which were among my favourites (and which she also loved when she was small) , so I rushed off to find More of Milly-Molly-Mandy, which seems to have been in the family’s possession for ever and a day. I have no idea where it came from – I think my mother may have bought it in a second-hand shop. It was published by George G Harrap & Company Ltd in 1944, ‘in conformity with the authorised economy standards’. I keep meaning to look this up, as I’d love to know more about wartime publishing. There’s even a little logo of a lion sitting on open book, on which is printed: BOOK PRODUCTION WAR ECONOMY STANDARD. Has anyone else ever come across this? And if so, can you tell me anything about it?

 I love this book just as much as when I did when I was a child. There are fabulous black and white drawing, by the author, and a map of the village showing where everyone lives,and a colour plate at the front, with Milly-Molly-Mandy making her bed with its green-painted ends, and the matching curtains and colourful rug on the floor. In fact Milly-Molly-Mandy Has a Surprise, where she sees her very own bedroom for the very first time is my favourite of all the stories. Her family turn the little storeroom up under the thatched roof into a room for her, so she no longer has to sleep in the corner of Father’s and Mother’s room. They decorate it with left-over paint, and Mother dyes old curtains and a bedspread to make them look like new, and they manage to keep the whole thing secret, even though Milly-Molly-Mandy helps with make-over. 

It’s such a wonderful surprise for the little girl, and you just know it must have been planned and organised by her mother, who must love her very much.

When she opened the door – she saw –

Her own little cot-bed with the green coverlet on, just inside. And the little square window with the green curtains blowing in the wind. And a yellow pot of nasturtiums on the sill. And the little green chest of drawers with the robin cloth on it. And the little green mirror hanging on the primrose wall, with Milly-Molly-Mandy’s face reflected in it. 

The room had ‘a little square window very near to the floor, and the ceiling sloped away on each side so that Father or Mother or Grandpa or Grandma or Uncle or Aunty could stand upright only in the middle of the room. (But Milly-Molly-Mandy could stand upright anywhere in it.)’  As a child I felt a sense of kinship with Milly-Molly-Mandy, for my own bedroom (decorated in blue and white) was up in the eaves of the house, with sloping ceilings and a tiny dormer window which opened on to the roof.

So there you are, a reflection on Mother’s Day – and a huge thank you to my mother and my daughters for their love, friendship, and our shared enjoyment of books and reading.