As you know, I recently read Demobbed by Alan Allport, a fascinating insight into the problems of returning servicemen coming home to find that they were strangers to their families, their children were frightened of this 'strange man' and had difficulty in adjusting to married life. Divorce rates rocketed post-1940 because of this and, in some cases, where infidelity on the part of wives had taken place, there were cases of murder.
After reading the latest Marghanita Laski title to be republished by Persephone, To bed with Grand Music I can only imagine that if the husband in this case, Graham, had returned home and killed his wife, he would have been acquitted on grounds of justifiable homicide, or have his case treated as manslaughter (as indeed, did happen - again in Demobbed by Allport). Seldom has a heroine, if I can call Deborah as such, been so unsympathetically portrayed as in this book. She seems to have no moral compass whatsoever, is an indifferent daughter and mother and selfish to the core.
It all starts well with Deborah and Graham bidding farewell to each other and swearing eternal love:
"Darling don't you think I shan't be missing you every hour of every day, thinking how bloody attractive you are and that I'm not there to be with you?"...............Deborah flung herself upon him "You're a swine to say such things you know I love you and I'll always love you............you don't have to worry about me in that way because I swear you don't have to" She paused and stopped crying. With an ugly edge to her voice she said 'Anyway, what about you?"
Graham promises her that he will always love her but he is not going to make promises he does not think he can keep "..it's no good saying I can do without a woman for three or four years, because I can't"
When this book was written and the servicemen were away fighting for their country, it was assumed that most men would not be faithful, it would not be expected of them, it would be impossible. However, the wives at home, left behind and struggling to bring up their children, run their homes in difficult circumstances, were expected to remain virtuous and be good wives and mothers. If they strayed, had affairs or, in some cases, brought another man's child into the family, they were the sinners, not the men involved. My initial reaction was that while Graham was retaining the right to be unfaithful himself, his underlying expectation was that Deborah would not.
I should cheer that in the end Deborah thought O to hell with this and embarked on her giddy succession of lovers and her hedonistic lifestyle throughout the war - after all, this could be viewed as a feminist stance, what's good enough for a man is good enough for me, but the problem here is that she is such an unlikeable person.
She goes to London and takes a job leaving her two year old child, Timmy, behind in the care of a housekeeper (who, fortunately is devoted to him) and starts off with the best of intentions. "Once or twice she had been to the pictures with one or other of the girls from the office, but afterwards the bed sitting room seemed more lonely and more desolate. But I'm being good for Graham she told herself and insensibly her grudge against him began to build itself up"
Then she meets Joe, an American, lonely in London and missing his home and family. The inevitable happens. Then she meets Sheldon 'my new Yank' but she finds him boring and then moves on to Pierre Decastre, a Frenchman who she decides will be her next lover, he is older and more sophisticated so she ditches Sheldon, who seems to accept his conge with good grace, and onto Pierre. Here she takes a step forward in her new career, as a mistress:
"Pierre, will you teach me to be a good mistress?.....if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well"
"That is certainly true" said Pierre "But if you learn well.........may you not find it a little hard to go back to being a good wife?2
"Hell why should I?" said Deborah leaning forward to put on some lipstick "Besides I don't think my husband has been wasting his time"
Repelled and disgusted Pierre said angrily "Very well, I will teach you what you want to know. I have three more weeks here and in that time you can learn all I know of the tricks used by poules-de-luxe, how they wear their clothes, how they walk into restaurants, how they look at you under their lashes, how they safeguards themselves against responsibility, how they please and, most important of all, how they pretend they have themselves received an infinity of pleasure. Is that what you want to know?"
Deborah turned round and said plaintively 'But Pierre, you're angry. Why are you angry with me?"
This particular relationship is the turning point. Up to now, Deborah can fool herself and, perhaps the reader, into believing that she has fallen into these relationships because of loneliness and the need to be looked after, but this is an irrevocable step, she has made the decision to be 'a good mistress'. There is a harsher word for what she has become and we know it as does she, but it is pushed to one side.
After Pierre has gone and he has introduced her to Luis, a Brazilian, she had a moment's wild panic "What the hell am I doing she thought, letting myself be handed from man to man like this, he must think I am a tart. Then she saw Pierre standing up, kissing her and and saying goodbye and thought as he left the room, damn it, I can't let Pierre down, this is his idea of being good to me and I do owe him rather a lot"
I was repelled and fascinated by this book in equal measure but the insightful writing of Marghanita Laski and her unerring pinpointing of human weakness and frailty, kept me riveted until the last page. In Deborah she has created a heroine seemingly with no saving grace whatsoever, a Becky Sharp or a Madame Bovary, and I spent a long time while reading this book desperately seeking for some mitigating circumstance I could apply to justify her behaviour. This became more and more difficult to do and in the end I gave up when she meets up with her old employer, now at the War Office who hinted that he was dealing with transfers and releases 'if you've got anyone you want brought home or, alternatively, sent away, I might be ready to oblige if you make it worth my while'.
"Deborah began to think what Graham's return must mean, the end of her life in London, the end of her gaiety, her pleasure....there was not, as Deborah now saw it, anything at all that was desirable to be looked for in Graham's return"
When I read Marghanita Laski's Little Boy Lost, also available from Persephone, the last line in that book completely floored me and left me breathless at the way the author had kept one more surprise, one more revelation to leave the reader reeling. This final disclosure of just how far Deborah had sunk, just how contemptible and vile she had become, had the same effect on me - I simply could not believe what I was reading and I nearly flung the book across the room.
In the end, despite my best endeavours, it is impossible to blame the circumstances and the War for Deborah's behavior. My personal feeling is that this lack of principle, her selfishness and lack of emotional attachment was there inside her all along. Her mother seems to harbour no illusions about her daughter's character and makes a pragmatic choice "I can see quite clearly what will happen to her if she goes to London - but I can see equally well the irremediable harm she will do to Timmy if she stays here. Which is the more important to me, my daughter or my grandson? Do I mind more if my daughter goes to the bad or my grandson has his nerves upset and his character ruined?"
A fascinating book totally at odds with the usual portrayal of long suffering wives at home, making do and mending and keeping the home fires burning for their husband's return. The timing of my reading of this book, coming as it does after my recent read of Demobbed, could not have been better, the two offer a fascinating insight into the effects of war, not just the military victories and losses, but the effects on individual lives. Just read Saplings by Noel Streatfield, to see a masterly portrayal of the same thing - how a family, on the surface, survived the war intact, but their emotional lives have been wrecked and they will never be the same again.
Juliet Gardiner has written the introduction for To bed with Grand Music and we are told that 'this is a book very much against the grain - it was published in 1946 just a year after the war when emotions were still raw". Because of the subject matter it was published under a pseudonym, Sarah Russell and I wonder if there are copies of this lurking on bookshelves and in second hand book shops with the authorship unknown.
Another superb book to add to the Persephone canon, as always beautifully produced with its endpapers and matching bookmark all of which adds to the pleasure of owning any book from this publishing house. Long may it continue to unearth such gems as this and bring them back once more to the public.
This is going on my Book of the Year list, no question....
