I've
written about Gwenllian Meyrick a couple of times before (see here),
and I seem to be working my way through all six of her novels (and wishing
there were more). The Morning-Room,
her first novel, was the most difficult to get hold of, and ended up winging
its way to me from just about the farthest possible spot within the U.S.—the
public library of Bangor, Maine. But it was well worth the effort, as this tale
of the postwar housing crisis is Meyrick's lightest and most entertaining tale.
It's
a bit difficult to situate Meyrick among the other middlebrow authors of the
period. The Morning-Room might be
described as something of a cross between Dorothy Whipple's Someone at a Distance and Doris Langley
Moore's Not at Home, though it is neither
so emotionally complex as the former nor so humorous as the latter. The situation of boarders
who turn out to be undesirable is also tied up a bit too neatly at the end (and,
in the age of #MeToo, not unproblematically). But despite these weaknesses, Meyrick
is so lushly domestic in her quiet little novels of nice people having mild
difficulties that I, once again, couldn't put it down.
The
novel opens in 1946 as 36-year-old Laura Armitage is searching for a new home
for her husband Marcus, soon to be demobilized from the war, and their two
children, Caroline and Jamie. It begins quite amusingly with a scene which must have echoed in houses all across the UK during these years:
"Seven bedrooms is too many," said Laura Armitage. "Haven't
you got anything with four bedrooms on your books?"
Mr. Evans, the house-agent's clerk, was affronted. He looked
so pained that Laura went over her words in her mind, in case she had said
something indiscreet.
"Four bedrooms?" he repeated.
"Well, I thought about four," she said humbly.
"Everyone wants a house with four bedrooms, Mrs.
Armitage. They usually stipulate for modern conveniences: coke boiler;
immersion heater; indoor coal-shed; gas and electric points; garden (but not
too large); garage. They also demand a house in not too isolated a position,
otherwise the daily help will stop coming as soon as the winter starts."
"How very odd!" remarked Laura. "All that is
exactly what I was going to tell you I wanted."
Mr. Evans shut his file with a bang. Most of the papers were
loose, and fluttered to the floor, and had to be picked up, which was something
of an anti-climax to Mr. Evans' indignant gesture. He was a Welshman with a
strong sense of the dramatic.
The
house in question is known as South Grove, and Mr Evans ultimately plays a
fateful role in her decision to take the house after all, seven bedrooms and
all. It just happens that he knows of an absolutely ideal housekeeper, Mrs
Mason, who is seeking a place with room enough for her daughter Freda, soon to
return from her service with the A.T.S., and the house is conveniently divided
between the old servant areas (back of the house) and the old front rooms. Mrs
Mason indeed seems to be too good to be true, and of course we know what that
means… The original jacket blurb, happily glued inside the Bangor Library copy
of the book, sums it all up as follows:
[S]lowly and imperceptibly the morning-room, where Mrs. Mason
lived, came to dominate Laura's house, Laura's children and even Laura herself.
Then Marcus came home to find that he had known Freda when she was in the
A.T.S. And the question is: who is going to take possession of the demobbed
warrior? The tension mounts as these convincingly ordinary people drift nearer and
nearer to the rocks.
Laura
becomes casual friends with Mr Evans, despite their contentious first meeting,
and he, along with his new wife who knew the Masons from years earlier, not
only plays a role in landing Laura with the Masons, but will finally help rid
her of them as well. Along the way, we also meet Laura's widowed sister Helen,
who has just met a promising new man, and Marcus's sister and mother.
It's
all predictable enough—it doesn't hold a candle to Moore's Not at Home in terms of twists and surprises and unexpected
results—but it's still thoroughly readable and enjoyable, and here, unlike in
most of Meyrick's novels, there are some very funny moments indeed.
Mr
Evans is a bit of a closet socialist, and when he takes Laura to meet the two
elderly sisters who are the current owners of South Grove and who are
ludicrously class-biased even in the midst of their current poverty, sparks
nearly fly:
She lowered herself with an obvious effort into her chair. Laura
felt that if she offered to help her, she would only be rebuffed. Mr. Evans,
not having had an invitation to sit down, was not quite sure if he ought to do
so, and remained standing, planning class extinction for the day when he got into
power.
And
one of my favorite passages from the entire novel is this subtly morbid
description of the impractical kitchen of the new house:
The kitchen was the other side of the passage, opposite the scullery
and pantry. It was a huge, depressing room with only one window, which looked
on to the yard and a high, dense hedge. The cupboards and woodwork were painted
chocolate-brown. There was a deep recess in one wall where the range had once
stood. In the middle of this recess, like some malevolent black creature,
squatted the boiler. There were hooks in the ceiling big enough to hold a rope
and a man at the end of it. The top of the table which stood in the middle of
the room was spotted and stained.
It's a bit of an odd situation for me, because Meyrick is clearly not as strong an author overall as some of my other favorites. She has a tendency (more in other novels than in The Morning-Room) to sink into melodrama, and there's little that's strikingly original or unique about her writing. And yet, somehow, she has become a favorite of mine in her own right. A big part of it must be her rather ordinary and yet totally relatable heroines—flawed but interesting, and even somewhat feminist (for their time). A strange balance, but one that works surprisingly well.
This sounds like a lovely read -- I hope you're adding it to your list of potential new FM reprints!
ReplyDeleteEven when you throw in mild sorts of semi-disclaimers, you make me want to read all the books, Scott.
ReplyDeleteTom
Yes, even when you have reservations you still make me want to rush to the second-hand bookshops and search and search!
ReplyDelete