IV

FRANK SWINNERTON

R SWINNERTON has already nine novels to his credit, all of them masterpieces of style,

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and is still comparatively unknown. Yet he is as well able to reproduce the atmosphere of life in the successful and unsuccessful suburbs of Weybridge and Kennington as Stephen McKenna is in the aristocratic world of Mayfair and Kensington (" where the dialect songs come from "). He is far more alive than Mr McKenna: his vision is larger, his sympathies broader.

In Nocturne, a wonderful tour de force, in which the whole action is confined to six hours, we actually share every minute of the young milliner's experiences. The small house in Kennington Park, where laughing, loving, passionate Jenny lives with her paralysed "Pa" and jealous Martha-like sister "Em," is put before us perfect in every detail: we see "Pa's " appetite for romance satisfied in the shape of murder and sudden death in the newspaper, as his appetite for food is by mountainous apple-dumplings. "Em's" yearnings are reserved for the insipid "Alf," who "walks out" with Jenny, while Jenny's may be gauged from this extract: "She wanted to go out in the darkness that so pleasantly enwrapped the earth, back to the stir and glitter of life somewhere beyond. Her vision had been far different from this scene. It carried her over land and sea right into an unexplored realm where there was wild laughter

and noise, where hearts broke tragically and women in the hour of ruin turned triumphant eyes to the glory of life, and where blinding, streaming lights and scintillating colours made everything seem different, made it seem romantic, rapturous, indescribable. From that vision back to the cupboard-like house in Kennington Park, and stodgy Alf Rylett, and supper of stew and bread-and-butter pudding, and Pa, and this little sobbing figure in her arms, was an incongruous flight. It made Jenny's mouth twist in a smile so painful that it was almost a grimace.

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“Oh, lor!' she said again, under her breath. What a life.'

Pa was something like an old beloved dog, unable to speak; it was Emmy who best understood the bitterness of his soul; it was Emmy who was most with him, and Emmy who felt sometimes as if she could kill him in her fierce hatred of his helplessness and stupidity. Emmy was harder than Jenny on the surface, but weaker below. Jenny was selfsufficient, self-protective, more happy-go-lucky, more humorous than Emmy. We see these sisters (who love one another deeply) first quarrelling over Alf. He prefers Jenny, and she treats him like dirt, while Emmy is furiously jealous.

"He's all right in his way," admitted Jenny. "He's clean. But he's quiet. .. he's got no devil in him. Sort of man who tells you what he likes for breakfast. I only go with him. . . . Well, you know why, as well as I do. But he's never on for a bit of fun. That's it: he's got no devil in him. I don't like that kind. Prefer the other sort."

A knock at the door interrupts the sisters' tart arguments, and Alf appears armed with seats for the theatre; before he has the chance to invite Jenny

(in her sister's presence), she makes it clear that she thinks he has come to take Em, and forces him to do so. While Em, who is overjoyed, goes out of the room to dress, Jenny and Alf have a heart-to-heart row which reveals their naked souls to the reader in a way that almost shocks one, so real does it sound. It is as if we were held by a vice in the room, compelled to listen to confidences of the most private sort. Eventually Alf and Em go, and Jenny is left at home to look after Pa and work out in her mind exactly what she has done, gradually rising into a frenzy of rebellion at the dullness and slavery which is her life. While she is lost in reverie there is another knock at the door, and she opens to find a large car, a chauffeur, and a letter for her from a sailor she had met some months before, requesting her to come to supper on his yacht. After a sharp conflict with her conscience she leaves Pa and drives off in an intoxication of bliss. Keith, her dream-lover, meets her on board and takes her down to the cabin. "She had never before seen such a room. It seemed, because the ceiling was low, to be very spacious; the walls and ceiling were of a kind of dusky amber hue; a golden brown was everywhere the prevailing tint. In the middle stood a square table; and on the table, arrayed on an exquisitely white tablecloth, was laid a wondrous meal. The table was laid for two; candles with amber shades made silver shine and glasses glitter. Upon a fruit-stand were peaches and nectarines; upon a tray she saw decanters: little dishes crowding the table bore mysterious things to eat such as Jenny had never before seen everywhere she saw flowers similar to those which had been in the motor-car."

It is noticeable that Mr Swinnerton knows how to

make our mouths water with a description of food, thereby confirming Alec Waugh's evidence that for a book to be successful one necessary ingredient is the actual description of rich meals. Coming as we do from the stew and bread-and-butter pudding of Kennington we are all the more likely to succumb, as Jenny does, to the soup, whitebait, trifle, peaches, almonds, and wonderful red wine which Keith had so cunningly prepared. The love-making that follows the meal is astoundingly real: Jenny, loving him with all the force of her passionate nature, yet struggling with herself all the time, believes that it is all no use as he didn't love her as she wanted him to. In the end he tells her quickly the story of his life. "I picked up a girl in London when I was twenty-not honest, but straight to me. It was no good. She went off with other men because I got tired of her: I told her she could stick to me or let me go. She wanted both. Then I got engaged to a girl-married to her when I was twenty-three-and she's dead. After I'd been with her for a year I broke away. . . . I haven't got a very good record: I've lived with three women, all of whom knew more than I did. I've never done a girl any harm intentionally: the last of them belongs to six years ago. You're the girl I love."

"What I'm wondering," said Jenny, "is, what you'd think of me if I'd lived with three different men ?" On and on runs the argument between them, Keith trying to make her believe that he would love her always, marry her on his return from the voyage just due to begin, Jenny knowing her absolute love for him, yet holding back, distrust of him looming large before her: ultimately she capitulates and returns home at midnight to find that in her absence

Alf and Emmy have agreed to get married, and Pa has had a bad accident.

Having at last got into bed she begins to judge her own conduct. "She was Keith's: she belonged to hi: but he did not belong to her. To Keith she might, she would give all, as she had done: but he would still be apart from her. Away from him, released from the spell, Jenny knew that she had yielded to him the freedom she so cherished as her inalienable right. She had given him her freedom: for her real freedom was her innocence and her desire to do right. She could not forgive herself. She struggled to go back to the old way of looking at everything. In a forlorn, quivering voice she ventured: “What a life! Golly, what a life!" But the effort to pretend was too great. She threw herself on the bed : "Keith . . . oh, Keith. . . .” The subtle analysis of a young girl's mind has never been better done.

...

Shops and Houses is a novel of quite another sort. Here we are shown the narrowness of suburban society. "One would think that a quite special piece of righteousness had been dealt out to each of the Beckwith ladies at birth by a benign fairy. Living in Beckwith is like living upon glass. It is both slippery and brittle. Nearly all the women suffer from aimlessness, an insatiable egomania." The Vechantors, who lead this society, are, however, above this pettiness: it is of Louis Vechantor and his fortunes that the book treats. Mr Swinnerton is exceedingly bitter in his irony about this suburb of his. "Nothing ever happened at Beckwith. It was like a backwater. Only time was consumed. That was the secret, terrible aim of dwellers in Beckwith. To eat a day and look forward to the next with