Love During Wartime

Return to Today
Margerie Scott
London: Peter Davies, 1961
213 pages

Vanessa Gray and Don Temple met in a streamy wartime canteen. She was an English Rose, working the counter; he was an American serviceman who found her attractive. After Vanessa's exhausting shift, Don hired a cab, whisking them to her Chelsea flat. Once there, Dan warmed a hot-water bottle and tall glass of milk, and Vanessa fell asleep in his comforting arms. The two didn't become lovers that night, but would the next morning. They both knew their's was a was a one-time, two-time, six or seven-time thing.

Don was married to Mary Nell, a "delicate" woman born and raised in his hometown of Kalamazoo, Michigan. I would've used the word "fragile" in place of "delicate." Never in the best of health, Mary Nell was convinced pregnancy would kill her, and so red-blooded American Don had been living a chaste life. Vanessa, single, was struggling with the recent deaths of her mother and RAF pilot brother Brian.

All this is backstory.

The novel's first sentence is far from brilliant, but I like it: "When the letter from Arizona arrived, Vanessa knew it was too late; twelve years too late."

You see, twelve years have passed since the lovers' last tryst, after which Don returned to Kalamazoo. In that time, Vanessa met and married Bill, a cousin of her childhood friend Philip Tennant. Injured in the war, poor Bill expired before their first wedding anniversary... tragically, before he could consummate the marriage. Vanessa now lives in the country, sharing the house in which she's been raised with her father, her elderly nanny, and a housekeeper of sorts named Marie-Teresa.

Don has written to say that he'll be visiting England in September. Because – I'm guessing – he didn't want to splurge on air mail, it is September. Don arrives on the very day his letter is received.

Marie-Teresa, who loves an audience, is positively giddy, whilst nanny refuses to hide her displeasure. The old girl remembers a weekend during the war when this married man dared visit. Vanessa's papa is displeased for much the same reason. 

Why is this man visiting now, after all these years?

Don is not so sure himself, though Mary Nell's death must have something to do with it.

The Kalamazooian has never been able to get over his wartime fling. He thinks that seeing her again might exorcise memory and desires. Or maybe, just maybe, he and Vanessa can start from where they left off, Bill be damned!

When Don learns that Bill is dead, he moves quickly in proposing marriage.

Vanessa's acceptance took me aback. Over the previous ninety-one pages, I really thought I'd come to know her. 

Return to Today is a novel of disruption – and with disruption comes action. Friend Philip is the first out of the gate. He'd had a wartime tumble with Vanessa himself, after which his own marriage proposal had been rejected. Ever since, sad sod Philip has sat, spending the intervening years thinking that the woman he loves will one day come around. Don's intrusion fires a new campaign to win Vanessa's heart.

Emily, Philip's mother, sees the American's intrusion as a threat to her own plan to wed Vanessa's father. 

And then we have Marie-Teresa; what's her reaction? Though a minor character, a refugee of unknown origin, she's is by far the most intriguing. Publisher Peter Davies is spot-on in describing Marie-Teresa as "a loveable dark-haired bundle of complications."

Peter Davies also describes Return to Today as a comedy. I'm not so sure it is, though there was one passage that raised a chuckle. It won't have the same effect out of context, so I won't bother sharing. 

Return to Today spans four days, which the author divides into six sections:

• Friday Morning
• Friday Evening
• Saturday
• Sunday
• Monday Morning
• Monday Evening

I recommend reading Friday Morning through Sunday; on Monday Morning the novel begins to fall apart because it's then that Scott really goes for laughs.

This is a shame, because the first four sections had me thinking that Return to Today was certain to make the annual Dusty Bookcase list of books worthy of a return to print.

It won't, which is not to suggest that it isn't worth your time.

A query: On the evening they meet, Venessa tells Dan "some people think my name is odd."

Is it?

Dan thinks so, asking "is it French or something?"

Was Vanessa such an unusual name eighty years ago?

The Windsor Star
2 December 1961

Object and Access: An attractive hardcover featuring dark blue boards, the jacket illustration is credited to Val Biro. My copy was purchased earlier this year from the very same UK bookseller who sold me Dove Cottage. Price: £8.00. There's some evidence that McClelland & Stewart published a Canadian edition, but I've never seen it.

As of this writing, two copies are offered for sale online. At £11.75, a jacketless copy of the Peter Davies edition is the cheapest. Ignore that. The copy you want to buy is listed by a bookseller in Ashland, Oregon, who offers the Peter Davies edition and the McClelland & Stewart edition of Scott's second novel The Darling Illusion (1954). Both have jackets. Both are inscribed by the author. The price for this two-book lot is US$44.00.

You know what to do.

Related posts:

They Fell in Love With the Actress

In Search of Margerie Scott

In Search of Margerie Scott

The Windsor Daily Star, 10 April 1951

Following last week's review of Margerie Scott's The Darling Illusion.

Until this year, I'd never heard of Margerie Scott. Her name doesn't appear in The Canadian Encyclopedia, The Dictionary of Canadian Biography, The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature, or the Enyclopedia of Canadian Literature. Three of her five novels were published by McClelland & Stewart – once "The Canadian Publisher" – but I'd never come across copies. My introduction came by way of an American, Scott Thompson of Furrowed Middlebrow, who mentioned her in this February post. "It's possible that Margerie Scott belongs on a Canadian women writers list," writes Mr Thompson.

Margerie Scott was born in 1897 at Leeds. If her publishers' author bios are correct, she received some part of her education in Belgium. Edith Margery Waite was her name at birth; "Scott" was added when she married Canadian Hubert Scott. According to the author, she lived in Canada ten years between the World Wars. During the second conflict, she served as chief billeting officer for the London borough of Chelsea. When the fighting stopped, she worked briefly for the Entertainments National Service Association before returning to Canada for another decade.

Throughout both Canadian stints, Windsor served as her home. She threw herself into society, volunteerism, and amateur theatre. Margerie Scott's name appears in nearly two hundred editions of the Border Cities Star and Windsor Daily Star, this from the 18 September 1956 edition of the latter being an example:

Scott also wrote theatre, film, and book reviews for the Star. My critique of Andre Langévin's Dust Over the City is at odds with hers.

The Windsor Daily Star
24 Sept 1955

I'm not sure we would have much agreed on things literary. In her lecture "The Short Story and Its Place in Modern Letters," covered in the Border Cities Star (22 September 1931), Margerie Scott described O. Henry and Rudyard Kipling as the greatest short story writers of the day. An Anderson, Fitzgerald, and Mansfield man, I take issue.

And then there's this:

Until recent years, the short story has been somewhat despised [emphasis mine]. The novel was the real work. But today, people are giving most of their time to perfecting the technique of the short story, which includes concise presentation of an idea, with an introduction, climax and completion.

More often than not, the Border City Star and Windsor Daily Star refer to Margery Scott as a short story writer. I've managed to track down twenty, most of which were published in long-dead magazines like Breezy Stories, Young Realistic Stories, Britannia and Eve, and The Canadian. One source records that she is the same E.M. Scott who  contributed "The Voyage to Kleptonia" to the October 1928 edition of Amazing Stories.

I don't quite doubt it.

Because her stories were never collected, I think of Margery Scott as a novelist. Life Begins for Father (1939), her debut, appears to have been written off; it received no mention in her subsequent books. In his surprisingly long 22 April 1939 Windsor Daily Star review, "Windsorite Resembles Dad in Novel," critic Angus Munro praises the novel as a "first class story of life in modern London."

My own first book dealt with people who inspired characters in Canadian literature, so you can understand my interest in this paragraph:

A Yorkshireman himself, Tom Waite emigrated to Canada in 1927, settling in Windsor. His profile in the January 1928 edition of Canadian Golfer is quite impressive.

There's more to be learned about Margery Scott. I've only started digging.

For now, the question remains: Does Margerie Scott belong on a Canadian women writers list?

I would say so. How about you?

Related posts:

They Fell in Love With the Actress

Another Handful of Dust
Love During Wartime

They Fell in Love With the Actress

The Darling Illusion
Margerie Scott
London: Peter Davies, 1954
246 pages

Olivia Thompson's dead body lies in a slowly growing pool of blood, an apron belonging to her housekeeper, Mrs Baker, covering the head. Looking down, Inspector of Detectives John Sims believes the death a suicide, but Doctor Jordan Plant, the coroner, suggests otherwise: "I've been thinking—John, have you ever known a woman to shoot herself in the face?"

Olivia's final days favour the doctor's opinion. A young actress who had spent much of the Second World War in London, she'd returned to her Canadian hometown only four days earlier. In the short time between arrival and death, Olivia had purchased and moved into her childhood home. She'd hired Mrs Baker, ordered new furniture, and had started in on plans to renovate. No, nothing speaks to suicide, which made this reader question the inspector's rush to judgement. I didn't know what to think of the coroner, who has this to say about the murderer: "It's more likely to be a woman than a man to do a thing like that to another woman."

Is it? I honestly have no idea.

Save the housekeeper, Olivia had no contact with anyone except Louise Brand, Edith Temple, and Mary Anne Nesbit, each of whom had visited in the days leading to her death. Names from Olivia's past, they all have reasons to hate her. The novel's structure, coupled with Dr Plant's conviction, encourages the expectation that one of these women did the bloody deed. But which one?

Don't look to Doctor Jordan Plant or Inspector John Sims for the answer, they feature only in the first of the novel's five sections. "Louise," the second section, serves to introduce a living Olivia and her family. Mother Meg, was a music hall performer in the Old Country. Father Tom was a smitten medical student, disowned over his choice of mate. Together Meg and Tom emigrated to a small Canadian city (read: Windsor), where they raised their children, Olivia and Gerry, and earned a reputation as a couple of carefree oddballs.

But what of Louise? Though this is her section, she features hardly at all. It's instead given over to Reg Barnes. The son of a rumrunner who made a fortune during American prohibition, he's expected to marry pretty, buxom blonde Louise Williams, a member of a prominent family that had achieved its riches in the very same manner. The Barneses and Williamses have money and pretense, but Reg is attracted to Meg and Tom's way of life... and their daughter. On the eve of the announcement of his engagement to Louise – invitations are back from the printer – he asks Olivia to marry him. She declines, Reg marries Louise, and in the section's climax, calls out Olivia's name on his wedding night.

"Edith," the novel's second section is named for Edith Temple. A frigid widow with a fetish for cleanliness, she'd once married a younger man, and had endured sex until pregnant. Her unfortunate husband was mercifully shot to death whilst running rum to thirsty Americans. Edith gave birth to a son, Jack, whom she raised with her cold, cold heart. It's no wonder that he's drawn to Meg and Tom's warm, loving home. Like Reg, he develops a thing for Olivia. Things take a turn when Jack learns of Olivia's plans to study theatre in London. He pleads with her to stay, is met with derision, and kills himself.

Though only sixty pages in length, "Mary Anne" may be worthy of a paper. Historians will find interest in its portrait of a family, Meg and Tom's, in wartime London, but the real value comes in its depiction of homosexuality and attitudes towards same. We begin in Canada. Mary Anne Nesbit and younger brother Bill are orphaned in their early teens. Against all odds, with the use of an otherwise useless aunt, they manage to maintain their independence. When comes the war, Bill is sent to fight overseas. Mary Anne joins the Canadian Red Cross so as to be closer to her brother. On leave, Bill visits Meg and Tom, now living in London, and surprises everyone by proposing to Olivia. She accepts, only to frustrate her betrothed by deferring the wedding for the stage. Bill goes on a bender, ending up in a King's Road pub. A man named Christopher Bentley sidles up to him at the bar and, when Bill gets too drunk to stand, takes him back to his flat. From this point on, despite initial "self disgust" on Bill's part, he and Christopher become a couple.

Mary Anne cannot accept her bother's new relationship, as evidenced in this exchange:

"It's your fault, " Mary Anne jumped up and stood facing Olivia, her face working, her hands balled into fists. "I didn't want him to marry you because I knew you'd never make him happy; I know as much about you as you know about me, and I know you'e selfish and cruel and always have been, but you did get engaged to Bill and you should have kept your promise instead of making him so miserable that he went off and got drunk and took up with... this..." she paused, thinking, and Olivia said with deadly sweetness:
     "Is 'pansy' the word you're looking for?"

Citing this passage out of context is deceiving; Olivia can be mean, but here she's defending Bill. His relationship with Christopher is not only accepted, but embraced by Meg, Tom, Olivia, their upstairs neighbour... really, everyone except his sister.

Olivia's defence of Bill is made more interesting in that it is so uncharacteristic. She's depicted as a dislikable, selfish, self-centred, uncaring woman whose only desire is stardom on the stage. In this she's supported by her parents. Meg and Ted's return to England has nearly everything to do with helping Olivia to achieve her dreams, though they'd be quick to point out that it also has something to do with the overseas wartime service of their son Gerry.

Remember Gerry?

The male characters in The Darling Illusion serve no purpose other than to propel the plot. Ted is nothing more than the most adoring of husbands, happily supporting his wife's whims, including her sudden decision to return to England. Gerry, at best the ghost of a character, provides additional reason for Meg and Tom's relocation. Once his parents are reestablished in London, he is – quite literally – killed off. Reg, Jack, and Bill exist only to provide Louise, Edith, and Mary Anne with reasons to hate Olivia.

It wasn't until I'd finished the novel that I read this in the jacket copy: "The Darling Illusion is not a thriller or detective story, but a penetrating novel of character."

A bold claim, it is both true and false.

It's true that The Darling Illusion is not a thriller or detective story; Inspector of Detectives John Sims and coroner Jordan Plant are nowhere to be found after the eighth page. It is not true that The Darling Illusion is a penetrating novel of character. Of its population, only Meg, Edith, and Mary Anne live. This is an unusual novel in that its protagonist, Olivia, exists as little more than a sketch; she's not nearly so realized as the secondary female characters. In this lies the novel's great flaw. Reg, Jack, and Bill all fall in love with Olivia, but the reader will be hard pressed to understand.

Midway through the novel, the omniscient narrator shares this about Bill's feelings for Olivia: "He loved her, but didn't like her."

I've never quite understood how that works.

I didn't love her, I didn't like her, and I didn't hate her; she never seemed real. It's no wonder then that Louise, Edith, and Mary Anne didn't kill Olivia.

I spoil little in revealing that her death can be blamed on a mouse.

I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

Epigraph:

The lines come from Roberts' "The Tantramar Revisited," first published in 1883.

Query: In the years after the war, would Olivia have been able to fly into Canada with a loaded revolver?

The novel's final page hinges on the answer.

About the author:

In fact, The Darling Illusion was the author's third novel, following Life Begins for Father (London: Hutchinson, 1939) and Mine Own Content (1952).

Object: A slim hardcover featuring mustard-coloured boards. The jacket illustration is uncredited. I think the artist captured something of Olivia, a woman whom Dr Plant describes as a woman who "could give the impression of beauty."

My copy was purchased for nine American dollars from an Australian bookseller in mid-March. It arrived two weeks ago. As you might imagine, I'd pretty much given up.

It features this book trade label:

Access: Davies' The Darling Illusion enjoyed only one printing. There was a McClelland & Stewart edition, but I've never seen it. Copies of the novel can be found at Library and Archives Canada, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, and nine of our university libraries. Serving the city in which the author lived, the Windsor Public Library holds none of Scott's novels, though it does have Beyond All Recompense: The Story of the Honourable Profession of Nursing in Windsor (1954), a booklet she wrote for the Windsor Centennial Festival.

Three copies of The Darling Illusion are currently listed for sale online, the least expensive – ten Australian dollars – being in "Good+" condition. Were I to revisit my March purchase, I'd be tempted by the American bookseller offering The Darling Illusion (M&S edition) and her subsequent novel, Return to Today (Peter Davies edition), for forty-four American dollars.

My thanks to Scott of Furrowed Middlebrow for bringing Margerie Scott to my attention. His writing on the author can be found in this post.

Related post:

In Search of Margery Scott