Sophie's Choice - Jane Gardam

My Search for Passion Continues...!

Continuing my quest for impassioned literature amongst my bookshelves I come across Jane Gardam. Thinking that a more contemporary author might be more ‘Pellingish’ in her outlook than Jane Austen, I pull some copies off the shelf. Three generations of my family (my Mum, me, my husband and my daughter) all enjoy her writing and we heard her read ‘The Boy Who Turned Into a Bike’ from her compilation of short stories ‘The Stories’ at Dartington last year. This story has an unusual take on love and passion so perhaps I’ll find something to help me here.

 

One of my favourite descriptions of love comes in the first instalment of Jane Gardam’s Raj Orphans trilogy, Old Filth (the other parts are The Man in the Wooden Hat and Last Friends). This first instalment centres on the life of Sir Edward Feathers (often known as Old Filth) and this passage refers to him.

Mrs Ingoldby was Eddie’s first English love. He had not known such an uncomplicated woman could exist. Calm and dreamy, often carrying somebody a cup of tea for no reason but love; entirely at the whim of a choleric husband, of whom she made no complaints. She was unfailingly delighted by the surprise of each new day.

Given the amount of tea made and consumed at the Hayridge this seemed apt; although this refers to deeds rather than words.

In the second instalment, The Man in the Wooden Hat, Old Filth proposes to his future wife, Betty by letter, a letter she describes as ‘meant to be kept’. However, she refuses to answer him until he’s asked in person.

"Which, dear Eddie, if I may say so, must be why you haven’t yet proposed to me."

"I thought I had_

"No. Your Chambers stationery has. Not you. I want to hear it from you. In your words. From your lips." (She was happy, though.)

Although Betty appreciates the care taken in the written version and the possibility of the it’s retention as ‘a memento of the jolly old dead’, she appears doomed to disappointment as, the proposal, when it comes, is no more romantic than the letter, although it eventually moves Old Filth to tears.

Despite the unromantic proposal, Old Filth and Betty remain married until her eventual death when both are in their eighties. As with Jane Austen, perhaps too much florid speech doesn’t always lead to lasting love. Betty Feather puts it like this:

Well, now I know. It won’t be romantic but who wants that? It won’t be passion, but better without, probably. And there will be children. And he’s remarkable and I’ll grow to love him very much. There’s nothing about him that’s unloveable.

But Betty has another lover, Old Filth’s adversary in court, Terry Veneering, the subject of the final part of the trilogy, Last Friends. Despite his entreaties, despite his avowed passion for her, Betty never leaves Old Filth for him and it is Old Filth who finds her when she’s run away (The Man in the Wooden Hat)

Wet to the skin, enclosed in his long arms , Elisabeth began to cry and Edward to set up the curious roaring noises that had overtaken him since his stammering childhood but now only when he was on the point of tears.

She said, "Oh, Eddie! Oh, Filth!" her wet face against his clean warm shirt.

She thought: I love him.

He said, "I thought you’d left me!"

Earlier, before her marriage to Old Filth, (again in The Man in the Wooden Hat), Betty has confessed about the affair with Veneering to her friend Amy who tells her

"I know because you told me, yesterday, that your marriage frightened you, because it meant you would never know passion. You did it to have something to remember and to have known desire."

But unlike, Old Filth, for all his passion Veneering only once tells Betty that he loves her (and then in the context of needing her help to look after his son) and will not leave his wife for her until it is too late. Even after her death, even only to himself, Veneering is unable to say those words (Last Friends):

She could love of course, thought Veneering. My God, I’ll never forget the night she was with me. And she said so little... Life was a performance...

For Betty it was a tremendous march. A brave and glorious and – well, comical sometimes, endurance. All governed by love. Passion – well, she’d forgone passion when she married. Her own choice. She’d taken her ration with me. She wouldn’t forget that night.

Other than a set of pearls and a couple of scrawled and matter of fact notes, signed only ‘V’ and ‘THV’ there is no ‘memento of the jolly old dead’ about this affair.

Perhaps, like Jane Austen, Betty Feathers learned to distinguish between the sincere and insincere, perhaps between passion and lust and love. Like Mrs Ingoldby, deeds may have been more important than words, a fact acknowledged by Old Filth in Last Friends

I came looking for her. Found her in the end, standing here in the road in a browny-gold silk thing, soaked to the skin, suitcase beside her. I’d been round and round, through all the bloody Donheads. Thought I’d never see her again. When I did find her, her wet face became – well, delirious with happiness. As is she saw me for the first time. And I knew I need never worry about you ever again.

But I’ve still not really found what I’m looking for. Perhaps my husband and I should resign ourselves to a Grantlyesque existence, putting the world to rights, rather than Pellingesque passion.

Sophie Ross