RANDOM JOTTINGS

Why is it during this lockdown period when I have plenty of time on my hands I do not blog more often? I intended to but then slothdom (is that a word?) overcomes me. I have been doing plenty of reading and lots to write about so I am awake early this morning and I shall get on with it.

You will see from the title of this post that I am re-reading Josephine Tey. My introduction to her was as a child when I remembered a radio serial that I listened to of her book Brat Farrar and finding it totally gripping. I have a copy of this on my shelf and it has been there for years so decided to have a crack at it last week. And it was when I started reading I realised that though I knew the story I had never actually read the book.  I just assumed I had.

The summing up of the story is simple: "A stranger enters the inner sanctum of the Ashby family posing as Patrick Ashby, the heir to the family's sizeable fortune. The stranger, Brat Farrar, has been carefully coached on Patrick's mannerisms, appearance and every significant detail of Patrick's early life, up to his thirteenth year when he disappeared and was thought to have drowned himself"

We know right from the start that Brat Farrar is an impostor. The author makes no attempt to hide it and, indeed, the story is told from Brat's viewpoint and we are privy to his thoughts.  Beause of this the reader feels empathy with him and does not condemn outright which we would do if it was coming at us from another viewpoint.

His twin Simon is at first disbelieving that he is his long lost brother but then accepts him with as good a grace as possible.  Brat realises that Simon knows he is not Patrick and is relieved by this. But the pretence continues. There is the odd incidenct when Simon lends Brat his horse to ride, a horse that has a nasty trick of knocking off his riders and causing their death….

So if Simon knows he is not Patrick, why does he not say so?   It was at this point of the story that my rememberance of the radio serial came flooding back and I realised I knew the ending.  But it did not matter as the written word was so different.  Kept me pinned to my sofa all afternoon. Wonderful.

The Franchise Affair.   Robert Blair is a country solicitor living in Milford where nothing happens and hs life is ordered and happy. Or is it?

"At exactly 3.30 pm on every working day Miss Tuff bore into his office a lacquer tray covered with a fair white cloth and bearing a cup of tea in blue patterned china and, on a plate to match, two biscuits; petite-beurre Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, digestive Tuesday, Thursdays and Saturdays…….Once or twice lately an odd alien thought had crossed his mind, irrelevant and unbidden. 'This is all you are ever going to have' and with that thought came a moment's constriction in his chest. Almost a panic reaction…."

And then the telephone rings and it is Marion Sharpe who lives with her mother at a house called The Franchise. They have been accused of kidnapping and beating a demure young schoolgirl, a school girl who seems to know all about the house and its contents and who accused them of keeping her locked up in the attic. Her story rings true.

Tey's Inspector Alan Grant appears in this title but is on the periphery, it is actually Robert Blair, galvanised into action and falling in love with Marion, who turns amateur detective to find out the truth.

This is one of my favourite Tey titles and I read it again with huge enjoyment. Yonks ago I remember an old black and white film starring Dulcie Gray and Michael Dennison and it was frightfully British and full of frightfully clipped accents and it was wonderful. (I have just checked it out on Amazon and it is there with this comment underneath: "How very English, and how very 1950s this movie is! Its tone is mostly subdued, quiet, unassertive and resolutely un-daring; it never shouts at the audience and even permissible melodrama is kept at a minimum. And yet, look at how shocking the story essentially is – and reflect just how sensational and nasty a modern-day version might be! ") I think I may have to watch it again. There was a remake in 1988 with Patrick Malahide perfectly cast as Blair but this seems to be unavailable on DVD so I turned to good old You Tube and found the entire six episodes were available and spent a happy morning watching it. It was as good as I remembered.

Miss Pym Disposes. Another title that I could not remember reading but once I started it I realised I had though many years ago in the mists of time.  Leys Physical Training College is famous for its excellent discipline and its spectacularly athletic students. Miss Lucy Pym, who has had an unexpected successful book on psychology  published later on in her life, is pleased and flattered to be invited to lecture there by her old school friend Henrietta who is the headmistress.

She finds it rather a wearing place to be at first. "A bell clanged. Brazen, insistent, maddening…..Miss Pym looked at her watch. Half past five!"

Her lecture to the students has gone well and she is determined to leave and return to her quiet London life. But something makes her stay on, after all what has she to return to? She has no family, nobody expecting her back and she realises what an uneventful life she leads. Rather like Robert Blair in the Franchise Affair. So she stays and
observes. 

This is a slow burner of a book – the death does not occur until nearly two thirds into the narrative but I think this is a masterly move. We, the reader, have been taken along with Miss Pym and watched and noted the relationships between the students, the underlying feelings and after a while you realise that there is an unbearable tension building up. It is lightly hinted at but it is there and you know something pretty awful is going to happen. When it does it is not a surprise but it is still shocking.

Miss Pym stumbles on something which reveals to her what has really happened. But she hesitates to go to Henrietta and tell her. Instead "Miss Pym disposes" and comes to a decision….and then finds that she might have been wrong.

Stunning book. Yes and I do mean stunning. Not in the sense that something happens every page and that there is derring do and masses of detection. Au contraire. Miss Pym Disposes and the other titles I have read are brilliant at building up a scene at keeping the reader in a state of tension and What is Going to Happen Next frame of mind.

Josephine Tey's writing is wonderful. It is spare, it is elegant, not a wasted dot or comma, not an exclamation mark in sight, no hyperbole just a beautifully flowing narrative which is so easy to read that you might not realise just how good she is.

I have read all her books – though I may had forgotten I had – but there are a few more to re-read and off I go.