A Son of the Rock

Salt, 2014, 246 p.

Curiously that’s two books in quick succession where the main character has been named Maggie. Here it is one Maggie Davies, though in the care home where she endures her declining months she is known as Maggie Stewart.

The story is told in interleaved sections. Those which recount from his point of view the visits of Maggie’s son Tom to his uncomprehending, dementia suffering mother, are always headed Sunday (though, one, on Maggie’s birthday actually occurs on a Monday,) and other, longer, numbered chapters tell the story of the life which led her there; a life not exactly flashing before her eyes but recollected in non-tranquillity. The final chapter, titled Sunday Afternoon, interweaves paragraphs from the two time-lines as the end nears.

Maggie spent the post-Second World War years seeing her twenties fade into thirty without attracting an admirer and fell prey to the dubious charms of the first man who gave her some attention only to be promptly dumped. When the inevitable happened, her parents threw her out. She travelled to Lewis to the home of family acquaintances but, forewarned, they also treat her with disdain and contempt. Only in a guest-house does she encounter any warmth, when she and the landlady’s war-blinded son, Michael, fall for each other. Lewis is a small place, though, and her secret causes her to be thrown out from there too. Returning to Edinburgh, it is only her sister-in-law, Jean, who shows her any compassion or sympathy. She struggles to find a job in her unmarried condition and she is little better treated at Woodstock House where she contracts to be confined and for her child to be looked after until she can get on her feet. Butlin really brings out the utter callousness of “polite” society at this time towards those who had made a mistake or been too innocent – or both. Only her correspondence with Michael, carried out via his best friend, and her visits to Woodstock House to see Tom give her any comfort. When Michael contrives to travel to Edinburgh it seems a happy ending might be in store – but we know from the ‘Sunday’ sections this will not be forthcoming.

This is a wonderfully written slice of an aspect of social history and a blazing indictment of those blinded to compassion and consideration by self-righteousness.

Pedant’s corner:- Jenners doorway – later Jenners’ doorway (Jenners’s,) Queens Crescent (Queen’s Crescent – used later,) Mrs Saunders’ (Saunders’s,) “that the woman’s heart being turned over” (that the woman’s heart was being turned over,) Miss Davies’ (Davies’s.) “The Forth Road Bridge was a cat’s cradle of red” (the Road Bridge has never been red and wasn’t built till the early 1960s: this part of the novel was set in 1950. The Forth Bridge – the rail bridge, which requires no such distinguishing adjective and was completed in 189o – was meant,) “to start to paying Jean back” (to start paying Jean back,) “would would stop her” (only one ‘would’ needed,) an opening quote mark which wasn’t necessary as it was a descriptive passage, not dialogue, “in her wellingtons boots” either, ‘in her Wellingtons’, or, ‘in her wellington boots’.)