A Son of the Rock

B&W, 2002, 252 p.

This is the third in Thomson’s trilogy which I only picked up because the second of the series had scenes set at the Empire Exhibition held in Glasgow in 1938. This one carries on the interrelated stories of the Cartwright and Gourlay families into the Second World War.

The book starts with the reconciliation of Wincey, who had fled her upper middle class home after the demise of her abusive grandfather – a death for which she erroneously felt responsible – to find refuge with the resolutely working class Gourlays. Davis again contrasts the welcoming acceptance of the Gourlays with the sterility of the Cartwright family’s relationships. Mrs Cartwright, Wincey’s grandmother is a stand out in this regard but has fewer appearances in this third instalment.

Wincey begins to spend her weekends at her parents’ home but still stays with the Gourlays during the week. Her mother, Victoria, is always pained by the fact that she refers to the Gourlays’ house as home. The war, when it comes, impinges on everything. The Doctor who became Wincey’s man friend but whom she can’t quite commit to because of her childhood trauma joins the navy and dies at Dunkirk. Malcy, the widower of Charlotte Gourlay (who was killed in a car accident in book two,) receives disfiguring injuries in the evacuation. Two of the Gourlay sisters are killed in the Clydebank blitz. Wincey’s parents become estranged by their war work; she as a nurse, he in the Home Guard.

All this is told in a workmanlike prose that is always easy to read but somehow unsatisfying. The characters have little emotional depth and sometimes are mere mouthpieces for events in the wider world. The chronology of those events is also frequently out of skew. There is too much telling, not enough showing, and occasional unnecessary asides elaborating on things the reader knew, or can work out for, him- or herself.

Moreover, the central development in the book – the rapprochement between Wincey and Malcy – is psychologically unconvincing. It is almost as if Davis herself had forgotten how things stood between them in Book Two.

Her trilogy is an echo of a past age but not really a close examination of it.

Pedant’s corner:- “‘But she makes that angry the way she treats you’” (But she makes me that angry the way she treats you’,) “the government were telling people” (the government was telling people,) a missing opening quote mark t the beginning of a piece of direct speech, “London was now the bombers primary target” (bombers’,) “‘she doesn’t mean it as slight on you’” (as a slight,) “with Nicholas in the part” (with Nicholas in the past.) “‘Tell her I asking for her’” (I’m asking,) homeopathic/homeopathy (several times; homoeopathic/homeopathy, or, even better, homœopathic/homœopathy,) a missing question mark, “saying’ Grow your own, can your own’” (saying, ‘Grow your own, can your own’.)

B&W, 2000, 237 p.

This is a sequel to Davis’s novel The Clydesiders, though it might as well not have been. The actual plot here does not require it. It could as easily have been anybody’s daughter who fled the house after her grandfather died in front of her when she had frozen at his fit and not fetched his medicine. As it is, Davis more or less uses it as a thread to tie this one to the first book in her trilogy.

Wincey (Winsome) is that much-loved daughter of Virginia and Richard Cartwright, whom everyone sees as close to her grandfather. Wincey knows his darker side though. When he takes that fatal fit she watches immobile as he dies, before fleeing off and taking the first tram she sees. She ends up crying on a street in Springburn where Florence Gourlay befriends her and takes her home – as an orphan otherwise destined for the workhouse. In a sense Wincey strikes lucky. The Gourlays – father Erchie, mother Teresa, eldest sister Charlotte, twins Euphemia and Bridget and Granny, Erchie’s mother, who gets all the best lines – are a friendly loving family and treat Wincey as one of their own.

It is the thirties though, and times are hard with Erchie unemployed. Salvation comes with the family’s sewing activities spearheaded by Charlotte but which, with Wincey’s help and Erchie’s knack for mending machines, is built up over the years into a successful business. Flies in the ointment are employee Malcy making up to Charlotte with an eye to the main chance and Wincey’s total aversion to men. She is cold even to Erchie, who has given her no reason to be. Very occasional chapters deal with the loss Virginia and Richard feel at Wincey’s disappearance, the strains it places on their marriage and their ongoing friendship with Virginia’s first husband James Mathieson, bound as they are by their socialist principles.

All this takes place in the shadow of the 1930s, the growth of Nazism in Germany and the shadow of forthcoming war. One bright spark is the Empire Exhibition of 1938 held in Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park, the mention of which in the book’s blurb enticed me to buy it in the first place. Literally bright; the night time illuminations were famously spectacular. Though Davis has clearly researched it (she may even have attended the event,) the scenes at the Exhibition itself are a little cursory. Then again a lot of the book is. Relationships are sketched out, developments telescoped, the treatment rushed, the information dumping and drawing of background somewhat crude. Sometimes conversations are too obviously designed to provide the reader with explanations. Though probably true to life as it was then the female characters seem much too eager for Wincey to be married off given she’s still in her mid-to-late teens.

Davis has been described as Glasgow’s Catherine Cookson. I’ve not read any Cookson. And I won’t in the future.

Pedant’s corner:- Davis uses the term ‘abusing’ of Wincey’s grandfather’s treatment of her. That’s an anachronistic word for what was more likely known in the 1930s as molesting or interfering with.
Otherwise; “of the abdication King Edward VIII” (abdication of King Edward,) “‘Any digestives,’ Granny asked” (a question mark, not a comma, after ‘digestives’,) “hokey kokey” (hokey cokey,) an end quotation mark in the middle of a piece of direct speech. “‘For years they’ve been these camps’” (there’ve been,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech. “‘Did she do along with this story’” (go along.) “‘Hiding’ yer heid in the sand’” (Hiding, [or, Hidin’] yer heid.) “‘An aw wis right’” (An ah wis right,) “‘When’s she ever been a blether,” Granny wanted to know’” (a question mark, not a comma, after blether) “along side” (alongside,) “the Atlantic restaurant” (it’s a proper noun, so Atlantic Restaurant,) “‘You really do believe there’s going to a war, then’” (going to be a war.)

Black and White, 1999, 276 p.

In an Oxfam bookshop I picked up the second book of the trilogy of which this is the first to check the flyleaf blurb. It mentioned the Empire Exhibition 1938, which its characters visit, so of course I had to buy it – and the third instalment which accompanied it. That left this one, which fortunately (or not) was available through Fife Libraries.

The Clydesiders starts in 1914. Victoria Watson is a young woman raised in a room and kitchen in the Gorbals, now in service as a kitchen maid in Hilltop House, the home of the Cartwright family. The son of the house, Nicholas, takes a fancy to her one day when she is out picking mushrooms for the table. The inevitable progression happens. With him being an Army officer the outbreak of war means their enforced separation but not before she has informed him, and he his mother, of her pregnancy. Against his professed wishes that Victoria be kept on, Mrs Cartwright summarily dismisses Victoria the day of his departure for Belgium and she is forced back to the dismal, insanitary conditions of her parent’s home. Not that its interior is unclean, that was a source of pride to working-class women. It is the overcrowding, the overflowing communal lavatory which the landlord will not fix, the vermin, and the back middens which make the building a slum.

Mrs Cartwright changes her tune when her son is reported dead, takes Victoria on temporarily as a maid/companion in her Helensburgh house and offers to bring her granddaughter up in comfort provided Victoria will have no more to do with the child. Despite her misgivings Victoria accedes to the request (which is really more of an order,) hands over her baby son and returns to her parents’ home.

In the meanwhile the political circumstances of the time background the story. The slum conditions, the raising of rents and most especially the perceived injustice of the war, fought by working men against working men for the benefit of their rulers, fired up a teacher, John Maclean, to protest. Victoria’s family are keen socialists but, even so, one of her brothers is working in a munitions plant and gets her a job there. Many of the “Red Clydesiders” protests and the authorities’ heavy-handed measures to restrain them are covered in the book. Due to her involvement in the movement Victoria meets another dedicated socialist, James Mathieson.

Tragedy then hits the Watsons as brother Ian is killed in an explosion in the factory. Mathieson then discovers the factory owner is none other than the Mr Cartwright who is Victoria’s son’s grandfather. Though she does not love him things progress between Victorian and Mathieson, but nevertheless she marries him. All this might have been fine but proceedings descend into melodrama when a few months later Richard Cartwright is found to be alive in a hospital in England and Victoria’s feelings are torn.

The writing here never rises above the workmanlike. There is a high degree of information dumping with too many circumstances of early twentieth century life deemed to require explanation, like the prevalence and cause of the disease rickets, the Scottish word ‘douts’ for dog-ends, and so on. The nature of Mr Cartwright’s business is unnecessarily kept from the reader so as to heighten the later conflict. The overall story relies too much on unlikely incident and coincidence. Victoria’s father, brothers and husband are throughout little more than mouthpieces. Nearly all the characters are types rather than individuals.

This is not high literature then. I suppose it was never intended to be. But it does highlight the conditions and grievances which led to the notion of socialism as a potential remedy for them

I still have two more books in the sequence to read……

Pedant’s corner:- lambant (lambent,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech (x 3,) Mrs Smithers’ (this, on the same page as Nicholas’s, ought to be Smithers’s,) ditto Tompkins’ (Tompkins’s,) bisom (usually spelled besom,) “‘who madam wants to speak to in the living room?’” (wasn’t a question so needs no question mark.) A man sings ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ in the street (in mid-1914?) There are mentions of munition workers turning yellow (again, in 1914?) “stunted childrens growth” (children’s,) “leaning back in this chair” (his chair.) “The Gairloch” (It’s ‘Gare Loch’, Gairloch is a village in northwest Scotland,) John Maclean is arrested as a “prisoner of war” (he could not have been a prisoner of war. He wasn’t an enemy combatant,) James’ (many times, but also – more than once – the correct James’s.) “She’d certainly could not have imagined” (She certainly could not,) St Andrew’s Hall (x 2, it was always ‘St Andrew’s Halls’,) “the crowd who welcomed” (the crowd which welcomed.) “‘Who’s side are you on?’” (Whose side,) a telegram is sent to Mrs Watson to tell her her son is missing in action, believed killed. (He was married, it would have been sent to his wife,) “for goodness’ sake” (varies between this and ‘for goodness sake’,) during one encounter Nicholas refers to our heroine as Virginia Mathieson (he would more likely have used her maiden surname here.)

These are the Scottish books I read this year, in order of reading. 14 by men, 13 by women. Two were SF and one had a fantasy element. Two were non-fiction and another contained poetry.

Death is a Welcome Guest by Louise Welsh
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
The Comforters by Muriel Spark
Red, Cherry Red by Jackie Kay
Braking Day by Adam Oyebanji
Rose Nicolson by Andrew Greig
The Gourlay Girls by Margaret Thomson Davis
A Summer of Drowning by John Burnside
The Perpetual Curate by Mrs Oliphant
The Thistle and the Grail by Robin Jenkins
The Big Music by Kirsty Gunn
The Young Team by Graeme Armstrong
At the Loch of the Green Corrie by Andrew Greig
Something Like Breathing by Angela Readman
To Be Continued by James Robertson
Lobsters on the Agenda by Naomi Mitchison
Morning Tide by Neil M Gunn
The Good Times by James Kelman
Phoebe Junior by Mrs Oliphant
Robinson by Muriel Spark
Midwinter by John Buchan
Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan
Clydesiders at War by Margaret Thomson Davis
Scottish Ghost Stories edited by James Robertson
Ancestral Machines by Michael Cobley
Islanders by Margaret Elphinstone
Billionaires’ Banquet by Ron Butlin

It’s that time of the year when people post ‘best of’ lists.

This isn’t a best of, merely a list of the books with Scottish authorship or Scottish flavour which I read this year. A round 30, of which (since Scotland in Space was an anthology* containing stories and articles** by both men and women) 14½ were by men and 15½ by women, 28½** were fiction (Snapshot being about Scottish Football Grounds.)

The Corncrake and the Lysander by Finlay J MacDonald
Light by Margaret Elphinstone
Snapshot by Daniel Gray and Alan McCredie
And the Cock Crew by Fionn MacColla
A Lovely Way to Burn by Louise Welsh
Ringan Gilhaize by John Galt
The Gates of Eden by Annie S Swan
Close Quarters by Angus McAllister
Vivaldi and the Number 3 by Ron Butlin
End Games in Bordeaux by Allan Massie
The Gleam in the North by D K Broster
A Far Cry From Kensington by Muriel Spark
Scotland in Space Ed by Deborah Scott and Simon Malpas
Being Emily by Anne Donovan
The Ninth Child by Sally Magnusson
Big Sky by Kate Atkinson
Their Lips Talk of Mischief by Alan Warner
The House by the Loch by Kirsty Wark
Summer by Ali Smith
Glister by John Burnside
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Scabby Queen by Kirstin Innes
The End of an Old Song by J D Scott
The Rental Heart and other fairy tales by Kirsty Logan
Republics of the Mind by James Robertson
The Dark Mile by D K Broster
Highland River by Neil M Gunn
The Clydesiders by Margaret Thomson Davis
The Last Peacock by Allan Massie
A Day at the Office by Robert Alan Jamieson

That last one was of course my final (unless I ever get round to Trainspotting) book on the Best 100 Scottish Books list.

I am part way through George Mckay Brown’s collection of short stories, Hawkfall, which would make the above sex ratio of authors 1:1 but am unlikely to post about it here before the New Year. (I’m four behind as it is, though one of those is for ParSec.)

* It was also the only one to be SF or Fantasy.

Black &White, 1993, 208 p. In Wax Fruit. First published 1947.

Wax Fruit is a trilogy of novels set in the Glasgow of the late nineteenth century. Antimacassar City is the first in the sequence.

We are dealing with the saga of the Moorhouse family, originating from an Ayrshire farm in the mid-1800s, though the setting is mainly Glasgow in the 1870s. The youngest Moorhouse, Phœbe, is the result of her father’s second marriage, to a Highland woman, and the book’s first scene describes the night she was orphaned by an accident. Phœbe is portrayed as a restrained, self-possessed girl and, later, young woman. Her older (half)-brother Mungo is the only one of the family left at the farm, the others have moved to Glasgow and are going up in the world. Her brother Arthur’s wife Bel determines to take her in, even though she is expecting their first child.

Phœbe takes a sisterly interest in the child, Arthur, when he is born. A few years later a maid, taking a shortcut home from a visit to his grandmother, loses him in a slum area when distracted by her sister’s presence there. On her own initiative and though still a child Phoebe sets out to find him, braving the shocking – and frightening – conditions of the overcrowded slums, and earns Bel’s everlasting gratitude for his rescue. McCrone’s attitude to the slum dwellers, couched through the middle-class values of the upwardly mobile Moorhouses, is disparaging and dismissive. They are depicted as depraved and dissolute; there is, it seems, nothing to redeem them.

The rest of the book deals mainly with Bel’s attempts to persuade her husband to move out of the city centre to the more salubrious West End and Mungo’s surprising attractiveness to Miss Ruanthorpe of Duntrafford, the local Big House in Ayrshire.

Henry Hayburn, tongue-tied except when enthusing about steam engines and engineering and a friend of another of Phœbe’s brothers, develops on sight a yearning for her. She is less enthusiastic but his family’s exposure to ruin in the collapse of the City Bank of Glasgow brings out her protective side.

The prose here is efficient but fails to spark. Elements of this are a bit like the works of Margaret Thompson Davis (though of course McCrone was published much earlier) but Davis’s attitude to the poor was more empathetic. But she was portraying the honourable poor.

As a cursory representation of Glasgow (a certain echelon of Glasgow) in the mid-Victorian age this is a good enough primer. Literature, though, it is not.

I still have two instalments to go. Maybe it will improve.

Pedant’s corner:- “Gilmour Hill”, “Kelvin Bridge” (1870s designations? now Gilmourhill and Kelvinbridge,) “‘you’ll can move out to the West’” (‘you’ll move out to the West’ or ‘you can move out to the West’,) missing commas before pieces of direct speech. “‘What way, can she not stay at the farm?’” (no need for that comma, it’s not two phrases,) “begging at he door” (at the door.) “Had she been unhappy here she was?” (where she was.) “Sophia as only too prompt” (was only too prompt,) missing quote marks around one piece of speech, “she turned way” (turned away,) “a coil of barbed wire lying rusty and hidden” (Barbed wire was only invented in 1873. There would hardly have been time for it to have been used on an Ayrshire estate and left to rust.)