Darkness in Zennor – Helen Dunmore / Daffodil Days – Helen Bain
DH Lawrence was told to leave Cornwall in 1917 because he had a German wife and the paranoia was such that the locals believed she was sending signals to U boats in the coastal waters. This is historical fact, but then Helen Dunmore has woven a story around it.
Even without the draining horror of the war that wouldn’t seem to end, the war that ate up young men and spat them out broken onto foreign soil, small Cornish communities would always be suspicious of strangers. To some extent that may still be the same over a century later, with many remote villages feeling that you would always be an incomer unless you were born there. An ‘emmet’ is an archaic dialectical term still used, usually in a pejorative sense, frequently applied to holiday makers or people who don’t permanently live there. Further north in Devon and Somerset the word ‘grock’ or ‘grockel’ tends to used, very much in the same derogative way.
Zennor, a small settlement, a few miles from St Ives, situated high above the sea was where the writer DH Lawrence hoped he could escape the war-fever that had flooded London. He wanted a simple country life, growing vegetables, writing at a small table that had views of green fields. He invited the writer Katherine Mansfield and her partner to join them, but they didn’t stay. Mansfield couldn’t cope with the mud, the wind and the lack of heating. Lawrence’s wife Frieda had given up every-thing to be with him: a husband and children, a very comfortable, aristo-cratic life and plenty of money. She so wanted to be happy and be liked.
Helen Dunmore introduces a young girl, Clare Coyne into their lives. She is lonely, despite being part of a large extended family and she is a talented artist. Clare is fascinated by these people who arrive and rent a cottage. They are so different and because of that, so exciting. She draws them, they share meals, they walk and talk. And eventually of course they are noticed and their friendship is frowned upon.
Clare is also involved with her cousin John William, who is on leave and suffering from shell-shock. He is surrounded by farming families who are struggling desperately to avoid their sons being drafted. ‘Essential occupation’ was much mooted and sometimes serious ‘accidents’ took place to an arm or a leg. A damaged or disabled son was infinitely preferable to one who was sent to France and would very likely never return. And why was DH Lawrence not in uniform? Actually he was deemed unfit for service due to tuberculosis; unhelpfully this was not a condition that was very visible.
And then there is a pregnancy. Clare is consumed by secrets and half spoken truths and devastated by the tragedy that overtakes John William. And who is the father of her child? The dark tide of gossip will quietly roll on in Zennor and DH Lawrence and Frieda will leave Cornwall, having found no escape or sanctuary but just suspicion and distrust.
Years later, after another war, and heading towards the 1960s, a decade of change and possibility, there is another high profile literary couple: Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. They too travel west, leaving London and arriving in North Tawton in Devon. Sylvia has in mind a bucolic, country life which really doesn’t quite exist, however hard she tries.
This is Helen Bain’s first novel and it does not follow the usual linear structure. Instead of being chronologically guided, she takes a series of encounters that Sylvia has in the Devon village and uses these to paint a picture for the reader of this vibrant, young American woman who, all her life, has struggled with prolonged periods of dark, debilitating depression.
The author writes with compassion about this enigmatic pair who have a volatile marriage. Ted Hughes always has women who are attracted to him and Sylvia finds it difficult to accept that her husband’s work has a much higher profile than her own.
It made me smile to read the West Country use of pronouns that I remember hearing in West Somerset when I moved there in the early 1960s. ‘Where he be to then?’ And ‘I’ll give it to he when he comes in.’ Decades later with the huge increase in transport, travel and the whole variety of media, speech has been flattened out to a great degree, which is rather sad.
Inevitably after a matter of months, Ted and Sylvia are back in London but living separately. This is the run up to the shattering event of Sylvia’s suicide, that many readers feel has been foretold in her poetry.
There is not a speech mark in sight in this book, but it reads well and easily. I would love to know why Helen Bain chose to do this; obviously it was an artistic decision. There are of course other modern authors, notably Sally Rooney, who write in this way, integrating dialogue within the narrative prose and abandoning all speech punctuation. This blurs the lines between what is spoken and what is thought, giving a stream of consciousness effect I suppose, as in the writing of Virginia Woolf.
So, two novels set in the West Country, both about literary characters and with a strong historical basis. I recommend them both. I found them interesting and satisfying.