While the English writer Nina Bawden is probably best known for her children’s books, especially Carrie’s War and The Witch’s Daughter, she also wrote several novels for adults, mostly focusing on the challenges of family life. Her 1965 novel A Little Love, A Little Learning is one such book – a subtle, well-observed story of the pains and joys of growing up. Carrie’s War aside, A Little Love… was my first experience of Bawden’s fiction, and while I didn’t love it as much as I expected to, there’s more than enough here to encourage me to try another.
Set in 1953, the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, the novel is narrated by twelve-year-old Kate, who lives with her family in the fictional suburb of Monks Ford, some twenty-five miles from London. Kate and her two sisters – eighteen-year-old Joanna and six-year-old Poll – have been raised by their mother, Ellen, and stepfather, Boyd, the warm, generous, open-hearted local doctor who loves the girls as he would his own. Having grown up with Boyd as her guardian, Kate has no impression of (or curiosity about) her biological father – as far as she is concerned, his absence has not been missed.
My father had not gone out of my life, he had, quite simply, never existed in it. I never even missed the idea of him, since, as most fathers were away from home at that time, his absence was not remarkable, nor remarked upon. As far as I was concerned, then, Boyd had not taken his place because there was no place to take. The role Boyd played was entirely his own… (p. 131)
For Ellen and the girls, their comfortable life in the suburbs is a world away from the hardship of Mile End Road, the family’s previous home before Boyd rescued them from poverty. Nevertheless, when Ellen’s old friend Aunt Hat (short for ‘Hattie’) comes to stay, the equilibrium within the family is gently disturbed in subtle and surprising ways.
She was dressed in the fashion of a few years before, known as the New Look: a full, tight-waisted skirt and girlish, frilled blouse, fastened at the neck by a brooch of painted shells. The curls and clothes gave her a romantic air. Her talcum powder smelt like icing sugar and, indeed, she reminded me of a frosted cake, soft and meltingly sweet… (p. 23)
While Ellen is practical, liberal and gentle, Aunt Hat is emotive, sentimental and indiscreet, minded to forgive her third husband, Jack, for his short temper and volatility. In short, Aunt Hat has taken refuge with Ellen and Boyd while Jack stands trial for domestic abuse – a charge that will likely put him in jail for a minimum of nine months if convicted – yet she still holds a soft spot for him. Kate is especially intrigued by this visitor’s arrival, triggering long-buried memories of a disagreement between her mother and Aunt Hat just before Ellen moved the family to Mile End Road.
With Joanna wrapped up in her feelings for local boy, Will, and the disorganised Poll busy playing games with her friends, Kate is left to accompany Boyd on his home visits to patients, an activity that exposes her to some of the complexities of the adult world. These outings, together with Aunt Hat’s colourful background and tendency to gossip, cause Kate some anxiety, revealing moral and ethical choices that she struggles to understand. For instance, when Kate realises that Boyd has played a role in arranging an abortion for one of his patients, she views his actions as wrong despite the valid mitigating circumstances involved.
…I sat quiet, feeling hurt and unanswered and puzzling over all the things that were beginning to worry me that year: why I was who I was and why Poll was who she was and why other people, all the other people in the turning world, were who they were, questions that were sometimes comfortable and idle, to be pondered lazily on long, flowering afternoons, and sometimes painfully alarming so that I had to squeeze my eyelids shut or sing under my breath to take my mind off them. (p. 145)
As the story plays out, several factors come together to create complications for the family, fuelled by Kate’s overactive imagination and a tendency to embellish the truth. Moreover, Boyd’s clinical judgement is further brought into question when he inherits a large sum of money from a doting female patient, especially when the deceased’s brother is cut out of the will…
In summary, this is a poignant, well-observed coming-of-age story, leavened with some lively touches of humour and an interesting cast of characters. The curiosities and concerns of adolescence are especially well-portrayed through Bawden’s depiction of Kate’s inner world; likewise, the scenes of family life are vividly painted with insight and sensitivity. A pleasant, enjoyable read, lacking perhaps some of the economy and precision I love in similar novels by other 20th-century women writers. Nevertheless, as I mentioned upfront, there’s enough here to prompt me to try more.
A Little Love, A Little Learning is published by Virago Press; personal copy.
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