Across the Common by Elizabeth Berridge

First published in 1964, Across the Common is the third book I’ve read by the British writer Elizabeth Berridge, and it’s probably the richest and most complex of the three. There is quite a lot going on under the surface in this novel of family relationships and suburban life – a subversive element that reveals itself as the narrative progresses.

As the novel opens, Louise is in the process of leaving her husband, Max, to return to The Hollies, the house where she was brought up, largely by her aunts. Waiting at the door for Louise on her arrival are Aunt Rosa and Aunt Seraphina, almost as if they were expecting her despite the lack of notice.

Right from the start there is a strange aura surrounding life at The Hollies, situated as it is across from the common in suburban Pagham Green. The house itself was built by Louise’s grandfather, a man whose presence still casts a shadow over the property in spite of (or perhaps because of) his early death. Now the house has become a refuge ‘for that vanishing species, the Great British Aunt’, as Rosa and Seraphina are soon to be joined by their sister, the wheelchair-bound Cissie.

Berridge excels at creating miniature pen-portraits of the three aunts, capturing their personalities and idiosyncrasies in the most visual of ways.

Aunt Cissie sat in her wheelchair, tiny and malevolent. She could not have weighed more than seven stone, and yet she seemed to vibrate with energy and fill the hall. I had forgotten, or perhaps had never noticed, how handsome she was. She had the Braithwaite nose, high and arched, and a look of a Basque woman about her: indomitable, aristocratic, and yet with a peasant’s energy. Beside her, my two aunts looked faded. (p. 103)

With her fur hat and forthright manner, Cissie has the eccentric air of ‘minor royalty’, commanding attention as she makes her big entrance. By contrast, Aunt Rosa – the eldest and most orderly of the three sisters – seems rather reserved in comparison, a standing typified by her grey flannel dress. Ultimately, it is left to Aunt Seraphina – the green-fingered middle sister – to provide some of the novel’s most humorous moments. As Louise is somewhat surprised to observe, Seraphina is a dab hand at pilfering flower cuttings from the local park, expertly trimming geranium shoots with great speed and efficiency, irrespective of the official regulations.

‘Aunt Seraphina, you can’t! You’ll be had up! Suppose everybody just took –’

‘Hush, child. Everybody is not me. I understand flowers. They were simply begging to be propagated. There is no crime in simply taking a few shoots to propagate in one’s own garden. Think of the next frost: it would be too late. I cannot bear waste, and I told an officious keeper, so, once.’

‘You were caught?’

‘Caught? Come, come. I was observed, yes, and given a sharp warning. But I made him understand my views. I explained that it was my money being spent on this park, so I was entitled to a little interest on it. Men are so illogical.’ (p. 43)

Louise may have more than one reason for returning to her childhood home, for stepping into the past and its memories of those early years. Naturally, there is the question of what she ought to do in the future, having left Max to his work as an art teacher (and potentially the company of one of his students, too). At first, the split seems permanent, but as the novel progresses, the finality of this decision appears somewhat less certain.

Intertwined with these considerations are Louise’s reflections on her family history, particularly the apparent differences between the Braithwaite men and the women.

It was strange how this family had shed its men. They lost them by illness and disaster. And, if I faced it, by desertion. For their brothers, except for Bertie, still, one presumed, in Canada or America, were dead. They outlived their husbands, would-be lovers and sons. Men, one felt, were merely milestones. (p. 97)

In short, these unsettling feelings are heightened by a letter from Louise’s father (now deceased) that has recently come to light. The letter – which was written several years earlier and placed in the hands of a solicitor – reveals previously undisclosed information about the death of Louise’s grandfather and its ramifications for the wider family. It’s a revelation that ultimately forces Louise to confront the possibility of darkness and violence in her family’s history, where secrets were concealed to protect the reputations of the innocent.

There is a sense that Louise has also returned ‘home’ to understand her past more clearly, to gain a kind of freedom or independence from the aunts who raised her. It is only by doing this, by uncovering the guilt and shame inherent in The Hollies, that she can hope to move forward.

While there is a narrative of sorts here, Across the Common is a character-driven novel – an insightful and humane look at the complexities of family relationships. Berridge has a wonderful eye for detail, capturing the aunts’ minor jealousies with humour and authenticity. The way they cling to the past, guarding their individual habits and rituals, is really quite endearing, highlighting our need as human beings for some dignity and stability – particularly in old age. Louise too is very well drawn, with an engaging combination of visible sympathy and private humour.

Overall, then, an enjoyable read with some great characterisation. Well worth seeking out if you’re a fan of this type of fiction. The Gerts have also written about this book, and you can find their thoughts here. 

My copy of Across the Common was published by Abacus; personal copy.

The Story of Stanley Brent by Elizabeth Berridge (1945)

This is wonderful – a story that compresses the key moments of a man’s life into just 75 pages. It’s the debut novel (or novella) by the English writer Elizabeth Berridge, whose Sing Me Who You Are (1967) I read earlier this year.

The novella opens with a notable event as Stanley – an assistant at a traditional Estate Agents in Belgravia – proposes marriage to his girlfriend, Ada, following an outing in the rain. It’s a touching, self-effacing scene, one that captures something of the tone in this thoughtful little book.

After a long engagement, Stanley and Ada marry. However, their hopes of a bright, optimistic future are somewhat tainted by a difficult honeymoon, particularly as their attempts at lovemaking leave Ada traumatised by the experience. Stanley, for his part, feels angry and ashamed, trapped in his own sense of isolation as he surveys the world outside.

The sight of the flat sands, the quietness of the night, emphasised by the slight sea-noise of dark waters, bought him uncomfortably face to face with himself. Time seemed absent. This was an hour that would not tally with his accustomed thoughts – not only was Ada a stranger to him, he was a stranger to himself. He was conscious of life and death flowing in and around him, desolating and building his spirit, testing and judging. He had never felt so helpless. (p. 22)

On their return home, the Brents slip into a life of routine and domesticity. Two daughters come along; various illnesses and disabilities are hinted at; and suddenly WW1 breaks out (although Stanley is not admitted to the army, presumably for health reasons).

What Berridge does so well throughout the book is to convey the feeling of a life slipping by. Stanley is rather passive and unambitious, qualities that are reflected both in his marriage and in his approach to work. Despite being made a junior partner at the firm, Stanley fails to see that the world around him is changing. He is too snobbish and wedded to tradition to take advantage of the demand for modest properties, a trend that accelerates in the years following the war. There is a degree of passivity too in Stanley’s response to his wife’s brief dalliance, something that gives Ada a sense of freedom and enjoyment. In another affecting scene, the two briefly reconcile when Ada realises the foolishness of her actions and Stanley reveals his deep-seated fear of loss.

As the years go by, the Brents continue to drift apart, fuelled by Ada’s ambitions for her daughters and Stanley’s inherent inertia and possibly depression – signs of an increasing dependence on alcohol begin to appear, especially when Stanley enters middle age.

…but he, Stanley Brent, why should he be lonely? Was it his own fault that Ada treated him so impatiently? Was he so impossible? Take that remark she had flung at him this morning, so final it had sounded. She seemed to know just what to say to agitate and make him appear muddle-headed. What he thought of as calmness was to her merely torpor. But what had she said? Like a splinter it had penetrated the surface of his mind; he could feel it working on his nerves, hurtfully. (p. 56)

There is such poignancy in Berridge’s portrayal of Stanley, which succeeds in capturing the loneliness a man can feel, even when he is surrounded by his family. As a novella, it highlights the small yet significant moments in day-to-day life, the unspoken tragedies of missed opportunities and other lives that might have been lived. Berridge accentuates this theme with a recurring motif, an unfinished tune on a violin that signals a connection between Stanley and Ada’s step-father, Monsieur Boucher, another man whose life seems shrouded in melancholy.

I really loved this novella, which manages to pack an impressive depth of feeling into a very compact story. The book itself comes in a beautiful hardback edition from Michael Walmer’s publishing house. My thanks for kindly providing a review copy.

Sing Me Who You Are by Elizabeth Berridge

There’s been a little flurry of interest in Elizabeth Berridge recently, partly prompted by a series of tweets from Simon (@stuck_inabook) and Frances (@nonsuchbook) on the Abacus editions of three of this author’s novels. Like Frances, I was intrigued by the sound of Berridge’s distinctly English style and promptly sent off for secondhand copies of two of the books, Across the Common (1964) and Sing Me Who You Are (1967). Now that I’ve read Sing, I can say that the cover matches the book to a T, perfectly capturing the rather idiosyncratic nature of the novel’s protagonist, Harriet Cooper.

Harriet – an unmarried librarian in her late thirties – has just inherited a rather ramshackle bus from her late Aunt Esther, which she plans to make her home. As the novel opens, Harriet is arriving at Uplands – a 250-acre Cambridgeshire estate where the bus happens to be located – complete with all her belongings and a pair of Siamese cats. While Harriet has been given the bus, she does not have any claim to Uplands, which is owned by her older cousin, Magda. These two women are very different from one another, both in looks and in stature. While Harriet is dowdy and mannish-looking, Magda is wealthy and attractive, very much the moneyed countrywoman with links to the local council.    

Harriet’s arrival at Uplands is a thorn in Magda’s side, the presence of the bus proving to be something of an irritation – a blot on the pastoral landscape, so to speak.

Earlier on she [Magda] had stood at the highest point of her estate, above the spinney that protected Harriet’s old converted bus, looking down over the woods and field that drifted gently to the little town below. At this time of year she could see a long way, beyond the town and over at least six counties. But all she had noticed this morning was the smoke from that absurd chimney of Harriet’s bus. The smoke rose unhurriedly from beyond the trees, for the wind which had chased the rain away had itself gone, leaving a still, damp autumn day. Harriet’s smoke irritated her, as if her cousin was deliberately writing sky signals asserting her presence on this land. And Harriet was someone whom you couldn’t very well order off, like gipsies or tramps. However much you wanted to, you couldn’t do that to poor old Harry. (p. 21)

There is a sense that Harriet had been feeling somewhat suffocated in her former role as a librarian; perhaps as a consequence of this, she views the bus as something of a fresh start, ushering in a degree of freedom from past constraints. Magda, on the other hand, is convinced that Harriet will hotfoot it back to London once the weather turns colder, underestimating the latter’s determination to stick it out.

At heart, the novel is a character study, an exploration of the tensions that arise between family members whose relationships reach back into the past. There is a spikiness to Harriet’s personality, a prickliness that can annoy others. Childhood rivalries resurface; former crushes re-emerge, particularly those involving Scrubbs, a womaniser with previous links to both Harriet and Magda. While Scrubbs is no longer alive, his shadow still hangs over the family in various and surprising ways. As the narrative unravels, longstanding secrets are revealed, and Harriet must come to terms with an altered view of her Aunt Esther.

The situation is further complicated by the presence of Magda’s husband, Gregg, a man who finds Harriet’s directness rather attractive. With his marriage to Magda on the wane, Gregg is pleased that Harriet has come to Uplands, and a tender entanglement between the two swiftly follows.  

While I didn’t love this novel quite as much as I had expected to, I still liked it a lot, particularly the author’s use of dry humour.

Harriet’s mother had died in the middle of Hymn No. 270 (Ancient and Modern). Her high, tuneless soprano had stopped abruptly and she had dropped forward over the back of the pew in front, hymnbook still open in her hand. Her peppermints, gloves and collection money (two sixpenny pieces, to make a modest jingle) had dropped off the shelf and rolled out into the aisle. Her chin had hit the wood, and her shiny straw hat, a new one, was jerked forward violently over her reading-glasses. All around the singing had grown ragged, heads turned.

It had been horrible. All the more so as this sort of behaviour would have horrified Mrs Cooper herself. (If the woman didn’t feel well, why hadn’t she stayed at home? Such a commotion, so unfeeling.) She must have died at once, Harriet saw, as she picked her up, for there was no realization of any outrage on her face. There was no expression at all. (pp. 27–28)

So, an interesting and intriguing read – there’s certainly enough going on here to make me want to read more. If you’ve read anything by Berridge, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts…