Nine Coaches Waiting (1958) by Mary Stewart

 

Linda Martin was back in Paris after an absence of nine years. With an English father and a French mother, she had grown up in France during the Second World War. When she was fourteen both of her parents were killed in a plane crash and she was sent to an orphanage in England where she remained for seven years. When she was offered a position in France as governess to nine-year-old Philippe, Comte de Valmy, she jumped at the opportunity to go back to the country she loved.

'Those sweet, those stinging memories…things I had never before noticed, never missed, until now I saw them unchanged, part and parcel of that life that stopped nine years ago…I was back in France; that much of the dream of the past nine years had come true. However prosaic or dreary my new job might be, at least I had come back to the country I had persisted in regarding as my home.'

Arriving at the Château Valmy in Savoy, Linda found that her young charge was a reserved, lonely child, heir to a large estate kept in trust by his uncle after the boy's parents died. It didn’t take Linda long to warm to the young boy and to discern that he was afraid of his uncle. His uncle had no time for his nephew and was cold and harsh towards him.
A shooting which narrowly missed Philippe, another near fatal ‘accident,’ and an unlikely romance, sets the scene for adventure, danger and uncertainty as Linda commits herself to take care of Philippe while trying to work out who the potential murderer might be.

This is the second book that I’ve read by Mary Stewart (the other being, Madam, Will You Talk?) and it was every bit as good as the first. It took a little longer for the story in Nine Coaches Waiting to develop, but it was also longer than the first.
There were some similarities between the two - a vulnerable but strong young woman, a lonely child who needed protection, the French setting, and a romance.

‘An owl called below me, down in the woods; called again. Its muted melancholy found too ready an echo in me. I felt tired and depressed. Too much had happened today; and the pleasant things…had somehow faded back out of mind and left me with this queerly flattened feeling.
I know what it was, of course. I’d lived with loneliness a long time. That was something which was always there…one learns to keep it at bay…’

Again, Mary Stewart’s writing is just lovely and each chapter is introduced by a literary quotation, e.g.

‘I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so.
John Donne: The Triple Fool.'

And this on the ability of poetry to educate the mind:

'The cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land…yes, that was it. That was it. Not for the first time I was sharply grateful to Daddy for making poetry a habit with me. The best words in the best order…one always got the same shock of recognition and delight when someone's words swam up to meet a thought or name a picture. Daddy had been right. Poetry was awfully good material to think with.'

There are some allusions to Cinderella and Jane Eyre intermingled in the story which were nicely done, as were the revelations of what underpinned the actions or thoughts of various characters.

‘Wrapped up in my loneliness and danger I hadn’t even seen that his need was the same as my own. He and I had hoed the same row, and he for a more bitter harvest.’

A great book to curl up with a cup of tea and no interruptions, if possible, because Mary Stewart’s books are hard to put down - at least the two I’ve read so far have been.

 

Madam, Will You Talk? (1955) by Mary Stewart

 

Mary Stewart was a new author to me in 2022 when a friend recommended her books and what a delightful author she is! Madam, Will You Talk? was her first book and it is a cracker.

Set in Southern France, it is a suspenseful story that doesn’t waste any time in plunging the reader into murder and mystery.

When I wrote that summer, and asked my friend Louise if she would come with me on a car trip to Provence, I had no idea that I might be issuing an invitation to danger…though the part I was to play in the tragedy was to break and re-form the pattern of my whole life, yet it was a very minor part, little more than a walk-on in the last act…How was I to know, that lovely quiet afternoon, that most of the actors in the tragedy were at that moment assembled in this neat, unpretentious little Provençal hotel?

Charity Selbourne, a twenty-eight year old woman, and the book’s heroine, narrates the story. I warmed to her character immediately when she befriended a lonely and deeply unhappy twelve-year-old boy. It’s not the usual stuff of romantic suspense but in one of Mary Stewart’s other books (Nine Coaches Waiting) she sympathetically portrays another young boy. I read in her obituary that:

At the age of 30, she suffered an ectopic pregnancy, undiagnosed for several weeks. Peritonitis set in and she nearly died. It was a long time before she accepted childlessness.

Mary Stewart’s writing is beautiful and descriptive, and reflects not only her own personal experience but also her interests and educational background. There is an abundance of literary allusions, nods to the classics, and knowledge of theatre and art scattered throughout this book. Her rendering of place/setting, in this case the south of France, in particular Avignon and Marseille, play their role as characters in the story - as does a dog!

Then fate, in the shape of Nidhug, took a hand.
My cue had come. I had to enter the stage.

Avignon is a walled city, as I have said, a compact and lovely little town skirted to the north and west by the Rhone and circled completely by medieval ramparts, none the less lovely, to my inexpert eye, for having been heavily restored in the nineteenth century. The city us dominated from the north by the Rocher des Doms, a steep mass of white rock crowned by the cathedral of Notre Dame, and green with singing pines.

le Rocher des Doms à Avignon | Avignon et Provence (avignon-et-provence.com)

The deserted town of Les Baux, in medieval times a strong and terrible fortress, stands high over the southern plains. The streets of eyeless houses - little more than broken shells - the crumbling lines of the once mighty bastions, the occasional jewel of a carved Renaissance window, clothed with ferns, have an uncanny beauty of their own, while something of the fierce and terrible history of the ‘wolves of Les Baux,’ the lords of Orange and Kings of Arles, still seems to inhere in these broken fortifications.

Les Baux-de-Provence Travel Guide - France - Eupedia

I saw the first light, fore-running the sun, gather in a cup of the eastern cloud, gather and grow and brim, till at last it spilled like milk over the golden lip, to smear the dark face of heaven from end to end.

In addition to her quality writing is an exciting, convoluted plot with many twists, including a thrilling car chase through the Rhône-Alpes. I enjoyed the (highly improbable) romance and the old-fashioned feel which reminded me of Agatha Christies’ The Man in the Brown Suit and (just a little) of Helen MacInnes’ writing style.

A wonderful read on a rainy day for me, and best of all, I have two more of her books waiting for me.

Mary Stewart's legacy as an author is vast. She is considered by many to be the mother of the modern romantic suspense novel. She was among the first to integrate mystery and love story, seamlessly blending the two elements in such a way that each strengthens the other.

 

 

Spring Magic (1942) by D.E. Stevenson

 

In his Introduction to Spring Magic, Alexander McCall Smith writes that D. E. Stevenson’s books,

‘…eluded the sort of classification that reviewers and scholars like to engage in. They are not simple romances; nor are they anything that would today be recognised as thrillers. They are in a category of their own: clearly-written straightforward tales that take the reader through a clear plot and reach a recognisable and unambiguous ending. The appeal that they have for the contemporary reader lies in the fact that there is no artifice in these books…These are gentle books, very fitting for times of uncertainty and conflict. Some books can be prescribed for anxiety - these are in that category. And it is an honourable and important one.’

Spring Magic is a delightful story with likeable characters and a sprinkling of humour. It is gentle in that it isn’t a nail-biting thriller, but it does have a certain amount of tension that kept me turning the pages and staying up late to finish it. Set during the Second World War, the story takes place in both the Highlands of Scotland and later in London, and it doesn’t ignore the social upheaval and uncertainty of that time.

Twenty-five-year-old Frances Field had lost both her parents before she was four years of age and had gone to live with the Wheelers, her uncle and his wife, in London. They were old-fashioned, had no children of their own, and didn’t want a child in the house, but there was no one else to take her, so to them she went.
As Frances grew older, Mrs. Wheeler found her to be very useful and as she herself was very lazy and professed to be an invalid, Frances basically took on the running of their large house.
When the war started Frances was keen to help in some way but Mrs. Wheeler ‘couldn’t manage without her.’ One day Dr Digby came to attend the ‘invalid’ and as Frances saw him to the door, he told her that there was nothing the matter with her aunt except laziness. He suggested to Frances that she should take a holiday. She had slaved for her aunt for years and had been blind to the fact that her aunt was always well enough to do anything she wanted. It would do her aunt good if she had to hustle around a bit.

‘It was odd that she had reached the age of twenty-five without having decided what sort of a person she was - or wanted to be. It was because she had never had a chance to follow her own inclinations nor to develop her personality.’

Frances felt invisible. She had a yielding personality and as she did not like scenes, she allowed herself to be dominated and repressed by her aunt. Dr. Digby had planted a seed in her mind and when the bombs began to fall on London she made her decision to leave. She wanted to go somewhere where she could think. She had seen a picture of Cairn, a coastal village in Scotland, at the Academy in London and had made up her mind that someday she would go there. Now was her chance.

The beauty of the place, the eccentricity and charm of the local folk, the friendship of three army wives, and a potential romance help her get back her own soul. She had never had to make her own decisions and at first found choosing between even small things difficult to do, but in this new environment she found freedom and became accustomed to making her own decisions and knowing her own mind.
This is only the second book I’ve read by D. E. Stevenson. I think the first was Sarah’s Cottage but that was about twenty years ago and I can’t remember much of it but I liked this one so much that I’ll be looking out for more of her books. Her characters were interesting and explored more fully over the course of the story. She contrasted two particular characters by their attitude to work and how that attitude extended to their relationships - a careless, slack outlook wasn’t confined to just one area of life; it permeated across into other areas.

Some favourite bits:

‘An epidemic of whooping-cough which was racking the children and disturbing their parent’s nights seemed much more real than the war.’

‘Miss Stalker was a small woman with a large nose and thick black eyebrows - it was her nose and eyebrows that you saw first - the rest of Miss Stalker seemed to be attached to these striking features.’

‘I don’t know whether you have realised what an extremely altruistic person I am. I have always been renowned for the way in which I sacrifice my own interests to the interests of my friends. For instance, when I was six years old I was very ill after eating a whole box of chocolates which belonged to my sister - I did it merely to save her from a similar fate.’

'Several girls had fallen rather heavily for (him) - nice girls too - but he had not even noticed the fact; he had remained heart-whole.'

 'Heart-whole' is a description I hadn't heard of until recently and it has popped up in some other books of this vintage.