The Young Clementina (1935) by D.E. Stevenson

 

I've been splurging on two authors in the last couple of years. Mary Stewart is one and the other is D.E.Stevenson. Mary Stewart was a new author I was introduced to through a friend and although I'd read one of Stevenson's books a few years ago, her books weren't readily available here. If you like a bit of action, feisty heroines and a variety of settings, then I’d recommend Mary Stewart. D.E. Stevenson’s books are softer and more domestic but they are lovely to read, she has a focus on the natural world and her stories are often set in her homeland of Scotland.

There is a sameness in the individual plot structures of each of these authors. I’ve linked to reviews I’ve written about some of Mary Stewart’s books above that will give you an idea of her style. Stevenson’s plots, at least in the novels I’ve read so far, focus on quite young women who have often had difficult or disrupted childhoods. They are unworldly, vulnerable, and generally under confident.

The Young Clementina departs a little from this as the main protagonist is in her thirties, and the man she loved in her teens and expected to marry, married someone else. It is darker and sadder than some of her other books. with a gritty realism in parts and if I didn’t know at the beginning that it was published in 1935, I would have put it after WWII and not before.
The main protagonist is not Clementina and I wondered why the title is what it is, but she is a key person in this story even though we meet her later in the book and she isn’t in it for very long. 

Two roads are open to me, one lonely but well known, peaceful and uneventful; the other full of dangers and difficulties which I cannot foresee.

Charlotte had been living on her own in a bleak flat in London for twelve years. She had grown up with Garth, a close neighbour, and had expected they would be married but when WWI broke out he had gone with all the other young men to fight for his country. Unlike many of the others who went, he returned, but he was changed.

The boy that I had known so well was a gentle-natured creature, considerate to others and somewhat self-effacing. This man who had come back in his place was ruthless, almost brutal at times. I told myself that the war had changed Garth’s nature…

Charlotte realised one night that it was all over between them and that Garth had gone from her forever. It was then that she moved to London and settled into a lonely but peaceful existence working in a private library reviewing travel books.

Separation

THERE is a mountain and a wood between us,
Where the lone shepherd and late bird have seen us
Morning and noon and eventide repass.
Between us now the mountain and the wood
Seem standing darker than last year they stood,
And say we must not cross—alas! alas!

– Walter Savage Landor

This has been my favourite book by Stevenson so far. It is more layered than some of her others and there was a sense of mystery throughout. The characters were interesting, and as with the author’s other books her sense of humour was evident, but in The Young Clementina that only surfaced in one character:

Mrs. Cope – the straight talking, outspoken cleaning lady who was a good friend to the lonely Charlotte:

Mrs. Cope looked around the court and preened herself; she was not in the last frightened, nor dismayed. Is there another country in the world where a woman of Mrs. Cope’s class and upbringing could face a judge and jury in a crowded court with confidence in their integrity and in her own rectitude? Is there another country in the world that could produce a Mrs. Cope?

Kitty – another main character and Charlotte’s younger sister who was selfish, spoiled and devious:

Kitty had become an undisciplined woman…I realised, too, that Kitty had coarsened, not physically – for her body had been cared for with unremitting skill and attention – but coarsened mentally, or perhaps spiritually would be nearer the truth…The coarsening of her mental fibres dismayed me. It was more grief to realise her degeneration, than to contemplate the mess she had made of her life, for the one was an inner and the fundamental thing and the other was merely fortuitous…
I should have been more help to her in her hour of need if she had not shut me out of her life so completely for twelve years.

This was a poignant story that fully engaged my attention. Charlotte’s loneliness and confusion over the lost relationship with Garth was very touching and Stevenson balanced Charlotte’s sorrow at the lost relationship with the feeling of peace she felt in not being in a position to be hurt by the man she still loved.

When I had recovered sufficiently I went and sat in Kensington Gardens and watched the children playing. I felt weak and silly, and the happiness of the children, as they ran about and shouted at each other, touched a spring in my heart…I had missed all that in my life – all the joys of normal womanhood – I was a very lonely woman, on the way to a lonely old age.

Charlotte’s acceptance of her life in London shielded her heart and given her some contentment but she was sunk in a groove that made her shrink from any change. But now she had a decision to make – to risk further misery and pain and face a prospect that terrifies her or to stay in the old groove of her life in books, dreams and loneliness.

I loved this story of loss and new beginnings and a woman’s search for truth. A very satisfying and compassionate story!

According to Wikipedia this title was published as Divorced From Reality in 1935 (alternate title: Miss Dean’s Dilemma; and was republished in 1966 as The Young Clementina)

 

Death in Berlin (1955) by M. M. Kaye

 

M.M. Kaye is well-known for her historical novels but I was unaware that she also had written six crime novels which are set in various locations. Kaye’s marriage to a British Army soldier meant that she travelled extensively and was able to use her experience of living in different locations in her writing. 

Death in Berlin (first published as Death Walks in Berlin) is set in the Berlin of 1953, eight years after WWII. Kaye and her husband were stationed in the city in the post war years and witnessed the erection of the Berlin Wall. They returned in later years and barely recognised the city as most of the ruins had disappeared from the British sector. 

Kaye describes Berlin as she saw it in 1953. As she took long walks through the leafy suburbs between Herr Strasse and the Grunewald and saw the ruined roofless houses where the Nazi elite used to live, she thought up the plot for her book. She made notes and wrote detailed descriptions of the ruined city, and made rough sketches of the stadium that Hitler had built in the 1930’s. This was used for the Olympic Games in 1936 and afterwards for a multitude of Nazi rallies. 

Post-war Berlin was a splendid setting for a murder mystery and the author’s familiarity with the city in the years after the war prior to the erection of the Berlin Wall creates an authentic atmosphere. 

The story opens at Dunkirk in 1940 with a group of refugees making their way to a fishing boat in a bid to escape to England. A young girl clinging to her doll is one of the refugees who makes it onto the boat, but one woman gets left behind in the scramble to get to the boat. Once the refugees reached England it was discovered that the young girl’s parents had been killed when the Germans attacked Belgium and that she was not French, as everyone imagined, but English. 

Years later, twenty-one-year-old Miranda Brand accepted an invitation from her cousin, Robert and his wife, Stella, to travel by train with them to Berlin and have a month’s holiday with them there. One of their travelling companions, Brigadier Brindley, told a story at dinner of a fortune in cut diamonds that was supposedly smuggled out of Germany in 1940. This proved to be the Brigadier's undoing...

That night, as the train rumbled on its way, Miranda could not sleep. She got up to get herself a cup of water and as she returned, the train rocked on a curve which made her stumble through her cabin door in the dark. Reaching out her hand & not finding her berth, she quickly realised she was in the wrong room. She had stumbled into the Brigadier’s compartment. Fortunately, he was sound asleep, and she left immediately and found her own compartment.  Sitting on her berth she thought how stupid she’d been and then she noticed that she had blood on her dressing gown and on the floor where she had walked. The Brigadier had been murdered and the prime suspect was Miranda who literally had blood on her hands. 

It was not only the sight of a murdered man that has brought those days back, dragging them out of that dark attic in her mind into which her conscious and subconscious mind had thrust them. She should never come here, to this shattered city where the very language in the streets tugged at shadowy memories that were better forgotten. 

I enjoyed this book although I didn’t think some of the characters were sufficiently developed - Miranda’s love interest, for example, but I’m keen to read more of Kaye's work. The ending was very unexpected and surprised me and as she reminded me a little of Mary Stewart, I'd be happy to explore her more thoroughly. I'm annoyed I can't find any of her books in the library and was stunned to randomly pick up Death in Berlin for a dollar!

Kaye was born to British parents in India and lived there until she was ten when she was sent to boarding school in England. She never expected to return but she met and married a British Indian Army officer who was transferred to the British Army when the Indian regiment was disbanded.

A few months before we left, The Wall went up. And with its rise many fond hopes for the future of humanity came tumbling down. I watched it being built: which is possibly why, when I look back, I think that I prefer the battered but more hopeful Berlin of 1953.

My Brother Michael (1959) by Mary Stewart

 

‘The result of my own visit to Greece and the impact of that wonderful country on a mind steeped in the classics. ‘My Brother Michael’ was my love affair with Greece.’ - Mary Stewart

Camilla Haven had broken with Philip her fiancée of six years, and now at twenty-five years of age, she had come to Greece for a holiday. Elizabeth, the young woman who was to have been her companion had broken her leg and had to remain in England. The story opens in a cafe in Athens with Camilla writing to Elizabeth about her time in Greece up until then.

‘I’m told that Delphi really is something. So I’ve left it till last. The only trouble is, I’m getting a bit worried about the cash. I suppose I’m a bit of a fool where money is concerned. Philip ran all that, and how right he was…’

As Camilla reflected back on her time with Philip, she was sure now, that although it was fun while it lasted, it wouldn’t have worked out. But after six years of being swept up in Philip’s magnificent wake,’ she did feel life was a trifle dull at times.

‘This is the first time for years I’ve been away on my own - I was almost going to say ‘off the lead’ - and I’m really enjoying myself in a way I hadn’t thought possible before. You know, I don’t suppose he’d ever have come here all; I just can’t see Philip prowling around Mycaenae or Cnossos or Delos, can you? Or letting me prowl either… There’s no regret, only relief that perhaps, now, I’ll have time to be myself…Even if I am quite shatteringly incompetent when I am being myself…’

To miss Delphi was unthinkable but it seemed that her only option was a one-day bus tour. It was all she could afford but a case of mistaken identity and her limited knowledge of the Greek language changed her plans. A stranger had come up to her table in the cafe with the keys to a hire car saying that the car was wanted urgently by Monsieur Simon in Delphi - it was a matter of life and death. He was told to give the keys to a young girl sitting alone in the cafe and she would drive it to Simon in Delphi.
After an unfruitful conversation with the cafe owner and various customers and a wait to see if another young woman arrived to pick up the car, she decided she might as well turn the situation to her advantage and drive it to Delphi herself.

‘The thing was simple, obvious and a direct intervention of providence.’

Camilla differed from the other heroines I’ve come across in Mary Stewart’s novels. She was unsure of herself and described herself as incompetent and cowardly. As the story progressed, she encountered situations where her mettle was tested, and she proved to be stronger than she imagined.
There was the usual romantic interest, which also differed from that in other books. Simon, a young Englishman, was reserved and gentle - a counterpoise to the overbearing Philip. Compassionate and tolerant, he saw beneath Camilla’s lack of confidence and gave her credit for having a personality of her own. I liked this shift from the feisty, competent heroine to one who was unsure of herself and couldn’t reverse a car to save herself.

My Brother Michael is set about fourteen years after WWII. Simon’s older brother, Michael, had been with the Special Air Service when the Germans occupied Greece and had been doing undercover work as a British Liaison Officer attached to a guerrilla organisation. Michael had died on Mt Parnassus in 1944 and Simon had come to Greece to find out more about the circumstances surrounding his death.

There’s a bit of history in this story - ELAS, the Communist Resistance; EDES, the anti-Communist Resistance, and the failed Communist coup in 1944.

‘And when you think harshly of ELAS, remember two things. One is that the Greek is born a fighting animal. Doesn’t their magnificent and pathetic history show you that? If a Greek can’t find anyone else to fight, he’ll fight his neighbour. The other is the poverty of Greece, and to the very poor any creed that brings promise has a quick way to the heart.’

Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you...?
- King Lear, Act 3; Scene 4

I was reminded of Helen MacInnes book, Decision in Delphi (1960), as it touches on the Greek Civil War and has its climax in Delphi. I linked to a few articles on the aftereffects of the civil war when I wrote it.

My Brother Michael has more violence than any of Stewart’s other books and there is one particularly nasty account of a s*xual nature and betrayal in Chapter 17 which was unexpected and jolting but not very explicit.

‘And that was how (…) was murdered with twenty yards of me, and I never lifted a finger to help…’

Some interesting links related to the content of this book:

The Charioteer of Delphi in the Clutches of WWII

Excavations at Delphi