WE ALL KNOW THAT THE longest journey begins with a single step, to which someone wise added that it is also important to be facing in the right direction. So it is with novels: that crucial first page will turn the reader on or off, but only further perusal reveals whether an engaging opening bears any relation to the rest of the book, or whether it is artful window-dressing.
Too often the writer makes a grandiose promise that the reader discovers too late and with bitter chagrin, will not be kept. In September we will find out if the arresting first line of Michael Cox’s debut novel The Meaning of Night (“After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn’s for an oyster supper.”) is vindicated by the pages that follow. John Murray, which reputedly paid a £500,000 advance, is evidently confident of the excellence of the product.
Not every novel can begin with such startling events; the reader must instead be ensnared by the characters. The continuing vogue for historical fiction narrated in the first person demands the most fully developed characterisation of all: the writer must create a voice that will excite our curiosity. The success of this voice depends on our capacity to meet it, if not to identify with it; to appreciate where it is coming from, to feel its authenticity; to connect. A cold-blooded murder will attract anyone’s attention; the appeal of a personality is more a matter of individual taste. A strong narrative voice pulls simultaneously in two directions: it must be unique, yet touch the parts of us that bind us together.
The opening page of Jane Harris’s The Observations introduces Bessy Buckley as she is about to take a job as a servant in a rambling country house near Edinburgh. She grabs our attention by noticing that her travelling companion sustains an impressive erection (“he got a jack on him would have put your eye out”) and conveys a goodly amount of circumstantial information, effortlessly and artlessly delivered in Bessy’s own voice, that, if you are in possession of a human heart, will hold you in thrall for the next 400 pages.
Bessy Buckley can hold her head up with Moll Flanders and Becky Sharp as a living, breathing mortal. The conceit of the novel — that Bessy has been asked to write down her history — enables the narrative to be communicated in her idiosyncratic blarney (she is an Irish immigrant). Her speech is peppered with happy similes, drawn from the slums of Dublin and Glasgow and from a smattering of culture that has stuck to her, as she would probably put it, like shit to a shoe. (In describing Arabella Reid, her beautiful mistress at Castle Haivers, she observes: “A real Aphrodite she was, only with arms”.) Bessy is a great reader and on arrival at Castle Haivers is pleased to be given Bleak House (“I hoped it wasn’t an omen”). Her description in her diary of what must be Richardson’s Pamela typifies what makes her different from contemporary fictional servants: “Missus gave me a book for my gift it is about a servant girl what is kidnapped by her master because he has took a fancy to her, I do be thinking the girl is feeble, she keeps writing letters to everybody about her predicament which is as much use as a sick headache what she should do is beat the lard out him.” (One strongly suspects that she would have preferred Henry Fielding’s skit Shamela.) Books figure large in The Observations: Arabella is writing one on the subject of servants, although this is a secret from her husband. As part of her research, she asks Bessy to keep a journal of her day-to-day doings.
The description of Pamela comes later; Arabella is disappointed at Bessy’s initial efforts, which consist simply of lists of chores. She explains that she wants Bessy to record not just her actions, but also how she feels about them. Ever eager to please her “missus” (whom Bessy quickly comes to adore) Bessy tries harder: “missus showed me how to clean silver i was pleased then she showed me the garden vegetables i was interested and where the sheep got in to eat them last year i was shocked then i carted about a ton of manure across yard i was highly delighted when that was done.”
At this point Bessy and punctuation are strangers, a situation that Arabella sets out to remedy. Bessy quickly learns to make words work to her advantage and the diary is eventually transformed from a means for Arabella to supervise Bessy’s progress into a tool with which the servant begins to control her mistress, as Bessy discovers and consciously manipulates the power invested in her narrative.
The most impressive aspect of Harris’s management of Bessy’s written and spoken language is that it entirely resists condescension: there is no patronising aspect even to the humour that it produces. Bessy is, above all, on the level. The plot of The Observations involves ghosts, murder, madness and duplicity on many levels — stock hi-fi themes, many of which resonate with Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith, with which it is likely to be compared.
However, the plot is not the most important element of this book. What one takes away is Bessy Buckley’s earthy voice, clear as a bell, ringing out her tale of love, loss and redemption.
Extract
Is it not always the way that when you get a shock to the system your body retreats into illness? So it was with me.
Over the course of the next few days the missus herself came and went from my room, she brought me broth, she cut my hair, she slathered cool cloths on my head, but would I speak to her, would I chook. I kept my potato trap and my eyes closed, I did not even want the sight of her. A few times, I heard her voice below in the yard as she spoke to someone, a Hector or a Curdle twin. And at night there was the creak of the stairs as she and her husband climbed to their separate chambers. Every time I thought of what she had wrote in the blasted book the pain grabbed my heart and squeezed it tight, leaving me dizzy and short of breath.
On the afternoon of the 3rd day I felt a little better (although I now suspect I was only delirious). It occurred to me that I would leave Castle Haivers, forget about wages and what I was due, just walk out let her struggle on without me, slap it into her. I even began to pack my duds, but was interrupted in this task by the sound of somebody on the stairs. Thinking it might be HER, I stuffed my bundle in the cupboard and lit back into bed. But it was only Jessie, bringing more broth and not at all happy as she had been instructed to empty my poe. (It contained nought of substance but of course she made a right Holy Show about keeping it at arms length as she put it out the door.) Then she turned to me, hands on hips.
“Her majesty wants tae know have you goat all what ye need.”
“Where is she?” I asked. “What’s she doing?” Jessie gave me the dead-eye. Then she says, with imperial scorn, “She’s downstairs wi’ her skirts up, sitting on a jelly.”
