I’ve tried to reflect my thoughts on Eric Oliver a few times now, but they’re still swimming about hazily and don’t want to be captured just yet. So I’ll leave Eric for another time and reflect on the first few short stories in ‘Fragments of a Life Story”, published in 1987; The Vast House (which was previously unpublished), Narcissus Bay, and At Sea, both of which were published in Brave and Cruel in 1948.
The Vast House recounts Denton’s memories of visits to his maternal grandmother in her huge Shanghai house. A wheelchair user, she relied on servants to care for Denton, and he adored the footman, Will. He reflects from his adult vantage about the innocence of a young boy enjoying the sensual contact of boisterous play, staring at Will’s physical form whilst he relaxes over a pipe, and furtively wearing Will’s clothes. Denton also describes for us the “boredom and disappointment” of his grandfather’s solitary life as a result of his grandmother’s lesbian relationship with her live-in friend Emma, their mutual passion and devotion excluding all others.
This is the most sensual of Denton’s stories that I’ve read so far, which is possibly why it wasn’t finished or published. His simple joy in Will’s companionship touches the heart. Was Denton indeed such a precocious, self-aware little boy, or does the adult Denton endow him with those gifts? At Sea seems to be similarly knowing in the retelling. Denton (Robert in the story) describes sharing a cabin with his mother on one of their frequent transatlantic trips, and his appalling behaviour towards Mr Barron, a fellow traveller who invited her (but not Robert) to a party in his cabin. Typically Denton, he describes Robert’s behaviour as matter-of-factly as he describes his protagonists’ appalling behaviour in all of his books, and he presents it without any attempt to excuse or justify. He’s asking an adult audience to empathise with a self-absorbed child who is old enough to know better. It also invites judgement on his mother, to a degree; not many mothers would ask their child to choose their clothes for them, and then wear what they chose even if they didn’t agree with the choice! To a modern audience, Denton’s childhood memoirs are a gloriously-described window on the past, an opportunity to reflect on our own childhood behaviour and values, and an invitation to make value judgements.
Young Denton never seems to grasp that the intensity of his relationship with his mother doesn’t trump the requirement to behave appropriately in public, hence his bewildered outrage when she’s forced to rebuke him in front of others. Rosalind was expecting too much emotional maturity on his part to engage in the complicity of being a little boy in public and a mini adult in private. So to some degree, she reaps what she sows, also inculcating a sense of entitlement to personal power that shows up in Denton’s extreme independence in his teenage years and beyond. This is evident in Narcissus Bay; Denton expects his friends to listen when he wants to speak, to do what he wants to do, and agree with his opinions (although lots of children do this, to be fair!). He patronises the adults in the story, feeling sorry for Adam’s mother because “she was so very benighted and unaware of real things”. He bathes, fully clothed, to demonstrate power over the boy who isn’t allowed to bathe.
Denton’s short stories are wonderful to read. Relatively insignificant daily activities elevated to intense vignettes that stay with you long after the reading. But I don’t want to finish reading them! Next up: The Happiest Time, The Coffin on the Hill, and The Barn.