REVIEW: The Whalebone Theatre

[feather_ghyll]

The Whalebone Theatre: Joanna Quinn
Fig Tree, Penguin 2022 (Free Proof Copy, acquired at a charity shop)

For some reason, I thought it was a children’s book, although I was quickly disabused of that notion just by reading the table of contents, fittingly laid out in acts rather than parts. We start off in 1919 where the inhabitants of Chilcombe are awaiting their new mistress. Cristabel Seagrave is four, and she is about to meet her new mother, for her father has remarried. Rosalind Seagrave reminds herself that Cristabel is motherless, but neither take to each other. Cristabel is seen as half-wild, always doing what her nanny would rather she is not. Rosalind, 23, accepted the proposal of a middle-aged widower because there were no other offers after the Great War, but she was so ignorant of sexual intercourse and pregnancy that she experiences sex with her husband almost as if it were marital rape. She gets on better with his much younger, much more charming brother Willoughby.

But then, rather disarmingly, the author takes us back in time to walk in Jasper Seagrave’s shoes. The firstborn of a loud man who exuded capability, his birth was followed by miscarriages, stillbirths and babies who died until the miracle of Willoughby. It becomes clear that one of the inheritances of Chilcombe is a lack of parental love (or an excess of it). Jasper turns to food for comfort, when war comes, an injury, his weight and age stop him from going to fight, whereas Willoughby flourishes as a pilot. Even after their father’s death, Jasper doesn’t flourish, until he meets down-to-earth Annabel and falls charmingly in love. She’s in her thirties, but instead of a son and heir, she gives birth to Cristabel, who her father will never love because her birth took away the love of his life.

The family changes in an unexpected way, and the book homes in on a particular stretch in Crista’s childhood. Aged about 12, she is the de facto big sister to ‘the Veg’ or Floss, about 8, her half-sister, and Digby, about 6, her cousin in fact. Rosalind is a hostess, Willoughby a benign drunk and the children finally have a governess, Mlle Aubrey, who they can’t shake off.

Cristabel has just found a whale washed up on the beach and claimed it. At around this time, the children also meet a Russian artist who helps inspire them to build a ‘theatre’ on Chilcombe’s grounds, using the whale’s bones. Cristabel has enough force of character to put on a play, using family members, house guests and servants as actors. Digby turns out to be a fine actor, and it becomes an annual affair.

Until the late 1930s come and Cristabel, who has always thought herself as good as a boy, is finding being a young lady difficult. So does plump, musical Flossie. Neither are helped by Rosalind’s notions and words. Meanwhile, the men are talking of war, and when it comes, eighteen year old Digby runs away and signs up with the army. Cristabel volunteers too, heeding the advice of one of her uncle Willoughby’s old military friends, while Rosalind and Willoughby drift away, leaving Flossie to take care of the house, grow up and find herself, as do the other two, who eventually both find their way to France as agents, as fluent French speakers.

Some of the developments are not-at-all surprising, plenty has been written about 1919-1945, (for instance, I’m watching ‘Outrageous’, set in the early 1930s). There were moments that reminded me of ‘Swallows and Amazons’, although the Seagrave children are more neglected. Cristabel grew up on Henty (as did her distant and then absent father) and has a confused notion of herself, although she grows up to see that it’s unfair that there are so many things she can’t do – like go to school – because she’s female. She and the other two slowly learn as they grow up and their world expands that their upbringing was abnormal, with an upper class sense of superiority, but adults other than their relations were the ones to educate and rear them in their own way, from flamboyant poetesses to sensible servants. I was reminded a bit of D.E Stevenson’s ‘Ambermere’, although this is richer.

For all three, the war that unfolds as they come into adulthood, shaking up their world, is the remaking of them, although some of that is through harrowing circumstances. Cristabel is almost destined to develop some kind of relationship with Leon, the eldest of the children the Seagraves termed ‘savages’. Willoughby suspects his son’s homosexuality before Digby himself realises it, while Flossie, once freed of her mother and society’s expectations, finds love over music twice. (There are shades of ‘Suite Francaise’ in one of these romances.)

The chapters and sentences tend to be short. The novel is mostly chronological, offering Cristabel’s childlike view of the world, contrasted by others, first of all Rosalind, then bringing in Flossie and Digby’s increasingly, and occasionally Maudie the maid’s among others. It creates a collage effect. It’s mostly narrative, but sometimes chapters are letters from Cristabel and Digby’s correspondence, or lists, and a couple, which I didn’t like, play around with form like verse-libre poetry, but it’s prose. So, the literary approach is somewhat fresh.

It's all gripping enough, motherless Cristabel making her way is always sympathetic, as are Flossie and Digby. From the first, we see characters’ depths, even superficial Rosalind’s.