Thalia

by Frances Faviell

  “Then,” said Tagore, “you will have read that the king of the monkeys tore up trees, carried away the Himalayas, and seized the clouds. The Ramayana says that the chief of the monkeys is perfect and that no one equals him in learning. How then should he be deceived by a painted cucumber?” And he began laughing at me again.

  Next day offerings of fruit appeared as if by magic. My prestige had fallen distinctly low. I had offended Rajat and unless he were appeased he might bring bad luck on us all I was told.

  At four o’clock I sat as usual on the veranda with a bowl of real bananas in readiness—but Rajat did not come—and although for several weeks I waited remorsefully for him he never came again.

  Afterword

  I THINK I was about 11 when I realised my mother was becoming a writer as well as being a painter. I was home from my English boarding school for the summer holidays when my father suggested that I should not disturb my mother in the mornings as she would be working. … At the time I was upset as my mother had never seemed to worry if I disturbed her.

  My mother was born and grew up in Plymouth, Devon. She was the fourth of five surviving children born to Anglo Scottish parents. Named Olive, she showed her innate independence at an early age by insisting she be called Olivia .She showed early talent as an artist and in her late teens won a scholarship to the Slade School of Art, then still under the direction of Henry Tonks. Her tutor, and later good friend, at the school was the painter Leon Underwood.

  In 1930 she married her first husband, a Hungarian academic, whose work took him to first Holland and then India. But they separated while there (and later divorced). She then stayed on for three months in the Ashram of the great Indian thinker and writer Rabindranath Tagore. Travelling on her own, painting and sketching, she visited other parts of India including Assam and for a few weeks lived with the Nagas, a primitive indigenous people in northeast India .On her way back to England she travelled via Japan and then China – still painting and sketching – until she had to flee Shanghai when the Japanese invaded.

  On her return to England she lived in Chelsea, then a haven for artists, and earned her living as a portrait painter. She met my father, who had recently resigned from the Indian Civil Service, in 1939, and they were married in 1940 after he had joined the Ministry of Information. Bombed out during the Blitz, as portrayed in her last book, A Chelsea Concerto, they spent the rest of the war, after I was born, in the Home Counties before returning to Chelsea in 1945.

  When the war ended my father was recruited to the Control Commission of Germany and became a high ranking official in the British administration, first in Berlin, negotiating with the others of the four powers on the organisation of the city, later in the British zone of West Germany. We joined him in Berlin in early 1946 and it was here that my mother encountered the Altmann family. It was her experiences with them that inspired her to start writing her first book, The Dancing Bear, which movingly describes Berlin in defeat through the eyes of the defeated as well as the victors.

  Each of her books, whether non-fiction or fiction, were inspired by an episode in her own life. By 1951 we had moved to Cologne and it was here that her second book, the novel A House on the Rhine, was conceived, based around migrant families (from the east of Germany) she had met and helped. Subsequently, she published another novel, Thalia, based on her own experience in France before the War when she was acting as a chaperone to a young teenager for the summer. Her final novel The Fledgeling, about a National Service deserter, was also based on an actual incident.

  My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1956 though I did not know at the time. At first radiotherapy seemed to have arrested the disease. But then two years later, it reappeared. She fought the disease with courage and humour, exhibiting the same clear sightedness with which she had viewed life around her as a painter and a writer. She died just after A Chelsea Concerto was published, in 1959.

  In her books as in her life, my mother had an openness to and compassion for others and, when she saw an injustice or need, would not be thwarted by authority of any kind in getting something done. But as she always pursued her causes with charm as well as firmness, few could deny her requests for long.

  John Richard Parker, 2016

  About The Author

  FRANCES FAVIELL (1905-1959) was the pen name of Olivia Faviell Lucas, painter and author. She studied at the Slade School of Art in London under the aegis of Leon Underwood. In 1930 she married a Hungarian academic and travelled with him to India where she lived for some time at the ashram of Rabindranath Tagore, and visiting Nagaland. She then lived in Japan and China until having to flee from Shanghai during the Japanese invasion. She met her second husband Richard Parker in 1939 and married him in 1940.

  She became a Red Cross volunteer in Chelsea during the Phoney War. Due to its proximity to the Royal Hospital and major bridges over the Thames Chelsea was one of the most heavily bombed areas of London. She and other members of the Chelsea artists’ community were often in the heart of the action, witnessing or involved in fascinating and horrific events throughout the Blitz. Her experiences of the time were later recounted in the memoir A Chelsea Concerto (1959).

  After the war, in 1946, she went with her son, John, to Berlin where Richard had been posted as a senior civil servant in the post-war British Administration (the CCG). It was here that she befriended the Altmann Family, which prompted her first book The Dancing Bear (1954), a memoir of the Occupation seen through the eyes of both occupier and occupied. She later wrote three novels, A House on the Rhine (1955), Thalia (1957), and The Fledgeling (1958). These are now all available as Furrowed Middlebrow books.

  FURROWED MIDDLEBROW

  FM1. A Footman for the Peacock (1940) ... RACHEL FERGUSON

  FM2. Evenfield (1942) ... RACHEL FERGUSON

  FM3. A Harp in Lowndes Square (1936) ... RACHEL FERGUSON

  FM4. A Chelsea Concerto (1959) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM5. The Dancing Bear (1954) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM6. A House on the Rhine (1955) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM7. Thalia (1957) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM8. The Fledgeling (1958) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM9. Bewildering Cares (1940) ... WINIFRED PECK

  Frances Faviell

  The Fledgeling

  ‘I can’t go back. I’d rather die—I’d rather be dead.’

  NEIL COLLINS is going AWOL from his National Service – for the third time. Twice he has served time for previous desertions and been sent back, despite being hopelessly unsuited to military life. This time, terrorized by a bullying fellow soldier determined to escape himself, Neil intends to make his escape a permanent one. He heads to London, to the dreary, claustrophobic rooms where his twin sister, Nonie, and their dying grandmother live, periodically invaded by prying neighbours, a little girl who has befriended Mrs Collins, a curious social worker, and other uninvited visitors.

  The Fledgeling traces the single day following Neil’s desertion, and its impacts on Neil, Nonie, the tough-as-nails Mrs Collins, and others. Each of the characters comes vividly alive in Faviell’s sensitive and observant prose. At times containing all the tension of a thriller, at others a profound drama of familial turmoil, Faviell’s third and final novel is dramatic, compelling, and emotionally wrenching.

  ‘A writer of unusual skill and delicacy in suggesting nuances of feeling and of character’ ORVILLE PRESCOTT

  ‘She writes with a sharpness of outline which would not shame Simenon.’ J.W. LAMBERT, Sunday Times

  FM8

  The Fledgeling – CHAPTER I

  ‘NOW’, urged Mike, ‘now. Make your way in that direction, where I’m pointing . . . you’ll strike the bleeding road about two miles on . . . you’ll easily get a lift to Doncaster and from there you can get others on. Quick! while there’s none of the other blighters in sight. Go on! I’ll be seeing you. . . .’

  The sun blazed down on the shelterless moors, where they had been dropped from ar
my lorries to find their way back to camp as a map-reading exercise. The lad whom Mike was addressing was slight, very fair, and delicate in appearance. His khaki uniform was too large for his shoulders and his fair almost girlish complexion was mottled now with the heat.

  ‘No, Mike, I’m too bloody scared. If they come back this way I’ll be spotted. They’re always on the look-out for me—they’ve confiscated my civvies. It’s not safe to try it in uniform—it’s too risky.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what I know already, you yellow bastard! You’ll be O.K.—if you do as I say. Get off now. Don’t hurry—walk at a steady pace as if you’re making for a given point. You’re trying to make your way back by the route allotted to our group. Go on now. Don’t waste time. Get going . . . you miserable little runt. I’ll cover for you—and I’ll answer for you like I said.’

  He stood over the younger lad with an attitude so menacing that the mottled red patches on the boy’s hot skin began paling with fear.

  ‘Go on!’ urged Mike. ‘Everyone knows you’re incapable of reading a map or using a compass. I’ll fix it for you . . . I’ve done it before. You get going now and you do what I said. Understand? Get everything okey doke before I turn up. Don’t you let me down. I’m taking the bleeding risks for you . . . Ninny . . . blast you!’

  The boy thus addressed, swallowed, and drew a breath before he answered. Then his words came out with a desperate rush, as if he had forced himself to utter them. ‘I don’t want to go, Mike. I’ll make some blunder. I haven’t got the nerve.’

  ‘You don’t need any bloody nerve for this. An idiot could get away now. They’re all walking about with their bleeding little noses turned towards our home-from-home camp. No other thought in their little minds—but to get back quick and report safely to our Mummy sergeant.’

  ‘I don’t want to do it,’ repeated the lad wretchedly.

  ‘Listen, Ninny! You’re going—and quick. If you don’t you know what’ll happen to you. Now—bugger off—and keep your nose towards your old grandmother and that Tarzan with the lorry . . . Understand?’ He gave his reluctant companion a shove in the direction he had indicated. ‘Go on. There’s not a soul in sight. I’ll catch up with the other buggers—they’re over there by those bushes. . . .’

  ‘Suppose they ask where I am?’

  ‘Oh use your head, you clot. What d’you think I’ll say? Ninny’s run home to grandma? I’ll manage to put ’em off—like I always do. You get going!’

  The youth whom he called ‘Ninny’ and whose name was Neil Collins took a last desperate look round, then turned an imploring one on Mike Andersen whose dark eyes, smiling but at the same time threatening, had never left his face.

  ‘All right,’ he mumbled, ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘You’ll not only do it—you’ll do it as I told you. Remember? Now scarper!’

  The boy mumbled something, and turning, began walking in the direction indicated by Mike. He was hot and terrified at what he was about to do. Resentment and anger boiled in him at Mike’s power over him. He despised himself for obeying, for falling in through craven fear with this man’s plans for his escape. That Mike, who had no home, was using him as a means of effecting his own escape he was perfectly well aware. He had found out long ago that Mike had only cultivated his friendship for that purpose.

  Neil had a bad reputation in the draft. He had already twice deserted and served sentences for it. Mike had soon ascertained that Neil had a home in London to which he had on both occasions gone for refuge. He had extracted every detail about the Collins’ household from Neil. He knew it as well as if he had been there. He had soon decided that the younger lad should make a fresh attempt at escape—and this time with his help he would not be sent back—they would both get safely away to Ireland where Neil had an old aunt.

  The opportunity had come sooner than he had expected. A month ago Neil’s elder brother had been killed in Cyprus, and there had been a lot of publicity about it. He had been doing his National Service as he and Neil were now doing theirs, and he had been shot in the back by a guerilla rebel while trying to lift his already badly wounded officer on to his shoulders to carry him to safety. In spite of the shot he had managed to drag the officer—covering him with his own body—to safety before he himself had died.

  Mike had urged Neil to ask for compassionate leave, although the lad himself knew that it would be refused him. When it was refused, Mike had worked steadily on the injustice of the whole thing, trying to fan the spark of resentment still burning in the young brother even after two heavy sentences for absence without leave. It had been hard work, for Neil had apparently given his word to his old grandmother to stick his service out to the end without any more desertions. The brother’s death—‘murder’ Mike had called it—had come as a boon. He had not hesitated to use it as a whipping stone for every supposed injustice and every bit of trouble in the camp. He had persuaded Neil to fall in with his plans by sheer persistence and by methods peculiar to his own unpleasant nature. He had established a hold over this weakling which delighted the sadistic side of his character. Lately, he had begun to suspect that others in the camp were noticing it. In fact he had been tackled on the subject by several men whom he described as the ‘classy’ lot who would soon leave to become officers because of their previous training in their public schools’ cadet corps. He had put them off—he was an adept at lying and at wriggling out of every duty and chore; but because he was amusing and could make the sergeant laugh—often at another chap’s expense—he was not unpopular. When he had taken up with young Collins the friendship had not gone unnoticed. Mike Andersen was tough—he could knock most people out in a fight—he was afraid of no one—or so it seemed, certainly not of Authority which he regarded as something to be pitied and made fun of but not openly defied.

  He watched Neil walking slowly away across the rough heather-covered moor towards the road. ‘Make for the telegraph wires!’ he shouted after him. Ninny was such a fool that he was quite capable of missing the road and ending up lost on the moor. And yet—he had twice gone off on his own. He must have some guts. Lately he had been displeased to find that Ninny was becoming more obstreperous and he had been forced to use more unpleasant methods to induce obedience. When he was quite sure that the rapidly decreasing stature of Neil’s figure meant that the boy was a sufficient distance away, he turned and began hurrying after the other two fellows in their group.

  Neil trudged on dispiritedly. He had no heart in what he was doing. He turned over in his mind the possibility of changing his mind and returning to the camp. It wouldn’t matter how late he arrived there—they would put that down to his general incompetence. He didn’t know how many miles away the camp was. They had all been driven for what seemed a long time in lorries and dropped in separate groups at various desolate spots. He turned round to look at Mike Andersen, but he had disappeared. Far away he could see two groups of khaki-clad figures making their separate ways across the huge expanse of moor, but Mike and the other two belonging to his group had vanished.

  He could see what looked like telegraph wires now . . . about a mile ahead. The heat-wave was marked every morning by a thick haze over the moor, and it was difficult to see. He made for the direction which Mike had indicated would bring him on to the main road. He thought that the main road would be dangerous, but Mike had urged him not to be so dumb. If he were seen, all he had to say was that somehow he had got lost during the exercise and that he had been trying to make his own way back to camp. And this was exactly what he was now turning over in his mind. Should he do that? Should he wander about for a time, then get on to the main road and ask for a lift back to the camp from some passing car or lorry? He sat down on a clump of heather to think it out. If only he dared! He did not want to go through with this thing. He had suffered enough in the glass-house. Another desertion would mean, if he were caught—and he had no confidence that he would get away—a whole year’s sentence in a civil jail.

  Mike had
enlarged on the injustice of that, too. Several fellows from their draft were serving sentences now in civil jails. Mike had pointed out that in a country supposed to be famed for its freedom and which invited and received refugees from countries which did not enjoy this privilege, it was a scandal that lads should be thrown into prison with common criminals merely because they had run away from conscription. None of this was new to Neil, whose father had been in the habit of enlarging upon the same subject to his family on the somewhat rare occasions when he visited them. He had enjoined both his sons to refuse to do their National Service—or to leave the country so that they would not be called up. As he had offered no help, either financial or otherwise, to either of them in achieving this, they had taken no notice of his long involved speeches.

  Neil, sitting now, a lone small figure in that vast landscape, could not bring himself to go on or to turn back. He simply could not make a decision. He wanted it made for him—and there was no one there to make it. The vision of Mike, and the influence of those strange dark eyes was still strongly with him, and in spite of the heat he shivered. He was terrified of Mike. He knew that now. At first he had liked him, admired him for the ease with which he got out of every difficulty and got over every obstacle. That he did so at the expense of other men did not dawn on Neil for some time, neither did the reason for Mike’s friendship with him. When it did, it was too late—he was already too deeply in the older lad’s toils.