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Episode 20: "The Ballad of Peckham Rye" by Muriel Spark
101 Plays11 months ago
We’re edging closer to THE PRIME, but today we chat about The Ballad of Peckham Rye. Spark’s novels are incredibly fun, but this might be the wildest, featuring an incredible character name (Dougal Douglas), a lot of absenteeism, a textile factory, a Nun Tunnel, and dancing. Lots of dancing.
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Music: “The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys” by Traffic
Logo design: Flynn Kidz Designs
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Transcript
Introduction to Lost in Redonda
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi, I'm Tom Flynn. And I'm Lori Feathers. And welcome to Lost in Redonda. Hi,
What's unique about 'The Ballad of Peckham Rye'?
00:00:17
Speaker
Lori. Today we're talking about the Ballad of Peckham Rye. And I don't know, Lori, this is a weird little book. This is our fourth mural spark. Am I counting right? Yeah, it's the fourth one.
00:00:31
Speaker
Yes, and there's a strangeness, I think, to all of the books that we've read so far, but maybe this one is just even the weirdest to date. There's a lot of things that are a little bit unique about it, I thought.
Setting and Characters in Peckham Rye
00:00:46
Speaker
It's pretty much a blue color.
00:00:49
Speaker
book. Most of the characters work in a textile factory. You get some office workers in the textile factory, but those folks probably were on the shop floor before they got promoted. The dialogue is really awesome, and I don't know how much I can talk to 1958, 1960,
00:01:15
Speaker
shop floor speak, but it felt really authentic to me the way that they were interacting and talking.
Who is Dougal Douglas?
00:01:24
Speaker
And again, we've got this little community of people that are connected in
00:01:31
Speaker
lots of weird and interchangeable ways some of the connections come up or become more evident as you get further into the book but I don't know where do you want to start with this one I feel like I ask you that every every time but
00:01:48
Speaker
Not that this book is at all inapproachable, this is just like a wildly fun book. I guess maybe start with the main protagonist here, a guy named variously Dougal Douglas or Douglas Dougal or last name Dougal-Douglas.
00:02:08
Speaker
Yeah, Dougal is, I mean, how to describe this guy, basically a chaos agent. He drops into the narrative, drops into this town. So Peckham is a working class area in London. I believe it still is fairly working class to this day, southeast London. Like you said, it's mostly taking place among the workers at a textile factory. And Dougal is
00:02:37
Speaker
Well, we can get into how legitimate his bona fides are. But Dougal is a university man that's hired by the upper management to try and basically affect the moral character of the workers. But from the first moment we meet him, properly meet him, he's bizarre. He's talking to everyone in this very odd manner. He has these real
00:03:03
Speaker
like almost flights of fancy in the middle of conversations, he will start talking about something completely different. And this is in a professional setting and somehow it's having the desired effect on the person he's speaking to. He's constantly
00:03:18
Speaker
altering his pose and his facial expressions to imitate or personify another character, a archetype, which has the desired effect of causing someone either riotous laughter or them to really listen even harder to what he has to say. He's a really, really weird character, but so, so much fun, even though he
00:03:45
Speaker
He reeks a lot of ruin. He definitely does a number on the factory and the community of people that he comes into contact with.
What's Dougal's impact on the community?
00:03:54
Speaker
I think though it's worth maybe kicking off a little bit with a kind of clever structural thing that Spark does with this novel because it actually begins at the end. It opens with Dixie and Humphrey. We end up spending a lot of time with both of them throughout the rest of the novel on their wedding day and going to the altar and Humphrey being asked if he'll take Dixie as his wife and him saying,
00:04:24
Speaker
You know to be quite frank I think not and then walking away and then it just sort of covers what happens in like
00:04:31
Speaker
intervening and frankly it doesn't even open with that it opens after that took place with Humphrey coming back to talk to Dixie a couple weeks after the fact and him being turned away at the door and then getting into a fight with a guy named Trevor who features very largely in the rest of the novel but that opening chapter wraps with everyone kind of remarking on how it was all Douglas's fault and we're all very glad to see the back of him and
00:04:59
Speaker
Some people say he just left. Some people say he got run off. And then we basically go back a few months in time to Douglas's introduction to this community, his hiring, his taking up rooms in the same. I mean, I guess it's a similar setup to Caroline in The Comforters, where it's like a multi-flat, although this is much more of like single rooms, I think.
00:05:23
Speaker
I got the sense it was like a boarding house. Yes, yes. Sorry, that was the exact phrase I was looking for and was failing to find. The same boarding house that Humphrey lives in. Yeah, so Dougal is Scottish. He has a diploma from the University of Edinburgh, which, I don't know, by the time this novel is over with, I kind of wonder how legitimate that
00:05:46
Speaker
There's nothing to ever say that it is illegitimate other than the fact that you should not trust a single thing that Douglas ever presents to you or represents as a truth because
00:05:59
Speaker
I don't even know if he knows what the truth is half the time. Again, he's hired by the upper management because there is high absenteeism and they're trying to be as efficient and productive as possible at this factory. I guess just on that point, I was kind of intrigued by this notion.
00:06:21
Speaker
There's a bit of a reference to an industry-wide survey that's gone out or something. All of the upper management of these textile factories have gotten the recommendation that they need to hire what they refer to as an arts man.
00:06:41
Speaker
you know, what is an arts man? Well, he's not the personnel manager, because we have we've got one of those that Dougal Douglas kind of does a number on, but he's in HR. But I guess you would say that he's kind of like employee relations, maybe is something we would call him like that.
00:07:03
Speaker
I feel like he's like the chief innovation officer, one of those new titles that's come up over the last however many years to like, you're just supposed to have the big thoughts that then help chart the course of the company. I think it was like eight years ago, design thinking became all the rage in corporate America where we have a very specific way of developing our thought processes.
00:07:28
Speaker
I don't know. As a practice, I'm sure it has its merits, but it also just very much sounds like a system to keep track of what people think. I don't know. Consultants speak. But Mr. Douglas presents himself as imminently qualified to fill this position. And in fact, he does fill this position for three factories in the town.
00:07:55
Speaker
And those aren't the only salaries that he's drawing down. But he makes it very clear to all of his employers that this position requires a lot of independent research on his part. So basically, he's not working at all. He's pretending
Social Commentary and Cultural Tensions
00:08:10
Speaker
to work. But just when people start to raise an eyebrow and like, where is he? What's he doing? What's he been up to? I haven't seen him for a while. Is he just goofing off? I need a report on this or a report on that.
00:08:25
Speaker
He'll come waltzing into their office and give them every confidence that he's on it, and he knows what he's doing, and he makes these pronouncements and these ridiculous recommendations. I don't know that he gives this recommendation to upper management, but he's very happy and free in giving it to the floor workers at the factory that you should just take every Monday off.
00:08:52
Speaker
Even though he knows that he's being hired to handle, first and foremost, this problem of absenteeism at the factory, he just thinks that if you're a little bit tired, if you're worn out, if you don't feel like it, or if you just need a change of air,
00:09:12
Speaker
Just take Mondays off. Don't come into work at all in Mondays, which of course is preposterous, but people follow his advice and do it, and he never seems to get in trouble for giving that advice. There's almost a viral quality to the advice he gives.
00:09:29
Speaker
And in some ways, I think that also reflects how information moves within this community, because there's a scene very early on where Dougal is crying in the canteen at the factory, and then he's later mocked for it at a pub by someone who was not there to witness it, like that very same night. So like, you know, word of mouth is certainly
00:09:52
Speaker
certainly one of the driving forces in this area. I really like the idea of Douglas Douglas as like a Bain capital or a McKinsey, like swooping in and just totally ripping a business apart for whatever ends there might be in that respect. And the ends certainly seem to be for the enrichment as much as he can of himself, of Douglas Douglas.
00:10:20
Speaker
But that's what's so enigmatic about this book and this character because you like him. He is this happy-go-lucky. He seems to genuinely care about some of the characters that he encounters. He becomes friends with Humphrey. Humphrey's fiancée Dixie does not like him because she thinks he's a fraud and
00:10:44
Speaker
But one of the things that it's a little bit hard to get around is, is this guy just being intentionally malicious? Is he being just like himself and people are buying into the bullshit that he's selling? Because it's a little hard to know other than like doing no work.
00:11:05
Speaker
making money and having a good time, what his motivation is for any of this stuff that he does or that happens to some of the characters. He describes the work he does as human research. And that phrase crops up quite a bit throughout the novel, especially in one scene towards the end where he's talking to Nellie and Mahone
00:11:31
Speaker
who's Irish and basically the the local bag lady local
00:11:37
Speaker
crazy who's walking around speaking verses of the Bible and the like. Their interaction and the relationship that they develop is really interesting as they're both not English. They both seem to see and understand the people around them and the social structures around them in a way that no one else is really perking their head up to.
00:12:01
Speaker
It's very helpful at times to be ignored if what you're trying to do is like make your way through the world in a world that doesn't much care for you, which it seems is part of what Nellie is doing at this stage of her life. But yeah, I don't know that Dougal necessarily does have an ultimate aim. I mean, I did say it's like for his own enrichment, and I think that's true. I mean, he's looking to make money and to be
00:12:31
Speaker
to be able to make his way through the world, but it almost feels much more like a making his way through the world. It doesn't feel like I'm aiming to be this kind of wealthy or accomplish this sort of thing. I mean, he suggests that he has certain demonic qualities to him. He invites folks to touch his forehead to feel where the horns that he was born with used to be. And he represents to different folks that he had
00:12:59
Speaker
He had them removed via surgery. They got knocked off of him during a childhood fight, all these things. But
00:13:07
Speaker
To go along with that, he does seem to understand and play the people that he talks to as if he has greater understanding of who they are than he should. I mean, unless he, unless he, before he took this position at the factory had done a deep dive into the area and there's nothing to suggest that he had and how could he have, he knows entirely too much.
00:13:31
Speaker
about a lot of the folks that he's playing. And it seems, at times, playing with. Mr. Drews, in particular, who's the one that hires him at the first factory, I mean, Dougal practically breaks the man down to his most, like, atomic, atomic levels of personality. And at times, a very funny way, and at other times, it almost feels cruel what he's doing to this guy.
00:13:59
Speaker
Yeah, maybe I have a too generous view of, and I don't know whether to pronounce it, Dougal or Dougal, but I felt that he genuinely cares about people. He really enjoys talking to people and talking to people kind of like in an authentic and what seems like he
00:14:22
Speaker
he has an ability to encourage people to open up and be very honest. And so the fact that he knows a lot of stuff that you wouldn't think he would ordinarily know, I guess I didn't see that as all that weird because I could see, I mean, he's nosy and he likes to go to the pub and he likes to drink a lot and he likes to get people to drink with him and open up and talk about
00:14:47
Speaker
their relationships and everything that's going on in their lives and people people are quite
00:14:53
Speaker
frank with him in a way that I think is kind of unusual for 1960s England, even with your best buddies to talk about some of the things that they talk about with him. I didn't see him though, like as a talented Mr. Ripley. He doesn't seem malign or malicious to me now. And I just kind of thought that the devil thing was just some kind of goofing off joke that he liked to
00:15:20
Speaker
He liked to cuz he thought it was he was you know entertaining and but it sounds like you think he might have actually had some Supernatural powers. I don't know if he had supernatural powers. I mean, I think he also could just be a very good con man doing cold reads, you know, like there could be that element of it too. I think though that
00:15:41
Speaker
In his human research, he does identify elements of what's going on with the workers at the factory and factories and the people living in Peckham, that there are all these sort of forces at play, this desire for
00:15:59
Speaker
this desire for a traditional lifestyle, this desire for fun, this sense of morality and immorality. I mean, all of which is true in almost any circumstance, but there is an element of striving among the young people. And it's all mostly young people that he's interacting with that are working at this textile place, other than a couple
00:16:21
Speaker
Couple folks but like Dixie for instance is 17 Humphrey is in his early 20s Trevor is about the same age and then there's a gap to Miss Coverdale
00:16:34
Speaker
Yes, who's 37, and then another gap to Mr. Druce. Although I would, it's a good question, how old is Dixie's mother, Mavis? I wonder if this novel is in some ways a, or could be read as a social commentary. Really kind of digging in on an almost Dickensian level, but getting in fast, getting in hard, and then getting out again and not spending
00:17:02
Speaker
500 pages in a serialized format to dig into these various people's lives. One of the things I'm really enjoying about this journey through Meryl Spark's work is because I haven't had a ton of time to just absorb all of it and think through it,
00:17:21
Speaker
Things are occurring as we're talking, which I hope is not a frustration for the listener. I hope you're enjoying the journey right along with us. But they're such rich novels, and frankly, my brain is kind of structured to create a project or find a larger schematic to an author's work, whether it's there or not.
00:17:45
Speaker
That's part of what's skipping through my head at the moment, I suppose, is how much of this is a character study, a social commentary, and how much of it is a fun novel that she created an absolutely frantic
00:18:06
Speaker
Yeah. Frantic diabolical character who is just dancing his way through this community. I mean, it is called the ballad of Peckham Rye. A ballad does have very specific connotations to it. And throughout this novel, he breaks into dance. Dougal. I mean, he's constantly dancing in the boarding house. He dances at a nightclub and causes, gets kicked out of it. Doing Highlander dances.
00:18:31
Speaker
doing Highlander dances, then doing what was described as a Zulu dance, then basically going through a pantomime of just various stereotypes, much to most of the other dancers' absolute enjoyment. And the guy that owned the place didn't seem to hate it, but was much more like, you're going to just screw up my dance floor if you keep doing that. So I need you to go.
00:18:56
Speaker
Plus, he starts a fight. He starts a lot of fights. But yeah, Dougal is dancing throughout this entire thing. And if you you could even read his interactions to other people that way, too, that he's putting them he's putting them through the paces, he's changing the tempo, he's deliberately wrong footing them so that he can better take the lead as I beat that metaphor to death.
00:19:18
Speaker
One of the curious things that happens as you've already talked a little bit about Tom is that early on, Dougal is caught publicly sobbing. And he says it's because his gal, Ginny, is going to get married to someone else. She doesn't want anything to do with him anymore. And this is like a very weird thing, right? I mean, I think it's even like at the
00:19:45
Speaker
at the company canteen. So he's like crying in front of his coworkers. He's like in management. But everyone tries to be, for the most part, the women, especially sympathetic and are very touched by his raw show of emotion.
00:20:03
Speaker
But then he also has the propensity to make everyone else around him cry as well. No matter what their age, their position in life, people just basically like,
00:20:22
Speaker
breakdown sobbing and it's it's it's almost like ridiculous like he hardly has to do anything and they'll just start like pouring pouring out to him about you know how desperate they are because of a situation that they're in and how their life life is
00:20:39
Speaker
is horrible and they don't know what to do. And he, in some respects, is sympathetic. Other times, he just gives off trite advice that sometimes doesn't even make any sense what he's telling them to do about their problems. But yeah, there's this
00:20:58
Speaker
There's this motif going on about like people just breaking down in public in front of other people, you know, and you think about British society as this, you know, very stiff upper lip and I would imagine especially at the time that this book was published and I don't know it's I would have to think that if I were
00:21:19
Speaker
living in London and pick this up at the Bloomsbury or London Review of Books bookstore, I would be thinking like, oh my God, these people are acting so weird in this book.
00:21:35
Speaker
Well, I see, I wonder about that too, though, because even in that scene, the canteen, there's this real push-pull between, I mean, Miss Coverdale is the one that comes across, um, uh, Dougal sobbing, and I think it was four or five women working there.
00:21:50
Speaker
but in various positions attempting to comfort him in some manner and coverdale is the head of the typist pool and so she has a certain level of authority. But she's getting a lot of backtalk and she's getting a lot of pushback from some of the younger women and when this is taking place.
00:22:11
Speaker
She's said it because of Dixie being 17, and we know that her mother was a GI bride. She got married to a U.S. serviceman, went over to the States, and then came back because the marriage fell apart, but came back pregnant.
00:22:26
Speaker
Um, had Dixie remarried to a, what seems like a very stable, nice guy in Arthur crew, um, with quite the lout of a, uh, uh, a son. So, but we know that it's like 19, like you said, 1959, 1960, and there really does seem to be this, this change happening within the social structure. I mean, even in the one nightclub where he, um, gets kicked out of.
00:22:52
Speaker
for the dancing that he's doing. There are West Indians and Africans in the audience, identified as such, which...
00:23:02
Speaker
We hear from older folks in the novel as being like, how can there be black people that live in Peckham? Isn't this ridiculous? I mean, so there is this sort of social change that seems to be taking place. And then you have the character of Beauty, who is, I mean, her name is literally Beauty in this novel. She's Trevor's girlfriend, sort of it seems, or at the very least is going with him at the moment. And Dougal is clearly making pains both to
00:23:31
Speaker
both to tweak Trevor by pursuing beauty, but also seems interested in her. But she sounds from her description like, you know, a mod. She sounds like what you're going to see in or what I saw in watching like a Hard Day's Night, the movie as
00:23:49
Speaker
My parents made us watch that all the time. And I say made us. It's a great movie, but like she sounds like what you're about to see in, you know, swinging sixties London. I think, I think that's something that sparks really good at something that she's kind of picking at is how much the world of London, of, of Britain is changing in this time and the tension between the, the youth and the previous generation.
00:24:18
Speaker
and the desire for having fun versus having a stable life, which very much comes
00:24:26
Speaker
comes out in Dixie and Humphrey's relationship. They're engaged to be married, and Humphrey is constantly complaining to Dougal that they're not having any fun, Humphrey and Dixie, because Dixie is working all the time, because she only wants to get married when she has a certain amount of money so she can make the right kind of down payment on her, on the bungalow that they want, and she wants it to look like this, and she wants this, so she's working all the time, and she's losing her sex.
00:24:56
Speaker
because she's working so much and she's so tired. Humphries, in some respects, griping because he feels, it seems, because he feels that she's undervaluing the money he makes as a union electrician.
00:25:12
Speaker
but yeah it also is just like again it just feels like you know Humphrey wants to be married to Dixie but doesn't but even though that novel opens with him standing her up at the altar but he also wants to have fun at the time and that seems to be a trade-off that Dixie's unwilling to make at that point so yeah it's just some really interesting tensions that she's messing around with
00:25:36
Speaker
And then you have Dougal, who is encouraging absenteeism, who's basically telling everyone, if you hit your job, just go do something else.
Strange Elements and Local Legends
00:25:43
Speaker
His attitude is one very much of almost anarchy. This is the land of do as you please, as far as he's concerned. And because of his various gifts and abilities to talk to people and convince them of what he needs to convince them of, for him, that very much does seem to be the case too.
00:26:03
Speaker
People do generally like him. Dixie's an exception. Trevor is definitely an exception. And you get a little bit of some vibes regarding Trevor's presumption that this Dougal guy is, or he's up to, Dougal Dougal, he's up to something sinister.
00:26:29
Speaker
There's something that's going on here that isn't apparent. Everyone likes him. He seems so nice. He's moving up in the world and he's doing very well, but he's a newcomer to this town. Trevor is very suspicious of him. Part of his suspicion is because he keeps seeing Dougal going into the police station.
00:26:54
Speaker
and talking to the police about some excavation work that's going on. And I was curious, Tom, to get your opinion about what that excavation work, what meaning you think it holds for the novel and what Spark is trying to do. We find there are nuns buried where they're excavating.
00:27:17
Speaker
And I guess it turns out that Dougal is just fascinated by this stuff, but he sure doesn't mind that people have the impression that he's very good friends with the cops, that maybe he's working for or with the cops.
00:27:35
Speaker
because it kind of helps him kind of be this this man of mystery the the nun tunnel um nun head it's really weird it's just like this really strange thing thrown thrown in i mean which is i don't know probably a redundant thing to say when there are so many strange things happening in this in this novel and dougle is such a strange character dougle is perfectly happy for people to think
00:27:59
Speaker
and uses it to his advantage at one point because I think we should get a little bit more into what Trevor's up to but he has presented himself to the police as a bit of an archaeologist and within the grounds of the station they are digging out a tunnel and it seems like the tunnel is supposed to like cut through an area and connect two spots but in the process they find the skeletons of nuns. I was curious so I did a quick search on that and it
00:28:28
Speaker
It may not be a real thing. It has a bit of a local legend component to it that there was a tunnel that nuns used.
00:28:38
Speaker
during the time of Henry VIII to escape from their convent, that this is that tunnel. There is an actual pub called the Nunhead nearby, and I mean, I didn't do a deep dive or anything, but it seems like this is a bit of a local legend that maybe Spark wove into her story to
00:29:01
Speaker
I don't know. Eventually give Dougal a bit of an escape plan, give him a way to interact with the police such that he can push other people off his back for a period of time. But it would be one of the few instances of Catholicism in this novel, right? I don't think that it's
00:29:22
Speaker
the case that you could say that the wedding at the beginning was definitely a Catholic one. It was a Christian one, certainly, but it did not necessarily have to be Catholic. And there really isn't much other discussion. I mean, other than Dougal's representation or talking to people about how he's an exorcist of lives and
00:29:39
Speaker
you know, suggesting that he may be demonic, either as a gag or as a way to wrong foot someone. There isn't like spiritualism in this one, the same way that there was in The Comforters and Robinson, or even in Memento Mori. I mean, this is
00:29:57
Speaker
This is in some ways the least religious of the novels. No, I mean, not even some ways. This is the least religious of the novels that we've read of hers so far. But yeah, the the the Nuntunnel, which is just a really great thing to say. And maybe that's why she created it was people could think about Nuntunnel. It's just a really it's just another really odd thing thrown in there that almost.
00:30:21
Speaker
enlarges what a strange figure Dougal is and helps to fill in what he does with his days when he's not working nine to five thirty at the factory on a regular basis.
00:30:32
Speaker
So what do you think is motivating the young man, Trevor, the electrician who is kind of Humphrey's friend, I guess. I mean, he ends up being the best man at Humphrey and Dixie's wedding. Which is so weird, right? The way that Humphrey comes across versus the way Trevor comes across. And even in like their early interactions, they don't seem friendly, like the early interactions we read, they don't seem friendly at all. And yet we're told
00:30:57
Speaker
We know from the opening of the novel that Trevor was the best man, and about two-thirds of the way through, Dixie says to Dougal that Trevor is going to be Humphrey's best man. You're like, why?
00:31:10
Speaker
So Trevor works, I think, as a freezer technician. That's clearly his day job. Howard's also established about halfway through that he's running a small gang of sorts. He almost has the East End mobster feel to him. And one of his gang is Dixie's young brother, who's, I think, 13.
00:31:33
Speaker
Yeah, 13-year-old Leslie Crewe, her stepbrother. And then there's also a colleague Gould who is 16 or so. No, 17 because he missed out on national service because he's got bad lungs. Nonetheless, they all smoke. I mean, everyone in this novel is smoking like chimneys.
00:31:54
Speaker
I think even beyond whatever small time criminal activities Trevor is getting up to, I just get the feeling that he doesn't like the upset that Dougal represents. He seems to pick up on the fact that Dougal is a
00:32:12
Speaker
Intrusive force that he's something that's going to disrupt this community Setting aside the fact that like he's in some ways going after beauty sort of not really that if he is friends with Humphrey Douglass displaced him quite a bit sitting all that aside it just feels like Trevor takes one look at this guy and is like no you don't fit here and I like how here Works, or I understand how here works
00:32:42
Speaker
And now there's something else happening. Yeah. And I think that he doesn't like the fact that the toggle goes around town and is kind of a back slapper and, you know, drinks with the people in the pubs and people generally like him. And and so, yeah, I think there's an element of jealousy there.
00:33:01
Speaker
There's some outrageously funny things in this novel, one of which is that Miss Coverdale, the head of the typist at the factory, Dougal tells her early on that she looks like an okapi, this African antelope slash giraffe-like animal, and there's various references to that throughout the book.
00:33:29
Speaker
That was that was chuckle out loud worthy for me. Another is, you know, Dougall is is smitten. I guess it's fair to say with with Ginny, but he can't he can't be with Ginny right now because Ginny isn't in good health. And Dougall will say at the drop of a hat that he has a fatal flaw and that fatal flaw is that he is repelled by illness. So
00:33:59
Speaker
He's left to try to communicate with Ginny by phone. She lives on the other side of the Thames in London. But every time he calls her, she can't talk because she's got something on the stove. And that just like is repeated over and over and over again. She always has something on the stove. And then you've got Miss Fern, the landlady at the boarding house.
00:34:24
Speaker
And she's kind of a closet drinker. She tries to pretend to be all prim, but she knows everything that's going on in the boarding house. Who's going to visit? Dougall Humphrey lives in the same boarding house. And and Dougall and she have many evenings sitting in the kitchen just drinking gin. And she's a funny character as well. So this might be one of
00:34:50
Speaker
the funniest of the books, I guess, of the four we've read so far. I mean, they're all they all have a very wry sense of humor to them. No pun intended. This is the Balm of Peckham Rye. But but this one, I felt myself found myself laughing out loud more at this one than than the other three that we've read so far. Yeah, there's a there's an evening early in the novel where Dougal is going
00:35:16
Speaker
going to sleep and he hears a very strange noise coming through his cupboard.
00:35:24
Speaker
Well, a couple things happen. He hears someone come in downstairs and recognizes that it's Humphrey. Humphrey's being very slow on the stairs and can't figure out why, like he sounds heavier. And then there's this really strange noise coming from Dougal's cupboard, which he then figures out is, the other side of the wall is Humphrey's room and his cupboard.
00:35:51
Speaker
Sometimes the way Spark writes, she's not really letting you know what's happening until a couple of pages later where the characters explain it. And it's such a remarkable thing about her writing. She so rarely is intervening in that regard. She lets the dialogue help you figure it out. But in this situation, you know that Humphrey has Dixie in his room and they're having sex in the cupboard. And when
00:36:19
Speaker
Dougal complains of it to the landlady and then later has Humphrey back in his room and starts making a noise and is like, why did you have to carry her up the stairs? Why did you have to have sex in the cupboard? And Humphrey like explains, well, one time she went up the stairs in her stocking theme, we almost got caught. And one time we were in bed together and we almost got caught. And so this is the only way we can have sex.
00:36:43
Speaker
It's on cold nights. This is the only way we can have sex because the only time they get to really go out together is on Saturdays. But for the rest of the conversation, pure athlete Dougal just bounces on the bed and makes the exact same sound that the cupboard made at Humphrey just to kind of mess with him a bit. It's delightful. It's so funny, but it's also such a
00:37:04
Speaker
it's such a natural joshing between two friends, you know, of like just really like knitting at that one thing that like, okay, I get it, it's funny, could you leave off? Okay, I get it, it's funny, could you leave off? Yeah, I mean, and in those scenes, absolutely, I mean, and even in the scenes where he's being kind of a bit of a shady prick, Dougal's delightful. Like he's a charismatic as hell character. I guess I kind of wonder,
00:37:33
Speaker
how kind he ultimately is to the folks around him, because a lot of lives get very much upended by his presence. Yeah, I don't know whether we want to give any of the denouement of the novel away, but I've got a list here of people that end up in a very bad way by the time Dougal leaves town.
00:37:59
Speaker
I think we should 100% go into that because I think it also kind of jives with a lot of the other things you've been talking about. But for those who haven't read it yet, plan to read it, don't want the spoilers, what have you, here's your warning. You got five, four, three, two, one. Go for it, Laurie.
00:38:20
Speaker
Okay, Mr. Whedon, the personnel manager at the first company that Dougal is employed by, and as we said, he's employed by three by the end of the book. And then we also have to talk about Cheese, the biography of the actress that he's writing. But okay, Mr. Whedon has a nervous breakdown. Ms. Fern has a very, like, perhaps life-ending stroke. We don't know whether she dies or not.
00:38:47
Speaker
the landlady.
Chaos and Aftermath in Peckham Rye
00:38:49
Speaker
Ms. Coverdale, I don't know if we've mentioned, but is having an affair with Mr. Drus, who's the head guy at the company, at the factory, and Mr. Drus is married. And he comes by Ms. Coverdale's house one evening and starts kind of jealously asking her about
00:39:12
Speaker
Dougal and it becomes a very heated thing and he kills her. That was very sudden and surprising to me. I think he, what does he do, stab her five times or something and she dies? Nine times with a corkscrew to the neck. The neck, which is what made Dougal say that she looked like an Okapi because Okapi's
00:39:32
Speaker
antelope that wants to be a giraffe so stretches out its neck and that neck that's so remarked upon is what is Brutally stabbed and leads to her death. Yeah. So mr. Drew's goes to jail probably for the rest of his life Of course, we know that Dixie gets left at the altar, but then we also know that she ultimately does end up getting married Yeah, but there are lots of bad things that happen to these
00:39:58
Speaker
to these characters, but let's talk about the character who's kind of in the background the whole time, but referred to as cheese. And Trevor picks up some notebooks, we'll steal some notebooks from Dougal's room and sees references to cheese and some other cryptic notes.
00:40:19
Speaker
And he thinks this is all code words for this cabal that Dougal is involved with, that the cops are in on as well.
00:40:30
Speaker
But she's, I guess, is a washed-up actress before Douglas even came to Peckham Rye, had hired him somehow, someway, to ghost-write her memoir. And so he is doing so, but he's doing so in a really crazy way because he's basically
00:40:51
Speaker
taking things that are happening to him and the people around him in Peckham Rye and just transplanting those on the biography of this actress. And when he talks to her by phone, she's saying, you know, well, I don't know that doesn't, I don't know how that's going to sound because
00:41:11
Speaker
That's not at all accurate. Do you really think we should say this? And she eventually just keeps buying into this crazy stuff that he's writing for her as her life story when none of it happened.
00:41:28
Speaker
When she does finally buy into it, they're on the phone. And up to this point, every time Cheeseman is called and they've chatted, as you said, she's giving this feedback of that didn't really happen. But initially she says that never happened. I don't think we should do that. The next time they speak, she goes, well, how did you know that I actually grew up in Peckham?
00:41:47
Speaker
as if he's uncovered something interesting. And then the last time they speak, she's thrilled with everything. She thinks this is wonderful. This is going to be such a good thing. And Doug, at that point, is planning on leaving. And he uses the same excuse that Ginny always used to try and get off the phone, saying, I've got some soup on this stove. I have to go. So when someone's finally bought hook, line and sinker, everything that he's trying to sell, he's done. He doesn't care anymore. He's ready to move on as if
00:42:15
Speaker
As if, frankly, as if the dance is coming to an end and he'd rather he'd rather decamp and find a new a new spot at which to do his thing. I think another thing to say about Mr. Drew's though is that there's a very strong suggestion that
00:42:31
Speaker
He has been engaging in illegal practices and that Trevor works for him, which is what he says to Miss Coverdale before murdering her, that Trevor Willmass is under my direction. This man who seemed very much under Dougal's spell and all over the place and distracted and sobbing and overwhelmed and in this loveless marriage where he hasn't spoken to his wife in five years,
00:43:00
Speaker
Right before he murders his underling and lover, suddenly sounds like a mob boss. The shift is really dramatic.
00:43:11
Speaker
I don't know, I couldn't quite tell if that was him becoming increasingly jealous of him throwing in his lot with Trevor to try and remove Dougal because he recognizes what Dougal is or what Dougal is doing to him. Or maybe it's easiest to read it very plainly that, yeah, he has been crooked this whole time and maybe Dougal was working on him, but at the end of the day,
00:43:33
Speaker
he doesn't want someone disrupting things as much as Dougal has ended up doing. I'm not sure. It was a weird note, but I thought worth, yeah, curious what you thought about that. Yeah, he does kind of, because he does come across as very pathetic for most of the novel.
00:43:50
Speaker
And then I don't know whether or not Trevor convinces him or he's already like suspecting Dougal of some kind of nefariousness, but he kind of buys into like the, I think in fact, there's like a story going around or maybe Mr. Juice makes is the one that that is the source of it that that Dougal is working with the cops to kind of find corruption in the factories or some type types of abuses.
00:44:18
Speaker
That's the story that Dougal gives to Nellie to relay back to Trevor. So when Trevor and his gang are, they're trying to figure out what Dougal is doing, but they initially suspect him of running a racket and they assume that it's a sex racket.
00:44:35
Speaker
It seems like they're trying to figure out what this guy is up to such that they can take over whatever he's, whatever criminal activity he's engaged with and then run him, run him out. What would have you after they absorb it? They question Nellie to try and get information from her. And that's when Douglas uses his cover of the police station to suggest that he's actually working with them, like you said, to, you know, to ferret out corruption.
00:45:03
Speaker
And if Trevor is in fact working for Drus, and Drus is in fact corrupt, that would not be very good information for Drus to receive. And they assume that Coverdale is typing up all of his narc sheets or something along those lines, his reports back to the police, which is part, I think, of why Drus ends up murdering her, is that he's enraged that this person who's supposed to be his is now actually working against him and so on.
00:45:32
Speaker
The scene with him dictating the book or part of the book, a chapter of the book, to cover Dale, to type, is hilarious because Trevor, as part of the stuff that he steals, is a notebook and there's all these kind of like stock phrases that apparently dongle.
00:45:49
Speaker
Dougal has heard someone say around town and he's like, ah, I like the sound of that. That would work well in the book. One of which is, I became the proud owner of a bicycle, which is just so inane that it's just kind of hilarious.
00:46:08
Speaker
But I think that you're on to something Tom because you said that you think that once people like Cheeseman just kind of like do what he tells them to and acquiesce then the challenge is over and he goes on to something else and we know that in the
00:46:27
Speaker
the last chapter of this book, and it's a chapter of one and a half pages, but we kind of get the post-movie credits of what happens to Dougal's life after he leaves Peckham Rye, and it's quite a fantastical and eventful life that he leads.
00:46:47
Speaker
As I said, this is the last chapter. This kind of confirms what ultimately happens between Humphrey and Dixie. But in terms of what happens with Dougal, much could be told of Dougal's subsequent life. He returned from Africa and became a nut. Prior to this, when he left, he
00:47:02
Speaker
went to Africa and began selling tape recorders to witch doctors. No medicine man, double said, these days can afford to be without a portable tape recorder without the aid of this modern device, which may be easily concealed in the undergrowth of the jungle. The old treble authority will rapidly become undermined by the mounting influence of modern skepticism, which is
00:47:21
Speaker
There's so much to say about that one line. But after that, after that, he returned from Africa and became a novice in the Franciscan monastery. So I guess this is the second mention of Catholicism in the novel. Before he was asked to leave, the prior had endured a nervous breakdown and several of the monks had broken their vows of obedience and actuality
00:47:41
Speaker
and their other vows by desire. Dougal pleaded his powers as an exorcist in vain. Thereafter, for economy's sake, he gathered together the scrap ends of his profligate experience, for he was a frugal man at heart, and turned them into a lot of cockeyed books and went far in the world. He never married." Like, what a way to rap it. But the other thing I wanted to say about this last chapter
00:48:06
Speaker
And this is the thing she did earlier when reflecting on how people discuss the fight between Humphrey and Trevor after Humphrey returns and is turned away at the door initially by Dixie's mother. And people talk about, oh, he's the one that stood her up at the altar. I know this one got the better of the fire. This happened and this happened. But it kind of throws back, she throws back in this idea of like how people talk and how narratives build and change and what the truth of the matter is or not.
00:48:34
Speaker
So she goes, some said Humphrey came back and married the girl in the end. Some said no, he married another girl. Others said it was like this. Dixie died of the broken heart and he never looked another girl again. Some thought he had returned and she had slammed the door in his face and called him a dirty swine, which he was. One or two recall there had been a fight between Humphrey and Trevor Lomas, but at all events, everyone remembered how a man had answered no at his wedding. In fact, they got married two months later, etc, etc. The final paragraph paints this
00:49:01
Speaker
image of Peckham, Peckham Rye, which is this massive park right in Peckham leading up to the
Conclusion: A Dreamlike Ending
00:49:09
Speaker
river. Up to this point, it feels like an industrial town, right? Like it feels like gray skies and it feels like houses on top of each other and not a lot of greenery, except maybe some small parts. It feels very urban and industrial. But the final paragraph
00:49:25
Speaker
It was a sunny day for November, and as he drove swiftly past the rye, he saw the children playing there and the women coming home from work with their shopping bags. The rye, for an instant, looking like a cloud of green and gold. The people seeming to ride upon it, as you might say, there was another world in this. And so it just changes to this, what, like technicolor dreamscape, like Dorothy winding up in Oz. Like it's, it's a really,
00:49:52
Speaker
She's doing a lot of interesting things in here, and it is such a dialogue-driven novel. But when she decides to flex her descriptions, as it were, it becomes almost as much of a dance as anything that Douglas is doing, I think, throughout the novel.
00:50:14
Speaker
Yeah. And I think you're absolutely right about the ballad aspect that bookends this short novel with Humphrey saying, no, to be frank, I will not marry Dixie. And then you get some say this happened, some say that happened, some people don't remember anything, blah, blah, blah. You have that in the beginning and then you have that at the end too. So it is kind of like this this oral storytelling almost and like the unreliability
00:50:45
Speaker
things as they're happening in the present in terms of what the hell is really going on but then over time it even becomes even more murky about what was going on with all of these characters it's just it's just a really fun fun book
00:51:00
Speaker
For a 140-page novel, I feel like we could spend another hour or two digging into it. And this is the magic, I think, of Meryl Spark. She is in total control. She knows what she's doing. And she's delivering a banger every single time. And it's incredible. Yeah. It was fun, Tom.
00:51:22
Speaker
This is fun. Next up, we have the bachelors, and we are edging ever closer to the prime, the prime of Miss Jean Brody. But next time, next Muriel Spark episode will be the bachelors, and I'll talk to you next week, Laurie. Looking forward to it.