The Romantic Armchair Traveller

Canary Islands: The Wind Off The Small Isles by Mary Stewart

 

In an essay published in 1973 Mary Stewart calls The Wind Off The Small Isles “a kind of coda” to the ten gothic and romantic suspense novels that precede it and “a bridge” to The Crystal Cave, her first historical novel (“Teller Of Tales” in Techniques Of The Selling Writer, edited by A. S. Burack, p.42). Now that I have finally had a chance to read the book, I think I can see what Stewart means. A novella of less than a hundred pages, The Wind Off The Small Isles can be inhaled in one quick, casual sitting. But in doing so one risks overlooking the allegory hidden within the simple story of lovers lost and found. For this is Mary Stewart’s dialogue with her own work, a meditation on the writer’s craft and a summing up of her philosophy.

 

A dramatic cliffside property on the coast of Lanzarote seems the perfect location to inspire Cora Gresham’s latest pirate novel for children. But the house is already taken, her secretary, Perdita West, discovers, and by none other than playwright James Blair, the mentor of Cora’s son, Michael. Over drinks on the terrace overlooking the bay the quartet discuss the mystery associated with the place’s history. None of them realise just how harrowingly past and present are about to meet.

 

In several respects The Wind Off The Small Isles is vintage Mary Stewart: the brisk pace, the prose full of flair, the charming characters, a first-person young female narrator (Perdita), romance, danger. There is even a spider-thin connection with This Rough Magic. Above all, there is Stewart's hallmark, the lively setting which is not only integral to but typically the actual inspiration for the story: “This was old lava, from long-ago eruptions, nothing more nor less than a plain of dusty, broken black rock with cutting edges, lightened here and there by the brilliant yellow-green sponges of some succulent, and the phalli of the candelabra cactus, like clustered stands of organ-pipes acid with verdigris” (p. 24). Not even the sunbaked starkness of Stewart’s Grecian settings is as strikingly intense as the primordial alienness of Lanzarote’s volcanic landscape. As Perdita pointedly notes, this inhospitable barrenness with its black lava fields and still active Fire Mountains even attracted the makers of a certain motion picture epic whose title I did not find on IMDB but bears an unmistakable resemblance to One Million Years B.C. (a recent release at the time of Stewart’s novella and indeed filmed on Lanzarote). Whereas these days the Canary Islands have long been a major holiday destination of sun-seeking Europeans, Stewart’s Lanzarote retains a wild, deserted atmosphere, the story having been written shortly before tourism on this easternmost island began to take off. Tellingly, however, a nightclub or restaurant is about to be developed at the far end of the hitherto isolated bay that both Cora and James have identified as an ideal writer’s hideaway. But such signs of taming can be dangerously lulling in an environment where humans remain largely at the mercy of nature. The direction of the wind, for example, affects which way the smoke and ash of volcanic eruptions will blow. (The novella’s title alludes to the islets in the Chinijo archipelago at the northern tip of Lanzarote. In the local vernacular, “Chinijo” means “small”.)

 

At the same time, this is undeniably Mary Stewart in condensed, episodic form. Its brevity means that if one rushes through the book, bent on the resolution, one will get only the bones of a composition that has pleasing symmetry and poetry but in terms of plot and characterisation is slighter than any other fiction Stewart has written for adults. The narrative voice is another difference, beginning to change from the brightly sensible lightness of tone that characterises her early novels. It still recognisable in the brisk and cheery notes of the novella’s contemporary storyline but a clear shift occurs when events deal with the historical subplot. Flippancy and banter disappear, replaced by a graver, solemn tenor and a sharpening focus on the intensely human – rather than the thriller-type – experience of tragedy and violence. (Notice how the cover art displays a more artsy, pared-down variation on the woman-in-jeopardy that in some incarnation or other appeared on almost all editions of Stewart’s books until this one?) Glimpses of this thoughtful sobriety have already been seen in the nostalgic The Ivy Tree and will surface again in her next romance, Touch Not The Cat (1976), a paranormal that in significant ways is more earth-bound than Stewart’s other gothics. Above all, however, the changes in tone herald the voice in Stewart’s Arthurian cycle.

 

So is there any real meat to The Wind Off The Small Isles? Oh yes. As sometimes is the case with books that appear lightweight, the careful reader is rewarded with something quite unique. Every element of this novella appears steeped in symbolic meaning, presenting the reader with an allegory of the creative process. Stewart is not being coy: she makes two of her characters writers and places them on an island where intermittent volcanic activity continues to violently shape and reshape the landscape. Writerly metaphors related to birth and creation are rife, some subtle, many surfacing plainly (of his current script James Blair says: “at present it’s quite hideously in embryo, all beginning and no end” (p.45)). Landscapes, actions, and events build strong symbolism beneath the surface story: our characters motor along bumpy, untravelled roads, admire plants being coaxed from ashen soil, physically knock on doors that do not open. Other symbolism relates to caves that are blindingly dark; traps and dead ends and the digging oneself out from these as from a chrysalis; the struggle for enlightenment; the breakthrough that ignites life and passion. But is this Stewart’s personal commentary on her own work so far or a general assessment of the craft? The answer may lie in a comparison between The Wind Off The Small Isles and Stewart’s interviews and articles.

 

In some of the the exchanges between Cora and Perdita one seems to catch a dialogue between a mature writer and her younger self; in the collegial conversations between Cora and James, the doubts and fears that haunt all authors (or those who have humility), whether literary or popular. “Mrs Gresham”, Perdita muses, “who is nothing if not clear-sighted, once called herself ‘the clown with the normal clown’s urge to play Hamlet’, but this didn’t seem to me to fit the bill. I called it her ‘Sullivan act’ – a finished master of light music breaking his heart to be Verdi. I said: ‘I wish you’d stop tormenting yourself because you’re not Graham Greene or James Blair or Robert Bolt* or someone. The number of people who’d miss ‘Coralie Gray’ [Cora’s pseudonym] if you stopped writing could be laid end to end – ’” (p. 21-2). When Cora disparages her protagonist, James defends the worth of her stories with his childhood love of Beatrix Potter. Mary Stewart, too, has written stories for children. And in her interview segment in Counterpoint (Rand MacNally hardcover edited by Roy Newquist, 1964), she repeatedly mentions her admiration for Graham Greene: “I know I’ve mentioned him before, but he always comes to mind first because he’s the maestro” (p. 568) and “There’s no difference in kind, really, in quality, between Greene’s serious novels and his “entertainments” [...] I certainly don’t put myself in Greene’s category” (p. 564). (Other writers she speaks of with respect range from James Baldwin and Mary Renault to Ian Fleming and Alistair MacLean.)

 

Acknowledging their different treatment by the critical establishment, Cora says to James, “This is one of those coincidences that nobody would believe if you or I put it into print – at least, if you did, they’d say it was a subtle denial of causality, and if I did they’d say it was romantic nonsense ... ” (p. 44). In the Counterpoint interview, Stewart explains “To my mind there are really only two kinds of novels, badly written and well written [...] I do the best I can with material that excites me” (p.564). Her choice of themes are a reflection of her values: “I am first and foremost a teller of tales, but I am also a serious-minded woman who accepts the responsibilities of her job, and that job, if I am to be true to what is in me, is to say with every voice at my command: ‘We must love and imitate the beautiful and the good.’ It is a comment on our age that one hesitates to stand up and say this aloud. But looking back now on the way I was thinking over these fifteen years as I wrote, it seems to me that this above all else is what I have affirmed” ("Teller Of Tales", p.47).

 

Deep-seated fears are less easily dismissed than superficial criticism: James Blair confesses that “For the last few years I’ve been lucky, one thing so to speak begetting the next as I worked, but after Tiger Tiger the vein ran out. [...] It never happened before, and it frightened me to death” (p.45). Interestingly, The Wind Off The Small Isles marks the point where Mary Stewart’s career takes off in a new direction. Some appear to treat this switch as her maturation into a literary writer; in these same circles, her romantic entertainment novels are generally written off as formulaic if polished fluff for the (female) masses. It is a distinction that her assessment of Greene’s output indicates she would politely reject. As she has remarked elsewhere, “one can build a second time, successfully, albeit a different structure and with different materials, but only if one has kept faith with oneself” (“Teller Of Tales”, p.46).

 

And there you have it. The Wind Off The Small Isles is many things: a haunting novella about love, a deftly written allegory, and a simple but confident summing up of one writer’s view of her craft. Readers hoping for the classic, involved fiction of Mary Stewart’s full-length novels will probably feel less enchanted than those familiar with her larger oeuvre and interested in the storyteller herself. Still, even read as a straightforward little tale of love and mystery the novella has artistic merit and emotional impact. Unexpectedly, tears sprung up in my eyes on reading the last page. I know I will revisit this surprisingly lovely book again. For the first time I am also inspired to finally familiarise myself properly with Stewart’s Arthurian cycle, something I always ended up putting off in the past because I could not find a way of bridging the gap between Stewart’s contemporary and historical voices. The Wind Off The Small Isles has shown me the way.

 

*Blair is fictional but Bolt is the author of A Man For All Seasons, the wonderful play about the confrontation between Thomas More and King Henry VIII of England that pitted the former's conscience against the latter's will and command. In the late 1950s Mary Stewart herself authored (at least) four radio plays. Again, in 1964 when asked about her ambitions for the future she replied, among other things, that she would “like to write a play” (Counterpoint, p. 571).

 

Excerpt

(Hodder And Stoughton hardcover, with illustrations by Laurence Irving, 1968, p. 47-8):

 

“Mr Blair took the glass. ‘Yes, I suppose the phrase “the small isles” suggested itself because it was familiar, though heaven help us, we might be on a different planet here.’ He sipped the wine absently, both hands cupping the cool glass, his gaze slowly travelling over the green bubbles of cactus, the black basalt, the glittering sea, the cloudless blue, focussed seemingly not on them or beyond them but on some sharp point of light thrown by them inward into himself, as by a burning-glass. But his voice was ordinary, even faintly apologetic. ‘The story ... As a matter of fact, it’s hardly a story at all, and what there is of it is so ordinary, so much the classic cliché of a love story, that told baldly like this it hardly bears repeating. But there’s something there, if one could find the treatment.’

We all sat watching him. I thought to myself, there’s always something there, if one can find the treatment. The same old material, the same old line, the same old setting – all that counts is the quality of the mind that processes them. And this was the man – I looked up suddenly and caught Mike Gresham watching me. His eyes flickered and he looked away quickly.”

 

Rhodes: Seven Tears For Apollo by Phyllis A. Whitney

Seven Tears For Apollo is one of the earlier and less well known novels of contemporary romantic suspense that Phyllis A. Whitney wrote. It is also one of the few set outside the Americas, in this case a Greek island near the coast of Turkey. In a comparison with the Greek-set romantic suspense novels of Mary Stewart, written around the same time*, Seven Tears Of Apollo does not fare well, lacking, for example, the poetic energy and moral backbone that helped raise Stewart’s books into the classics they are today. The Rhodes of Whitney co-exists stiffly with the feeble plot, descriptions sometimes reading like primly conscientious notes from a travel journal (Whitney visited the island), and the principal character is so tangled up in anxieties that a cloud of depression greys the mood on nearly every page. Nevertheless, as a psychological portrait of an abused woman’s lonely struggle to regain self-confidence, Seven Tears For Apollo evoked strong emotions in me.

 

Fear and pain dominate American Dorcas Brandt’s memories of her deceased husband, Gino Nikkaris. “Seven times [you] must weep for Apollo, ” he told her the first time they met, in front of a museum statue of the god, “before [you] will shake free of the bonds that hold [you]”. The consequences of Gino’s criminal activities continue to haunt Dorcas after his death, and so, desperate to make a new start for herself and her daughter, she accompanies writer Fernanda Farrar on a research trip to Rhodes.

But small, threatening incidents soon shatter her hopes for peace. Confronted with disbelief on every side when she tries to explain that someone may mean her harm, she begins to doubt her own mind. Worse, Fernanda takes the attitude that her instability, as she calls it, is a bad influence on her little daughter. Then she discovers a long-lost letter with a cryptic message about Apollo in one of her daughter’s storybooks, and realises she is holding the clue to the mystery. But since even level-headed Johnny Orion, a teacher and fellow traveller whom she has started to like, refuses to take her concerns seriously, it looks as if she must find the strength to defeat her unknown enemies alone.

 

 

 

My main problem with the story concerns Dorcas's relationship with Fernanda Ferrar. The person closest to a parent in Gino’s life, Fernanda was like a foster-mother to him and reveres his memory. It is her firm conviction that Gino was a loving husband, and that Dorcas was simply too neurotic to see it. Fernanda oversees the welfare of Beth, Dorcas and Gino’s daughter, with the determination of a grandparent, making many decisions regarding her that should belong to Dorcas. On her part, Dorcas is grateful to Fernanda for the safe home she has tried to provide for Dorcas and Beth after Gino’s death, and strives to temper secret resentment with appreciation. She never reveals Gino's abusive side to Fernanda.

What this translates to throughout the book is a constant battle of wills invariably won by Fernanda because of Dorcas’s insecurities. No matter how many times Dorcas resolves to stand up for herself and decide what is best for herself and her daughter, she always ends up buckling under the patronising behaviour of others, be it Fernanda, Beth’s nanny, Johnny, or someone else. What made this theoretically understandable diffidence incredibly frustrating for me was that each time Dorcas succumbed to pressure she reasoned to herself that the other person had a good point and that she must not resent them. I found it a challenge to – how shall I put it tactfully – remain patient with a character who insists on telling herself that being a doormat is a sign of having a healthy perspective. With the exception below, I will make allowances for the strain she labours under and not go into the TSTL behavior she exhibited now and then, most notably in chapter fourteen; the poor woman suffers enough!

Another thing I questioned was the premise which demands Dorcas to believe Rhodes is a good place to get away from the problems caused in the USA by her husband's shady dealings in the art and antiques world. It is made clear in the first two chapters that her Greek-Italian husband had (supposedly severed) family ties with Rhodes and business ties with Greece. How on earth could Dorcas reasonably expect to escape his past on Rhodes of all places? Not once does she inquire into that past while she is on Rhodes, either, even when doing so seemed, to me, the obvious course of action in order to help clarify or verify certain concerns.

As I indicated in my post about Blue Fire, Phyllis A. Whitney’s male love interests are often overbearing at best and coldly domineering at worst. Johnny Orion (“O’Ryan via South America”) falls into the former category. He takes Fernanda’s word over Dorcas’s for most of the story, and even once he and Dorcas confess their romantic interest in each other his support tends to take the form of criticism. Dorcas learns to appreciate his viewpoint, but personally I several times thought his was a hard sort of love. His personality is not distant but Whitney’s characterisation of him is shallow and his role in the story keeps him on the sidelines for long periods at a time. He eventually comes to see Dorcas has been right all along (don’t expect an apology, though) but since even in the decisive final scenes and action sequences he somehow disappears into the background, he remains one of the less interesting characters in Seven Tears For Apollo.

By contrast, Xenia Katalonos, the wife of a prominent Greek sculptor, and Vanda Petrus, Beth’s Rhodian nanny are two strongly-defined secondary characters who stole the show whenever they appeared on the scene. Each charged the sometimes anemic writing and dispirited, repressed atmosphere of the story with her own, intriguing brand of passion and mystery, reminding me of where Seven Tears For Apollo takes place: amid the intense, sunbright colours of an ancient Mediterranean culture.

Seven Tears For Apollo may not be the best place to start if one has never read romantic suspense by Whitney before. The plot develops at a sluggish pace for the first half of the book, which seems mainly concerned with generating suspense through the fragile psychological state of the principal character. For an armchair traveller, plenty of historical scenery is provided - Kameiros, Mount Filerimos, Lindos, and the city of Rhodes - but usually in such an uninspiring style that one might as well be listening to a jaded tour guide. The romantic couple are short on romance, and taken as individuals, not very entertaining characters.

Yet Phyllis A. Whitney does a credible job of showing the tense despair of an emotionally battered character who can rely on no one but herself. Dorcas may be too easily subjugated to be an admirable heroine, but she never completely gives up and in the end she fights bravely for what is hers. While Seven Tears For Apollo would not be my first choice for a romantic fictional trip to Greece – I would recommend either My Brother Michael or This Rough Magic for that – I am not sorry to have spent a few leisurely hours brushing up on the history of such a fascinating place as Rhodes.

*My Brother Michael (1960), The Moonspinners (1963), and This Rough Magic (1964).

 

Excerpt

(Appleton Century Crofts hardcover, 1963, pages 68-9):

 

“Along the water a stone wall, low on the land side, dropped steeply to the rocky beach below. Scattered among stones and big boulders were curious stone balls, some of them as large as a man’s head, some of them smaller. All had been shaped and rounded by the hand of man.

‘What can they be?’ Fernanda puzzled. ‘They don’t look like cannon balls – they’re too big.’

Johnny knew the answer. ‘Rhodes was a city often besieged in the old days. Those balls were thrown by catapult when Turks and Saracens and pirates tried to breach the walls. I suppose the Knights of Saint John used them, too, in defense. You’ll see them everywhere around the town. Out there in the harbor a good many lie where they must have fallen and no one bothers about them.’

‘Fascinating,’ Fernanda said thoughtfully, tapping a tooth with the end of her silver pencil.

Johnny laughed and spoke over his shoulder to Dorcas. ‘We have to watch her when she sounds like that. It means she’s cooking something up . If we don’t watch her, she’ll try to take one of those balls home for a pocket piece.’

The stone catapult balls, perhaps more than anything else, Dorcas thought, gave a sense of the past as it hung over Rhodes. Down on the beach the stones shone in the sun, wet and brown and pock marked from long weathering, lying where they had fallen short of the wall they were intended to breach. She could almost hear an echo of the crashing and the tumult.

The car had reached two massively rounded towers with a deep, arched gateway between, offering entry into the walled town. Above the gate still hung the marble buckler of a knight. As they drove through with other traffic, the great masses of stone dwarfed the car.

Once inside, Johnny found an open square where they could park and they got out to walk over ancient cobblestones. Stone buildings two or three stories high closed around them, almost every window bearing the mark of a cross in wood strips that separated the panes. For all that the town within the walls offered shops to draw the tourists, it was a town in its own right. People lived here in houses that were not greatly different from what they had been in the days of the knights.

As they crossed the square, Dorcas was again reminded of Beth’s absence. There was no small hand tugging at her own, no demands made upon her attention. She hoped all was going well back at the hotel. She must not worry.”

Scotland: Wildfire At Midnight by Mary Stewart

Mention the Hebrides and I remember a rainy afternoon on the Isle of Skye with a pot of black tea and the best scones I have ever tasted, the extraordinary kindness of the Scots towards a young, backpacking stranger, and Wildfire At Midnight. A gothicky romantic suspense that became my first introduction to Mary Stewart, Wildfire At Midnight remains a comfort read I re-savour regularly.

 

1953. London is in the grips of coronation fever and weary Gianetta “Janet” Brooke flees the city for a quiet holiday on the Scottish island of Skye. But a strange atmosphere hangs over the isolated little hotel, a tension that is heightened by any mention of Blaven, the nearest peak of the Black Cuillin mountains. Then, among the fishing enthusiasts, climbers, and an old acquaintance who populate the hotel, Giannetta is shocked to run into her ex-husband.

Divorced four years ago after a disastrous marriage, neither is keen to advertise they know each other. While Nicholas Drury researches the folklore of the area to collect material for his latest novel, Gianetta befriends the other guests, in particular Roderick Grant, who explains the reason everybody is upset: a local crofter’s daughter was found ritualistically murdered on Blaven a scant three weeks earlier. Soon after Giannetta’s arrival, tragedy strikes again. And this time, police interest turns from the first victim’s boyfriend to the hotel guests.

 

In the article “Teller of Tales" (The Writer, Volume 83, No. 5, May 1970), Mary Stewart says, "Wildfire at Midnight was an attempt at something different [from her previous writings], the classic closed-room detective story with restricted action, a biggish cast, and a closely circular plot. It taught me technically a great deal, but mainly that the detective story, with its emphasis on plot rather than people, is not for me. What mattered to me was not the mystery, but the choice the heroine faces between personal and larger loyalties."

The classic mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie may not have satisfied Mary Stewart’s professional inclinations, but Wildfire At Midnight is as successful an experiment as any mystery lover could wish. Readers looking for the romantic aspect of Stewart’s storytelling, however, may come away a little less impressed, unless old-school alpha behaviour appeals.

At a brief 175 pages Wildfire At Midnight is a quick read but the intrigue makes every page absorbing and the whole is as thrilling as any mystery double the length. If you enjoy the classic mystery authors such as Agatha Christie or John Dickson Carr (like I do), for example, Wildfire At Midnight should warm the cockles of your heart. Suspects abound; the Inspector is the sternly competent, pipe-smoking, bushy-eyebrowed character of numerous black-and-white British films of the Thirties and Forties; and the heroine is kindly, caring, and prone to end up in the thick of devious goings-on.

On the other hand, this is not a light-hearted romp of the breezily cheerful country-house type. In Wildfire At Midnight, death by murder is a tragedy instead of a mere plot point, and its pall affects the mood and temper of everyone in the hotel. Once it becomes evident that the murderer is not done with his or her crimes, tension and fear escalates as hotel guests realise they, too, may be in danger. Having developed old and new friendships and aware that the guilty person, if found, will be hanged and “buried in quicklime in a prison yard” (p. 108), Giannetta has to fight not to buckle during her struggle to weigh the morality of loyalties against justice and civic duty. Around her, too, brittle nerves stir up heated arguments as the hotel guests begin to suspect one another. The question of when co-operation with the authorities becomes a matter of spying on each other culminates in "strong opinions" (p. 115-6) about whether physical violence has any acceptable place in civilized society.

As for the love interests, I cannot say much about them without spoiling that particular subplot. Two men express interest in Giannetta: her ex-husband Nicholas Drury and climber Roderick Grant. I was a young and definitely unsophisticated teenager the first time I read Wildfire At Midnight and the outcome of the romantic triangle took me by utter, and not very pleasant, surprise. None of my re-readings have altered that first impression, yet I have learned to set the resolution to the romance aside. The result is immense enjoyment of the ambiance, the mystery, the skilfully sketched assortment of quirky and colourful characters, and the setting.

One can always rely on Mary Stewart’s descriptive genius to create a setting so breathtakingly real that it seems to be a memory of one’s own rather than an imagined place. This is perhaps particularly the case with northern England and Scotland; born in Durham and educated there and in Yorkshire, Stewart later settled in Scotland. Wildfire At Midnight also borrows specialist knowledge from her husband, noted Scottish geologist Sir Frederick Stewart, and draws upon the couple’s travels: “[...] the one background I owe entirely to him is the Scottish one for Wildfire At Midnight. We travelled every inch of Scotland together.” (Interview in Counterpoint, edited by Roy Newquist, published by Rand McNally & Company, 1964, page 564.) The rain-lashed island setting with its suddenly descending fogs, perilous mountains, treacherous bogs, and toasty peat fires by which to warm oneself with a glass of sherry, is a character in its own right. It is neither filler nor a device to create suspenseful moodiness (although suspenseful and moody are the resulting atmosphere), but is actually even more integral to the plot than usual with Stewart, who always takes care to match her stories believably to the chosen location.

Wildfire At Midnight has aged rather well not because it still seems modern - for good or ill, it does not, and some of its more dated attitudes require indulgence of the conventions and sensibilities of another era - or because it touches on a discussion of ethics that will probably always remain a human dilemma; it has aged well because it fits so comfortably into a beloved genre that thrives as much on nostalgia as it does on a well-conceived mystery. It shows Mary Stewart the plotter at her best; and for those seeking an armchair trip to Scotland, well, Mary Stewart’s Isle Of Skye is almost every bit as striking as the real one.

 

Excerpt

(Fawcett Crest paperback, 1956, p. 73-4):

"The night had been black and wild, and after several fruitless and exhausting hours of climbing and shouting in the blustering darkness, the searchers had straggled home in the early hours of daylight, to snatch food and a little sleep before setting out, haggard-eyed and weary, for a further search. Bill Persimmon had telephoned for the local rescue team, and about nine next morning, a force some twenty strong set out once again for what must now certainly be reckoned the scene of an accident.

This time, I went with them. Even if I couldn't rock-climb, I would at least provide another pair of eyes, and I could help to cover some of the vast areas of scree and rough heather bordering the Black Spout.

The morning - I remembered with vague surprise that it was the eve of Coronation Day - had broken grey and forbidding. The wind still lurched among the cairns and heather braes with inconsequent violence, and the frequent showers of rain were arrow-sharp and heavy. We were all muffled to the eyes, and trudged our way up the sodden glen with heads bent to meet the vicious stabbing of the rain.

It was a little better as we came under the shelter of the hill where Roderick and I had talked two nights ago, but, as we struggled on to the crest of it, the wind met us again in force. The raindrops drove like nails before it, and I turned my back to it for a moment's respite. The storm gusts leaped past me, wrenching at my coat, and fled down the valley towards the sea.

The hotel looked far away and small and lonely, with, behind it, the sea loch whitening under the racing feet of the wind. I saw a car move slowly away from the porch, and creep along the storm-lashed track to Strathaird. It was a big car, cream, with a black convertible top.

'Marcia Maling's car,' said a voice at my elbow."

Austria: Airs Above The Ground by Mary Stewart

The central question for an armchair traveller is whether a novel's setting is inextricable from the story. As a romantic armchair traveller I'm partial to books where love is the bond that ties all the elements together.

Mary Stewart’s gothics or romantic suspense novels are classics of the romance genre. Among their many charms is a strong sense of place. As Lenemaja Friedman writes in the last chapter of Mary Stewart (Twayne's English Author series, Northeastern University, 1990), "[...] she is comfortable in the out-of-doors, and so are her characters. She knows about the trees and the flowers, the birds and the rocks; she also has a painter's eye and a poet's ear and as a result creates passages of excellent description". Airs Above The Ground (originally published in 1965) is a solid example of these strengths.

 

Not only does Vanessa March's husband cancel their long-planned holiday to disappear on a sudden business trip to Sweden: a newsreel shot of a fire reveals him to actually be in Austria - and holding a young woman. Determined to discover what is going on Vanessa boards a plane to Vienna and hunts down the travelling circus at which Lewis was last spotted.

 

The title of Airs Above The Ground comes from dressage and the artful maneuvers famously performed by The Spanish Riding School's Lipizzans. These provide the inspiration for a story that moves from Vienna to the rural province of Styria, and from a music-filled circus tent to the night-dark roofs of a crenellated castle. We are introduced to an intrepid heroine whose wifely concern and professional background as a veterinarian drive her headlong into a plot involving spies, international crime, and animals variously dignified and foul-mouthed.

Airs Above The Ground used to be one of the two Stewarts that I was lukewarm about (The Ivy Tree is the other). It does not have the gothic fairytale enchantment of Nine Coaches Waiting, the wit or scenic drama of This Rough Magic, or the emotional depth of My Brother Michael. What it does have is a teenage sidekick, a circus, and horses. The pacing in the book's first two thirds feels as leisurely as the atmosphere of the sleepy, sunny villages in which much of the story takes place, and the love interest, in this case the heroine’s husband, is absent for large chunks of the story.

Each rereading of the book has improved its previous standing in my estimation. Perhaps my expectations of a higher romance quotient got in the way early on; perhaps my tastes have a acquired bit more sophistication. While the romantic protagonists in Airs Above The Ground are already married and the bubbly anticipation from experiencing two characters fall in love is therefore missing, the sexual tension and banter between the pair is allowed freer play than in any other of the author's contemporary stories, including Touch not The Cat (the only one which includes a love scene). A slight datedness to the male/female interactions does not detract from the intelligence or likeability of the protagonists; indeed, the whole cast of characters is vintage Mary Stewart, colourful and well-rounded. The details that build the mystery are complex, and once the action switches into high gear the suspense at one point culminates in one of Stewart’s most pulse-pounding chase scenes.

Airs Above the Ground may not be Mary Stewart's most dazzling offering, but its touching epilogue completes a story as rich and satisfying as a generous slice of Sachertorte. With whipped cream on the side.

 

Excerpt (Hodder and Stoughton paperback edition, 1967, p.50)

“Beyond Wiener Neustadt we found ourselves in a rolling landscape of forested slopes, green pastures, and romantic crags girdled by silver streams and crowned with castles.

It was a scene from the idylls rather than from romance, pastoral rather than gothic. The valley bottoms were rich with crops, and the hayfields stretched golden right up to the spurs of the hills. Even when the road – magnificently engineered – began its twisting climb to the Semmering Pass, there was still nothing in the grand manner about the scenery; the great slopes of pine forest were only a shelter and a frame for the peaceful human picture below.

We ate at Semmering – a resort which, at four thousand feet, is sunny all winter and which now, in the height of summer, had air so dizzyingly clear as to make Timothy [the teenage sidekick] extra ravenous even by his standards, and to restore to me something of the appetite which had been taken away by the nervous tension that I hadn’t yet admitted, but which increased steadily as we neared the end of the journey.”