Whenever I travel I make a point of visiting historical residences, the older the better. So when I saw the still-life painting1 on the cover of Katie Fforde’s suggestively titled contemporary romantic comedy, Stately Pursuits, I settled down for what I hoped would be a witty and warm story centred around an interesting building in a rural English village setting.
What could an unemployed, dumped-by-her-boss-boyfriend, therefore living-with-her-parents twenty-something woman possibly have against house-sitting a sickly relative’s stately home? Nothing, her mother decides and volunteers Hetty for the job. Never mind that the place could burst into flames any moment due to antiquated wiring, or that rats have made the kitchen their playground (while the elderly cat sleeps inside the oven), or that the dilapidated manor will need an army to scrub it down before it must open to the public at Easter.
Unless Connor The Barbarian, as the villagers call the absent heir, succeeds in demolishing the building to make way for a theme park. He will not have his evil way if the villagers have anything to say about it – and they do. Enlisted in the cause, Hetty soon discovers her fight to save the house leaves very little time for nursing a broken heart. Especially once Connor shows up unannounced and things really heat up.
The background to the plot of Stately Pursuits revolves around a topic of current rural concern. Courtbridge House is situated in a dying (Surrey?) village. Shops, the post office, and the school have closed as inhabitants move elsewhere in search of work. Residences are being bought up as weekend retreats by city-dwellers who don’t participate in local life. The remaining villagers rally around the manor, which represents the last vestige of a vanishing heritage.
It is in depicting the community spirit, embodied in countless volunteers with a dogged determination to prove that Courtbridge House can positively affect the village’s economic welfare, that Stately Pursuits shows most spirit. For example, Phyllis Hempstead, the domineering local historian who spearheads the volunteer force, brims with energy and mettle. Whereas Hetty Longden appreciates her loyalty in an overwhelmed sort of way, I was grateful every time Phyllis showed up and injected vitality into the increasingly insipid execution of a decent story.
Although Stately Pursuits deals with the problem of owning and operating a large historical property in an era where even the privileged struggle to afford it2, the two main characters exhibit a curiously detached attitude toward the house as anything but a symbol. As Hetty arrives at the manor, her growing conviction that it must be saved is accompanied by a complete lack of interest in exploring the house. She is supposedly anxious about sleeping alone in a place she considers spooky, but, day after day, apart from the nightmarishly filthy kitchen – where paradoxically she can be found most of the time despite being a tin-can cook – the only areas the reader gains access to are those Hetty frequents out of dire necessity. Despite a description of the exterior architecture, most of the house interiors are either dismissed or treated in such uninspired terms that I received no real sense of the size, style, or atmosphere of the place. The thoroughly modern facilities in some of the outhouses, on the other hand, are described in gushing yet bland, interior magazine-like detail. For all her dedication to principle, Hetty does not seem to develop any personal connection with the house or derive any emotional enjoyment from it, which is underscored by her nonchalance when faced with a revealing choice at the end of the story.
The prologue’s somewhat clichéd set-up gives an idea of Hetty’s character: gentle and well-meaning until provoked beyond endurance, when she becomes like a furious terrier. What becomes clear only upon further reading is that a great deal of the comedy in Stately Pursuits is contingent upon Hetty’s behaviour, and that this behaviour is marked by evasiveness and flightiness. She displays practical initiative in trying to put her relative’s financial affairs in order, but in pursuing her ends often declines to seek consent. She feeds a bedridden person nothing but drinks, including alcohol, and aspirin – which she hopes will keep him knocked out and out of her way – several days in a row. She supervises the formidable undertaking to restore Courtbridge to acceptable functionality, but when confronted with a direct question, squirms off the hook, and when in doubt about a person’s thoughts or feelings, does not ask for clarification. All this causes plenty of supposedly humorous entanglements and mayhem.
For his part, Connor Barrabin vociferously opposes being saddled with the catastrophic financial drain he believes Courtbridge presents and dismisses as a ridiculous fancy the possibility that tourism might reverse the manor’s fortunes. It is obvious early on that Connor genuinely cares for his elderly relative, whose affairs Connor looks after, so the main conflict with Hetty and the villagers arises from the circumstance that his idea about what is best differs from everybody else’s. Yet, for example, when Courtbridge House closes to the public for the season and the accounts are supposed to indicate whether the property can support itself or not – and, on a personal level, whether it is Connor or Hetty who has been proven right – he casually neglects to inquire about the visitor numbers. Towards the end, his decisions indicate a sudden cavalierness that contradict his practical concerns and realistic outlook. I failed to understand the logic of how he had arrived at at his conclusions.
It is hard to attribute any alterations in Hetty or Connor to character growth. To the frustrating end, these two remain immature and unchanged in how they behave in general and relate to each other in particular. Since Connor is constantly exasperated by Hetty’s actions and relentlessly questions her sense and motives I am not certain how or when or why he becomes attracted to her. Hetty tiptoes around him yet finds it difficult to control her desire for him. While they discover a common interest in music, they spend the majority of their time together being angry or upset at each other. They never attempt to learn to communicate. Five pages from the end (the final two chapters play out during the same evening) they are still perpetuating the same pattern: Hetty is evasive, Connor irascible. He is not coming out with the word “love”, which makes her “tense with uncertainty”. I fully expect that in any future they may share she will continue to do things behind his back while he struggles vainly to express his caring in a way she might understand.
Unfortunately, while Stately Pursuits is meant to come off as a light and frothy tale where the opposites-attract romance is the icing on the cake, after a pleasantly hopeful beginning I experienced mainly tedium. I think Katie Fforde is good at spotting the absurd in mundane situations and everyday concerns, and she creates appealing warmth by finding something likeable in each and every character. Nevertheless, comedy is subjective and in my case the “infectious gaiety” promised on the dustjacket flap proved fleeting at best. Too often I found the dialogue pointless and belaboured, the sense of place generic, the prose dull, and the narrative style so low-key as to seem alternately vague and monotonous. It took me longer to plod through the 280 pages of Stately Pursuits than to complete the close to eight-hundred pages of much denser word count of another novel I recently read. Twenty pages from the end I set the book down for several hours to allow myself a break from numbness. I fear the other Katie Fforde book I own, Wild Designs, will continue to gather dust on my shelves a while longer.
1 Still Life With Still-Life Cupboard by Pamela Kay.
2 See, for example, the case of Calke Abbey; the multitude of British stately homes - or country houses - and castles that are dependent on tourism and/or organisations such as English Heritage or National Trust; and the slide into decay illustrated by films like Easy Virtue.
(Michael Joseph hardcover, 1997, pages 54-55):
“Unsure of how long she’d been asleep, but aware that it was pitch-dark outside, she slowly woke up. With great reluctance she allowed her brain to register an unfamiliar noise. It was faint, and sounded oddly like someone clashing pots and pans together. It must be some leftover junk blowing in the wind, she decided. And then listened again. There was no wind, and the noise was coming from inside the house, from the kitchen.
She would have to go and investigate. It was probably something perfectly innocent, like a window blowing open and a breeze playing on the pots and pans. The dogs, who were now sitting up, ears pricked, would protect her.
She disentangled herself from her bedding, picked up the poker, tiptoed down the passage, and very, very slowly, making as little noise as possible, opened the kitchen door.
There was a man standing with his back to her. He had opened the fridge door and was staring into it. He was wearing corduroy trousers and a very hairy sweater, the sort of clothes that could see off Cape Horn without bother. The dogs, on seeing him, ran up to him and jabbed their noses into the backs of his legs. He jumped, turned, saw Hetty, and made a sound like someone in a film who’d been shot, which he swiftly turned into a string of very bad language.
‘Who the f***ing hell are you?’ he demanded hoarsely, after what seemed a long time.
Hetty pulled herself up, trying to feel dignified in her Damart pyjamas. ‘More to the point,’ she said stiffly, ‘who are you?’
But she didn’t need to ask. She knew who he was. He was Conan the Barbarian.”