Once Upon a Time in England - where to start? The initial ingredients are: the 1970s, the north of England, and a mixed marriage. You know something bad is going to happen.
Robbie is a carrot headed man of Irish heritage, living in Warrington. He sings with showbands and goes down a storm. Susheela is a Malay Indian from Kuala Lumpur who came to England to train as a nurse and find a husband. She found Robbie. Helen Walsh visits the family at three significant times - 1975, 1981 and 1989. In the first installment, Robbie and Susheela are in love; they have a young son Vincent and Susheela is expecting a second. But there are already tensions. The couple already seem to be divided on the question of exotic spice - whether in food (Susheela would like some, Robbie wouldn't) or in life in general. Robbie finds himself ostracized for his mixed marriage and he seems to find escape in his singing. Meanwhile, Susheela is threatened, and before long is raped in her own home by a gang of skinheads as part of a racial assault. Susheela tries to play it down - she decides to tell neither the police nor Robbie what really happened, but in truth she has lost her confidence for ever. By way of escape, she aims to integrate herself into white suburbia, surrounding herself with symbols of bland safety. And from this unpromising start, the family's lives start to unravel over the course of the next fourteen years.
The success of the novel is the enormity of what it takes on. It addresses a whole heap of social issues - race, mixed marriage, rape, homosexuality, queer bashing, drugs, social class, adultery, ambition, and the list goes on. Yet the skill is that it never feels as though it is ticking issues off on a list. Susheela is not a token Asian; Vincent is not a token gay; Ellen is not a token teenage rebel. Nobody is there to play a part, rather the story unravels around people who are, simply, themselves. That results in a work that is very engaging, very credible and very intense. The depth of the problems and issues makes for a very rich experience.
It's also striking that Helen Walsh avoided the trap of creating one-dimensional victims. To a great extent, the characters do not help themselves. There is the feeling that, for example, Vincent is not bullied because he is black, but because he is weak. There is wrong choice after wrong choice. Moving to Thelwall; not reporting the rape; choosing the wrong school bag; buying the wrong car; going to the wrong school; ... It is a catalogue of distasters, some of which might even be funny if they were not so tragic. This is lightened by the occasional glimmer of hope - Ellie's scholarship to the private school; Vincent's writing prize; Robbie's affair; Susheela's friendship with (horrors) Robbie's boss's wife. But each hope proves to be a false dawn.
The ending, when it comes, is both noble and squalid. It shocks to the core.
The novel is not without fault. There are a couple of glaring anachronisms. And more worryingly, the first thirty or forty pages felt like wading through a thick fog of alliteration and flowery language that obscured all meaning. Perhaps this died back after the opening chapters or perhaps the rape had an immediacy that broke through the over-writing. But once the first tension has been built, and seen through to a horrific denouement, there is nothing more to distract - just pure, raw, deep emotion.
Once Upon a Time in England is a valuable testament to the times and places it describes. 1970s and 1980s England was a hard place to grow up. Young people had to make conscious decisions about whether to take a path of racism and bigotry, or whether to take a more liberal view. Many felt enormous social pressure to swing to the right. This is an unsentimental depiction of the effect that such decisions, such pressure had on fellow man.
Once Upon a Time in England is an excellent antidote to 70s and 80s nostalgia. They were not glory days, they were hard times.
