Pastoral (Vintage Classics) [Paperback]

Peter Marshall is an experienced bomber pilot who is well into his second tour of duty. His main interest in life seems to be pike fishing, an interest he shares with the rest of his crew and so in the midst of a terrible war we have this very pastoral scene of someone fishing or going out to look at badgers at night. Then he meets a WAAF signals officer, Gervase Stephenson and shares some of this Pastoral scene with her in between missions. She initially spurns his advances, but then realises her mistake during a mission in which he is faced with the prospect of returning home with a seriously damaged plane and an injured crew.

OK, some of the text seems stilted and everyone talks about S-E-X in such an oblique way. Did people really talk like that only 60 years ago? Sometimes, I catch myself thinking: "If they just hopped into bed everything would be fine." Spurned by his WAAF officer, Peter Marshall starts making mistakes, and I admit I found the part when the plane was faced with a drop into the North Sea and air crew faced almost certain death and they then received the message "Good luck to the Captain and crew" quite moving. Tension mounts in the story as the countdown begins to the end of his tour of duty and as Peter Marshall continues as happy as a sand boy because his WAAF officer loves him, she meanwhile is sick with worry, working in the ops room, painfully aware of anything that goes wrong. Forget, On the Beach, forget A Town Like Alice - this is a wonderful story.

To film script writers: this would make a superb film, how about it?

Pastoral was written during WWII, and from a purely British viewpoint, unlike so many of the war books that were written long after the conflict by so many Americans. As such there is a totally different atmosphere to this book, a quietness, an acceptance of the conditions and requirements of the war as just something that is there, part of the daily routine. And it is within this atmosphere that Nevil constructs a fine love story between the very experienced bomber pilot Peter Marshal (at age 22!) and a W.A.A.F signals officer, Gervase Robertson.

As perhaps is typical for war-time love stories, the war itself provides the conflict, the friction between the lovers, as Peter is duty-bound to continue flying bombing missions, and Gervase believes her own duties are important to the course of the war, and should not be given up merely to get married. Her decline of Peter’s offer of marriage sends Peter into a mental tail-spin, seriously impacting his efficiency as a flyer. How this conflict is resolved and the events that happen because of this conflict form the main portion of this book. Before reaching that point, however, we are treated to a view of English morality and customs of the day, a code that says one mustn’t go off alone with a member of the opposite sex, that married woman are expected to keep house, not have jobs, where the woman must defer to the man. A view that might seem dreadfully stifling and old-fashioned to a reader of today’s world, but it shown in such a non-obtrusive way that the reader can accept it without question. Until, that is, the reader finishes the book, and realizes that Neville has been quietly showing (and mildly satirizing) both the good and bad qualities of such a code. This is typical of Nevil’s writing – his points are made far more by showing, rather than telling, always a mark of a fine writer. Also noteworthy is the attitude towards the war that is displayed by all the characters here – that death is an everyday happening, but it won’t happen to me, it only happens to someone else, so it is safely ignorable. An attitude that seems to belong to every young person.

Nevil’s prose style tends towards the descriptive, especially of the countryside and everyday actions. His dialogue in this book is loaded with English slang, very typical of actual speech patterns of the day, but this does at times make it somewhat hard for the poor modern American reader to decode what is being said. And some of Nevil’s expertise as an avionics engineer shows in his descriptions of the aircraft and the functioning of various parts of these machines, at times obviously assuming that reader knows more about aircraft than is normally the case. These, however, are very minor negatives, almost totally subsumed by the engagement of the reader in the story of these two very well realized characters.

This book deserves an attentive read, if nothing else just to see how a romance really should be written, as opposed to the items that pass for ‘romance’ on the book racks of today.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)