Smile by Deborah Moggach.

                                   Smile by Deborah Moggach.

"Through a fog of early morning sickness I'd carry out the plates of scrambled eggs."Cheer up," he said. "It might never happen." "I thought it has."

This collection is composed of 11 short stories examining marriage and modern families, insecure and generally unhappy. In some cases freedom and divorce are feasible alternatives to an empty and unfulfilled life. In Smile imagine the workers in a hotel having to wear badges that simply read Smile. The hotel was American so perhaps this explains it? Sandy, the narrator was 19. Formerly known as Alexandra, we learn that she changed her name when she was 12. She has been in and out of care homes since her dad walked out on her at the tender age of 4. A damaged young lady.

She seems attracted to older men, one in particular "who never turned up, married and based in Huddersfield." We learn of her pregnancy when she is working in the hotel, serving breakfasts. Further into the pregnancy she is moved into the kitchen. She has decided to keep the baby: "I'd have someone to love, who would be mine." You soon get the feeling of how unhappy she has been and her desperate need to be loved. When Donna is born she monopolises her: " I'd sit for hours, just breathing in her scent."

Mum wasn't the best of role models for a young mother like Sandy. She had a volatile relationship with her current boyfriend, Eddie, one minute giggling, the next rowing. Sandy felt warm and whole towards the end of her pregnancy. Once the baby is born, Moggach portrays her as a fulfilled young woman: "Donna had changed my world, nothing seemed real anymore, only her." An older man, the type that Sandy is usually attracted to turns up at the hotel on a fairly regular basis, happy-go-lucky, a rep. doing a bit of this and a bit of that takes a shine to Sandy paying her the usual compliments: "You're looking bonny" followed by "You've got a beautiful smile." Sandy is not her usual smitten self because she takes the responsibility of motherhood seriously.

When he flirts with her she tells him he's too old for her and he admits to being "matured in the cask." When she took his Access card for payment one time she saw the name on the card and of course, recognised it. "What's up? Seen a ghost!" Of course she was shocked. She takes the opportunity to visit him in his room to ply him with questions and he tells her he sells toys: "It's the child in me. I'm just a little boy at heart." He persuades her to play a sixties game called Ker-Plunk which was being relaunched. She feels uncomfortable when he puts his hand around her waist and squeezes her before asking for a kiss. "You make me feel years younger," he tells her then asks if he can take her to Brighton pier to eat ice cream the next time he visits. Sandy is unable to smile through another heartache and one wonders what the future will hold for the poor girl.

In Making Hay we meet Frank who hints at some medical problem that he hasn’t disclosed to his wife or anyone else. It sounds serious. He’s a coach driver and he is taking a group of women and children for a CND rally. Women Against the Bomb. It seems to be a beautiful June day and Frank seems meditative. He is married to Doriza, a Hungarian who he met 15 years ago. It had been a fiery relationship, Frank being seduced by her mysterious ways but once the rot sets in: “mystery’s the first thing to wear off.”  He is still fond of her but something is missing. Something else though. He mentions his visit to the hospital and “some little creep in a white coat” and the need to tell his wife, hints of not feeling well. Even the mention of cancer: “I’ve got leukaemia.”

Something out of the ordinary happens as he is checking the coach before locking it up.  A woman was still on the coach, reluctant to go on the march, complaining about feeling ill. She was pretty but dressed badly, making her frumpy and she seemed to be depressed. Both of them took a walk outside before she grabbed him, stripped off and they made passionate love. 

“Greedily she wanted more. She gripped me, there was something impersonal and determined about the way she did it.” Not once did she smile.

“Make hay while the sun shines,” she told him. He rephrased it substituting love for hay. Her answer was surprisingly: “Love? I’d call it despair.”  Once the rally was over, Frank dropped the women off home and this young woman disappeared out of Frank’s life for ever. Imagine what Frank told his wife when he returned home!

Lost Boys focuses on family relationships. Ewan complained to his wife that he had had a deprived childhood even though Lily, his mother had taken him to France and Tuscany for the summer and a year spent in a Cairo hotel. How could Ewan describe Lily as being untrustworthy and yet his wife describes her as being romantic? He resented his mother for neglecting him. He recalls an incident when she was painting nudes by the river when he was a young child: “I wandered down the stream and fell in and nearly drowned.”

The narrator, his wife, idolises Lily and after having her children she longs for Lily’s company. “I felt emptied, an empty vessel, drained by others’ needs.” She takes the children to Lily’s and they go swimming. She had hoped to be inspired by her. The swimming trip initially proved to be a wonderful experience before turning sour and potentially tragic.

The narrator leaves us with an image of Ewan as a little boy in his school blazer waiting at the school gate for a mother who didn’t turn up. She also leaves us with a poignant image of another lost boy, her son. The interesting message is that by idolising someone that person is lost to us. Reflective and thoughtful.

Publisher: Arrow Books Ltd.   ISBN: 0-74931227-0

REVIEW it by Carol Naylor.

Copyright 2015. Permission must be obtained from the author before any of this article review is reproduced.