To Bed With Grand Music

Posted on | May 8, 2010 | 18 Comments

To Bed With Grand Music by Marghanita Laski is the fourth of her novels that Persephone Books have published but was the first of those four to be published, in 1946 under the pseudonym “Sarah Russell”. A unique take on the experience of women in WWII England, To Bed With Grand Music opens with the arresting line, “Graham and Deborah Robertson lay in bed together and tried to say goodbye to each other”; Deborah’s husband is due to leave for Cairo for a desk-job in the war effort and in their goodbye he promises to be unfaithful to his wife, for the duration of his time overseas, only with women who cannot be compared to her, whilst Deborah vows her fidelity. The novel follows with Deborah’s failure to keep that promise throughout wartime until victory and her husband’s impending return home.

That is where I come unstuck. I have found it difficult to gather my thoughts and present them concisely on this book because Deborah exasperates, repels and flummoxes me. It is difficult for me to fully articulate my thoughts on this book because I have so many; it is thoroughly though-provoking and Darlene was right in suggesting it for me, on the basis that she entered into a dialogue with herself whilst reading it and thought that I would do likewise. Deborah is most vexing as is the situation presented. A husband freely admits -in advance- to being unfaithful to his wife whilst he is serving his country and yet she is to remain the docile wife at home with their son; the double-standard employed in the power dynamic of their marriage infuriates me and yet it was is seen as the norm because men have needs. Goodness forbid that a woman has sexual needs of her own and that she seeks that fulfillment outwith the sanctimony of marriage, let alone during wartime. The premise of To Bed With Grand Music is a shocking one but shocking in the sense that such things have rarely been tackled in literature and certainly not on the back of the war itself, when people were acclimatising to peace-time; Mollie Panter-Downes deals with it to an extent in her Mrs Craven short stories and Elizabeth Bowen depicted the sensuality found in the Blitz (or the darkness it resulted in) in The Heat of the Day, which Sarah Waters picked up on decades later in The Night Watch but for the main, those stories of the Home Front have been endearing (I think of Henrietta’s War, myself). What Laski has done is expose the underbelly of how the women left at home could -and often did- occupy themselves whilst the men were at the front (the preface by Juliet Gardiner makes fascinating reading).

Deborah is a thoroughly dislikable character from the outset; she is brattish and selfish. Being a housewife and a mother to Timmy, their two-year-old son, frustrates and bores Deborah and it is not long after Graham’s embarkation -at the instigation of her mother and housekeeper- leaves the family cottage and goes to find work in London, returning only on weekends to see her son. Before she has even set herself up in London, Deborah has experienced her first sexual encounter with another man; she is disgusted with herself but it is not long after moving to London that she conducts her first extra-marital affair and then another and then another, each one more seedy and briefer than the one before. By the novel’s end, the transformation is complete and Deborah has gone from a doting wife to a tart without a heart who seeks lessons in becoming a good mistress.

There is such difficulty in evaluating what becomes to Deborah because I rail against judging a woman for her sexual liberation and support a woman’s right to use her own body as she wishes but, in effect, Deborah prostitutes herself for dinners and drinks, hats and bags, and black-market stockings and nail-varnish. Laski presents such a quandary because I struggled so hard not to judge Deborah but I succumbed; Deborah disgusted me in her wanton disregard for the pain she was inflicting (the potential pain that had to be surmised) on the innocent victims of her adultery: her son and the wives of those married men she went with; she even begins to think of her actions as in the best interests of her child. My own strong feelings against adultery made it impossible to read this novel objectively; it wasn’t an immoral book but I’m not sure of Laski’s intent, whether she was writing a straight-up expose or a condemnation; she certainly did not pain Deborah in a sympathetic light. Deborah deludes herself in justifying her actions and it does make compelling reading, if not a completely enjoyable experience because of the frustration felt at Deborah’s actions and her justifications. It is most definitely a disconcerting read, more for my own reactions to it, and for the unique take on the home front that it provides, which is truly illuminating post black-out.

Despite lacking the emotional intensity of Little Boy Lost, To Bed With Grand Music still has me reeling and unable to express and do justice to how good -not to mention versatile- a novelist Laski is. I do think that, like me, she judged Deborah and she makes a persuasive argument for doing so. Graham, the husband, only appears in that opening bedroom scene -excluding some gushing and sexist letters- so we can only surmise how he has been conducting himself whilst absent from home; his absence excuses him from culpability, which is enraging, and is very effective in evoking the double-standard applied to cheating spouses. This novel is very much one about gender, power and sexual freedom, whether that was Laski’s intention or not. Yet again Laski has evoked a powerful reaction in me as a reader.

Some representative passages:

It was not until the end of August that Deborah’s content began to break up. Each autumn in wartime, everyone is slightly more depressed than they were each spring, for they look forward to cold and black-out and bombing, and another Christmas of war. They have forgotten the fantastic hopes they entertained as the last winter faded away, or, if they remember them, it is only to contrast their past expectations with present reality.

Deborah understood him. ‘You’re at least the third person,’ she said, ‘who has asked me if it mightn’t be better if I went home to my chee-ild. Well, darling, that’s just one of the things I’ve really thought out for myself and I know it’s better to be happy than unhappy, and not only for me but for my baby as well. I like this sort of life, in fact, I love it, and seeing as how I’m hurting no one and doing myself quite a lot of good, I rather think I’ll carry on with it. I’ve come to the conclusion that conventional morals were invented by a lot of unattractive bitches to make themselves feel good.

The end-papers from To Bed With Grand Music are taken from a 1940 Jacqmar scarf, ‘Good Night Everybody’ from a private collection.

Category: Book Reviews, Challenges, Persephone Reading Week
Tags: Marghanita Laski > Persephone Books > Women Unbound

Comments

18 Responses to “To Bed With Grand Music”

vivienne
May 8th, 2010 @ 8:36 am

Deborah sounds an interesting character. I definitely want to read this one. I am trying to decide which Persephone books to actually order, but you have all thrown me into confusion will all your fantastic reviews.
tea lady (the glittering burn)
May 8th, 2010 @ 9:36 am

I like how you wrote about your struggle with the book, it sounds like quite an intense reading experience.

I am currently reading Someone At A Distance but will not be reviewing it by the end of the week as I love it so much I’m determined to savour it!
Rachel
May 8th, 2010 @ 10:03 am

Those quotes say it all! Terrific review Claire! I desperately want to read this now…I love books that make you wrestle with the characters!
Mrs.B.
May 8th, 2010 @ 10:29 am

Claire, what an excellent, excellent review! I just finished this last weekend and I haven’t had the time to really think about it and write a review in time for Persephone week but I think you’ve expressed everything I was feeling while reading the book.

I didn’t like her character and the more I read, the more she repelled me. At the end where her husband writes and suggests that they stay at a particular hotel (I forget it’s name) before his homecoming, her action and comments just disgusted me. The hotel wasn’t good enough for her and what she was now used to. Yes, in effect she had become a whore. I do wonder if she had sexual needs or just a need to live the high life. She would sleep with a man just so he would buy her dinner or a bag as you said.

However, that said…Laski’s writing was compelling and I couldn’t help reading on and turning the pages. All her books so far and I’ve only read 3 of them have been riveting yet all so different.
Persephone Round-Up #11 | Paperback Reader
May 8th, 2010 @ 11:32 am

[...] of all, please have a read of my review (if you can call it that) of To Bed With Grand Music and don’t forget to enter my prize-draw [...]
anothercookiecrumbles
May 8th, 2010 @ 11:47 am

I’ve not read the book, but I think, to a large extent, I share your opinion on women like Deborah. Infidelity is in my list of top five despicable acts, and when the main driver behind it is “the high life,” it’s ever more repelling.
Claire (The Captive Reader)
May 8th, 2010 @ 1:39 pm

Every review I’ve read of this book leaves me conflicted. On the one hand, it seems like a uniquely engaging reading experience but, on the other, I am certain I would be incredibly frustrated and upset with Deborah and her wanton lifestyle right from the start. Do I really want to read something where my dominant emotion is going to be anger?

A fascinating review.
Bellezza
May 8th, 2010 @ 2:27 pm

You may not have been succinct, Claire, but you wrote such an enotionally charged post which is very effective! I loathed Deborah! I had no respect for her whatsoever, and kept waiting for her to get her ‘just desserts’. But, it seems she became the very temptress her “friend” Madeleine was…Deborah had wanton disregard for everyone: her mother, her son, her housekeepr, her lovers, her husband and even herself. She will not prosper, and it makes me sad that she is such a destructive person. Still, it’s an incredibly thought-provoking novel as you said, and illicted in me many of the emotions I felt toward Briony (hatred!) in the novel Atonement.
Bellezza
May 8th, 2010 @ 2:31 pm

p.s. I wonder if her husband hadn’t left with his words of intention how that would have effected Deborah. I can’t help but wonder if he’d promised fidelity that would have at least given her some encouragement to be faithful herself. Although, we can never pin our actions on someone else…
JoAnn
May 8th, 2010 @ 3:15 pm

Excellent review – I MUST read this!
Iris
May 8th, 2010 @ 4:43 pm

Your review was so passionate and I loved reading about your confusion about this book. It definitely made me curious about the book itself. I think I’d feel the same as you do on Deborah, which would make it a difficult read for me I’m sure, but it sounds really fascinating as well.

Great review!
Danielle
May 8th, 2010 @ 6:45 pm

I’ve only skimmed your post as this is one of the books I am buying as I am going to order some Persephones this weekend. Deborah sounds like an interesting character and I’m curious to read this. It’ll be interesting to see how she compares to Louise from Someone at a Distance–another character who I am not warming up to, I’m afraid!
heather
May 8th, 2010 @ 7:35 pm

Hear hear Claire. I too struggled not to judge Deborah, but she made it so easy. She didn’t redeem herself at all or try to really. But the novel was so captivating and though Deborah was not a sympathetic character, I still couldn’t wait to see what horrible move she would make next. It was like a train wreck.
Donna
May 9th, 2010 @ 9:49 am

Excellent thought-provoking post Claire! I judged away gaily I’m afraid (!) and hence had none of the problems you did reading it. Wasn’t Deborah a nasty piece of work by the end? She knew she was in the wrong all the way through, but just found it easier and easier to justify her selfishness.
skirmishofwit
May 9th, 2010 @ 9:51 am

Very much enjoyed your review Claire! I must admit that I hated Deborah freely: to me her actions towards her son and her husband’s friend were inexcusable.Equally, however, I was shocked by Deborah’s mother’s behaviour. She seemed entirely aware of what could happen in persuading her daughter to move to London, and so she chose what she thought was best for her grandchild over what was best for her child. It’s still a novel I mull over so many months after reading it – surely a testimony to Laski’s incredible skill.
Darlene
May 9th, 2010 @ 12:57 pm

I’m so glad that this book got a rise out of you! It’s definitely not a book that you hug to your chest when you’re finished…I wanted to throw it against the wall! But I loved it, I loved that it provoked all of the thoughts which you so expressed so perfectly. That Marghanita Laski could be the same woman who wrote such different voices in the books that I have read…well, I’m just short of worshipping this woman. Sorry if your blood pressure was raised during the reading of this book *smile*.
Buried In Print
May 10th, 2010 @ 4:03 pm

I wish I’d waited to read this one in Persephone Week: it just begs for discussion. Deborah’s behaviour is infuriating at times, but it’s not as easily judged when you look at the context of Graham’s leaving (as Bellezza says above) and the societal expectations of women: it’s complex and stuffed with “buts”, and that’s doubly amazing given what a short novel it is. I definitely want to read Little Boy Lost now.
Akilah
September 11th, 2010 @ 2:16 am

Fantastic review.