Company in the Evening by Ursula Orange #1944Club

I loved the first Ursula Orange novel I read (Tom Tiddler’s Ground) and was glad that the 1944 Club provided an opportunity to read another. Company in the Evening is one of the Furrowed Middlebrow reprints – extremely welcome, especially given how much Scott has made us all want to read Ursula Orange over the years. And, yes, it’s another really good’un.

The novel is from the perspective of Vicky, a woman who has recently divorced and is looking after her young daughter (born after the divorce) while also working at a literary agency. She is managing life rather well, but her mother can’t believe this is possible – and decides that Vicky should take in her sister-in-law. Rene has been living with Vicky’s mother, after being widowed (a very WW2 element to the story) – and she makes the move to Vicky’s household, fitting neither in the role of servant or relative. She will provide, Vicky’s mother optimistically hopes, ‘company in the evening’.

Vicky is more a real character than a likeable one. Or, perhaps, she becomes likeable because she is so understandable. She does not particularly want Rene to move in with her, nor does she know quite how to speak to her. Orange is very good in the scenes where Vicky tries to reach across the intellectual and social chasm between herself and Rene, wanting to find the right topics and language, but also (because she is only ordinarily nice; nothing special) not putting in quite as much effort as is needed. She is definitely an intellectual snob and, to a lesser extent, a class snob – but it is undeniable that this chasm would exist, even if Vicky cared less about it. The women are two different to understand one another.

Meanwhile, she starts to reconnect with her ex-husband – recognising, for the first time, that he might want to make something of the role of father, and that she never really gave him the chance. Looping back to the title – might he become the aforementioned company?

The dynamics of the unusual household are done extremely well. We always know what people are or aren’t likely to say, do, and feel, and understand how awkwardly these elements cohere – or don’t cohere. It is a funny novel, but not in the way that Tom Tiddler’s Ground was. It’s the war – set in 1941, if memory serves – and a more sombre light is cast over the book.

Having said that, all the stuff at her literary agency is amusing – particularly her dealings with an author who sends all her best stories elsewhere, and is maddeningly unhelpful in meetings. I love reading about anybody engaged in literary work, and this was all rich material for what a literary agency was presumably like in the 1940s.

Dorothy Harper wafted herself out of the office, all pearls, fur-coat and scent. I am sure that she always pictured herself as bringing just a little colour and romance—a breath of the outside world—into our drab lives. As neither of us ever did anything but listen patiently while she talked her society prattle, perhaps we encouraged her in this conception. I was ‘Miss Sylvester’ to her, as I was to all our clients. I am sure that had she known that I was (like her) a divorcee, she would. have been deeply shocked. Little typists in offices (she would think) have no business to be also divorced women with private lives of their own.

The oddball humour is perhaps an odd fit with the social anxieties – and with all the motherhood aspect, particularly when Vicky’s daughter has a health crisis. But I think it works well together – because, of course, people’s lives have funny moments and unhappy moments, and Orange has written something that is naturalistic in tone, if not in every word spoken. I’m so grateful that Scott and Furrowed Middlebrow have brought Ursula Orange back into print – and you can read his detailed thoughts about this novel on his blog.