The three women of the McWatt family, Honesty, Mary and their niece, Bridie, sat around the interior grate of their little flat in Napier Crescent, Castleburgh, on a cold December evening in 1945, their eyes on the black marble clock on the mantelshelf, tense with anxiety and anticipation.
The opening paragraph of Winifred Peck’s A Clear Dawn made me feel pretty sure I’d picked up something I’d enjoy. We’re in a domestic setting with a group of women and something is happening to shake things up – already I am squarely in the middle of my comfort zone. And, as I read most of A Clear Dawn on a very long train journey to Edinburgh, I quickly realised that ‘Castleburgh’ is a stand-in for that city. It felt apt. And all the more coincidental, given that I’ve had A Clear Dawn on my shelves for more than 20 years.
As that opening tells us, three women live together in a small flat. Two sisters in their 40s – though, as often in novels of this period, they feel rather older – and a niece in her 20s. Honesty is intelligent and sharp – perhaps living up to her name a little too closely at times. Mary is kind and deeply committed to her Christian faith. Bridie is loyal to her aunts but also aware that her youth and vitality deserve a wider canvas than their restricted world.
What has brought ‘anxiety and anticipation’ to the trio? It’s the return of Walter – their brother and uncle, respectively. Not only is he coming back to Scotland after years in the Middle East, he is returning with a fiancé, Lily. The women don’t know anything about her, but are prepared to make her welcome in their lives – well, ‘prepared’ to differing degrees. But the flat truly belongs to Walter, and they plot how best to shift living arrangements and furniture so that the newlyweds will be able to move in with them, once they are, indeed, newly wed. Until then, Lily can stay with a nearby aunt and Walter can stay with them.
During the initial meeting, it quickly becomes clear that this arrangement will not succeed. Whatever the opposite of a ‘meeting of minds’ is, that’s what happens almost as soon as Lily steps over the threshold. As the reader soon learns, she is marrying Walter largely because she is at an age when there are unlikely to be many further options, and because of a misplaced idea that he is wealthy. This modest flat, and the proposed living arrangements, are a horror to her.
“Oh, Wattie darling, such a funny mistake!” The falsity of Lily’s high, sweet voice with its cutting edge was obvious even to gentle Mary. “Your kind, kind sisters thought we were coming to crowd out this dear little flat when we married. I’ve been telling Honesty that of couse, of course, we mean to have a little home of our own!”
I think Winifred Peck is masterful at dialogue. Can’t you just hear her? And what made A Clear Dawn so enjoyable to me is that Lily isn’t some sort of spoiled ogre. You feel almost as much sympathy for her as for the sisters she may end up displacing. This is, after all, not the life she thought she was getting. And that sympathy is indicative of something that runs like a seam through the novel: Peck’s lack of cynicism. Characters are complex, but when they do good, noble things, it is celebrated. There are lines like this, which you’d struggle to find in a novel written today: ‘Perhaps it was true, yes, she supposed it was certainly true, that love and forgiveness must be put in the scales against truth and honour, and weigh them down in the end.’ In this cynical era, such simple, hard-won truth feels refreshing and powerful.
The only note in A Clear Dawn that felt less successful to me was the introduction of Ian. He is the estranged son of the absent-minded couple for whom Honesty is housekeeper. We learn that he was, as a child, possibly responsible for the death of his younger sister – and his parents lament that he has turned out bad. He is, in fact, sociopathic. When he arrives on the scene, causing chaos for various characters – particularly Lily – he doesn’t quite live up to this description. He is selfish, weak, immoral – but I think Peck’s pen drew back from creating anybody as evil as he is initially described. Even so, he is a curious addition to a novel filled with ordinary, flawed, lovable people. For even Lily is lovable, even if it is a love that comes with impatience – and Walter, similarly, you want to shake. But Honesty and Mary are two of the most engaging, enjoyable characters I’ve come across for a long time. I wonder why Peck decided to throw something so dark into the world of striking pastels that she had created.
And the title? It comes from Milton, and is quoted by one of the characters late in the novel: “By this time, like one who had set out on his way through life by night and travelled through a region of smooth and idle dreams, we now arrive on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at a far distance, true colours and shapes.” If I’m honest, I don’t truly understand what that means – except perhaps a new start, with the reality of things clarified for us?
There are certainly characters who embark on new starts at the end of this novel, and some who must mourn the ending of what they hoped for. There is a surprising amount of incident in the book. But it is really a novel about character, as all the best novels are, and succeeds brilliantly on that count. Honesty and Mary are particularly wonderful characters, and the family dynamic between the core characters – especially the dissatisfying meeting of new and old women – is done exceptionally well. I loved reading A Clear Dawn and it reminded me why I love domestic, middlebrow novels of this period so much.
It’s good to have that reminder. Quite often, because I am on the hunt for future British Library Women Writers titles, I read novels like this by authors I’ve never heard of. They’re picked from the dusty corners of bookshops, in the hope that I’ll stumble across something brilliant. It has led to some wonderful discoveries in the series – Winifed Boggs, Dorothy Evelyn Smith, Theodora Benson – but, of course, the majority are mediocre. And perhaps it dinted my impression of how much I loved this variety of novel. Thank you, Winifred Peck, for reminding me why it is my favourite thing. Kicking off the 1949 Club with a definite success (and I’m sorry that it is so hard to get of, friends).
