Told in Winter by Jon Godden

Each Christmas, the Thomas family take it in turn to open the parcels under the tree – most of which have come from each other, or family and friends that we all know. And every year there’s a little pile of parcels to me from somebody none of the others know. And that person changes each year. It’s the LibraryThing Virago Modern Classics Secret Santa! [The group is devoted to VMCs – the Secret Santa books don’t have to be VMCs.]

This year, I was lucky enough to get Dee as my Santa, and chose a lovely selection of books. Among them was Told In Winter (1961) by Jon Godden – Rumer Godden’s sister. Since I wanted to read it in winter, and because that gorgeous cover was calling to me, I polished it off in January. I didn’t quite have the snow depicted on the cover and in the book, but it definitely felt suitably wintery.

Snow had fallen all night and the house in the woods was already cut off from the road and the village by a four-foot drift at the bottom of the lane. Snow lay along the branches of the firs that made a dark ring round the house, and the lawn was a smooth white lake.

As the sun came up behind the hills, the back door opened and closed again. One of the house’s three inhabitants was now abroad in the morning; the cold air filled her lungs and cleared the last mists of sleep from her eyes. She shook her head, as if in amazement at the white world which confronted her, and moved cautiously round the side of the house keeping close to the walls. Every few steps she paused to look suspiciously across the untouched expanse of snow into the recesses between the trees. Nothing moved. Nothing threatened.

This is the opening to the novel – and I don’t know about you, but I already felt a really strong sense of place. Not just the snow, but the stillness, the isolation, the vastness. I love a novel that can make me feel like I dived into it – and because descriptions of landscapes etc usually don’t work for me, I want the bare bones of the physical environment to be filled with how it makes the observer feel. Not many authors can do it in a way that works for me, but I felt cold and isolated as I read the opening of Told In Winter – isolated in a positive sense. With a secure centre.

And have you worked out what’s unusual about the first character we meet? We learn, after a few more paragraphs, that this is Sylvie – and she is a dog.

In this isolated house are only three characters: Jerome, a writer who has had success with plays and less success with the novels he considers his true art. Peter, who was Jerome’s batman in the war and is now a sort of housekeeper. And Sylvie, the Alsatian who lives with Peter when Jerome isn’t there, but worships Jerome.

Godden builds this house so perfectly. Focalising through a dog might sound twee or annoying, but it is not that. She never treats Sylvie like a pet or a piece of whimsy – she gives us Sylvie’s viewpoint, with honesty and accuracy, and without ever slipping into the first person. That would have made it too fey.

If their little world seems almost idyllic, then the moods in it aren’t. Peter is recalcitrant and so loyal that he can’t help pointing out his master’s errors. Jerome is frustrated and cross, and grudgingly fond of Peter. Only Sylvie is content, and she is content only when Jerome is around.

Into this world, though, stumbles Una. She has lost her car in the snow and turns up, bedraggled and desperate. Peter is sickened by the thought of her. Jerome is shocked and tries to send her away – but lets her in. They have had a relationship of sorts, and she believes herself to be in love with him. She has come to this distant place to convince him to reciprocate that love.

Into a settled household comes a great disturbance. I don’t love a big age gap in a novel, particularly of the kind where the man is always saying things like ”You silly little thing”, and the girl is weeping and flinging herself on him. It would read like a middle-aged man’s fantasy if it weren’t written by a woman. Well, it might anyway.

But if we put that aside, there is something very interesting at the heart of Told in Winter. It’s the most intriguing take on a love triangle that I’ve read. A love triangle between a man, a woman… and a dog. Sylvie is deeply, openly jealous. And Peter is constantly trying to get her to behave with dignity and restraint, as he feels too pained at watching her undisguised jealousy.

In terms of plot, this is it. Godden’s writing is so beautiful that it doesn’t need more. We see Jerome use his control over the girl and the dog, ebbing too and fro between them. We share Peter’s growing rage and unhappiness. And we know there can’t be a happy ending for this disturbed trio.

I don’t know much about dogs, so I’m guessing about how accurate Godden is – but it certainly chimed with everything I do know. It reminded me of May Sarton’s excellent The Fur Person, about a cat, in the depth of its attempt to explore the psyche of the animal – putting aside any of the romanticised versions that humans might put on top of that. Are dogs really this possessive of humans? I’m going to assume so.

Told in Winter will stay with me a long time, and makes me wonder how a writer of Godden’s calibre ever faded away.