The Forgotten Smile – Margaret Kennedy (1961)

Well I am sorry – I really had intended to get this review written and posted a little nearer to Margaret Kennedy day – but it appears to have been one of those weeks.

The Forgotten Smile is a later Margaret Kennedy novel – one offering the reader a wonderful escape to another world. The majority of the novel takes place on Keritha, a tiny Greek Island, largely forgotten by the rest of the world. A place of Pagan mysticism and legend, where the cruise ships don’t stop and aren’t really welcome. It’s a place out of step with the modern world and is perfect for an escape.

The title of the novel is explained thus:

“I believe that is why our ancestors, who never supposed themselves destined for felicity, have left so many memorials, in this part of the world, to human happiness and to the spectacle of men rejoicing. In the earliest sculpture they are smiling. It is this forgotten smile, sometimes called ‘mysterious’, which I have sometimes seen on Keritha. We have preserved it because, in the eyes of the world, for many centuries, there has been nothing of note to be sought on our island.”

The novel opens with an unexpected meeting between pompous Ancient Greek scholar Dr. Percival Challoner – and Selwyn Potter – one of his former students – on the Greek island of Thasos. Selwyn (by far my favourite character) is a man who is only dimly aware of his own inability to fit in, his waist line is too thick, his hair is too curly. At first, to Selwyn’s confusion, Dr Challoner doesn’t seem to remember his former student – this is a man who is pretty disparaging of everything. However, the two are destined to be thrown together, and Dr Challoner forced to remember Selwyn Potter, as he finds he needs his help. Dr Challoner has no interest in any field of study other than his own, to the extent that he can’t even speak modern Greek – just the ancient. Wanting to travel to the mysterious Keritha, where he has a legacy waiting for him in the form of a house which belonged to an uncle and aunt (whom he resented simply for their being younger than he – Dr Challoner dislikes such unconventional oddities) – he enlists Selwyn’s help as translator. The pair find themselves on a small boat for the trip to Keritha – which they share with crates of Coca-Cola and a goat.

“The boat was small. The cargo included several crates of Coca-Cola and a tempestuous Billy goat. At the sight and smell of this creature Dr Challoner would have cancelled the trip had he been able to retrieve his suitcase which were stowed away under the crates. Nobody listened to his protests. He was pushed aboard amidst a terrific altercation carrying on between the crew and some people on the quay. In the course of it they put out to sea but the volleys of invective between ship and shore went on as long as any shout would carry on across the water.
‘What was all that about?’ he asked as silence fell.
‘Just the time of day,’ said Selwyn. ‘Who’s dead, and who’s married. Also some important citizen has bought a refrigerator. You needn’t keep your feet tucked up like that. The goat won’t bite.’”

When they arrive on Keritha, Selwyn Potter is amazed to meet someone else he knows. Kate Benson, whose daughter Selwyn had known slightly years earlier – Selwyn is remembered for breaking a small table when he visited the Benson house. Kate, it transpires has been staying on Keritha for the last two years. From here the narrative jumps back a couple of years to reveal how it was that Kate Benson, wife and mother, ended up in such an unlikely place.

Kate a woman of around sixty, fed up with being under-appreciated and ignored by her adult children and her husband, Kate decides to take an Aegean cruise. She selects a cruise that doesn’t take the usual route, making stops in less well-known places, that are a little off the usual tourist track. The ship makes a stop at Keritha, where Kate runs into childhood friends; brother and sister Edith and Alfred Challoner (who in the present have died within months of each other). The Challoners; Kate learns, came home to the island of their birth years earlier. The Challoners had not had a happy time in England, never quite fitting in, they returned to a place where they felt they belonged, here Alfred is revered by the locals and called ‘Lord Freddie.’ With her childhood friends Kate finds a home a world away from the one she left – with all the family arguments that have recently so unsettled her.

Back in the present and with Edith and Alfred recently dead, Kate has stayed on in the house – at least temporarily with the mysterious Eugenia. She comes forward to meet Dr Challoner – the new Lord of the house – and is mildly irritated to meet Selwyn again. Kate is not the first person to overlook the poor, bumbling Selwyn, never wondering what it is that has brought a once brilliant scholar to life as a school-master.

“The more we love people the more we have to change when they die. If the dead could come back, those who loved them most would seem to them the most changed.”

In retrospect, we hear Selwyn’s story – as well as Kate’s – as the story of these people slip back and forth from past to present. Gradually the island works its magic on this group, casting each of them in a new light in the eyes of the others. Keritha shows those who need showing, that the world hasn’t quite finished with them yet – that perhaps there is a place for them back in the world.

The Forgotten Smile was such a lovely read for Margaret Kennedy day – perhaps one year I will actually post a review on the correct day.