Afternoon of a Good Woman – Nina Bawden (1976)

Nina Bawden’s 1976 novel Afternoon of a Good Woman, is a slight, serious novel about a woman’s self-examination and guilt.

As the novel opens we learn that Penelope has decided to leave her husband.

“Today, Tuesday, the day that Penelope has chosen to leave her husband, is the first really warm day of spring. Her decision, last-minute but well researched, happens, through some chance (or perhaps characteristic) ineptitude, to coincide with her sitting, at ten o’clock in the morning, in judgement on her peers.”

Penelope is a magistrate, proud to be the good woman of the title – she is a good mother and a good wife of twenty years. Her husband; Eddie, writes successful tv dramas, and once wrote a novel which has been an enormous success, but now he has become lazy in his routine, and Penelope feels she must nag him into work. Eddie’s fist wife is in a psychiatric hospital – where she has been for years, and where Eddie still visits. His guilt, that he drove her there with his novel which she saw as a terrible betrayal – and about which Eddie was forced to think differently when he looked at it through her eyes.

Today Penelope will become more aware than usual of the fragile line between good and bad. The cases which will come before her on the day she leaves a note on Eddie’s typewriter keys – will be sad, pathetic and unglamorous – but will give her plenty to think about. The case of a middle-aged man charged with indecent exposure – forces Penelope to wonder how her own sex life might sound the details were blandly and emotionlessly read out. Then there is the more convoluted case of theft brought against Abel Binders, which the judge instructs the jury to dismiss – but the jury have other ideas and want to hear the defence after all – much to the irritation of the bench.

“Apart from one woman who has fallen asleep, plump chin on fur collar, the jury listen attentively to the Judge’s instruction like good children in class. When he has finished some of them frown as if the intrusion of what seems a subjective moral assessment into this court of law is somehow improper. How are they to know what has gone on in Abel Binder’s mind? Or perhaps they are simply confused. One elderly man is cupping a blue knuckly hand at the back of his ear, although he has not appeared deaf before. It is confusing, of course that innocence should emerge in the course of prosecution evidence. Incongruous anyway.”

Throughout the day, as the business of the court rumbles on – Penelope reflects on her past, the things for which she still feels guilt and sadness. She remembers her step-mother Eve – who she had loved so jealously when her father brought her home, that she had resented Eve’s own children. The young Penelope had not really understood Eve’s fragility and vulnerabilities – had enjoyed caring for her when her father was working away, caring for Eve the best she can before and after school. Not realising she should be getting help for Eve, Penelope unwittingly leaves her in harm’s way. When Eve ends up hospitalised Penelope goes to live with Auntie and Uncle – a house in which she feels awkward and constrained, and where Eve’s illness is never mentioned. She remembers the lies she told in that house.

“When she first became ill, I enjoyed looking after her. If I came home from school to find her still in her nightdress, sitting limply before the empty grate, or weeping into a stack of dirty dishes in the kitchen, I lit the fire, washed the dishes, made supper for us both. If there was nothing to eat in the house, I took Eve’s purse and ran to the corner shop, later on; when it seemed that Eve was feeling too tired to go out at all, I took charge of the ration-books and began to shop regularly, on the way to and from school. I felt strong and competent, looking after my poor little stepmother, and though I hoped she would be better soon, for her own sake, I was glad to have been given this chance to show what I could do for her.”

Penelope examines her difficult sometimes heady relationships with her step-siblings, which included meddling in the abusive marriage her step-sister entered into – and which led indirectly to a sudden tragedy. Looking back at her adolescence and young womanhood, she explores her first all-consuming love – which has never gone away, comparing it with how she has felt about Eddie.

As the court day ends. Penelope will leave, carry out her plans, she telephones Desdemona, Eddie’s friend and editor, a sign perhaps of Penelope’s guilt, though she is certain she is doing the right thing for both of them.

As ever, Nina Bawden brings her unique understanding of complicated families and the relationships inside them to this novel. It is an intelligent novel about people who feel very real. Penelope is a flawed heroine; many readers won’t like her – though I find such characters so much more interesting.