A Summer to Decide – Pamela Hansford Johnson (1948)

A Summer to Decide is the third novel in Pamela Hansford Johnson’s Helena trilogy – which follows the fortunes of Claud Pickering and his ever changing relationship with his extraordinary step-mother Helena. The first novel Too Dear for my Possessing begins when Claud is about fourteen, living in Bruges with his father and Step-mother. This novel takes place about twenty five years later – in London, a lot has happened since those days in Bruges.

Claud is the narrator of all three novels, but it is the character of Helena who drives them, she is a brilliant creation – all PHJ’s characters are explored deftly and yet Claud still emerges a much paler creation than either Helena or her daughter Charmian. This, I am certain is deliberate, Claud is not a poorly written character – not two dimensional in any way – his colourlessness is a foil to Helena’s brilliance.

It’s no spoiler to reveal that very early in this novel Helena dies – we know that from the blurb of this edition.

“Personal tragedy is surprising in bright weather. That winter, however, I came easily enough to accept it. In a snow-locked London, reduced in fire and light, where thousand upon thousand of conscientious basement-dwellers lived by candlelight, the stage seemed set for the tragic event.”

What will a world without Helena in it look like? What next for Claud with his books of art criticism under his belt – and not much else going on in his life?

As this novel begins, the war has been over for a couple of years, Claud is in his late thirties – and living again with Helena after the events of the previous novel. His one great love is in the past, and he has a failed marriage behind him too. His half-sister Charmian is twenty-four and married to Evan Sholto who Helena and Claud both knew immediately was a man who would make her miserable. As Helena lies dying, Charmian is giving birth to her daughter Laura. Sholto is as usual nowhere to be seen when he is most needed, and the scales finally, fall from Charmian’s eyes.

“I cried for Helena that night; it was the first time I had done so. And in the morning I was able to think of her without anguish, remember her in joy, as I shall remember her always till the end of my life.”

Helena remains a subtle presence throughout the novel – though never ghost or spirit like – in the memories of Claud and Charmian. John Field formally a frequent visitor to Helena’s home, and once a great friend of the family, reappears on the scene too. Claud is alarmed at John’s friendship with his brother-in-law Sholto – he suspects – rightly as it turns out that the two are up to no good.

“Thus it was that John Field freed me of Helena. Whatever was the truth of his story, it had destroyed, for me, the power of her legend. I was free to delight in her memory, and to love her, without being tied to a conception so much larger than life-size.”

Charmian is committed to her baby daughter – but despite having completely fallen out of love with her feckless, philandering husband who has lately turned to drink – she vows to stick to him – and even moves his toxic mother into their home. Claud is hugely frustrated – continually urging his sister to leave her husband. Charmian is resistant to being saved.

Claud meets Ellen – a woman widowed during the war, who he is immediately drawn to – she is reserved, works for the board of trade and at home nurses a chronically hypochondriac father.

Meanwhile Claud takes up a position in a friend’s gallery – later investing some of his own money in it. There’s a sense of him being quite directionless without Helena in is life – he is frequently beside himself over the fate Charmian has decided to inflict upon herself – and this only increases when Sholto and John Field are embroiled in a criminal scandal. Claud is offered a life changing job which would require him to move ‘up North’ but would settle him for life – with everything else going on it’s a difficult decision to make.

PHJ’s affection and concern for Charmian and the terrible life she leads with Evan Sholto and his awful mother is what is at the heart of this novel. Helena’s influence can still be felt but is fading as both Charmian and Claud move forward with their lives and make decisions she may or may not have liked.

“I acknowledged now in the full clarity of my thought that she would never return, that I should never again hear the bursting out of her news even as the door opened to admit her, that I should never again know the stirring of the air about her wild and insatiable busyness. To think of her with joy was something; but it did not lessen the cold of knowing she had gone.”

Each of these Helena novels – and many other PHJ novels are available on kindle thanks to Bello books – and I believe can be ordered as quite expensive print on demand paperbacks too. I like my kindle very much, but as I so much prefer reading real books, the books I have on it do get forgotten. Which is why my reading of these three excellent books have been spaced out quite widely over the past three years. I enjoyed this novel very much. It would be fair to say that while it completes the story of these characters satisfactorily – it is not quite as wonderful as the two novels which precede it. Perhaps it suffers from a lack of Helena.  

The other thing about kindles of course is that unless you check first – you don’t really know how long the book is going to be. I don’t always remember to find that out first – and I so was surprised to find that A Summer to Decide is over 400 pages. I remember now that both Too Dear for my Possessing and An Avenue of Stone were a bit longer than I had expected too. None of that mattered except it meant I have been a bit late getting to my book group read.