Somewhere in England – Carola Oman (1943)

Still catching up with my October reads. Somewhere in England, the sequel to Nothing to Report was one of the books I read while I was away (and ill) in Devon at half term. It was perfect reading for my tired, ill brain.

Many of you will know how I love a novel written during the Second World War – and for those of you who like that period, Dean Street Press have lots of good ones that bring the period to life in a way that modern writers writing about that period can’t quite manage.

“Mary listened, to the sounds made by the traffic in the cobbled street outside, and thought how odd it was that it had needed a second German War to bring back to English county towns at noon the sound of horses’ hoofs as a predominant note.”

The tone of Somewhere in England is a little more sombre I think than Nothing to Report. That seems to reflect the times in which we find ourselves, we have very much entered into the serious part of the war, people are already deeply affected and altered by wartime experiences, life has changed, there are people to be worried about, young women widowed and soldiers who have already come home wounded and in need of care.  

“I’m about to enter my twenty-third year,” repeated Elizabeth, her dark eyes filling with tears. “It’s not natural, the life I’m living here—a housemaid without even any fun on my evening off.” “A very wise friend of mine said to me the other day, in a letter,” remembered Mrs. Hungerford, “I think that this should be called ‘The Lonely War.’ Most people are separated from those they love best just now. Nearly all are having to contend with some difficulties, and some with very great difficulties. . .”

This novel starts a couple of years after the end of that earlier novel – and the Second World War is in full swing. People and places have been altered by the war, they are doing different things, living in different places. As the novel opens Phillipa-Dawn Johnson (Pippa), is preparing to travel to Woodside the country hospital in the former home of our old friend Mary Morrison. Things have changed quite considerably for Mary since we last met her – and though the nursing staff are marshalled to within an inch of their lives by a matron, it is Mary who oversees the day to day running of the hospital she decided to set up at the beginning of the war. Mary isn’t the only character from Nothing to Report who we meet again rather changed by the war, Mrs Bates we now discover has had her debilitating rheumatism cured by the rise of Hitler, and is getting stuck in the best she can.

The first part of the book is told mainly from Pippa’s point of view. She is only eighteen, a bit of a history buff she embarked upon a lot of research before she arrived at Woodside, so she knows everything there is to know about the history of the house. She is very keen. She is also very kind, and really wants to do her best for the patients. Through her gauche young eyes we experience Woodside as it is in 1942. Meeting the staff she will be working alongside – some of whom readers of the earlier novel will be familiar. A dedicated reader of the historical novels of Rosanna Masquerier, Pippa is absolutely delighted to find her doing war work – Acting Quartermaster at Woodside. Two of the nurses; Elizabeth and her sister-in-law Lalage interest Pippa enormously, she is desperate to become friends with them – but sadly finds herself rather brushed aside.

“It was horrible to be eighteen, and not wanted, and she had never meant to be pushing, and of course, if she had thought for a moment before she spoke, she would have realized that Elizabeth and Lalage, who were twenty-one and twenty-two, couldn’t want to go out with her. Probably Lalage had been bored to death by all her questions about country people and things, and had been longing to shake her off, but had been too kind-hearted. Probably Elizabeth had agreed with Lalage that she would do the snubbing.”

One person Pippa does make friends with is Lady Merle – and her dog, who Pippa is allowed to walk. Pippa thinks Lady Merle is the living image of Elizabeth Tudor in later life a description the lady herself doesn’t seem to mind at all.

Like the earlier novel, this is also a story of village life. A place filled with memorable rather eccentric characters, romance and as it is war time the concerns of those left behind. There is also the Grand Fête to be organised, which has become a huge community effort.

This is a delicious, gentle sequel to Nothing to Report – another winner from the lovely Dean Street Press.