A Month of Novellas, Book 13: The Return of the Soldier - Rebecca West (1918)

on train back home from nyc

This is such a punch in the gut of a book.

I knew of Rebecca West, but only as a travel writer, she of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, the classic tome about Yugoslavia published in 1941. It's been sitting on my travel shelf for a while, and I'll honestly admit to being a bit daunted by its' 1,232 pages. Yeah, that's not a typo.

What I didn't realize before embarking on this month's quest, is that she was also an acclaimed novelist. The Return of the Soldier was her first novel published in 1918 and damn if it's not pretty amazing.

The basic plot is that a 30-something wealthy landowner returns from having fought in WWI suffering from amnesia.

He's very much aware of who he is, but he seems to have forgotten the intervening last 15 years of his life, thinking himself to be still be about 20 or so and well in love with a young innkeeper's daughter, Margaret.

But what he's forgotten is that he didn't marry that young woman and instead married Kitty, an incredibly shallow excuse for a human being, with whom he'd been living unhappily up until the moment he was called up for duty.

I'll give Kitty one wee break. Part of the reason why Chris - the returning soldier - is unhappy is because they lost their young child at the age of 2. No marriage can survive that sort of trauma unscathed, so Kitty is not solely to blame. But dammit if she's not also incredibly unlikeable. Her reaction to a visitor with an 'unfashionable' address:

"As the girl went, Kitty took up the amber hairpins from her lap and began swathing her hair about her head. "Last year's fashion," she commented; "but I fancy it'll do for a person with that sort of address."" p.9.

There's also Jenny, a cousin, living in the house. Her presence is never really explained, how is it that she's come to live with the couple, but she was Chris's childhood playmate as we find out later on.

But really both these women are detestable. This is Jenny's reaction to Margaret coming by with news of Chris (the women don't yet know who she really is, just think her a stranger who's come to their door):
"Yet she was bad enough. She was repulsively furred with neglect and poverty, as even a good glove that has dropped down behind a bed in a hotel and has lain undisturbed for a day or two is repulsive when the chambermaid retrieves it from the dust and fluff." pp.10.

At this point, they are yet unaware of the connection between Margaret and Chris, which would have made it a bit more understandable to be mean about her, but instead she's a perfect stranger to them. Someone who's come by to help them and they treat her and think of her as if she was the lowest scum, like an inanimate dirty object. I just kept on fuming the whole time they're speaking to her or of her.

But then again the joke's on them, as Chris doesn't recognize Kitty in the least and wants to spend all his time with Margaret...who not surprisingly has married and formed her own life as well during the past 15 years since they last met.

One should feel for Kitty and Jenny, for the sheer horror of having had their husband and relation go off to war to only come back having absolutely forgotten one of them, but instead I ended up rooting for Margaret and Chris to reestablish a life together. Again, this is what Jenny says to Chris before he's had the opportunity to see Margaret once again:

"She isn't beautiful any longer. She's drearily married. She's seamed and scored and ravaged by squalid circumstances. You can't love her when you see her."" pp.39.

Gah! What horrid people! Apparently as soon as one starts to age even a bit - they're in their mid-thirties for fuck's sake! - one becomes unlovable. Grrr.
Thankfully Chris is an actual real human being and of course is ecstatic to see Margaret once again.

I wish I could say it got better, that the women change and become better human beings and that there's an amiable resolution to all this. But of course there couldn't be. There are other spouses and traumas and pettiness and it'll make you cry. 

The language is beautiful and in the space of 80 pages you'll have felt like you really got to know a few human beings in depth.

But as for the crying thing, don't say I didn't warn you.