Mother's Boy

"The poem was a piece of code, he realised. It didn't expose him directly, as writing a story or essay might, not like writing anything in the first person singular, but it locked his thoughts and feelings safely in a place where only those granted the key would ever access them."

Mother's Boy is the seventeenth novel by British author, Patrick Gale. Regardless of her less-than idyllic childhood, and despite her superior in service to the Frasers warning her of the pitfalls of marriage, all Laura Bartlett really wants is to be a mother. When, as England heads into war, she meets handsome Charlie Causley, whose plans for running a guesthouse might not exactly thrill her, she accepts his marriage proposal without delay.

Charlie enlists and goes off to fight, but they take advantage of his every leave, as short and far apart as they are. By the time Charlie is invalided out with mustard gas damage to his lungs, they have a baby boy, named Charles Stanley Causley, after his father and Laura's recently-lost, much-beloved younger brother. Unlike other fathers who go out to work, Charles gets to spend lots of time with his, due to something mentioned only in whispers: TB. But only for a few years…

Just like her widowed mother did, Laura works hard as a laundress to maintain her independence, to keep herself and Charles housed, fed and clothed. She knows he has to make his way in the world and, working class she may be, but Laura is fiercely determined to gain every possible educational advantage for her beloved boy, who is so very aware and reveals an early love of words and music.

She understood: "He would never be like his cousins. She had to accept and embrace that. He would always be different, and less trouble in some ways and far more of a worry in others. He would probably never be like everyone else, never be normal, and the butcher's boy would probably not be the last to be maddened by his brilliance."

"She had hoped for a clever, special boy and he had grown into a clever, special man, which meant he could be prickly and difficult and knew exactly how best to wound her with his sharp tongue. If he had been ordinary, what Miss Bracewell called 'low wattage', he'd have been married by now, and lost to her that way, and probably risking his health in the iron foundry, sawmill or tanneries."

After two office jobs, and with the country again at war, Charles enlists in the Navy as a coder, a life that will entail training, a lot of seasickness, fleeting episodes of clandestine love, and decoding or coding under tremendous pressure while lines of poetry insist on running through his head.

Meanwhile, Laura's life consists of hard work, taking in evacuees, rare and short Intervals with her son on his infrequent and unpredictable leaves, encounters with black American GIs and later, German POWs, and waiting, endless waiting for word. And hoping he has the luck of "… those who felt they had been stroked by the black wingtip but spared the talons."

Patrick Gale takes the known facts of cherished Cornwall poet and playwright, Charles Causley and, with richly imagined detail and gorgeous prose, brings this intensely private man to vivid life. Causley's beloved mother, Laura, too is depicted as a woman of depth and strength.

Gale's descriptive prose is so beautiful and evocative, it's hard to limit the quotes; of Causley's earliest memory: "As an old man famous for his sensitivity, discretion, wit and discipline, he will secretly inspect this memory at intervals and do so with professional envy. The baby in his cot may be quite passive and vulnerable to the whims of others, but he is also quite safe and will never again be so receptive; he is all ear, all eye, no judgement, no defensive irony."

Once again, an utterly superb read.