‘The Secret Guests’ by B.W. Black (aka John Banville)

A Year With John Banville | #JohnBanville2024

Fiction – Kindle edition; Penguin; 275 pages; 2020.

The Secret Guests is one of John Banville’s “entertainments” written under his pseudonym B.W. Black.

It’s a story that could have fallen right out of the hands of the scriptwriters of The Crown because it posits what might have happened if the two royal princesses — Elizabeth and Margaret — had been evacuated from London during the Blitz and spirited away to neutral Ireland for safekeeping.

In reality, this would never have happened, but Banville makes the arrangement seem plausible [1]: the Irish Government has agreed to keep the pair in a “safe house” in exchange for Whitehall-sanctioned shipments of desperately needed coal.

Secret mission

Under the top secret operation, the girls are given new names — 14-year-old Elizabeth becomes “Ellen” and her 10-year-old sister Margaret becomes “Mary” — and they are taken to Clonmillis Hall in Tipperary, home of their distant relative, the Duke of Edenmore.

They are accompanied by Celia Nashe, a MI5 agent, who acts as their (reluctant) governess, while Detective Garda Strafford [2] is sent from Dublin to provide police protection.

The legend that had been put about among the servants, who would, naturally, spread it beyond the Hall, was that the two girls, evacuated until the nightly bombing raids on London should have eased, were the daughters of the duke’s grand-niece—there was, of course, no such person—married to an officer high up in the military, who had been posted, along with his wife, to Cairo. (page 64)

Plotwise, it takes a little while for the story to get going as Banville takes his time to set the scene and introduce us to a small cast of characters — the people who run the household and those who live in the neighbouring village, some of whom “have pledged to drive the British out of the North and reunite the country”.

Suspense builds

The threat of politically motivated kidnap lends the novel a suspenseful atmosphere, but there are just as many tensions within the household as outwith. Will Strafford strike up a relationship with Nashe, for instance? Will the servants keep their mouths shut about the real identity of the girls staying at the Hall? Will haughty Ellen and curious Mary keep up the pretence or say something that will put them in real danger?

Throughout The Secret Guests Banville reminds us of the differences — political, personal, cultural — between the English and the Irish. For Nashe, the M15 agent, it’s an eye-opening experience to discover that

her England, a place of rolling downs and country cottages, of Big Ben and the Pearly Kings and Queens, of Yorkshire pudding and seaside ices, could be the object of such violent hatred and contempt. (page 96)

While for Anglo-Irish Strafford, a Protestant amongst Catholics (and the only Protestant detective in the country), the situation merely confirms his position as an outsider.

Yet as a descendant of the land-grabbers who had flooded over from England three centuries before, was he not himself suspended between two worlds, two sets of sensibilities, two impossible choices? Poor Ireland, poor divided little country, gnawing away at immemorial grievances, like a fox caught in a snare trying to bite off its trapped leg.

Eventually, things come to a head in a dramatic climax, making this book an enjoyable romp and one that is hard to pigeonhole — it’s not quite a crime novel, neither is it a thriller; perhaps it’s best described as historical fiction with a literary bent.

My favourite similies

And it’s the literary angle I most appreciated in this novel. Banville has a way with similies, which he often uses in a mischievous, amusing way. Here’s a selection of my favourite from this book:

He sported a small black moustache, like a smudged, sooty thumbprint applied to the groove under his nose, which was a godsend to his opponents, whose nickname for him was ‘Adolf’. (page 8)

♥

Hegarty held his face bent over his plate—like a sheep over a patch of grass, Strafford thought—mashing the potatoes into the fish juices and inserting forkfuls of the resulting mush into his mouth, the process accompanied by small, surely unconscious, mumbling slurps of appreciation. (page 20)

♥

For years this house had drifted along contentedly enough, like a great anchorless hulk in a torpid sea. (page 64)

♥

Strafford had become aware of a vague sense of desperation rising inside him, like seawater in the hold of a foundering ship. (page 66)

♥

Denton took off his cap and set his gun on the table—on the bare wood it looked uncannily like the severed, dried-out haunch of some spindle-legged animal—and went to the sink. (page 215)

♥

What had woken him was the rug slipping from his shoulders and dropping on to the floor behind his chair; it was as if he had shed his own pelt, in one slithering go. (page 253)

I read this book as part of A Year With John Banville, which I am co-hosting with  Cathy from 746 Books. You are invited to join in using the hashtag #JohnBanville2024. To learn more, including our monthly reading schedule, please visit my John Banville page.

♥ This month Cathy reviewed ‘Birchwood’, his second novel, which was originally published in 1973.

♥ Next month I plan to read his first novel, ‘Nightspawn’, and Cathy plans to read ‘The Newton Letter’.

[1] Perhaps what is less plausible is that he makes Éamon de Valera’s son a Major in the British Army. Éamon de Valera was the taoiseach (prime minister) and no friend of the British.

[2] Readers of Banville’s recent crime series — Snow, April in Spain and The Lock-Up — will recognise Strafford as the main protagonist from those novels. In this book, he is much younger. His boss, Inspector Hackett, also features.