by Susan Abraham
I find of late that I veer towards nostalgia as a natural connection to a holistic life that's solely personal and unique, one tailor-made just for me.
I view the past as an indexed library; a cherished science where introspection built from a sedated wisdom was slyly packed to secrecy by my once youthful fingers as a heirloom. Now years later and slightly befuddled with what I had first set out to achieve, I am myself called to receive cognizance with thankfulness; my mind fiddling with armfuls of curious thought on lessons learnt; like a child studying a wrapped present slipped too early under the tree and waiting for 'what gives.'
No doubt, my early African journeys starting with travels to Tanzania, Zanzibar and Zimbabwe - and also once there was a short stint in Johannesburg - and later branching out to an extraordinary fascination for wildlife safaris and mountain climbing, heralded the silent hedonism that re-claimed my heart, for a 'desire of being.'
I'm certain it was a matter of expansive seascapes, skylines, mountains, hills, rivers and plains, sunsets and Harare trees like mismatched ghosts in the twilight, almost gothic and foreboding in character, that led me on to a lively celebration of nature closeted with wonderment and glory.
Now, my zig-zagged spirituality constantly points to a memorable merry childhood featuring books, dreams and old friends that serve as modules and puzzles with which to help me rekindle lifelong passions. The whole affair appears serene in thought and prayerful in nature.
Why do I seek to look back to where I had first set out? Why is it so essential, necessary and intoxicating? Those are the questions I now ask myself.
That may be why too, I picked up a reissued reprint of a 1971 Ruth Rendell mystery featuring a cast of brilliant inspectors and sergeants - not without their fair share of humanity - including the endearing, taciturn Wexford, called No More Dying Then.
The mystery celebrated a humbler era that was missing its cell phones, internet technology or sophisticated forensic examinations. Instead, solutions relied on clever clues, a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing here and there from pubs and golf clubs to otherwise nosy or secluded neighbourhoods and of course, intense whispered discussions among policemen that eclipsed kinder dialogue and razor-sharp observations.
The premise is simple. Two children go missing in England's Kinsmarkham, the legendary setting for a Wexford mystery. One is later found sadly dead - the body had lain for months in a cistern - while the other's disappearance continues to beget disbelief.
The plot revolves around an assortment as I noticed, of irate women characters that reveal through disgruntled eccentricities, unlikely events and strange coincidences.
At the same time, a widowed Inspector Mike Burden, falls in love with a young winsome woman, bohemian in appearance and slightly hippish with her candour and notion of free love. This leads to a host of complications and Wexford's own concern for his confused colleague. In fact, each character may have its own nemises so that Rendell's talent shines in revealing many families lives and troubles like a neat, thoughtful symmetry or perhaps too, a mansion spreading wide its windows to let in the view.
Thus, I read my beloved crime novel with rapt absorption and finished it within a space of three hours - minus a short intelude with the telly.
I loved this novel for what it represented with its crystal clear descriptions of countrysides... that had begun to lure my footsteps to England even at an unsuspecting young age. I could still catch my now tattered mood of expectancy and the fading reel of scenic views I had conjured in my imagination. As I turned through the pages, I realised that none of my childhood memories were untouched, none through the many difficult years later on, had been intruded upon.
Rendell's style also appeared to project an interplay of two other favourite novelists, Lynne Reid Banks in The L-Shaped Room and the late Dame Iris Murdoch. Banks wrote of characters who were professed free spirits with their liberal ambitions and adventurous faith in the premature years of swinging London.
So does Rendell when she writes of Gemma who is the complicated and ill-fated sweetheart of Insp. Burden and who changes plans like a weather-vane.
"...it will be better for us if I do what we're planning and go...she's so lonely and I'm so dreadfully sorry for her...that way I can have London and my friends..." - Gemma in No More Dying Then
In many of her deeply intense philosophical novels, Murdoch wrote of a series of beautiful or terribly plain characters, all often involved in a web of comic entanglements. She wrote of homosexuality with profound acuteness.
I was reminded of this when Swan, a young handsome man described as a modern day Apollo - Murdoch had many of those - spurned a scholar's heart. Frensham never got over it as is evident when Wexford visits to question him over a crime. Frensham a pronounced alchoholic is still heart-broken and terribly drunk.
