The Bachelors

Reading Muriel Spark this year will be mostly re-reading; in fact, there are only two of her novels that I haven’t read at least once before: The Mandelbaum Gate and The Bachelors. The former results from foolishly placing the book unread among all her others where it has lain low ever since; the latter from a rare false start. Spark’s beginnings are generally addictive, her novels demanding to be devoured, preferably in a single sitting, all the better to appreciate the lines which echo through the pages. The Bachelors, however, felt stuffy and stand-offish and was put aside, jilted and (in quite another way) on the shelf.

The Bachelors is perhaps Spark’s most naturalistic novel, a fact suggested in the plethora of place names which feature in its opening lines. We meet the first bachelors – Matthew, a barrister, and Ronald, a graphologist – discussing their shopping in a scene that was possibly more amusing in 1960 when the novel was published. Ronald is epileptic, something which has ruled him out of the priesthood and also, he believes, marriage:

“I’ve got my epilepsy as an alibi.”

Ronald is the closest we have to a hero in the novel, his profession as a graphologist gaining him “a reputation in the detection of forgeries” in a novel about false faiths. His antithesis, Patrick Seton, stands accused of forging the signature of Freda Flower in order to defraud her of £2,000 – Ronald will be called as an expert witness in the trial, and Matthew will prosecute. Patrick proclaims his innocence to his pregnant girlfriend, Alice, and her friend Elsie:

“I’ll be acquitted… It’s the case of a jealous, frustrated woman trying to get her own back on me.”

Alice is devoted to Patrick but refuses to have the abortion he requests. Spark uses Elsie to suggest Patrick’s devotion to Alice is not as whole-hearted as he pretends, asking about his forthcoming divorce (which would allow him to marry Alice) and hinting that she does not entirely trust him to give Alice her insulin:

“Elsie looked at him suspiciously. ‘I hope you do give her the injection regularly,’ she said. ‘She needs taking care of.’”

Patrick is a medium, spiritualism being one of the false faiths of the novel. Spark, naturally, has some fun with this, including comments about ridding the séance of ‘cranks’ as “they lower the tone,” and a wonderfully comic set-piece in which Patrick, channelling Freda Flower’s dead husband, warns her about continuing with the forgery prosecution, while Freda’s self-styled protector, a clairvoyant called Mike Garland, attempts to intervene.

Ironically, while Patrick’s life is based on falsehood, he is presented as possessing the spiritual powers he claims to (Spark’s ‘nevertheless’ principle – as one character says, “I suppose he could be a genuine medium… and a fraud in other respects”). It is this, for example, which allows him to blackmail Dr Lyte, whom he first observes as a “shaken stranger” at a séance as he comes out of his trance:

“Patrick rapidly appreciated that he had said something in his trance that had truly got its mark. ‘How exactly did you know?’ Dr Lyte said in a way which was very different from his nice clothes.”

It is in his conversations with Dr Lyte, whose isolated chalet in the mountains he intends to take Alice to after the trial, that we learn of Patrick’s plan to murder her, giving the novel the under-stated undercurrent of violence so common in Spark’s work:

“How long does it take… for a diabetic person to die if they deprive themselves of insulin?”

Where Patrick has his trances, Ronald has his epilepsy, which is also seen by some as a spiritual gift. He, too, is sought out for advice:

“It was as if they held some sort of ancient superstition about his epilepsy: ‘the falling sickness’, ‘the sacred disease’, ‘the evil spirit’. Ronald felt he was regarded by his friends as a sacred cow or a wise monkey.”

Later he tells Matthew, “Everyone consults me about their marriages.” When he goes to ask Elsie to return Patrick’s forged letter (which she has stolen from him) she tells him about her sex life:

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this in the first five minutes.”

She offers to return the letter if he will sleep with her but he refuses. Though it goes against his interests, he is unfailingly honest with her:

“’If I give you the letter now,’ she said, ‘will you come back again some time?’
‘It’s unlikely,’ he said…
‘If I don’t give you the letter what will you do?’
‘I’ll come back and try again.’
‘Christ!’ she said, ‘You’re driving me mad.’”

Ultimately, though, Ronald is rather a nondescript hero, and Patrick a more everyday villain than Dougal Douglas or Jean Brodie. Its short time span (four days) and large cast make it feel rather crammed. While The Bachelors is successfully in its own terms, these terms seem rather limited compared to Spark’s other work.

Tags: muriel spark, the bachelors