azdak

nineveh_uk happened to mention on her lj that The Nine Tailors isn't her favourite DLS novel. Being ill-mannered and contrary by nature, I immediately said "How can you think this? The Nine Tailors is one of my favourites". Then I went and mowed the lawn, and found myself thinking the entire time about the virtues of The Nine Tailors, with this result.

Cut for spoilers.


It has a wonderfully Sapphire and Steel-ish feel to it, with its sense of atonement being demanded far out of proportion to the original offence (to quote the German guard who shot Roger Bushell, "I have always know that I would answer for this, this deed I did not wish to do"). Will Thoday doesn't wish to kill Deacon. He doesn't even intend to leave him up in the bell tower, cold and hungry, overnight. He tries his best to reach him, but is defeated by the flu, and his well-meaning family. Yet his sense of guilt over Deacon's death is so great that at the end he effectively commits suicide – we note that he isn't the one who accidentally slips into the water, he deliberately plunges in after the other man. He chooses to die, just as Mr Tallboy, in that utterly chilling ending to Murder Must Advertise, chooses to walk away from Peter's flat, not too fast, and without looking back, in order to save his family from disgrace. And Mary Thoday knows this. When she hears the news of his death, she cries out in despair "Will! Oh, Will! He didn't want to live!"

The price Will pays is far in excess of his crime, but it rings true both psychologically and mythically. At one level, he feels the guilt a person might feel who is fiddling with the radio in their car and consequently runs over a child – OF COURSE they had no intention of killing anyone, but they let their attention lapse, and bang! And however much they might wish to turn time back, there's nothing they can do. The child is dead, because of them. At another level, Will's story has something of a Greek tragedy about it, in the implacability of the forces ranged against him, and their demand for sacrifice as the only mode of appeasement.

There is a sense, as with Sapphire and Steel, that events are governed by a different kind of logic from normal reality. A trauma counsellor would tell Will that he should stop blaming himself, that Deacon's death wasn't his fault; but the harsh world of the Fens isn't ruled by rationality but by the logic of fairy tales and dreams. Peter says, memorably, "Bells are like cats and mirrors, they're always queer." They have names, and personalities. In some queer way they are alive, they function as representatives of supernatural forces – Rector Venables tells us that "There have always been legends about Batty Thomas. She has slain two other men in times past, and Hezekiah will tell you that the bells are said to be jealous of the presence of evil," and goes on to interpret Will's death as a judgment, in an astonishingly uncomforting observation about God: "Perhaps God speaks through those mouths of inarticulate metal. He is a righteous judge, strong and patient, and he is provoked every day."

This is a God of the Old Testament, the jealous God, concerned not with Kisses of Peace and Kumbayah, but with obedience; not with mercy, but with justice. The flood that inundates all of Fenchurch St Paul but the church itself has clear biblical echoes to it, reinforced by the biblical allusions of the quotations beneath the chapter headings ("Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all the waves and thy billows are gone over me" and a verse from Genesis about the animals going into the ark). Indeed, the chapter headings themselves are "The waters are called out" and "The waters are called home", positioning them firmly as agents of the supernatural, operating under the command of a higher authority. The flood has a splendidly banal immediate cause – two government departments that cannot agree over which has financial responsibility for maintaining a set of sluice gates - but hovering behind this rational interpretation is a sense that man has been meddling inappropriately with the natural order of the things – both in altering the channels that have been untouched since Cromwell's time (and which demanded their own tribute of blood when they were first constructed), and in Will's crime against heaven, in killing Deacon, and in taking for his wife a married a woman. When Will sacrifices himself, he restores the proper order. The drains have their necessary victim (one thinks of the old nursery rhyme, "London Bridge is falling down", with its echo of the practice of burying a person alive in the foundations of a bridge to give them strength and to keep watch). God has His act of atonement. The waters can recede and the community has been spared.

On the downside, the book has a great deal more about bell-ringing in it than any normal reader could desire (and it grows less interesting with every re-read, rather than more). However, at least this gives Lord Peter the opportunity to prove once again that he would have been a dead cert for Bletchley Park once war broke out. The Nine Tailors also gives Mr Mervyn Bunter (Comedian) several moments in the limelight, and convinces me that his Perfect Manservant persona is pure performance – in reality, the man is a total drama queen. What's not to love?