The Light of Day
Graham Swift Hamish Hamilton, 244pp, £16.99
ISBN 0241142040
George Webb, a private detective based in Wimbledon, west London, tells us how he spends the day of Thursday 20 November 1997. First he calls in at the office on Wimbledon Broadway and chats inconsequentially to his assistant, Rita.
Rita is also a former client. Like most of George's clients, she hired him to follow her cheating husband. Having dumped the husband, she took George in hand because his "presentation", the way he kept the office, wasn't very good. The place now resembles quite a smart little operation. "Where would I be without her?" George asks. "But she's going to leave me, I can tell."
What Rita is unhappy about is what he does on alternate Thursdays, and has done for the past two years without fail. He goes to see another former client, Sarah, with whom he is in love. It has to be alternate Thursdays because those are the prison visiting days. Sarah is serving life for the murder of her gynaecologist husband, Bob.
Early on, George tells us what happened. Bob's Croatian girlfriend decided to go home once the civil war in Croatia was over. Sarah, who knew about the affair, gave Bob permission to see the girl off at Heathrow, but wanted George to tag along. She was worried Bob might get on the plane as well. Bob didn't, but when he came back she was so annoyed by his sombre expression that she at once stabbed him with a kitchen knife.
Today happens to be the second anniversary of the murder and, as per Sarah's instructions, George has to buy roses to put on Bob's grave in Putney Vale before driving to the prison. As he goes along, he gives us flashbacks about his childhood, his failed marriage, the case that got him thrown off the police force - he made a witness sign a statement that was true but which the witness hadn't actually uttered - and the events leading up to Bob's demise. The technique is one often used in films, where the general outline is clear from the off but layers of detail are gradually added.
Unlike in films, however, there is no unexpected revelation at the end. The only development, as George provides more of his observations and deductions about the fatal night, is that we gain some understanding of why Sarah, after setting out a candlelit dinner and putting on her best little black dress, simply couldn't bear the sight of Bob's obvious desolation at the loss of his other woman.
We never do understand George's obsession with Sarah. Perhaps we aren't supposed to. They met only three times, in innocuous circumstances, before she was locked up, and you might think a tendency to sudden homicidal wrath was a bit of a turn-off, but there it is. "You cross a line," is all George says.
A partial and indirect clue lies in his childhood, when he discovered his father was having an affair. He kept the secret for decades but his mother found out in the end. Her dignified response to this bombshell seems to be at the root of George's sympathy for wronged wives.
Graham Swift's previous novel, the Booker-winning Last Orders, excelled in making the thoughts of averagely inarticulate people seem articulate, even eloquent. Swift adopts a similar approach in The Light of Day, but with less success. George, who warns us that he isn't much of a one for words, is learning to express himself: Sarah asks him to bring "homework" on each visit, written accounts of daily life that allow her imagination to roam outside the walls.
George's style is fine on ordinary things. But when he tries for heightened effect the result is self-conscious and sometimes clunky. The overheard snippet about his father's affair becomes a "little wild black ball . . . the little black ball of knowledge", because he was looking for a lost (and obviously white) golf ball at the time. These try-hard moments mar a subtle and affecting novel.
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