20 Books of Summer 2022: The Feast by Margaret Kennedy

 

I first came upon a copy of this book in our local Shelter shop. On the front cover it says;

 Cornwall, Summer 1947. A buried seaside hotel…

I didn’t want to read a book about a disaster, nor did I want to read a fantasy. So I put it back. It was only when I went home and read Jacqui Wine’s enthusiastic review (here) that I realised I’d misunderstood what The Feast was about. It was some days before I could go back to the shop. but thank goodness the book – with its beautiful cover from the Mary Evans Picture Library – was still there. I loved it.

He expected to find ruins, noise, confusion, screams, corpses – any horror but that which he found…..The fallen cliff had filled up the entire cove. No trace was left of the house, the little platform where it had stood, or of anything else that had ever been there.

Although there is some mystery in The Feast, there is none about what has happened. In the very first chapter the local vicar is struggling to write a sermon for a memorial service for seven people who have been – and remain – buried under the Pendizack Hotel, which has come crashing down into the cove beneath it. He doesn’t really want to hold a service at all; he tells his friend that he was frightened, and still is. He finds it hard to understand what has happened, and to make sense of what the survivors told him when they came to the vicarage for shelter that night.

The rest of the book takes us back through the week preceding the disaster, introducing us to the owners, staff and guests of the hotel. As we see them all rubbing along together, arguing, criticising, wheedling, whining, plotting or – in some cases – doing their best in trying circumstances, we can’t resist attempting to work out who will perish, who will escape, and more importantly why. And this is what Margaret Kennedy cleverly keeps to herself until the very last chapter, by which time we have formed attachments to some and developed a loathing of others. Finding out if we are right or wrong would be more than enough to propel us through the story, but The Feast is also a wonderful depiction of people on holiday in post war England, a world of sweet coupons, black market goods, chamber pots, shared bathrooms and chauffeurs.

Margaret Kennedy - image: faber. co.uk

Margaret Kennedy first thought of writing a book based on the seven deadly sins in 1937. She and a group of friends would each write a short story; each story would have a character who embodied one of the sins. This idea came to nothing, but Kennedy didn’t discard it altogether; she thought it might be too depressing until she realised that not every character in the book had to be sinful – and so The Feast was born.

Pendizack is owned by Mr and Mrs Siddal. It used to be their own home, but Mrs Siddal started taking in guests to help pay their sons’ school fees. Mrs Siddal does almost all the work; Mr Siddal is so lazy he has been consigned to the boot room. There he does very little, ignoring the various crises that beset Pendizack, refusing to open not only red bills but any official-looking post, and popping out occasionally to pontificate on philosophical points with those guests who are prepared to listen. He’s not exactly evil, but he is idle to the point of sloth, and his failure to act is a major factor in the eventual fate of the hotel.

Other characters include the horrid, spiteful, and also lazy housekeeper Miss Ellis, an embittered woman who resents everything and everybody, Mr Paley, the male half of a couple who lost a child many years ago (a loss due partly to his own pride and refusal to accept help from his wife’s family) and is too bitter and guilt-ridden to make any effort to move on, and Lady Gifford, a self-centered, indulged aristocratic woman who thinks only of her own comforts.

Image: historylearnng.com

There’s also Mrs Cove, a cruel and selfish widow who both neglects and exploits her three daughters, and Canon Wraxton, a bullying, controlling vicar who makes his adult daughter’s life a misery.  

Set against these are the characters we might almost label as the virtues, like Gerald, the oldest Siddal son, who – despite having his own career as a doctor – works hard at the hotel and tries to make his parents see sense, Christina Paley, who longs to put her grieving aside and return to life in the present, Beatrix, Maud and Blanche Cove, innocents who are terrified of their mother and want only to have a little bit of childish fun, and above all Nancibel Thomas, the hotel maid, a straight-talking, clear headed, sensible girl who refuses to leave wrongs unchallenged.

Every character is so well drawn that I felt I knew them. Everyone has surely met a Miss Ellis, a woman with a gargantuan chip on her shoulder, just as they have known a tyrannical old man like Canon Wraxton, who reminded me all too well of the judge in the first county court in which I ever had the misfortune to stand up;

His priestly garments only made him more formidable, for they threatened eternal punishment to anyone so rash as to disagree with him.

And everyone would like to know someone like Nancibel, or indeed Christina Paley.

Wartime ration book (sweets were rationed until 1949) - image: National Museum Wales

The days pass with plenty of action – Hebe, the Giffords’ wayward but well-meaning daughter almost causes a swimming tragedy, and the ruthless Mrs Cove gradually reveals her avarice (she even gets her girls to hand over their sweet rations so that she can sell them to the greedy Lady Gifford) – but as the end of the week approaches and the Gifford children plan a grand feast to please the Cove girls, it becomes clear that Mr Siddal has wilfully ignored an important communication from the local government surveyor. Meanwhile the two younger Siddal sons have discovered growing cracks in the cliff, which was originally believed to have been unaffected by a wartime mine that exploded some months previously in the cave below.

And on the day of the feast, Mrs Siddal sees hundreds of mice rushing out of the hotel, pursued by Hebe’s cat…..

The Feast is a clever book. Margaret Kennedy combines a page-turning mystery with a morality tale so that, as we reach the end of the story, we find ourselves both entertained and satisfied rather than cheated or preached at.

Nineteen years earlier, in 1931, RC Sherriff published The Fortnight in September, in which an ordinary South London family takes its annual holiday at Bognor. That book too includes many period details, although the Stevens family stays at a boarding hosue rather than an hotel. But the Stevens are essentially good people, any secrets that they have are kept only to protect the people they love. At the end of the fortnight they return happily to Dulwich, refreshed, reinvigorated, and ready to face whatever life may bring.

For seven residents of the Pendizack Hotel, things turn out rather differently.

The Feast by Margaret Kennedy was first published in 1950 by Rinehart and Company. In 2021 it was republished by Faber & Faber.