I had an interesting experience reading The Gulls Fly Inland by Sylvia Thompson (1941). The blurb on the back made it sound like a thwarted-lovers type story. This wouldn’t really pique my interest but the war setting and reliability of Handheld Press’ choices meant I decided to give it a go.
Around page 70, I wondered why I was enjoying it, when the characterisation of the love interest, Vernon, was practically non-existent. I knew basically nothing about him. Yet I was enjoying the novel because in fact, it was more to my taste than I’d expected, portraying families and changing interwar society with an elegiac tone. I returned to the novella, and a few pages on there was this:
“I have been reading what I have written since I began. So far I think I have made better portraits of people I have loved less. […] Whatever I have written of Vernon seems true, but like a conventional photograph; not evocative. […] Perhaps I have only added up little characteristics, but failed to explain him.”
Well, that acknowledgement won me over entirely!
The Gulls Fly Inland takes the form of a diary written by Blanche Lancret, a young French woman exiled to England by the Second World War. She begins on 3 October 1939, and writes not only of her current circumstances but of her past, her friends and family, and her romance with Vernon, brother of her American schoolfriend Annabelle.
Throughout the diary, as she pines for Vernon, she also pines for France, Europe, and a time she knows is lost forever:
“For, as my father gave me one Paris, and my schooldays another, Vernon gave me still another; and the roots of the third Paris are those we followed together […] in this Paris, which is the one I have still in my heart, there are corners made significant by our moments of brilliant feeling as by sudden effects of floodlight.”
Blanche’s life is one of reasonably wealthy privilege. At the start of the novel she has Annabelle’s baby, her goddaughter, Camilla Blanche, living with her, while the rest of the Annabelle’s children recover from chickenpox. But of course she doesn’t have to care for a baby, the nanny has come too. She and Annabelle met at boarding school, and Blanche spends her holidays on the French Riviera with my favourite character, her mother’s half-sister Tante Julie.
“For I knew, by now, that my aunt, though never actually demi-mondaine, did not take part in any reputable social life; and did not desire to. I did not understand then her greatest distinction, which is that she lives according to her own values; and of all the artificial values respects only money and fashion.”
I also found Tante Julie’s love interest, Otto Behrens, more fully realised than Vernon:
“I was charmed by his brown bird-lidded eyes which shone clear with his natural goodness of heart, for unlike many worldly people he loves his world.”
Blanche’s father is loving but incapacitated by grief for his wife who died of pneumonia. He lives in Venice, physically and somewhat emotionally distant. And so the impact of the war will be felt across the continent in a very personal way for Blanche.
As time goes on, we see a maturing of Blanche, from schoolgirl to young woman who is increasingly aware of the world, politically and socially.
“Suddenly seduced, as happens to me from time to time, by England, or at any rate by the England which I have been able to enjoy—that is, which ignores a dozen Englands which I either do not know or do not wish to experience; industrial England, political England, England expressed in Midland towns, in dockyards, in suburbs, in slums.”
The Gulls Fly Inland is a very subtle novel. The sadness of what it portrays crept up on me, as Blanche’s friends and family gradually accept that their lives are changing forever, by forces beyond their control. There is love in many guises here: romantic, familial, between friends, for place and for time. It is truly moving, and of course, at the time of writing, Sylvia Thompson did not know what the outcome of the conflict would be.
Although sad, the resilience and strength of the characters means it is not depressing. There are sparks of humour too, as Blanche can be a witty and slightly spiky narrator:
“What Annabelle says is often self-evident, but she gives the sentence to you like a present, prettily tied up with a ribbon of your favourite colour.”
So The Gulls Fly Inland wasn’t at all the book I expected, and so much the better for it – but for those of you without wizened hearts like mine, rest assured there are some romantic moments too!
To end, a wartime classic apt for Blanche and Vernon, and I chose a version sung by an American group in honour of Vernon:
madame bibi lophile recommends 