The English Way of Doing Things is, according to the Futura paperback of Is This Allowed?, the third of Willie Donaldson’s novels published under that imprint. It’s a book with a complicated genesis, being, I think, the only book in Willie’s canon to have begun life as play and gone on to become the focal point of a lawsuit after it was published as a novel.
But putting all that to one side, regular readers of Donaldson will find themselves in familiar territory with The English Way. It’s the third novel in what I’d call his Emma Jane trilogy and features a lot of the same cast we were introduced to in Between the Ladies and the Gentlemen and who we got to know better in The Balloons in the Black Bag/Nicknames Only. Toby Danvers, Ken the Australian Horse Player, Dawn Upstairs, Pretty Marie, Big Dolores, they’re all here and accompanied by fruity newcomers like Steady Eddie, Scott-Dobbs, and Nigel Mount-Hugh MP.
Before turning to the contents of the book, it’s worth knowing a bit about its background. According to Terence Blacker’s biography of Willie, work on what eventually became the novel began in collaboration with a writer called Philip Wiseman in 1978. Wiseman was apparently having problems at the time, both personal and financial, and Willie, as his friend, agreed to co-author a play based on the characters from his first novel with Wiseman in an effort to earn the fellow some money. The play was written, sent out and utterly ignored.
Willie subsequently wrote The Balloons in the Black Bag, which appeared in 1978, and shortly afterwards hit the big time with The Henry Root Letters in 1980. Fast forward to 1984 and Willie’s publishers suggested he write a novel, which he did and turned in The English Way of Doing Things. He was accused by Wiseman of simply writing up their play and making a commercial and critical success of it. Wiseman sued Willie for £10,000 but the case was eventually decided in Willie’s favour.
Why is all this important? Well, because reading the novel makes one all too aware that there’s a certain amount of truth to the allegation. The novel really does read like a play, given that most of the action relies on characters bursting in and out of doors, or from behind scenery. Indeed, much of the text reads somewhat like stage directions, and the dialogue is certainly dramatic. Willie was always a very good writer of dialogue, granted, but in this novel each character has a very distinct (and funny) voice of their own.
That’s not to knock the style of the novel at all, by the way. It moves along at a fair clip, but once you’re aware of its dramatic origins, The English Way really does show a signs of having been adapted.
So, what’s it about? Well, as I say, it concentrates on the same menagerie of lowlifes who occupy the pages of his first two novels, but unlike those books The English Way of Doing Things isn’t told from Willie’s perspective. While the first two novels are written autobiographically, the third novel is, perhaps appropriately, told in third person and neither Willie nor Emma Jane appear in the book.
There isn’t one sole central character, apart perhaps from Dawn Upstairs (who loses the Upstairs part of her pseudonym here), and the plot plays out over the course of two days.
Briefly, a criminal named Ronnie Snipe is released from prison and is owed a substantial sum of money by Toby Danvers, the mad impresario who was working at the Telephone Exchange in Balloons in the Black Bag. Snipe swears revenge and vows to track down Toby, who is at that moment lunching with a fellow called Scott-Dobbs in the Ivy.
Toby’s his usual drowsy and theatrical self, breaking wind and succumbing to narcolepsy in mid-sentence, but he’s trying to raise the money to stage his great stage comeback, an allegedly modern morality play called Satan’s Daughter. He’s trying to hit up Scott-Dobbs for the price of a share in the venture, £1000, but makes a hash of it, offending the whole Ivy restaurant in full-force Donaldson fashon as he bungles things.
From there, he avoids an encounter with Snipe as he falls, dazed, into a taxi after a pavement altercation with a creakingly posh couple, and arrives back at Dawn’s flat. Inexplicably she’s taken him in as her boyfriend and dotes on him like a mother, and she’s trying to get their lives to go straight: she’s getting off the game and wants him to take a job as a teacher.
However, Ken the Australian Horse Player (or Ken Pardoe, as he is more commonly referred to here) arrives on the scene and mistakes Toby for a monied eccentric, while Toby comes to realise, deliriously that Ken is mad, persuasive, energetic and, crucially, rich. The two forge an alliance and try to get Satan’s Daughter staged in the hopes of making some serious capital (Ken) or being lauded as a Grand Old Man of the theatre (Danvers), with predictably catastrophic results.
Along the way the novel takes in stoned prostitutes, cross-dressing pimps, a batty old Dame who gets high on some hash-laced duck with orange, corrupt policemen, a politician with a somewhat unorthodox fixation on Justin Fashanu, a mad old military man and many more eccentrics besides.
I laughed and laughed reading this novel. On balance, I enjoyed The Balloons in the Black Bag/Nicknames Only more but that’s because I like Willie’s weasley reasoning and armchair philosophy, which are absent in English Way, owing to his non-participation in the narrative. But that’s not to say isn’t a whole lot of fun. The first few pages are somewhat disorientating and reminded me of the prose that opens his autobiography, From Winchester to This. However, once you get used to the pace of the book, it becomes a joy to read.
Particular praise must be reserved for Willie’s treatments of Toby Danvers and Ken Pardoe. Both characters are huge fun, and their interactions are priceless. Scenes involving them ’casting’ a young actress and talking to the Dame’s agent had me laughing aloud. The dinner scene and the concluding bust-fundraiser-clusterfuck were so riveting and hilarious that my cheek muscles ached while I was reading them.
If I have one criticism it would be that the book’s first quarter is a little slow. After a brilliant build-up with Toby Danvers at the Ivy, there are several long scenes of Dawn Upstairs, Delores and Eddie which aren’t especially funny and tried my patience. But, that said, those segments of dialogue are essential for setting up plot, and on the whole, the novel is very, very funny indeed. I would say I laughed a little less than I did at Balloons in the Black Bag but probably as much as when I read Both the Ladies and the Gentlemen.
To be brief, those who’ve read and enjoyed either of Willie’s previous books about the Cheslsea call-girls and hustlers scene will have a whale of a time with The English Way of Doing Things. If you’re unacquainted with the characters on display here, you might be better off tracking down one, if not both, of those books first. But, whatever, this is a smashing book that will definitely entertain anyone who enjoy’s Willie’s work.
Totally arbitrary overall rating: 8/10
