Gillespie and I, Jane Harris’s second novel is set, like her
first, in 19th century Scotland.
The story of Gillespie
and I is told in retrospect by an octogenarian English spinster,
Harriet Baxter. The year is 1933 and Harriet, sitting in her flat in
Bloomsbury, London, is writing down what she calls her memoir, although, to be
precise, she is writing about a two-year period in her life, in the 1880s, when
she lived in Glasgow and became very close to the family of an upcoming artist
called Ned Gillespie. Harriet’s association with the Gillespies ended on a
traumatic note for almost everyone concerned and for a while earned Harriet
notoriety which she feels, even though more than forty years have elapsed, she
did not deserve.
As the decade of 1880
is nearing its end Harriet is (by the standard of that age) is a thirty-six
year old spinster of independent means. After the death of her aunt, Harriet
has travelled to Glasgow with the intention of spending a few weeks in the city
and visiting the International Empire exhibition. In Glasgow Harriet gets
acquainted with the family of Ned Gillespie, one of whose painting is hanging
in the exhibition. The initial meeting between Harriet and Ned’s family is by
accident when Harriet saves the life of Ned’s mother, Elspeth, who tumbles
while walking and, incredible as it may seem, is in danger of choking to death
having swallowed her dentures! After this initial, fortuitous, meeting Harriet
wastes no time in getting close to the Gillespie family and spends most of her
waking hours in the first floor apartment of the Gillespies. Ned Gillespie’s is
a lower middle class family. There is a grocery shop that is run by Ned’s
younger brother, Kenneth. Ned, who had taken over the running of the shop after
his father’s death, has ambitions to be an artist. He is spending increasingly
more time in pursuit of his art. His younger sister, Mabel, having split up
from her boyfriend, has returned to Glasgow. Ned lives with his wife Annie and
two daughters, Sybil and Rose. Into this cosy, domestic and closely knit family
enters Harriet. Writing her memoir forty years later, Harriet has no hesitation
in acknowledging that Ned Gillespie was a genius but for the most part his
family was a burden on him. Harriet, comfortably off herself, notices that the Gillespies,
while not exactly impecunious, are still leading financially uncertain
existence. Harriet does what she can to help the family. This involves
commissioning her portrait (which Ned’s wife Annie, an amateur painter herself,
paints), showering the family with small yet frequent gifts etcetera. Despite this Harriet is left with the
suspicion, as time passes, that her near-constant presence in the Gillespie
household is not appreciated by Ned’s wife Annie; also detested are Harriet’s
gifts to the family. Harriet’s suggestion that Ned, Annie and their children
come to stay at a house she has rented a few miles out of Glasgow is rejected
by both Ned and Annie. To add to the family’s stress, the behaviour of Ned and
Annie’s elder daughter, Sybil, unexpectedly and inexplicably deteriorates. Once
a well-behaved and placid girl, Sybil’s behaviour becomes unpredictable and
antisocial. Obscene drawings appear on the wall of the kitchen; during the
Hogmanay ceremony a number of guests become unwell after drinking punch and it
is strongly suspected that Sybil added rat poison to the punch bowl. Elspeth and
Annie fall out over how best to deal and “cure” Sybil’s bad behaviour. Harriet
does not much like Sybil compared with the angelic Rose. Then Rose disappears.
She and Sybil are playing in a public garden (not far from the house where
Harriet rented a room when she first arrived in Glasgow and which she has kept
even after she moved into hr rented house). Sybil, who comes back to the house
on her own tells the story that she was given a penny by a thin woman—a
stranger—whose face is covered with a veil to get something from a nearby shop;
and by the time she returned to the garden both the woman and Rose had
disappeared. An extensive search organized by the Glasgow police; however,
despite numerous claims that a girl fitting Rose’s description was seen in the
company of a man at different times in different parts of the city, Rose cannot
be traced. The disappearance of Rose has a devastating effect on Ned’s family,
in particular Sybil, whose behaviour deteriorates to the extent where she needs
to be committed to the local asylum. After a few months of futile search the
police close the case. Some more months pass and then a member of public
discovers Rose’s decomposed body in a wood. Subsequent investigation by the
police leads to the arrest of a German man and his Scottish wife. The couple
admits to having abducted the girl but make a sensational claim: the couple was
approached by Harriet Baxter to kidnap the girl. They did not know why Harriet
wanted the girl abducted; however her instructions were clear: the girl was to
be kidnapped for a day only and she should come to no harm. That Rose ends up
dead is the result of a freak accident. Harriet is arrested along with the
German and his wife and is tried in the crown court in Edinburgh. Writing her
memoir forty years after the trial Harriet becomes increasingly convinced that
the new maid working for her who calls herself Sarah, is none other than Sybil,
Ned Gillepsie’s eldest daughter.
Gillespie and I is a gripping tale, told with panache. Jane
Harris’s prose is lush, witty and with clever turns of phrase. At more than six
hundred pages this is not exactly a short novel. That it does not drag at any
stage is as much to do with the crackling plot—taut, unsettling and full of unexpected
twists—as with Harris’s prose that hides as much as it reveals. The prose has a
kind of lilting fluency which, imperceptibly, creates a momentum of its own.
The protagonist of the
novel, Harriet Baxter, is, like Madame Mao, small but lethal. As she starts
narrating her story the impression the reader forms is of an art-loving,
essentially good hearted, if ever so slightly lonely, woman who goes out of her
way to those whom she calls her friends. This initial impression soon gives way
to an uneasy feeling, as Harriet’s presence in the Gillespie household borders
on being intrusive and her proximity to Ned in particular becomes forced. For
an intelligent woman Harriet can be very obtuse; she has the ability to not
take hint and the talent to latch on to any ambiguities and distort the
messages to suit her emotional needs. All of this conspires to make Harriet, as
a narrator, about as reliable as Hermann Goering’s lawyer at the Nuremberg
trials. As the novel nears its end—Harris has one final twist in store for the
reader—the reader can’t make up his mind whether to pity or loathe Harriet.
Hers is a lonely, pitiful life but not less baleful for that.
Gillespie and I is an adroit psychological study of obsession,
manipulation, and deception—both of others and of self. It is a clever novel
that expertly manoeuvres readers’ expectations, and is remarkable for what is
unsaid and unsayable.
