If Mollie Panter-Downes and Barbara Euphan Todd pulled me out of the existential ennui brought on by too much Georges Simenon with their marvellous WW2 and post-war writings, then Molly Clavering has just pinched and patted my cheek and sent me on my way with a spring in my step and song in my heart. You certainly must read her books. You will love them.

The song, incidentally, might be something by Bothwell’s finest Friends Again, for there is something in Clavering’s writing that conjures a similar lightness of touch, an earthy delirium that speaks of late summer morning dews and early autumnal crackling wood fires. There is a parallel too perhaps in their relationships with other, more storied contemporaries. For whilst the Friends Again gang were reportedly deemed too uncool (and a little late) for the Postcard party, so too did Clavering suffer perhaps a little next to the successes of her great friend D.E. Stevenson. So whilst Stevenson’s books sold in terrific numbers, Clavering’s, apparently, whilst hardly bombing, nevertheless sold significantly less. Perhaps then it’s more akin to comparing Friends Again to, say, Haircut 100, with whom they shared a similar chunky knitwear aesthetic but failed to break the charts (or youngsters’ hearts) in quite the same manner. Certainly the band members might have borrowed their look from the dashing young men who feature in Clavering’s books. All shaved back and sides, floppy fringes, plus the sturdy leather boots and Aran sweaters of Naval Officers. I am basing this entirely on the evidence of two books, you understand, but apparently the whole Naval Officer character is a recurring theme in Clavering’s novels. She clearly had A Thing, then. Whether she enjoyed the look or sound of Haircut 100 or Friends Again is unknown, however. She would have been in her 80s when they were making records, so the chances are she would have been unimpressed, but you never know.

My first Clavering, then, was the utterly delightful ‘Mrs Lorimer’s Quiet Summer’. First published in 1953, this is another of those post-WW2 novels that prickles lightly with post-war austerity and the sense of Life Returning To Normal, where Normal is something altogether New. There is less of the sense of that new age being as discomfiting for the Middle Classes (as the characters in the book assuredly are) as there might be in other post-war novels, but there are slight nods of acknowledgement. If there is a criticism of the book it is just that those nods are so slight, particularly in the case of one of Mrs Lorimer’s daughters who spent the war flying aircraft from one place in the UK to another and now appears to struggle to return to earth, as it were. The daughter in question seems hardly to exist in the novel, being mildly ignored by Clavering and the rest of the extended Lorimer family; not exactly Cast Out, but certainly existing on the edges, as if no-one (Clavering included) seems to know quite how to figure her. She would make a fine jumping off point for a historical novel. This is picking hairs, however, for ‘Mrs Lorimer’s Quiet Summer’ is hardly positioned as a novel that intends to make Serious Points about society, people or anything else. Rather, it is an unashamedly light hearted book that giggles and glistens in the sunlight, unafraid to unravel its threads into occasional trip hazards in its relentless and joyous pursuit of pleasure.

The novel is, I believe, to a degree autobiographical. Mrs Lorimer appears to be a thinly disguised D.E. Stevenson, with her dear friend Grace Maxwell as Clavering. The portraits of both women are warm and quietly admiring, and if one might arch an eyebrow and suggest that Clavering has been particularly kind to herself then by all accounts the depiction appears to be accurate, for contemporary descriptions of Clavering describe her as a figure with an marvellously positive outlook and a cheery disposition. Notable dissenters to this opinion at the time of the book’s publication were Stevenson’s children, all of whom necessarily are given at least one prickly character trait that Clavering teases at and weaves her narrative around. By all accounts the irritation did not last long however, and that is no real surprise, for all the little nuances are really just genre-related literary devices and rather obviously so. Still, it’s perfectly understandable to see how they might have irked, particularly in the rather highly strung character of Phillis who is a bit of a spoilt and hysterical adult-child. Whilst we do get glimpses into how the pre-war family experiences might have moulded these characters, this is perhaps not as deeply explored as it might have been in a more, ah, ‘highbrow’ novel. If that kind of interminable raking over of The Past is the kind of thing you enjoy then I dare say that ‘Mrs Lorimer’s Quiet Summer’ would be sniffed at in distaste and left untouched on the shelf. Whilst understandable (we each of us have our Points Of Interest and Areas Of Pointed Ignorance, after all) I cannot help but suggest such an attitude would be a shame, for ‘Mrs Lorimer’ is one of those wonderfully undemanding novels that romps along with a deceptively easy step, every so often dropping a line or two that, whilst not exactly shatteringly insightful into the nature of existence, nevertheless causes one to nod sagely. The more so, I expect, if one has reached the same sort of age that Clavering was when writing (53, since you ask). There are, in particular, some lovely observations on the process of maturing, or not, and when Lorimer/Stevenson reflects on “…what a silly little fool one was at twenty-three” and Douglas/Clavering responds with “Most of us were. Some of us still are. It’s a safeguard to realise it…” one rather hopes that anyone of a similar age or older will recognise a universal truth lightly proclaimed. I know I do.

There is something too, I think, of Clavering in the character of the elderly Miss Balfour in the 1956 novel ‘Near Neighbours’. I understand that this is an unusual entry in Clavering’s catalogue in that it is set largely in an urban (Edinburgh) rather than rural setting. The fact that I have a lifetime ambivalence about Edinburgh no doubt informs my thoughts that the place hardly matters in this context, but unlike in ‘Mrs Lorimer…’ where the lightly fictionalised landscapes around the Scottish border town of Moffat are evidently fired through with knowledge and love, Edinburgh in itself hardly seems to figure beyond some tourist brochure references to the castle and Princes Street (though oddly no mention of the one-o-clock gun going off…). Instead the setting of ‘Kirkaldy Terrace’ (somewhere in the West End?) is little more than a vehicle for placing the characters next door to each other, winding them up and then sitting back to watch them race around bumping into each other. If that sounds harsh, then it is not meant to be so, although it must be said that, as in ‘Mrs Lorimer’, there is enough additional evidence in ‘Near Neighbours’ to suggest that Clavering is just a little clunky in her writing. As I say, that’s not necessarily a criticism, more an observation. There are rough edges. Pieces don’t quite fit together. There are little cracks in the plaster work and some splodgy paint work on the window sills; the gloss not quite so carefully applied as it might be. Yet it is a charming awkwardness rather than an irritating lack of skill. To pull in another obscure musical reference, Clavering reads rather like Marine Girls sounded. The appeal of breathless wonder and purposeful naïveté should never be underestimated, after all.

It is difficult to say anything in detail about ‘Near Neighbours’ without throwing in spoilers, but suffice to say that the novels oscillates mildly between the aforementioned Miss Balfour (in her late 60s and recently come into sole ownership of her large terrace home after the death of a domineering elder sister) and the Lennox family who live next door. It’s the Lennox daughters (all named after trees) and, to a lesser extent the son (not named after a tree, but rather a mint…) who largely dominate the book as each in their own way navigates the post-war landscape of youth and young adulthood. Romance inevitably dominates (it’s Romantic Fiction at heart, after all!) and inevitably too there are numerous roadblocks and diversions on the route to True Love And Happiness for all of them. What raises the novel above the level of Workaday Romance, however, is the figure of Miss Balfour as a kind of unifying element. She acts almost as a peculiar fairy godmother, an angelic figure spreading peace and goodwill. There is, indeed, a lovely line which suggests that “What she did not know and would not have believed was that the people who knew her could not help living up to her belief in their good qualities, or that their virtues were sometimes no more than the reflection of her own shining honesty and kindliness.”, whilst the novel’s closing lines delicately suggest a surprised saintly figure beatifically providing the light by which the other characters travel into this and that.

So whilst there is perhaps something of the character of Clavering herself in Miss Balfour, it’s also unlikely, given the small amount of research I have carried out, to suggest that Molly Clavering would have the nerve to suggest herself as anything approaching saintliness. And yet, perhaps too there is something of a knowing smile behind it all. A twinkling of the eye as the soloing Clavering who, like so many of her generation Never Married, perhaps cast her sight forward to the woman she might (have) be(en). A deliciously soft self-aggrandisement shot through with a wicked barb of deflationary wit as when we are told that “one is usually apt to dislike the unfortunate person whose praises one hears sung too often…. like the books people say you must read because you’ll be certain to love them.” Touché.