23rd September 2023
It is 1926. “’Is it a hanging?’ an eager newspaper delivery boy asked no-one in particular” in the early morning crowd gathered at the gates of Holloway Prison.
So begins Shrines of Gaiety. It is not a hanging. The crowd has come to watch as Nellie Coker – the “Queen of Clubs” in the Soho district and the owner of half-a-dozen money-making establishments – is released from Holloway Prison after a 6-month sentence for breaching the licensing laws. From a distance, she is discreetly observed by Detective Chief Inspector John Frobisher and his unlikely (and unofficial) sidekick, Gwendolen Kelling, a 30-something librarian, who has recently arrived from York searching for two young girls who have run away to the bright lights of London.
And so we are introduced to three of the main characters in Kate Atkinson’s entertaining tale, which is set in the capital city – its nightlife at once both glittering and seedy – during the inter-war period.
They are soon joined by a cast of other significant figures in the complex network of relationships and contacts that is revealed during the course of the story: Arthur Maddox, a corrupt police detective; Niven and Ramsay Coker, Nellie’s adult sons, one a dispassionate First World War veteran, the other a dissolute wastrel; Freda Murgatroyd, an ambitious young theatrical performer; Vivian Quinn, a louche gossip columnist and chronicler of the ‘Bright Young Things’; Mr Azzopardi, a supposed Maltese gangster with a long-standing grudge against Nellie.
It adds up to a spider’s web of the righteous and the crooked and those placed somewhere in between and we can enjoy the mental mapping of the overlapping linkages – some deliberate, others coincidental – between the main players. (That said, I did find a couple of the coincidences – including one that leads to a hugely dramatic episode – rather convenient for the narrative’s development).
Kate Atkinson skilfully builds up the backstories of the principal characters. In the case of Nellie, this included leaving her drinker/gambler husband in Edinburgh and taking her 5 young children to London, where she initially found rooms at a pound a week near King’s Cross. It is the death of a landlady that provided Nellie with an unexpected and illicit windfall, which she used to buy into and progress through the nightclub scene. This has culminated in the ownership of the Amethyst, a club which is patronised by royalty and criminals alike. “Mixed bag”, she comments, when asked about one evening’s clientele, “Tallulah Bankhead, Frazzini [a leading gangster], the King of Denmark…”. The clubs are protected from raids – initially at least – by Nellie’s connection (Maddox) at Bow Street police station
The main plotline concerns the various threats posed to Nellie Croker’s empire from various sources, both within and outside the family. As we learn from the opening scene, one of these is from DCI Frobisher, who is aware of the corruption at Bow Street and seeks to link the club scene with a series of deaths by drowning of young girls washed up near Tower Bridge. The sheer ruthlessness of Nellie in protecting her interests is duly made evident when it is required.
Atkinson adeptly makes use of both real-life and fictional characters. Amongst the rival gangs mentioned in the narrative are the Elephant and Castle Mob, Derby Sabini’s roughs and the Hoxton Gang, all of whom were major players in the London underworld of the period. (Charles “Darby” Sabini (1888-1950) has a Wikipedia entry describing him as “a British-Italian mob boss and considered protector of Little Italy during the interwar years”. Nellie Coker herself is based on the real-life Kate Meyrick (1875-1933)).
The author’s researches have yielded a plethora of cultural references: Gwendolen’s librarian experience in York had extended to persuading her dour branch manager that they should stock “…the ‘racier’ writers of the day: Elinor Glyn, Ruby M Ayres, Ethel M Dell”; although one of the force at Bow Street was nicknamed The Laughing Policeman, “God, how Frobisher hated that stupid Charles Penrose song”; later, the background sounds include “Billy Murray singing ‘Clap hands. Here comes Charley’”. There is a neat reference to contemporary advertising: “they said smoking was good for you, but Ramsay wasn’t so sure”.
Period detail is essential in establishing the temporal context, of course. However, there were times when I did feel that this was rather laboured: Frobisher was interested in “a demonstration of a ‘televisor’ to the Royal Society by a chap called Baird”; one character refers to another as having been “stopped at one of those new ‘traffic light’ things” near St James’s; later we learn that, “there was much talk in the air of a General Strike” (although not, it has to be said, by any of the characters with whom we are concerned); and “…when I [Quinn] was in Paris I had a very interesting discussion about bullfighting with an American chap called Hemingway, a journalist, writes stories”.
Kate Atkinson has a straightforward writing style, which aids the reader in making good progress through the narrative. The story has a near-linear structure, in which some key scenes are quickly repeated from a different perspective or with additional detail, but these jerky bits of time-shifting should not present a challenge to the engaged reader. (That there are 68 chapters within the 512-page paperback edition published by Penguin Random House – most of which are comprised of shorter sub-sections – reflects the necessary progress of the different characters and plotlines within the overall story).
With the exception of one couple, Kate Atkinson summarises the fates of each of her characters in the final couple of chapters, taking us variously – at least for those that survive for the duration of the story – into both the immediate post-war years and the longer term. Other fates are determined before then, in one case – to me at least – shockingly so.
“Is it a hanging?’ the boy asked his neighbour, standing in the crowd outside Pentonville prison. Yes, the very same delivery boy that we met outside Holloway..”. The first line of the penultimate chapter completes a neat circle for us. And, this time, it is a hanging.
JR Alexander 