A magical last coda

THE Girl in the Polka Dot Dress is the late Beryl Bainbridge’s 17th novel. Though unfinished at the time of her passing, some meticulous editing, directed by the various narrative suggestions offered by the author during the final days and weeks of her life, has helped to shape the unfinished manuscript into a largely cohesive and very readable whole.

At a skin-deep level, the result is a road novel, one that seems fairly straightforward in its structuring.

The year is 1968, a tumultuous one in post-war American history. The Vietnam conflict is approaching its zenith, the civil rights movement has just been dealt a devastating blow by the assassination of Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy, the latest in the long, scuffed lineage of Great White Hopes, is making what will prove to be a tragic bid for the Presidency.

Into this steps a quirky Liverpudlian named Rose, a woman verging on 30 but who looks and acts much younger, arriving in the country determined to find Dr Fred Wheeler, a man she had known in her mid-teens and who she views as a kind of saviour. In her quest, she is assisted — enabled, really — by a good Samaritan called Washington Harold.

Harold, who professes to know Dr Wheeler, pays her airfare and agrees to help her with the search. They traverse the country in a camper van, rambling between the coasts, meet a variety of odd characters along the way, and continually find themselves one step behind in the chase.

This, in and of itself, makes for a pleasurable if rather lightweight read, but there has never been anything staid or predictable about Miss Bainbridge’s literary pronouncements.

The real magic on show here is how the characters — and by extension, cultures — interact and clash. Rose, immersed in dreams rather than reality and badly marked by the guilt and agonies of her past, is a marvellous creation, a bodily mess of whimsy, childishness and occasional chips of insight.

Harold, seething to his own inner turmoil, is not at all what he appears to be and holds less-than-honourable reasons for seeking the illusive Dr Wheeler. Shackled together on an arduous journey, this unlikely couple share everything but truth and warmth.

If there is a problem with this novel it is that it actually does feel unfinished. The climax looms and then frails to nothing, though this is a technique not particularly untypical of an author who has often favoured vagueness over explicit resolution. And in such skilled hands, even failings hold merit. In fact, The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress stands as a suitable coda to a long and distinguished career of one of modern Britain’s finest novelists.