The Sugar Mother (original 1988; edition 2010)

bargain = 1 of 29 books for $5.

(Spoiler)
To me “The Sugar Mother” is about evasion or reality, just as “The Well” is. Edwin does not want to acknowledge that he has become infatuated with a young girl less than half his age and either makes up all sorts of reasons for his relationship (mainly that it’s just a business arrangement to produce a baby) or allows his mind to wander off too awkward a subject. Towards the end, when Cecilia is on her way back and reality is even more pressing than ever, he does admit his evasions: “He was doing what he always did. He was taking a false way, a falsely intellectual way out. It was his habit to think of something else other than the immediate when the immediate (in this case the identity of the father of Leila’s child) was too unpleasant.”

How critical, though, are we about Edwin? Being told in the third person you would think that he’s distanced enough for us to be objective about him, but this isn’t any omniscient third person narration as it’s all told from Edwin’s viewpoint without us even being able to know what the other characters are thinking - typical of Jolley, especially in “The Well”. So, we have an unusual relationship with Edwin. We have the forced intimacy of only being able to see through his eyes but we are also allowed the objectivity offered by third person narration. So, while Edwin has obvious ability and time to make others feel at ease and to look after their little comforts, we feel this is more a matter of upbringing, of etiquette as much as of real concern for them. In fact we often see his real feelings running contrary to his actions as at the first dinner party when he finds all his guests tiresome and really wants them to go so that he can be with Leila. Still, for what it’s worth I think we value at least the effort and façade Edwin offers to others who, although they live banal, empty lives, reminiscing about India or playing Sunday morning tennis at the club, have a vulnerability perhaps because of this. So Paulette is deeply hurt when Edwin rejects her at the key or wife swopping party and later urgently wants him to take her home to make love. Daphne also is highly vulnerable and down trodden and we like the way Edwin, for the most part, protects her self-image by making soothing remarks and not hurting such a clumsy but well intentioned woman. All this doesn’t stop us, though, from being highly critical of his self delusion. He is naive perhaps, being deceived by Leila’s mother - as really appears to be the case, though, typically with Jolley, we can’t know for sure what the truth is - a nice touch of verisimilitude as of course the truth is unattainable. Anyway, his (self-)deception is, he himself recognizes, something he unconsciously but deliberately brought on himself. He was the one who fed Leila’s mother the false sob-story about Cecilia losing her baby in order to ease the way for Leila’s mother (always only known as this in order to preserve her real essential anonymity) to suggest the surrogacy and so a liaison between him and Leila (199). Edwin has acknowledged earlier too (178) that he had initially “encouraged her in her first feelings of love for him knowing that he should not . . He was surprised that at the age he was he had not been wiser and more thoughtful.” This revelation should perhaps elevate him in our eyes, but we still remember the way he went about deluding himself in the first place and then, at the very end, he puts off thinking about Cecilia’s return by allowing himself to think about the preparations that have to be made before a war. So, has he really become a wiser man? I don’t think Jolley makes us feel too judgemental about Edwin, though. We're more inclined to follow Daphne’s lead and feel some reluctant tolerance, especially when those around him - and Cecelia even at a distance are too socialite-minded to gain much sympathy. And even Leila and Leila’s mother are rather suspect. Was Leila already pregnant? Mrs Bott certainly seems to manipulate Edwin, easing the path to involvement and entanglement, even if things really didn’t turn out as she expected - though of course we never really know what her plans were. All we know is that she is clever at getting money out of Edwin and that she does stroke his ego. She may be a shrew but she has an outwardly comforting, reassuring façade.

By and large, though, people in Jolley’s books aren’t nice though treated with Edwin-type tolerance by the author. Edwin himself is a hypochondriac, fussing over his different books in which he puts down observations about his body and the intangible. From the way his colleges treat him at the college (university), he seems to be out of touch. Vorwickl is made to seem loud and unattractive while Edwin fusses around choosing the right dressing gown. Cecilia’s trivial comments on the phone make her seem trivial herself - their marriage is obviously a dead one, continued out of habit, with Cecilia ready to leave Edwin for a year to be with her (lesbian?) friend. “How they were seen by other people began to mean more to them and they must, all the time, have been meaning less to each other.” ( )