Betty by the Numbers: The Founding Bettys’ Ratings

Shall we begin with several rousing cheers for Betty Debbie and Betty Keira, the Founding Bettys, who so assiduously worked and worried and read and dreamed and finally brought us the marvelous wonderment that is everyneelsthing.blogspot.com, a/k/a The Uncrushable Jersey Dress.  What a joy and a treasure they have unloosed upon the world, however misguided Betty D. may be about The Fortunes of Francesca (1997) or ditto Betty K. in the matter of Heaven is Gentle (1974).  So here’s to the Founding Bettys, who read 135 books with care and attention, and rated each of them with a magnificently-imagined scale-of-Betty-food (except Betty Magdalen reviewed Fate is Remarkable).  Hip, hip, hooray!  Hip, hip, HOORAY!  Hip, hip, hippety HOORAY-O-RAMA!!!



Betty Debbie's T reads, “You encourage me to fend off the encroaching years;" Betty Keira's reads, "Emily took instant exception to his pink frilled shirt."

Ithe Founding Bettys.  Now, about those ratings...

  

Almost two-thirds of the Neels oeuvre warrants, in the FBs view, a boeuf en croute or better.  One suspects a smidgeon of partisanship.  Zero, that’s right, zero, rate a tinned soup or digestive biscuits, and only 6% rate a cheese board or below.  The average score is something like a small serving of boeuf en croute with a large mince pie for afters (7.75).  The median score is boeuf en croute (8).

Time out for a quick reminder on the rating system:

The best books warrant a lashings of whipped cream rating, which equates to ten points out of ten.  A handful get lashings-plus.  Then, in descending order, we have:

9	queen of puddings	delightfully named, but really just super-custardy bread pudding with jam underneath and meringue on top
8	boeuf en croute	most excellent if you like beef...
7	mince pies	if genuine mince, with suet and organ meats and other disgusting yuk, I’d rather have tinned soup; if just nice fruits and booze and minimal citron, I may take seconds
6	treacle tart	bleargh
5	madeira cake	tasty, but too often dry
4	the cheese board	gosh, I love a good cheese board, but I suppose if you’re comparing it to a confection of meringue, almonds, cream and chocolate, it may lack something
3	beans on toast	DELICIOUS served hot with cheese melted on top, but quite unpalatable if allowed to get soggy
2	digestive biscuits	actually quite tasty, but unfortunately named
1	tinned soup	typically very salty, and no real flavor of whatever it’s supposed to be – especially sad with things like asparagus

So, here we go:  four books, or 3%, warrant lashings-plus:  Blow Hot, Blow Cold/Surgeon from Holland/Visiting Consultant (1969) – lashings of whipped cream with cherries on top; Winter Wedding (1979) – mountains of lashings of whipped cream; Caroline’s Waterloo (1980) – lashings of whipped cream with a cherry on top; and A Christmas Romance (1999) – lashings and lashings of whipped cream.  Note the broad range of publication dates; note too that we have 75% nurses, 75% Dutchmen, 25% MOCs, average heroine age of 24 and average hero age of 38, all of which are reasonably representative of the broader canon.  There’s 50% barons represented here, which is a bit high, but probably not to an expert on statistics.

The unadorned, regular-sized lashings go to 13 books, from 1970’s Fate is Remarkable to 2001’s An Ordinary Girl.  That’s 10% of the total.  After the lashings, the curve starts to go a bit top-heavy, as 24% of the books, 32 in total, get the coveted Queen of Puddings rating.  Two, in fact, get a bit higher, as Cassandra by Chance (1973) warrants Queen of Puds with a dollop of whipped cream, and Roses Have Thorns (1990) gets the pudding with a full serving of cream.  

Betty Kylene dishing up a heaping helping of Hannah, or maybe An Ideal Wife.

Down a rung we go, but still up on the top-third of the scale, and we get 36 books, or 27%, earning boeuf en croute or slightly better.  Both the beginning Betty, Sister Peters in Amsterdam (1969), and the final one, Emma’s Wedding (2001), win 8’s from our judges.  Six books win ratings like the “boeuf en croute with dollop of queen of puddings” awarded to Heaven Around the Corner (1981), although I vote “tinned dog-meat soup with a scummy crust” for that one.  Cheerfully and respectfully, I vote “tinned dog-meat soup with a scummy crust.”  And non-fat sour cream with chokecherries for afters.  But I’m on board with most of the others.

So we have covered 63% of our novels, or 85 books, as we descend unto the mince pies.  There are 16 books, or 12% of the total, in or near this category.  There’s some confusion with the volumes No Need to Say Goodbye (1989) and The Awakened Heart (1993), as the former is rated treacle tart for the first half and Queen of Puddings for the second, and the latter rated just the opposite.  Turning up my hem to tot up some maths, I get an average of 7.5, or mince-pies-plus, for each.  Grasp a Nettle (1977) was a bit simpler, as it rated halfway between pies and beef.

Now we arrive at the quarter of the novels that rate the lowest, with 34 books remaining.  Eighteen of those, or 13% of the oeuvre, are in the treacle-tart segment.  These range all the way from 1971’s Tangled Autumn (but I love Sappha!  the causeway!) to 2001’s Always and Forever.  They also include two 6.75 scores, for Last April Fair (1980), “almost mince pies,” and The Right Kind of Girl (1995), “mince pie that’s been dropped on the ground.”    Did I mention Ithe Founding Bettys?

There are just seven madeira cakes (5%) and five cheese boards (4%).  The cheese-board scores include the unfortunate The Edge of Winter, which was headed for a boeuf en croute, but sadly detoured into a tinned-soup ending, resulting in a score of... hand me that apron and a pencil, please... 4.5.  The cheese boards are all from the mid-1970s (1973-1976).

A mere three books warrant beans on toast:  Winter of Change/Surgeon in Charge (1973), A Small Slice of Summer (1975) (WHAAAAT?!? so wrong!), and Not Once but Twice (1981).  They are followed by the sad and lonely The Gemel Ring (1974) in last place at a 2.5, or midway between beans on toast and digestive biscuits.  You can sense Betty Debbie’s more-in-sorrow as she wields her pen on this one:  “I honestly don't know what rating to give this book. I could never work up any liking or sympathy for Everard.  He was rude, insulting, hyper-critical, irritable and cranky...when he wasn't being mocking and supercilious.  The best things about him are things (cars, Gemel Rings, good looks)...but none of those really add up to any kind of real reason to fall in love with him.  His one redeeming feature is that he operates a rest home (which is all well and good, but Charity didn't know that when she fell in love).  The character of Charity was lovely - as long as we ignore the 600-pound gorilla in the room.  Why would a smart, talented, good looking Olivia fall for such a putz? There was no saucy flippancy to her remarks...she comes off sounding a wee bit desperate.  I did love Mr. and Mrs. Boekercheck (very awesome) and Corrie Blom was a brief, but fun, interlude.  Granny was also fun, she's got one of the best lines in Neeldom (speaking of a girl that Everard had dated)...’she's only half alive and the live half isn't at all to my liking.’
“I think I will have to resort to doing maths again.  Mr. and Mrs. Boekerchek get a queen of puddings, Corrie - boeuf en croute, Granny - lashings of whipped cream, Charity - treacle tart (I would have rated her higher if I thought she would be happy with Everard) and Everard - a great big ‘tinned soup.’  Overall it lands somewhere between digestive biscuits and beans on toast (for me...).”

Let’s have it, Bettys – where do you uncover the coagulated aroma of tinned soup in the oeuvre?  How many of the Novels Neels earn mountains of lashings with cherries and berries and chocolate shavings from you?

A Matter of Chance--1977

 

I do not like you Doctor Fell, the reason why I cannot tell...  A Matter of Chance has such an engaging cover and I did so want to love it!

Cressida Bingley, 26, is to be pitied.  If I've done the math correctly, it can't have been much more than six weeks since her father and mother were both carried away by the flu and she's lost and alone on the back streets of Amsterdam in the dwindling evening light.

When a voice speaks behind her it really is the last straw.  'I can't understand you, so do go away!'  All she wants is to be left alone, to nurse her wounds in a safely out of the way place, to begin her job as typist to an elderly Dutch doctor on the following day and 'to drive and drive and drive, away from her grief and loneliness'.  So, no.  Girlfriend doesn't want a pick-up.

That's okay.  Giles van der Teile isn't interested in that either.  Raised as he was, by members of the Dutch Resistance, he probably has helping-British-people-find-their-way-in-Holland encoded on his DNA.  They march to her modest hotel and part ways; she in antipathy, he in the first throes of love-at-first-sight.

On the next day she sets out for her new job and meets the kindly (if scatty) Doctors van Blom and Herrima.  They also have another partner.  (Who could it be?!)

Giles calls their reintroduction 'inevitable' and quickly assures her that he has 'found the girl for myself and intend to marry her.'  Such a fast worker, that Giles.  All that's left is to book the banquet hall and call the preacher, no?  No.  While Giles is amusing himself with sly allusions to his eventual wedding, Cressida mentally stamps his manila folder and files that away for future reference. 

By and by, Giles introduces Monique de Vries into the tangled web of intrigue.  She is nothing more than a Babe (if aging one) and the widow of Giles' best friend.Naturally, Cressida thinks she is the next Mrs. RDD.

We also have the pleasure (for me a qualified one as I suggest The Great Betty was easing her guilty conscience by reassuring us of their HEA) of meeting Harriet and Friso Eijsinck.

As her nurse-ly fingers are tapping away at that manuscript, Cressida begins to notice the curiosity of the practice's set-up.  The 'junior elderlies are doing all the work--exhausting themselves in the process while the easy-living  Giles escorts his girlfriend here and there.   Cresssy's brave enough to take her concerns to Giles and get the snubbing of her young life.

And then the flu hits.  (What a lost opportunity.  Everyone is succumbing like ninepins and Cressida suffers nary a pang that this is the enemy that carried off her beloved parents.)

The elderlies get it and then the housekeeper and finally Cressy falls.  She feels wretched (and he's really very lovely while she's out to it) but congratulates Giles on buckling down and finally doing some work!

And that would be fine if that's all there was but she actually calls him selfish for what she assumes to be a date with Monique in the midst of the crisis.  Jealousy, mis-communication, pride, name-calling.  Shrug.  The washing machine is on the spin cycle.

But Cressy has her Dawning Realization anyway.  (And probably hates herself a little for loving a man who forgets his duties so far as to need reminding of them.)

Why don't you run along and take Cressy to the clinic, son?

It is only when Giles takes Cressy (rhymes with Nessy) to visit his mother that the gyroscope stops spinning.

Future MIL: Hi, Cressy.  I wanted to meet you.

Cressy: I won't spend a minute wondering why...

MIL: My son is an idiot.

Cressy:What a lovely woman you are.

MIL: Look, he's not going to tell you that he's only in with the elderlies as a silent partner because they helped my husband during the war.  And he's not going to tell you about his free slum clinic that he runs that takes all of his time.  And I'm sure he's not going to explain about Monique.

Cressy: About that...

This is going to be a fun mother-in-law.  Between them they ride roughshod over the hapless male (in one of the darlingest scenes) and get him to invite her over to the clinic and out to dinner.  But they never do make it to dinner because, somehow, they always fall out before she gets anything to eat--which is why they have to take their rare dinners together in front of muscled referees.  

After one such meal with Harriet and Friso, they come across a swerving car that lands toot sweet into a deep canal. 

Lives are saved and lost.  Clothes are ruined and it's all worth it (yes, even the death) for the look of outraged horror on Giles face when he realizes that Cressy has been bobbing along gamely in the canal without a working  knowledge of the Australian Crawl.  But, as with Cressy's dear departed (her parents, remember?), the wreckage isn't allowed to clutter up the grassy verge of her mental landscape for long.  She recovers from the ordeal at Giles' home and then installs herself back with the elderlies as soon as may be.
Which works out fine for Giles as I suppose he didn't like to propose to a woman recuperating under his own roof.  That's right.  Propose. 
He does so on the very day that Monique de Vries gets hitched and Cressy is in no mood to accept.
The balance of the rest of the book is:

Cressy wings off to do the heavy lifting...

• Giles' teasing/pushing/nudging Cressida to make a decision.
• Cressy refusing to marry a man who doesn't love her back. (She's not cut out for the half-loaf life.)
• 'I love you, Giles, but you don't love me.  That's why I'm going.' (Followed by a hospital emergency that takes him away.) 
• Her return to England, followed a week later by Giles--which is when things ought to have been sorted but aren't and he leaves in a huff.  (And I really can't stand them at this point.  They have the stupidest fights ever with very little sympathy for the other.)
• Her flight to Holland to run him to ground.  'I had to...tell you I was sorry.  I love you, I told you that,...but-- well, it's made my love seem a very poor thing, hasn't it--not worth bothering about.'

He is finally ready to manfully make some declarations and they have at least the same chance that Harriet and Friso had to make a go of it.
The End

Rating: Boy, I hate doing it, but this was Ho-hum and the Cheese Board for me.  Here's what I liked:

• Cressida is the kind of woman you'd want hauling buckets of hot shot to the guns during a siege war.  She's capable of the 'militant eye' and will not be pushed around.  When Giles is cold or snubbing or glacially angry, she raises an eyebrow and puts him in his place as though he is barely out of short pants and being impertinent.  
• I adore that she is not above using the presence of his mother to get him to do what she wants.  She is a very clever girl.
• Giles is not the horror that was Friso Eijsinck (but then, he doesn't have an AC 428 Fastback, so perhaps he felt he had no right to be.) 

And here's what I didn't care for:

• There were some continuity issues in this one.  At the end, he tells her that she never revealed her belief to him that he was into Monique but she covered that point during the first proposal.  (She all but screamed her anxiety like a fishwife.)
• I don't know why The Great Betty had to give Cressida such a poignant back-story (Dead parents within the last two months?!  That's heavy.).  It never really gets used (and hardly ever mentioned after the initial exposition) and feels like way too much just to get her to Holland.  Giles spends a paragraph telling her The Heart Must Go On, but even so, when she's so mopey about him in the end I want to yell, 'Remember those parents of yours?  The dead ones?!'
• Yes, Cressida made a mistake about how much Giles worked but he carried his resentment unnecessarily far, giving her no chance to draw the right conclusions.  And then, when he is vindicated, she doesn't really apologize!  Dirty pool.
• I never really feel like the momentum gets going.  There are a lot of great elements (Dutch Occupation stories and worldwide flu pandemics are not to be sneezed at.) but they're not strung together to make a pleasing whole...much like the annual Oscar telecast.

So there you go.  Cheese Board.
P.S. When this plot enjoyed its first go-round on the karmic wheel as Nurse Harriet Goes to Holland, I gave it a slightly higher Mince Pies and I'm afraid it's been too long to remember if I actually like that one better.  I remember the hero as way more jerky but the angst-y-ness surrounding his inability to recognize Harry's vulnerability, shyness and seriousness made it a little more complex.  Cressida is not so crushable as Harry and Giles is not so mean as Friso--and that's the best I remember.

Food: Onion soup, chicken a'la King, trifle, erwten soup, toast and Dundee marmalade, grapes, thin bread and butter. When he refuses to feed her, she is forced to sneak downstairs for a mug of milk and massive slice of bread and gets kissed for her pains.  In a mildly paternalistic action, he implies that her girly taste-buds will be grossed-out by his  'underdone steak' and instead suggests she have Truite Saumonee' au Champagne and chocolate souffle. (Which I don't get at all, really, as my Mijnheer wants his steak to resemble jerky and I prefer that the cow suffer mild blunt-force trauma and be slapped on the plate.)  We also get vol-au-vents stuffed with prawns, iced melon and lobster Thermidor.

Fashion: Girlfriend gets a LOT of use out of tweed skirts and a ubiquitous fur hat (that manages to survive a dunking in an oily canal more or less intact).  Giles wears a car coat.  Cressida also dons a dark green woolen dress, a tweed skirt and angora jumper and she borrows an exquisite nightdress in blue with handmade lace (and he never does tell her that it belongs to his sister or unexpectedly fashionable (if elderly) housekeeper). Giles' mother (recovering from her bout of flu) wears a 'voluminous, long-sleeved, high-necked nightgown of finest silk.

Heaven is Gentle--1974

Heaven is Gentle begins with such a cute premise that it makes what follows all the more disappointing. Professor Christian van Duyl and Doctor McOldFart are discussing hiring a nurse to run an experimental asthma clinic for several weeks in the Scottish Highlands. Several names on the list are discarded simply because they sound frivolous and incapable (just as hearing the name Tiffani Amber Thiessen could only possibly conjure the image of Tiffany Amber Thiessen) until they reach the name Eliza Proudfoot--surely a battle-ax of a woman, a buxom warrior princess fit for managing Beta-male asthmatics.
Er...for men of science they make some pretty silly suppositions as Eliza, though 28 and the capable Ward Sister of Men's Medical at St. Anne's, is small, shapely, blonde and has men falling over themselves for the chance of having their proposals turned down by her.
Now let's skip to the bit where they meet. She's driven herself up in a rattle-trap of a Fiat over roads that closely resemble a pony track, it's sheeting rain and the 'lodge' is forbidding. Knock, knock, knock on the door. "Hey, it's raining down my back out here...why are you standing there with a moronic look on your face?"
Christian is surprised and initially (in the first 30 minutes or so) disposed to find the whole thing funny. They were expecting Boadicea and they got Helen of Troy. More fool them.
Eliza isn't very impressed with the place. Someone has written 'dust me' in the layers of grime and dirt on the mirror, her asthmatics live in a converted WWII Nissen hut (actually quite cozy but there's no escaping the sardine can comparisons), nobody seems at all convinced that she's good at her job and if only Christian would wipe that nasty, sneering look off his face she could get down to brass tacks.
Scotland (the Other Woman in this phase of the book) does not sell herself as anything pleasant or vacation-worthy. I love grotty weather, myself, but this seemed particularly dour.
Christian, in between being very nasty (To him, her presence is not funny anymore. He's attracted to the Fair Eliza and terrified.), asks the men servants to make her a good tea everyday. He probably tells himself that it (his consideration) is nothing.
Eliza, for her part, charmingly sets to making the Scots wilderness a home. She adopts a pregnant cat--over whose delivery Christian and her call a truce--and settles into her allegedly comfortable cottage. As for the lodge, a housekeeper is found, rugs are beaten, charming smudges of dust are sported. But I wouldn't put it past Eliza to have done this as an elaborate ruse for getting into Christian's room to look at his picture of this 'high-minded' woman he's engaged to.
What?! He's engaged?
That's right. Doctor McOldFart tells Eliza that Christian is gettin' hitched and it isn't until she's 'cleaning' his room (and holding the picture of Estella which Christian catches her at) that she realizes that her preferred brand of catnip is a potent mixture of scorn, insults, off-hand consideration and ice.
When Scotland, that saucy minx, sends a storm of Biblical proportions cascading through Eliza's cottage, it's Christian to the rescue! She thrusts a broom into his amused arms and they stem the tide together. At last! A half hour of mellow dialog (wherein he discloses that his hometown was once the site of the Hanseatic Empire and a Summer residence of Charlemagne while she discloses the precise GPS coordinates to her parent's Regency house) finds them in uncharacteristic charity with one another. I think this calls for a tortured and grudging kiss...
Because of that kiss, Christian probably feels angry at himself and a little guilty (though only a little) so, naturally, she has earned his icy disdain. Which introduces a little episode I like to call, Why Did You Hike Up the Mountain Alone You Barking Idiot? A Storm Was Coming and You Didn't Tell Anyone? Also, You Had Been Told Not To--Which Seemed A Reasonable Request in the Scottish Highlands in Winter. Why? Why? Why?
I have little patience with Little Miss You Can't Tell Me What to Do. Still, he isn't horrible to her and she is quite sporting. This constitutes progress. Take your pitiful crumbs, be grateful and don't ask for seconds.
Eliza toys with the idea of taking Christian away from the frigid cardboard figure of his fiancee'. (Which is a little presumptuous and mean if you think about it. She can tell from a single photo that Estelle deserves her contempt? Harsh.)
On a trip into the bustling shopping town of Ullapool she is pestered by a rat-faced man and hauled across the coals by Christian for it. Tears. Apologies. Grudging admission of her attractiveness wrung from him. Around and around we go...
As the end of the asthmatic experiment looms, Christian wonders what Eliza will do with the kittens and offers to take them.
She: Oh really? I thought that Estelle would probably drown them in a lake, as like as not.
He: No. She'll have to like it or lump it.
She: She sounds like a crushing bore!
Yeah, that last bit was real. Eliza is playing some dirty pool.
But the good news is that as they leave Scotland behind, some of The Great Betty's usual awesomeness begins to shine.
In a wayside inn on their last day together, he calls her into the coffee room for some postmortems which I won't spoil. Sufficient to say, he cowers behind glasses, lists her attributes (A Scout is loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous...), tells her he's glad she's leaving and gets one of the best tongue lashings in all of Neelsdom.
Editorial Note: The Venerable Neels can be a little parsimonious with her showdowns. Mercy and forgiveness for all sort of evils flow freely. Heaven is Gentle is a different kettle of fish and, if I've been hard on this book, I genuinely love this part.
Christian is not so chastened that he doesn't kiss the tar out of her anyway.
Since this is only page 124, you know we have to have a medical emergency to bridge the gap between meet-cute, exposition and the glorious end.
Doctor McOldFart is chosen to play the part of deathly-ill romantic facilitator. His asthma attack brings Christian and Eliza together. But none of it is very interesting until she takes Doctor McOldFart to Holland (to visit Christian and work on that asthma study).
Let's look inside the brain of our fair maiden:

• He's rich! I can't steal him from that frigid bag-of-bones now!
• Estelle gives me indigestion!
• She doesn't bore him to tears? How can she not bore him to tears!

A word about Estelle: I don't hate her. She doesn't want any more pets. She treats Eliza like a nurse. She has salt-cellars for bosoms. (Thank you, Betty!) She wants to run the house her own way when she gets married (instead of her future mother-in-law). She kisses another man during her engagement--hey, wait. Erm...didn't Christian? Her future MIL is cheer-leading the opposition. She and he are incompatible but she's not beneath contempt.
It isn't long before Christian finally (FINALLY) decides to cut bait with Estelle. (Champagne all around!) Estelle, for her part is inching closer to a certain Doctor HandyLips (and his interest in Roman ruins).
Christian makes some earnest attempts at wooing, is cute-put-out when she can't come to dinner with him, defends her to Estelle ("I like small women..." ) and turns himself into quite a likable fellow.
It only wants Eliza catching Estelle and Doctor HandyLips clinching in the shrubbery for gaskets to be blown to kingdom come. Engagements are broken at last.
Christian wastes no time getting Eliza alone. Come into the study...and I will ask you to marry me in a manner which you will never forget as long as you live.
The End

Rating: Heaven is Gentle is a head scratcher. I honestly almost loathe the beginning. Scotland is sodden and dire and bleak--even when it's not raining it lays there like a damp blanket. Christian and Eliza's relationship borders on cruel. Still, here and there I find some flashes of genius. ('Dust me') The middle is middling--Christian's mood is described too often as sneering and icy but we're making progress. The end is smashing. Love, love, love it. Twenty pages from the finale, Betty tells us that they went to lunch together and were 'taking with the enthusiasm of two people who have discovered each other for the first time'. That's when it struck me--All the rest of it was written not as a love story but as the Anatomy of a Bad Break-up. Only when Estelle the Inoffensive seems poised to leave him does Christian settle down to wooing in Fair Eliza in earnest. The prelude to that was merely a dissection of his inner turmoil at being attracted to Eliza and attached to Estelle. I'm going to give this the cheese board because:

• Eliza plays dirty. She could very easily be written as a villainess--scheming to marry Christian, snooping in his things, hating Estelle without provocation, calling Estelle names to his face, etc. That's not cricket.
  
• Running off to the mountains was unforgivably stupid. She is plucky thereafter but still...
• I somewhat enjoy watching The Travails of Christian as he struggles with his attraction but he's often jerky.

But again, the second half is pretty good and the end is great. (Boeuf en croute great.) Read it from his perspective (extricating himself from the wrong girl) and you'll like it quite well. I totally get why those that like it do (it has some very charming bits), I just wasn't that Betty.

Food: Hot soup and sausage rolls, saddle of lamb, apricot upside-down pudding, lovely macaroni and cheese and a cherry cake (which both repels me on the matter of cooked fruit and attracts me because I love cherries).

Fashion: To Scotland she packs thick sweaters and slacks, a long cloak, old anorak, an old rose mohair skirt and cashmere top. She wears Wellington boots and knitted gloves to tramp about the countryside. Our hero rescues Eliza in a great socking sheepskin jacket. She also owns a high-necked brown jersey. Also, much hay is made of the fact that she doesn't travel with an evening dress to Holland.

Cobweb Morning--1975

First off, Betty Debbie and I were sorting out our review assignments and this was her statement: You have...let's see...Cobweb (HA!) Morning! (cackle, cackle, cackle). "I'm going to remember that you did that," I intoned severely. Cobweb Morning. Ugh. I did not recall it with perfect felicity.

Alexandra Dobbs is a 27 year-old brick house. She's stacked. In her frilled and goffered hat (the strings neatly tied under one chin), she's better than Anthony Ferris (whose name denotes a certain kind of pompous chin-less-ness), the ambitious gasbag who takes her to cheap Italian places and lectures her on punctuality.

Taro van Dresselhuys, 36, is dressed in shabby tweeds and drives a middle-aged Morris 1000. I've been reading Betty Neels for a long time now and don't need Alexandra's father to remind me that a Morris 1000 is a car for elderly ladies and retired gents. "He can't be doing very well." Tatty tweeds and middling cars? Can this possibly be the hero? Maybe if we turn him on his head a rich partner will shake out of his tweed pocket and rescue the fair Alexandra from the Anthony Ferrises of this world.

Cobweb Morning begins promisingly with an auto smash-up. A beautiful blonde paperweight is brought into the ICU carried romantically by our Tatty Professor. No, our professor was not involved. Even when driving Morris 1000s Dutch doctors have Romulan Defensive Shields attached to each bumper. Instead, they (him and an elderly aunt) came upon the single-car smash soon after it happened.
Alexandra wonders who this lovely paperweight could be. Who is the old woman in the corner with the pearls, gloves and handbag? (I'm imagining Barbara Bush here but you are free here to imagine the late Queen Mother, Miss Marple, Julia Child or Frumpy Helen Mirren.) And who is the officious Dutchman recommending the Cape ventilator?
Alex (no one else calls her that but typing Alexandra each time is going to lead to a stress fracture) tells Anthony the Pompous all about the smash and the decorative paperweight but as his favorite pronouns are 'I, me, my' she doesn't get more than a word in.
The professor, evidently adept at coming upon wreckages and carnage, witnesses the Sturm and Drang of The Implosion of Alex and Anthony--"You walked down the street as though you hated--er--whatever his name is. You have a very eloquent back."
Meanwhile, the paperweight has woken from her coma! Her traumatic head wound mysteriously didn't touch her face, leave a mark on her body or result in more than 'the weakies'. All the blonde hair prompts Alex to call her 'Penny Bright' instead of Albino Viper or Man-Eating Lioness or Honey Arsenic which would all have probably jarred her memory--being as they are, doppelgangers of her personality. Wait. What was that? Memory, you say? Oh shoot. We've got a case of retrograde amnesia here. And they don't know who she is or where she came from. Don't you just hate it when you leave the house without the merest scrap of identification? And the car she was traveling in was stolen!
Hey darling, that case I've been working on. The one that made national headlines. She woke up! Guess what...
Snort. You're late and inconsiderate and...me me blah, blah blah me, blah blah blah blah me me me.
Anthony has torn it. Alex hands in her resignation the next morning in a scene so abrupt you'd be forgiven for missing it.
But back to Paperweight Penny...She's going to be released from the hospital (like some sort of medieval plague flung along with a rotting corpse over a castle wall) and live with Miss Euphemia Thrums (Barbara Bush) because no one has come forward to claim her. In a whole month no one was missing an angelic-looking sociopath? Really? This is what an economist might call a case of supply exceeding demand.
So, Taro of the Tatty Tweeds asks Alex if she might consider staying with Aunt Euphemia to nurse Penny. (Seriously, it kills me that she's named Penny. I love that name. Had my youngest little tax rebate been a girl we would have gone there.)
Okay, sure but don't pay me so much, will you? Girlfriend needs to watch a few more Today Show segments on strong salary negotiation. But she's worried about his Morris 1000 and the tweeds so, like a nice girl, wants to be Penny-wise (Ha! Penny-wise. I kill me.) for his sake.
Aunt's house is interesting. I am supposed to find it charming that a room in the back has a wall of windows leading out to the land beyond but I am hung up thinking about heat loss calculators and energy efficiency and tacky 70s era sliding doors. A good room for watching the wildlife if you want to but bring a Snuggie (This one to the left is called the Peekaru and will cost you 80 bucks and your dignity).
Penny's recovery is swift. She is peevish, irritable, sulky, bored and silent in turns. She likes nice things but only if they belong to her. She hates to be outdoors and loves laying about with a Vogue or Harper's Bazaar to pass the time.
Type that into my handy-dandy Occupational History Generator: She's a Professional Dental Patient! (Hm. That can't be right.)
But when Taro pops over from Holland she's another person--the kind that makes you feel like you've had one too many Krispy Kremes. But even her sweetness can't hide her shockingly modern views. "People don't get married these days--we're free to do just what we like." So it looks like we can cross nun, Sunday School teacher and cleric's wife off her list of possible identities...
Before Taro leaves, he and Alex share a moment of enchantment out in a cobweb morning. (Uh, a spot of snogging around the spider webs.) What a propitious time for a dawning realization.
Christmas is approaching and when Taro asks what everyone would like Penny points to a wildly expensive Vogue dress (never minding Taro's shabby clothes) and Alex, to turn his generosity into a joke, asks for a sapphire jewelry set (necklace, bracelet, earrings, broach--the lot) and a little golden angel. Laugh, laugh.
On Christmas Eve she gets a little wind-up golden angel, some hard staring and a kiss for her pains.--"...not the sapphires, they'll have to wait." (Land ho!)
It is not to be, however, as he quickly downshifts for Christmas morning, handing Penny her Vogue number and mistletoe kissing every Double X in the household. All that general jocularity dampens Alex's spirits. "She could make rings round Penny if she wished to when it came to attracting a man, but...Taro hadn't shown in any way that he would like her to...Christmas, she decided as she got into bed, was an overrated affair, and mistletoe was just plain silly." As, I suppose, is the Easter bunny, Turkish delight and the internal combustion engine. She is in no mood to see silver linings.
A few days later, Alex is driving Penny home from a shopping trip when the wheel is wrenched from her hands. Alex responds with a hard slap across Penny's lucid face (pause and enjoy....rewind, read again, enjoy some more) and the Morris 1000 sustains a knock to its bumper (no Romulan defense shields for Brit nurses). Shaking and frightened, Alex pulls into the driveway where Penny hops out of the car and proceeds to have a psychotic event. "She hit me...and drove into a tree..." Instead of slapping her again, as was entirely warranted by her mad ravings, Alex doesn't interrupt the floor show and is given a mildly hard time by the good doctor.
Editorial Note: I had remembered her being called on the carpet much more severely (and unfairly) before this reading. I owe Betty an apology. Taro does not make himself irredeemable but certainly muddies the water.
Taro approaches her the wrong way, she retaliates, there is much row-ing and she storms upstairs to pack her things. Wisely, Taro corners her and asks her to put herself in his position: There you were, darling, with that nutbar bawling her head off and the Morris' Romulan bumpers missing...You could have been killed!
Alex's best quality is that she never sulks. The bag is unpacked and no one is worried overmuch that she will sleep under the same roof as the Attempted Murderer. If The Mighty Neels had more of a Gothic bent, the gentle verbal undermining and car smash would be followed by loose stair treads, pond duckings and cudgels to the head at the bottom of the garden.
But Alex is unable to forget the clear-eyed purpose in her face while Penny was swerving the car into a mighty chestnut tree and begins to suspect that Penny's retrograde amnesia is not the Harrison Ford Regarding Henry variety where a brand spanking new personality (and better hair) comes with traumatic memory loss. No, Penny was this way before and perhaps, perhaps, she's remembering things she'd rather keep quiet.
So, Taro proposes a trip to Holland so that Penny can be examined. Alex frowned. "I haven't any clothes." "Dear girl, there's a lot I could say in answer to that, but I don't like to upset Aunty's sense of modesty...I find to my disappointment, that you appear to be more than adequately covered."
Gasp!
Gasp!
Gasp!
Head between the knees, breathe into the paper bag, in and out, nice and easy (slap, slap), Betty Keira. Oh the Humanity!
I'll be alright. Just a mo'. Was that a pass by a Brighton-ish Expressway? I feel like a Victorian matron whose husband just called the piano supports 'legs' instead of 'limbs'. Get the smelling salts.
In Holland, Penny's examination almost immediately exposes her as a fraud. She remembers everything and has for some time--and she would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling kids and your pesky dog! Her real name is Jacqueline Coster (this is the last time you'll hear it) and she had a spat with her live-in boyfriend, walked out on him and hasn't seen her parents in years.
Penny's Payment (Betty's words) is to put Taro's kittens in a garment bag and his dog on a leash with a heavy metal rod and toss all into a canal. Good thing Alex is such an awesome swimmer. Taro's reaction to the contretemps is much too mild. Just when another hard slap is warranted or a call to the authorities (administrators of the loony bin, I mean), he shrugs it off and awaits her departure. Penny's parthian shot is to mutter, "If I ever get the chance, I'll do you a bad turn." Again, no hard slapping.
With Penny out of the way, the story loses a bit of steam. But we've still got 70 pages to make small talk...
Alex gets a made-up job in Rotterdam and Taro sets a stage for proposal neatly. "You're a darling..." Fireside snogging just begins to get interesting when...Ring! Blast those Dutch telephones! It's big brother. Mother has the measles...If you're not doing anything... What business does a woman in her mid-fifties have getting measles for the first time?!
Taro retreats from emotional scenes and carries her off to the airport the next morning. "I moved heaven and earth to be free to spend [today] with you and here I am, speeding you away at the earliest possible moment." He's dripping with frustration and now I'm thinking of Peter, Paul and Mary. Kiss me and smile for me, tell me that you'll wait for me, hold me like you'll never let me go...etc., etc.
The Un-Incarcerated Snake in the Grass (Penny or Jacqueline, whichever you like) sees her at Waterloo Station waiting for her train and talking to...Blind-to-Social-Cues-Anthony. Oh this is going to turn out well.
Alex shakes off Anthony (who keeps saying something like he'll be down to visit...she can't be bothered to listen--Taro and Mother and Horlicks is swirling in her brain) and arrives home, rolling up her sleeves, fixing invalid meals and hearty meals and cleaning and fetching and missing Taro terribly.
Anthony arrives several days later--because there's nothing more helpful to a crisis than entertaining ex-boyfriends. Like a teenager trying to decline a Saturday night date and finding herself having to be ruder and more blunt as hints sail cleanly over a pimple marked head, Alex decides she can just park him in the sitting room and ignore him where possible. Ding Dong!
Oh for the love of...Taro. Black-browed Taro. I actually like this bit. Taro is angry and jealous and is too far gone to hide it behind a mask of indifference. "I thought that I had been given the right to ask questions of you, Alexandra... I came because I had a letter from Penny...I didn't believe her, but I had to come and see for myself..."
He storms off but not before making himself utterly charming to her father.
Pooh! Suddenly taking a job in Australia or New Zealand or Central Africa (Girlfriend, in a few years Robert Mugabe is going to make that career path non-viable.) seems to make sense.
It takes Aunt Euphemia to sort them out. She invites her back to Snuggie Cottage where the Professor, contrite and darling, tracks her down and proposes in a muddy, windswept garden. Looking forward, Alexandra sees a happy brood of little boys wearing Wellington boots.
The End


Rating: Not as bad as I remembered it. I didn't see Taro giving Penny the benefit of the doubt (as my memory stubbornly clung to) so much or being quite so off-hand with our Miss Dobbs either. A book with retrograde amnesia can't be all bad but I felt that The Mighty Neels was having so much fun with the villainess that she didn't give as much time to Taro and Alexandra as was needed. It did have some lovely bits here and there. So, ho-hum and the cheese board.

Food: Wholesome fish pie (gah), Canard a' l'Orange (orange duck?), smoked eel on toast (mmmm. Just like mama made.), Steak Orloff

Fashion: Tweeds and sweaters, well-fitting uniforms, red silk jersey dress, Penny's Vogue dress (pale blue wool more than 100 Pounds), ridiculous wool hats and a mile and a half of scarf, leather boots, Wellies

Cheese Board?!

I was feeling particularly melancholy the other day. I've just finished nursing my latest/last kid and there's a certain Tevye Effect going on at my house. "Wasn't it yesterday when they were small? Sunrise, sunset..." Okay, pass the tissue--or in Betty's case, fine lawn monogrammed handkerchiefs.

So, I sought solace in my dairy product of choice. Costco brand vanilla ice cream with lashings of Hershey's chocolate syrup and mixed nut sprinkles. Each bite dropped into my soul like manna from heaven. I defy Professor Minjeer Jonkeer van der Rijk ter Sene's cheese board to do the same.