Gerald and Elizabeth by D.E. Stevenson

Title: Gerald and Elizabeth
Author: D.E. Stevenson
Publication: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, hardcover, 1969
Genre: Fiction
Setting: Great Britain

Description: Gerald is returning to London after a disastrous experience in Cape Town working for a diamond mine. The lovely young American women aboard the ship cannot distract him from his gloom, although one tries to cheer him up and tells him about an incident when she too was misjudged. Although Gerald is proud and quite determined to get a job before he reaches out to his sister, a prominent actress in London, he has no references so is unsuccessful. Lonely, he goes secretly to see her musical and she sees him in the audience and summons him backstage to find out what is going on. Gerald’s fortunes improve when he is reunited with his confident sister: she believes he is innocent, and introduces him to friends who will help him get a job and regain his self-respect and appeal. She also brainstorms with him to figure out exactly what happened in Cape Town and how to clear his name.

My Impression: Gerald attracts interest on the ship heading from Africa to England from an affluent American family, the Harrimans (Note to DES: do your Americans have to be overly gushy and prone to saying ‘wunnerful’? Why bite the hand that buys your books?), because he is miserably keeping a low profile. Some would say annoyingly passive!

It was easy to make friends on shipboard – in fact it was difficult not to - but Mr. Brown eluded them and, apart from a chance meeting in the corridor when he hurried past with a muttered “Good morning” in answer to their smiles, no contact had been made.

Lovely Penelope Harriman tries to befriend him and somewhat succeeds as Gerald reveals a little of his trouble and she urges him to ask his sister for help when he gets home.

Gerald stood at the door and thought about Penelope’s story for quite a long time. Her experience and his own were different . . . and yet there was a curious sort of resemblance between them. She had said, “It shows how easily things can happen.”

Could the stones have got into the lining of his jacket “easily”? No, of course not! All the same he was glad that Penelope had felt she wanted to tell him her story.

It turns out that Penelope is right – Bess is the key to Gerald’s facing what happened to him instead of cringing from it and recognizing he was set up. Her conviction that he is innocent soothes his anguish at being disgraced and it is through Bess’s beau that he obtains a job worthy of his skill. However, in a nice touch, Gerald is able to find information that will lead to his sister’s happiness, which somehow restores the balance in their relationship.

I don’t recall ever reading this DES previously. It is full of the usual entertaining and quirky characters, especially Gerald’s curmudgeonly uncle and an adult son who bullied Gerald and Bess when they were children and now wants a loan – or he might reveal Gerald’s secret. Bess’s show business friends are mostly shallow and gossipy. Some assume that Gerald is not really her brother so Bess has a party to introduce him, although it is also a fun opportunity for the Harrimans to meet Gerald’s famous sister. There are also some very dated bits. Of course, I noticed that part of the plot around the detection of the purloined diamonds at the mine was that the white managers leaving the mine did not usually have to be x-rayed while the indigenous staff always were, and I did not care for the fact that Bess’s dedicated assistant Matilda is depicted as an obsessive hunchback. My favorite character is Sir Walter McCallum, a hands-on owner of a ship building operation in Glasgow:

[A] man of about forty – possibly a year or two older – with a thin face, a firm chin and dark grey eyes. His ears were well shaped; his hands were rather large with unusually long fingers. His hair was thick and dark; his eyebrows strongly marked. Gerald’s first impression had been that the man was somewhat alarming, but now his mouth was smiling.

“Look here!” he exclaimed, waking from his trance. “I’ve got an appointment at three-thirty – it’s almost that now – so you had better come and have dinner with me. I live with my mother at Bearsden.”

“I haven’t a dinner-jacket with me,” objected Gerald.

It’s 1969 and a dinner jacket is still appropriate for a gentleman and his mother, dining alone. And I have to tell my staff that wearing a baseball cap in the office is not suitable.  I do appreciate modern medicine and interlibrary loan but, otherwise, I suspect I was born at the wrong time . . .

Source: Personal copy, recently acquired. Not her best but still enjoyable. And the good news is that I own The House of the Deer, set in the Highlands of Scotland, was written by DES to oblige her many fans who read Gerald and Elizabeth and asked for “more about Gerald.”