Bel Lamington by D.E. Stevenson

Title: Bel Lamington
Author: D.E. Stevenson
Publication: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, hardcover, 1961
Genre: Fiction
Setting: Great Britain

Description: After Bel’s aunt dies, she is on her own and leaves Sussex for a tiny flat in London and a secretarial job at an import/export firm. She finds it interesting but is lonely and the other office staff resent that her industry is recognized when she is promoted to work for a young partner, Ellis Brownlee. In her spare time, Bel creates a tiny roof garden outside her flat and one evening she comes home to find a handsome artist ensconced there. Mark Desborough is intrigued by the garden and Bel, and insists on painting her. Having a new and attractive friend is exactly what Bel needed to start enjoying life again but when things go wrong with Mark and her job, Bel flees to Scotland to lick her wounds and reassess what she requires to be happy.

My Impression: This is one of DES’s most appealing books, although I don’t subscribe to the “no one can be happy living in a city” point of view (admittedly, it is harder to do on a meager budget). However, Bel is sad and claustrophobic in her bedsitter and the description of her creating a small rooftop garden is charming. For an attractive young artist like Mark to appear magically is a great plot development and expands Bel’s world and perspective, fortuitously reconnecting her with a school friend so she has a place to go when Mark, inevitably, moves on.

There is a type of book where the characters worry about money but still manage to have servants and send their children to boarding school. However, one of the reasons I like Bel Lamington is that it is lighthearted in places and serious in others - Bel’s concerns are real: she has not been able to afford to go anywhere for a holiday and fears being ill because there is no one to care and she might lose her job. Then, unfairly, she is dismissed:

“But – but I must explain –“ began Bel desperately.

“I’m busy. I’ve no time to listen to explanations. Here’s two weeks’ salary,” he added, pushing a bulging envelope across the table towards her.

He was beginning to get worked up again. He felt queer and giddy. He felt – extremely unwell. Why couldn’t the wretched girl go away and leave him to recover in peace?

“Take the money and go!” he shouted in fury.

Bel was terrified. Afterward she thought of all the things she should have said, but at the time she was dumb. He looked so queer! He looked – he looked like a madman!

He sounds like some of the people I have worked with! Poor Bel, already so worried and friendless: this is one of her worst fears. Fortunately, because she ran into Louise Armstrong when her portrait was being exhibited, she has at least one option. Louise and her doctor father, an avid fisherman, are going on holiday to Drumburly in Scotland and invited her to come, expenses paid. DES readers know this area well as some of her most popular books, Vittoria Cottage, Music in the Hills, and Winter and Rough Weather/Shoulder the Sky, are set there and a few of those characters appear in this book. 

Being with people who value her is just what Bel needs and allows her to muster her wits. Also, luckily, Bel has friends back in London who are working behind the scenes on her behalf. Despite being a bit too much of a doormat, Bel is a winsome heroine – the sort you’d like as a friend – and this is a very enjoyable story; the characters in the office are well drawn and DES’s descriptions of Scotland always make me want to plan a trip there.

Here is another review of Bel Lamington from Pining for the West, who liked it as much as I did.

Source: Library.  This is one of the few DES I do not own.