The Road to Hell - Gillian Edwards

In my post about Sun of My Life (1951) by Gillian Mary Edwards, I mentioned that four books by a Gillian Edwards (without the ‘Mary’), one a novel and three non-fiction, had been published by Bles in the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies. After further investigation, I can now confirm that these are by the same author. The dustwrapper flap of the novel, The Road to Hell (1967), makes the link clear, and tells us she was now working as a secretary to the Professor of Zoology in Cambridge. And it turns out that the book has a definite supernatural fiction interest.

In The Road to Hell, the narrator is a man in his forties on a wandering holiday on a Mediterranean island, away from his wife, family, and secure job in finance. He comes via a precipitous path to a remote village with a ruined castle above it: a festival is in progress. He is beguiled by the charm of a teenage girl he chances upon bathing in a rock pool: her family offer him hospitality. He wishes to repay them, but soon learns that here money has no value: everything is done by barter and mutual assistance.

The village is poor, primitive, the villagers illiterate, but they are contented in their own way. The only cultured people he meets are the village priest, who largely accepts their simple ways, and an enigmatic figure at the castle called “the Prince”, whom the villagers avoid. There are no modern amenities, not even a doctor or teacher, and the narrator notices that the villagers are grossly cheated by a visiting pedlar who takes their crafts and produce for a pittance. He determines to help them, and sets up basic banking, marketing and credit facilities. The title already tells us where his good intentions will lead and, in contrast to her earlier novel, which contrived an optimistic ending, this has a distinctly darker finish.

When discussing Sun of My Life, I said that the book had an almost allegorical and mythic quality. That is even more the case here. The story is clearly designed to point a message, and also deals in archetypal figures. The fate of the poet in the first book, and the piecing-together of his life and work, had a haunting quality, certainly, but this was purely metaphorical. In The Road to Hell, there is by contrast an overt fantastic element, when the secret of the urbane, courteous and sophisticated Prince is revealed: for this is a Faustian story. That aspect is very stealthily and subtly handled, and readers will find here a surprising and delicate modern handling of the theme.

Overall, however, I did not find this book quite so attractive as the first. To be candid, we could have done with rather more of the Prince and rather less of the peasants. And I think the stronger allegory makes the story rather over-determined. There is not enough scope for uncertainty, mystery, enigma. The incidental details, the individual portraits, are beguiling, and the book is well-contrived, but it is just a bit too single-minded in pursuing its proverbial paved way.

Scott at Furrowed Middlebrow has tracked down a brief notice of the book in the Birmingham Evening Mail of 31 March 1967: ‘Miss Edwards has given a new twist to the classic tale of the man who sold his soul to the devil. A well-meaning man enlists the aid of the dark powers to bring prosperity to an unsophisticated village . . . and in so doing brings the village people all the ills of civilisation. A neat, if incredible, little tale, it rather luridly underlines the need for careful consideration of even the best of good intentions.’ That’s a fair, if somewhat brusque summary. Even so, the book strengthens the sense that here is an overlooked writer with an original imagination, narrative strength and a talent for the strange.

There may be more yet to come about this author.

(Mark Valentine)

Image: Quair Books, Leeds