Book 250: Gibraltar (English) – A Vision of Battlements (Anthony BURGESS)

They reached Ragged Staff, and the boat was being moored by the steps. It seemed to Ennis that there was no great distance from the gunwale to the grey stone slabs of the quay above. He was the senior rank aboard, the men were impatient to be ashore, so, going first, he tried to heave himself up. Feet on the gunwale, hands on the quay, he prepared for the pull. But then the boat lurched, without warning, away and, to his blank surprise, down he went. The cold green oozy murk belched open to welcome him. He went straight down, the fathom of his height, then another, then another, with a splash and a glug, to the stillness of the men’s surprise, blank as his own, then the calls, the cries from above, the gurgling in green water, fathom by fathom down out of the light, the oozy coffin embracing him, his heavy boots, soaked clothing, down, down.

 

This was the first novel written by Anthony Burgess (of A Clockwork Orange fame) but not the first published. And it was out of print for ages. The copy I bought second-hand was the original 1965 edition (though Burgess wrote it in 1949). When you buy second-hand books you sometimes find surprises inside… in this case, a Pan Am boarding pass for Washington, D.C. to London with a colour postcard-like picture of Mexico. (I feel that the sad decline of boarding places is another sign of The End Of Civilisation As We Know It).

Gibraltar is a British overseas territory which basically consists just of the fortress rock at the northern entrance to the Mediterranean (one of the ancient Greeks’ Pillars of Hercules). It was named Jebel Tariq (The Mountain of Tariq) in Arabic after the Umayyad military commander who captured it in the 700s CE. This is where the name ‘Gibraltar’ comes from. Its history goes back a long way before that – most poignantly, it may have been the last refuge of the Neanderthals, long after Homo Sapiens had overrun Europe. The English captured it in the War of the Spanish Succession and Spain ceded it in perpetuity in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. That doesn’t mean that Spain, is happy about having this British stone in its shoe, despite Spain having its own two colony cities in Africa (Ceuta and Melilla) that Morocco isn’t happy about either. But the Brits, especially the Royal Navy, would consider it too strategically important to give up, and it is very unlikely the inhabitants would vote to join Spain.

The story is set right at the end of the Second World War. Everyone is waiting to be demobbed and get home as soon as possible, and Burgess captures this no-man’s-land brilliantly. Since so much no longer has a point, there’s a big breakdown of discipline, deference, and rank. It’s often very funny.

The hapless Richard Ennis (who is no doubt a self-deprecatory send-up of Burgess himself) has ended up in Gibraltar (like the author did). Apparently he had been a misfit as a soldier. Like Burgess, he is a composer, but if this is his calling he is hardly staring success in the face there either. He tries to interest his comrades in Culture but they’re really only interested in eating, drinking, womanising and getting home from the war. His wife Laurel waiting at home for his return, which should happen at any time, but that doesn’t stop his eyes wandering. Sadly this early anti-hero keeps falling into the same traps. (The novel is sneakily structured along the lines of The Aenid!)

Maybe the funniest bit of all is where Ennis tries to stop a riot and his well-intentioned words get misinterpreted. There is a visit to a Spain we wouldn’t recognise today – here it is like something out of Hogarth.

It’s not the funniest, nor the most acerbic, send-up from WWII, and nor does it compare with Burgess’ later work, though it does already show his wit and literary references, but it grew on me and I did end up enjoying it. It might have an existential waiting-for-Godot feeling, but also a light-heartedness that is a very different world from that of A Clockwork Orange. What a shame it doesn’t get read any more.

 

Burgess, Anthony (1917 – 1993), A Vision of Battlements, NY, Ballantine, 1965, ISBN 345-03196-2-125