Inspiring Older Readers
The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress by Beryl Bainbridge
Beryl’s last novel, unfinished at her death in 2010 but tidied-up for posthumous publication by her editor, is still vintage Bainbridge. In fact, if anything, it feels like enhanced Bainbridge; elusive, dark, immediate and ultimately a bit of a puzzle.
It’s 1968 and the oddly other-worldly dental receptionist, Rose, arrives in the US from the UK to meet up with the anally retentive, Harold Grasse (who calls himself Washington Harold) and both have one aim in mind – to track down the mysterious Mr Wheeler. Rose is driven by a desire to find the man she believes changed her life with the gnomic advice he dispensed to her in the UK at a critical time in her life. Harold, by contrast is seeking Wheeler to exact a jealous revenge relating to his now dead wife – a mission he keeps from Rose.
This distinctly odd couple have come together through a third-party introduction and have plenty to find out about each other. And this becomes the recipe for one of the odder American road trips in literature and concludes enigmatically with the assassination of Robert Kennedy. The two hop across the US in a knackered, old camper van in pursuit of Wheeler who is rumoured to be part of Robert Kennedy’s election entourage. Rose’s main sartorial affectation is her polka-dot dress and Bainbridge rather archly plants the suggestion of links with an established conspiracy theory about Kennedy’s killing. Paul Bailey, reviewing the book in The Independent in 2011 puts it this way:
“This is not one of Bainbridge's historical reconstructions, despite the fact that the plot hinges on the assassination of Robert Kennedy. A girl in a polka-dot dress was seen running from the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after the six shots were fired. In the final chapters, a diminutive man in a yellow sweater with the ambition of becoming a jockey is introduced, and a crazy hypnotist tells Rose that his name is Sirhan. (Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to life imprisonment for Kennedy's murder.)”
But, as with so much of Bainbridge’s work, it’s really the extraordinary characters rather than the plot that takes centre stage. Harold and Rose – oil and water in many ways – come out of the book as fully formed three-dimensional characters and their coming together is the chemistry for some very odd encounters indeed.
Bailey is again excellent on the way the two interact:
“Rose is someone that only Beryl Bainbridge could have created. She is reminiscent of the girls in her early, partly autobiographical, novels - resilient against all the odds, sharp-witted when it suits her, annoyingly vague when she's distracted. The great success here is that she and Harold are two of a desperate kind, without their ever acknowledging the fact to one another.”
The road trip format enables Bainbridge to toss the odd couple into a series of meetings with Harold’s eccentrically bohemian friends and uncovers the deeper personalities of the two main protagonists. There’s also a sort of perverse, simmering sexual tension between Harold and Rose that reaches a very odd consummation just once in a bizarre encounter in a motel room.
The book feels very much like what it is – a novel that’s probably three-quarters finished. I’d be astonished, had she lived long enough, if Bainbridge would have been happy to leave the ending as it currently is. This really is the only part of the novel that feels a bit like notes on a work in progress because the rest is such good value and high octane Bainbridge.
I want to leave the last word to Alex Clarke who reviewed the book in The Guardian in 2011 when it was released. Clarke articulates exactly how I think this book needs to approached:
“The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress may not have every final i dotted and t crossed but, as most of Bainbridge's oeuvre did, it leaves its readers with more to think about than one might imagine possible for such a slender tale. It is a fitting finale and a poignant farewell to a career defiantly and uncontestably sui generis.”
Terry Potter
June 2020