As I read this novel I thought of “A Canterbury Tale” and the way the present and the past mingle in the depiction of the landscape. I could also hear another Mollie’s voice – the songs of Molly Drake and their evocation of the English countryside with an undertone of melancholy. And yet what remains here is not melancholy but a sense of good-nature and hopefulness.

There is much for the characters to be melancholy about. The setting is somewhere around the South Downs in the first year after the war. Peace has returned but the upheavals of war are everywhere. Not just the rusting coils of barbed wire among the sorrel but also in rationing, bereavement, disorientation, social upheaval. If I were feeling caustic I could sum up the novel as a middle-class couple having to come to terms with the post-war “servant problem” (diddums). But it’s beautifully and perceptively written from a viewpoint that is sympathetic to all sides.

Pre-war Laura and Stephen lived in a large house with servants who ensured their domestic life ran on well-oiled rollers. Garden, kitchen, child – all looked after without any effort on their part. Perfect roses and vegetables grown for them, dinners served to them by lamplight, daughter presented to them bathed and ready for bed. Now they have a slapdash daily and an ageing occasional gardener and not much money and they must do everything else themselves. The house has become a tyrant rather than a retreat, but they – or, at least, Stephen – try to maintain their former way of life.

Poor Stephen, thought Laura . . . He hated the way they scraped along, scrambled and muddled along, though he said nothing. He took off his coat after dinner, hung it over a chair, and pitched into the washing up. Wretched victims of their class, they still had dinner. Without the slaves, they still cherished the useless lamp. Left alone, Laura would have settled and clung somewhere like that butterfly, sipping without ceremony, perfectly happy. While Stephen was away she had snatched her meals anywhere. But now there was a man in the house again, they faced each other over polished wood, branching candlelight, the small ivory electric bell which was nothing but a joke.

The novel follows mostly Laura over the course of one beautiful summer’s day: her thoughts, her chores, her short journeys, her interactions with other people. Nothing much happens, but perhaps this one day is to be a turning point in her personal life. Every little detail tells you something about the changed state of the country. The beautiful widow in the village shop is going to marry repulsive Mr Rudge the builder – someone who knows how to look after Number One and is doing well in the post-war world. But whereas Evelyn Waugh in “Brideshead Revisited“ gave us Hooper whom he obviously loathed, Mollie Panter-Downes is not hostile to the new world. In fact I wondered if the likely puppies of Stuffy’s fling with the gypsy’s greyhounds were a closing symbol of the post-war world.

I can see why she wrote so little fiction and concentrated on journalism. She sticks to what she observes and doesn’t stray beyond that; the characters and their situations in this novel are very similar to her wartime short stories and presented in the same sympathetic, expansive manner. It really was a pleasure to read it.

Afterword

I read “My Husband Simon” a few weeks later – published in 1931. My goodness, how different the tone towards the lower orders! There is no mercy for the negligent cleaner here – unlike the latitude in the portrayal of the careless Mrs Prout in “One Fine Day”. Panter-Downes seemed to unlearn her earlier snobbishness.