In I946, ex-corporal Sam Richardson returns home from Burma to Wigton in Cumbria. Awaiting are his wife, Ellen, and Joe, their son, now aged seven. Sam finds an England of ration books and smoke stacks, where the general reaction to returned soldiers is one of indifference. Sam has changed and carries deep in his heart a dread war memory of which he cannot bear to think, let alone speak. A man resentful of his own lack of education, Sam can find little comfort for his restlessness in his home town, of which he dreamt so often during the war.
Ellen, too, has changed: she has become independent of Sam and cannot understand why he fails to share her upwardly mobile ambitions. Joe, who has grown up with unfettered access to his mother during his father's absence, now grows resentful of Sam. The child becomes a catalyst for his parents' brewing conflict, which is played out in the very scrupulously-reproduced working-class environment of an English post-WW2 town.
Sam decides to emigrate to Australia, but Ellen wants to put down a deposit on a house. Sam's wish to start afresh is balanced by Ellen's desire to cling to what she knows. The new strains against the old and love is crushed between. Melvyn Bragg writes with strenuous honesty. The characters in this story are all "good lads", doing their honest best. Only Japanese soldiers, a safe enough target, provide any glimpse of real villainy. But for all its worthiness, one yearns in a tale like this for sustained tension. The author has decided to allow the reader to invade the thought-process of almost ever character - and there are many - in order, one presumes, to achieve the greatest possible overview. The result is often to dilute the reader's interest and to call into question, in a strange and unintended way, the author's commitment to his main characters.
Very little is left to chance. Troopers are given "Players cigarettes". Ellen asserts her desire to stay in Wigton: " `I really want this place, Sam,' she said, invoking his Christian name as a sign of her seriousness."
Like all NCOs of forgotten wars, Sam pays a big price for his loyalty to his country, and Melvyn Bragg's story is an honourable attempt to redress the balance.
Peter Cunningham's novel, Consequences of the Heart, was published earlier this year by Harvill