The most unequivocal sign that in a previous life I was something other than a techie is not my involvement with philosophy, but the mere fact that it takes only few words on a page to turn my day upside down. Yesterday I finished reading R.C. Sherriff’s The Fortnight in September and although it did not match the expectations that some rave reviews had built up for me, it did manage to catch me off guard on several occasions. No wonder I cannot stop thinking about it.
Sherriff’s story is tremendously simple. The Stevens have been going on holiday for fifteen days in September since forever. Every year they travel to the same place: same trains, same streets, same guest house, same beach, same sea. Everything is carefully planned and everyone tries their best to behave according to the plan. Sherriff captures the poetry of the most trivial routines of the Stevenses from the very beginning, framing with consummate elegance their vivid joy about apparently banal accomplishments, as if no surprise is in itself a reason to be happily surprised.
But Sherriff is even better at understanding the anxiety of his characters and the tragedy of their nostalgic attempts at stopping time by trying to preserve everything as it has always been, when in fact, little by little, all has changed, the characters themselves first and foremost. The question of time, the fear of missing a chance, the anxious contempt for wasted opportunities, the impossible dreams of escape: for a Marcel Proust lover this is all too familiar and more than welcome. What I find even more interesting, and what really makes The Fortnight in September a special book for me, is how I can relate many of the people and the events in these pages to my direct experience.
When I was little, we used to spend every summer in a small place near Lake Garda. We didn’t stay for more than a day, because it wasn’t that far from our home so it was cheaper to get there early in the morning and be back right after dinner. The fierce regularity of this trip was so similar to the Stevenses’. My mother, the female version of Mr. Stevens, always packed the same lunch and made sure we always left the house around 7am in order to claim the same spot on the beach before anyone else. In the evening, she always had a table reserved in a cozy restaurant nearby for a pizza. The first two years there was a kid with whom I played a lot. We took crazy dives from the jetty in order to splash all sorts of people, German tourists in particular, who, according to us, had to walk around soaking wet. There was a small arcade where I usually went after lunch, but now I am sure it was a trick my parents used to keep me out of the water for a while.
It’s funny remembering all of this now. Along with the memories come the mixed feelings Sherriff describes with beautiful insight. The first summers everyone was so enthusiastic to be leaving for the lake. Then, as I was getting older my opinion on this trip changed. I started feeling like I didn’t want to be reassured by the comfort of a familiar place any more. Every year the beach, the arcade, the jetty looked different to me, not just because I was less and less interested in these things, trying to act like a grown-up already, but because they served as reminders of habits I was ready to abandon. I wished for new thrills, new adventures.
At the same time, only now I understand how important that small place was for my parents. Much like Mr. and Mrs. Stevens, my parents were not using that beach as a simple escape from their days of work. They were putting every inch of themselves in moments they wanted to last forever. They were trying to have something worth remembering because they knew, deep within their hearts, it wasn’t just the arcade or the jetty ageing quickly. Fighting through anxious routines the inevitable changes with which time challenges the solidity of a family, they wanted us to stay together one more time.