Fear to Tread, by Michael Gilbert
Michael Gilbert has proven to be one of the most consistent, most versatile, and most surprising writers of thrillers and suchlike dark fiction. Not that his books are dark—far from it. At their core is an almost quaint sensibility of the power of human goodness, even as recognition that the not-so-nice aspects of the psyche often hold sway, even rule … for a time. Now when I say “proven to be” consistent and versatile, I of course mean proven to me, at least for the seven books of his (out of thirty [!]) I have read. Few other authors have offered such compelling stories with such diverse action as Trouble, The 92nd Tiger, Death in Captivity, The Queen Against Karl Mullen, and—one of the best books I’ve read in the past five years—The Killing of Katie Steelstock (originally published as Death of a Favourite Girl in the UK). And now comes another brilliant offering from the schoolmaster turned solicitor who wrote his fiction during his daily commute (as I learn from Wikipedia), Fear to Tread. It was his seventh book, published in 1953. Would that all of us look so sharp as we approach our septuagenarian years!
He had things to think about. If he went home his wife would talk to him and that would stop him thinking about them. He could not, by any stretch of imagination, talk to her about it. He had discovered that early in his married life. Although he was very genuinely in love with her, he could not talk to her about things that mattered. Perhaps all married people were like that.
Mr. Wetherall considers his problem
Mr. Wetherall is everyman, an everyman we perhaps once aspired to be, before the corruption of time and the times put paid to our youthful dreams of heroism and doing the right thing. Perhaps Michael Gilbert true genius is his ability to create a believable hero who stands against the forces of evil with a stout heart and a not entirely grim determination perhaps it lies in his power to craft a plot that permits him to hold his own against terrific odds and eventually … but that would be telling, now wouldn’t it? Suffice it to say that little by slow the headmaster of a small boys’ school on the wrong side of the Thames becomes embroiled with nefarious acts and actors until everything he holds dear is threatened. A most plausibly implausible plot unfolds bit by bit and the reader is carried along by the ever-quickening stream of incident and action until what began as a trifling kerfuffle becomes a titanic struggle between civilization and those in opposition, or at least, a bigger kerfuffle.
He was fully aware of the curious strands of his own character. But the fact that he recognized them, as any toper or drug addict may recognize and deplore his own weaknesses, did not make him competent to counteract them.
Mr. Wetherall puts his finger on the problem with Socrates’ dictum to ‘Know thyself’
As is often the case with Mr. Gilbert’s novels, the book is a tale of ordinary people, much like you and I, caught up in extraordinary events, though in this case the events affect everyone in England in greater or lesser fashion. The plot centers around the illegal foods trade, a serious problem in Britain in the post-war era, when rationing was still necessary in the face of continued privation after straining both physical and psychical resources to the maximum in the fight against fascism. The action begins quite modestly, with our stolid protagonist Mr. Wetherall (whose significant name I only now notice) learning that a foods parcel sent to him from a dear friend in Canada has gone missing. A whole host of only peripherally related events link together to propel him into a life-and-death struggle with the criminal powers behind a thriving black market in food and drink.
It was people, really, thought Mr. Wetherall. When it came to the point you’d do things for people that you’d never dream of doing for patriotism or politics or principles. Unimportant people.
What we believe is one thing; what we do is often quite another
I shouldn’t (and shan’t) give away too much of the plot; you really should check out Gilbert’s oeuvre for yourself—he’s that good. But the characters are engaging, if a bit dated, as is the devotion to some principle besides … well, no principle at all, I suppose. Written in 1953, before England entirely realized that not only was the Empire gone, but so too were the public school ideals that lived in symbiosis with that Empire, Fear to Tread espouses hope for standards which seem almost quaint nowadays, as I said previously. As even Mr. Wetherall recognizes in the quote above, principles are all very well and good, but at core you have to believe in something even deeper, if you’re going to believe in anything at all. But what have we lost when we lost the world in which such aspirations could take root and hold fast against the inclement storms and wearying trials of life as it is actually lived? Perhaps, as the title suggests, Mr. Wetherall is in the end a bit of a fool. But this reader, for one, wishes we had fewer fools of the modern stripe, and had more fools like him.