Let’s not talk about sex

On Chesil Beach

BY IAN MCEWAN (JONATHAN CAPE, £12.99)

HOW DISTANT the 1960s seem. Significantly, Ian McEwan's new novella is set in 1962, a year before that earmarked by Philip Larkin as the overture to the sexual blitzkrieg. In McEwan's atomic portrayal of unconsummated love it seems another age, as removed from the present time as the pebbles found on Chesil Beach on the Dorset coast.

It is against this geologically intriguing phenomenon that love, so carefully and sincerely nurtured, founders, a consequence of things left unsaid, of our endless capacity to suffer embarrassment when it comes to sex. From the writer's point of view this is a gift, as it has been the mainstay of fiction in English since the beginning of the novel. Whether it be in the work of Jane Austen or Kazuo Ishiguro, muteness in such ticklish matters has magnificent, awful - and sometimes hilarious - consequences; thoughts and speech rarely connect. It is as if each character is split in two. On the one hand there is the person whose mouth moves and who can maintain a conversation. On the other, there is the dumbstruck individual whose real feelings exist only in cartoon bubbles.

For centuries in Britain, congress between inexperienced members of both sexes was like playing tennis in the pitch dark - very hit or miss. It may seem implausible to members of a younger generation but, as McEwan's novella reminds us, it is not so long ago that sex was not ubiquitous. There was no need, for example, for a watershed because television - still haunted by Lord Reith - was sanitised to an extraordinary degree. Page Three girls were still some way off and the only place one could swear with near impunity was on the football terraces. To some, those will seem like halcyon days. Others, however, will look back and wince at the coy repressiveness of it all.

Ian McEwan, who was born in 1948, appears to want to have his cake and eat it. On one level, On Chesil Beach is evocative of an England that Thomas Hardy would have found somewhat familiar. The countryside had yet to succumb to rampant urbanisation and cars were beyond the pocket of the bulk of the population. Moreover, as in a Hardy novel, sex was generally forbidden until after marriage, women who were prepared to "do it" before that being regarded as loose or desperate. On top of which, in the absence of reliable contraception, the chances of pregnancy were too great a risk to take. One did not want to be landed for a lifetime with someone one did not want to be with.

Edward and Florence, the two innocent protagonists, are representative of their era; the last generation whose sexual naivety now seems almost unbelievable. For Florence, sex outside marriage is not even on the agenda; for Edward, waiting is the price he must pay for the prize of her virginity. Despite their intelligence, neither of them is biologically savvy. When Edward thrusts his tongue into Florence's mouth she recoils, her moans misinterpreted by him as manifestations of ecstasy, a harbinger, he expects, of what married life holds in prospect. Meanwhile, she cannot quite bring herself to accept - or to articulate to him - how horrific she views the forthcoming conjugation, relying on everything being all right on the night.

"Their courtship," writes McEwan, in the most courtly of prose, "had been a pavane, a stately unfolding, bound by protocols never agreed or voiced, but generally observed. Nothing was ever discussed - nor did they feel the lack of intimate talk. These were matters beyond words, beyond definition."

In On Chesil Beach, as in Edward and Florence's relationship, nothing happens quickly. Belying its comparative brevity, McEwan's story unravels unhurriedly. Similarly, Edward realises that hurrying things "could undo months of good work". When, in a cinema, he takes her hand and places it between his legs, she freezes. For her, he assumes, marriage is the Rubicon that must be crossed before sex can be contemplated. It never crosses his mind that she finds the very idea of it abhorrent.

Here, as in his earlier novels, McEwan plays exquisitely with his readers' patience, withholding information almost to the point of cruelty. There is much that may be deemed farcical in the situation in which Edward and Florence find themselves. For them, however, sex is no laughing or casual matter. Lest we underestimate it, McEwan spells it out, including everything from fear, timidity and squeamishness to Englishness, class and history.

James Thurber once asked if sex was necessary. Given what the ill-starred couple must endure, who could blame either of them for responding negatively. McEwan - being McEwan - does not, come the denouement, shirk behind courtly language. Nor, though, does he descend into crudity. Neither does he judge. Both Edward and Florence are victims and their lives are subsequently affected by what happened on their wedding night. To say more would perhaps reveal too much.

Suffice it to say that both of them must live with the consequences. That we learn more about Edward than we do about Florence is a regret that a longer book could have cushioned. As it is, On Chesil Beach adds another gleaming pebble to the cairn of Ian McEwan's oeuvre, which grows ever more impressive.

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