Jumping the Queue
First edition
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| Author | Mary Wesley |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Macmillan |
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Publication date
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1983 |
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| Pages | 203 |
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Jumping the Queue (1983) is British novelist Mary Wesley´s first adult novel, published when the author was seventy years old. The story takes place mainly in Cornwall, England, and follows a middle aged widow's struggle with guilt and self-reproach after the death of her husband and her determination to jump the queue – commit suicide.
Mary Wesley had been writing most of her life and had had two children's books published when her husband died in 1970. The years that followed were unproductive and barren and Wesley was troubled by poverty and grief. However, by 1977 she managed to finish the script to Jumping the Queue, a book about a widow's wish to commit suicide in the wake of her husband's death. The book clearly reflects the depth of Wesley's own despair when she wrote it, and the entire work can be seen as part of the process of grieving. However, Wesley had to wait five years before she found a publisher courageous enough to accept the script, and Jumping the Queue was finally published on 28 April 1983. After thirty-five years of writing and rejections her first adult novel had become a reality.
The heroine of the novel is Matilda, a widow in her fifties, who lives alone in an isolated cottage in Cornwall, England. Her four children all live abroad and rarely visit her, and troubled by her husband's death she has decided to end it all – commit suicide.
Matilda's plan is to go to the beach, swim out and drown herself. However, a gang of youngsters spoil her plan when they show up with the intention of having a party on "her" beach, and Matilda moves on to throw herself out from a bridge, only to find that the bridge has been occupied by a young man who has had the same idea as she. Matilda recognises the man, Hugh, as someone who is on the run from the police for having murdered his mother, and she invites him to stay with her in her cottage.
In the following days Matilda tells Hugh the story of her life, bit by bit. It is a story about a life filled with lies, adultery, incest and murder. Hugh is constantly worried that she may betray him and call the police, and Matilda partly hopes that he will just disappear and partly hopes he will stay. When he finally does go, Matilda is left alone with her skeletons.
The novel was adapted into a TV play in 1989, directed by Claude Whatham. It is headlined by Sheila Hancock as the grieving and determined widow, Matilda, and David Threlfall plays the young man, Hugh.
With its mood of quiet desperation, guilt and suicide Jumping the Queue is Wesley's darkest book. The protagonist, Matilda, is a soul haunted by guilt and self-reproach about her relationship with her family. Her husband had a weak heart and she feels guilty about not having been with him when he had a stroke. She also feels guilty because she has been a bad mother unable to communicate with her children: "It is my fault, she reproached herself. I cannot reach them..." And she feels guilty about loving one of her children the best. In the search for some kind of sympathy, or even absolution, from Hugh, who is listening to her story, she says: "You must think I don´t love my children...". She even feels guilty about the death of her pets: "I am a great betrayer, she thought. That is my sin". Initially, we believe that Matilda wants to commit suicide out of grief for the loss of her husband, Tom. She keeps telling Hugh, and herself, how much she loved him and misses him. However, her conversations with Hugh reveal a suppressed anger at her husband. Even before his death she has been angry with him because of his sexual relationship with their daughter, Louise. The relationship seems to have taken place with their daughter's consent, but she is angry with her husband for letting it happen. After his death Matilda learns that he has led a secret life, which infuriates her even more. She is angry about his apparent affairs with her friends and about his obscure smuggling business, and she is angry because she doesn't know the truth about his trips to Paris and his relations with that dodgy friend of theirs, John/Piers. But most of all, she is angry because it all went on under her very nose and the fact that she didn't notice or even suspect a thing. Matilda doesn't learn about this secret life of his until after his death, and she starts questioning herself if she really loved him: "Tom, Tom, oh poor Tom, did I love you".
In the wake of her new knowledge of her husband Matilda feels left out and betrayed. She feels that her pride has been hurt and that she has been ridiculed throughout their entire marriage. As her neighbour, Mr Jones, says to Hugh: "She is finding out more about him, liking him less, getting disillusioned...". It is the sum of her anger and disillusionment that has conditioned Matilda toward suicide, not grief.
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