Mixed Fiction

THESE LOVERS FLED AWAY, by Howard Spring (483 pp.; Harper; $4.50), starts at the turn of the century with a handful of corny characters in a Cornish setting, then marches through all the pomp, circumstance, sweat and tears of three generations of 20th century Britain. Playwright Chad Boothroyd, the hero, loves Rose Garland. Rose, a rather dreary dreg of tea, is invariably presented to the reader in a gown of crimson silk, which invariably seems to have a fetish effect upon Chad. Ultimately, Chad gets Rose, but only after she 1) lives with Eustace Hawke, a sensational poet with more than an overtone of Rupert Brooke about him, and 2) goes through a loveless marriage with Billy Pascoe, a lowly rustic who becomes England's greatest atomic scientist.

The plot is pat, the situations cliche, and the novel's real worth lies in the embroidery with which Author Spring (My Son, My Son) surrounds that crimson gown. The rich and reverent descriptions of the English scene are worth the price of admission, as are some of the characters--especially Chad's Dickensian Uncle Arthur, a glutton who grows auriculae and dotes on a skinny whippet.

THE SHIRALEE, by D'Arcy Niland (250 pp.; William Sloane; $3.50), takes its title from an old Australian word for the bundle of belongings swagmen carry as they tramp about the land. Macauley, at 35, was a proud and able swagman, i.e., itinerant sheep-station hand, who hated cities, where you always need "a penny for the slot and a key for the door." But he had a city wife until, on a visit home, he found her with another man. Breaking the bloke's jaw wasn't enough for Macauley; in a spiteful rage against his wife, he carried off their 3 1/2-year-old daughter, whom he scarcely knew.

In cabbage-tree hat and overalls, "Buster" became his second shiralee, and as Macauley trudged with her from job to job on the back tracks of the bush, his churlishness toward his burden slowly changed to brusque tenderness. Macauley's growing-up is obviously meant to be the heart of the story, but the book's strength lies in its Cineramic picture of the swagman's life--taking a turn at shearing, cutting burrs, fencing or digging spuds. To Macauley this was the only life, for "you have a hundred roads to choose from and a hundred towns to put the finger on." Australian Novelist Niland, who has been a swagman himself, tells the reader a lot about his homeland in a story as fresh as a billy of tea brewing over a thistle campfire. But for some tastes, he may have spooned in a bit too much sugar.

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