Those of you dieting your way to a svelte physique amid the flesh-exposing terrors of summer should take courage from Mrs Hawkins, the heroine of Muriel Spark’s wonderful novel A Far Cry from Kensington.
Mrs Hawkins, with her unfortunate ‘Rubens quality of flesh’, only starts to worry about her weight when she gets a new job and notices that all her colleagues suffer from some kind of affliction. These range from stammers to stomach ulcers, pock-marked faces to war-wounds, and so, lying awake one night, she wonders what her own ailment might be. She gets out of bed to look at herself in the mirror: ‘I stood there, massive in my loose, warm nightdress.’ Then she realises, ‘I was immensely too fat. I was -overweight, I thought, to the point that anyone employing me must be kinky.’
Mrs Hawkins decides to slim down, even though she risks losing her job along with the weight. This is 1954 — long before the 5:2, Dukan or even Weight Watchers — so she follows a diet of her own invention: ‘You eat and drink the same as always, only half.’
More feeble dieters might quail at the thought of halving their food over a prolonged period, but Mrs Hawkins rather enjoys it. ‘I sneaked a glance at the amount everyone else was eating. It seemed enormous in relation to my half,’ she gloats during a smart dinner party, to which she wears an old evening dress, the waist joyfully taken in ‘a good inch to both sides’. For sure, Mrs Hawkins suffers from pangs, but she is made of stronger stuff, and stoically reflects on her constant weariness and hunger: ‘I took pride in that.’
The ‘eat half’ diet gets results, leaving our heroine so slim and spritely that the other characters start to address her by her first name, Nancy, instead of the matronly ‘Mrs Hawkins’.
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