In 1990 Nigel Williams published The Wimbledon Poisoner, a comedy about a dull solicitor who tries to kill his wife, fails repeatedly, but tops a lot of neighbours in the process. It sold 150,000 copies – about the same as the new Nick Hornby or David Nicholls shifts in print these days.
One of these copies came into my possession when I was about 11. I reread it religiously. I even made incredibly dim pencil notes in my paperback. I’d have picked it up because we lived in Raynes Park, one stop along the railway line, several steps down the swank ladder, but still an easy enough puff up the hill into SW19, with its tree-lined streets of mock Tudor semis, its posh school and its fancy village, its pubs rich in local history, which the book’s hero, Henry Farr, has detailed in a Casaubon-ish book called The Complete History of Wimbledon, which nobody wants to publish.
Rage about this rejection, about being felt – by himself included – to be boring, and about being remorselessly exploited by his awful wife, Elinor, turns Henry’s thoughts to slaughter. The first attempt, involving thallium-laced chicken, goes wrong when his friend Donald comes by for supper unexpectedly. Henry’s next, involving Finish ’Em! bleach in the punch at Donald’s wake is more indiscriminate but, again, Elinor remains unscathed. Both incidents draw the couple closer together. Elinor softens as her husband becomes empowered. But Henry’s resolve not to kill her coincides with what must be his imminent arrest.
The Wimbledon Poisoner is a weird book. There is brilliant observational patter, plus a couple of stone-cold farce masterpieces (buying the poison, trying to stop Donald scoffing) that even the most resistant would struggle not to snigger at. There is, through most of it, a fluent mix of whimsy and something more astringent, more cross. Henry is, actually, a complex chap, a scatological Pooter, stricken with a chirpier type of malaise than that suffered by Reggie Perrin, his neighbour over Norbiton – but an existential crisis none the less.
Yet there are also gags and conceits evidently dashed off (Williams wrote it while at the BBC). Writing that blurs the line between the colloquial and the facile. Once the first few deeds are done, the plot wobbles, and the appearance of a mysterious policeman slows momentum and worries the genre.
But, at 11, I wouldn’t have noticed. Even cliches come fresh once in your life. I simply found it hysterically funny. Not just the set pieces but all the incidentals about south-west London life, the hopeless piano lessons and the obsession with car paintwork, the wrangles over hedges, the Waitrose runs and the twitching nets. Likewise, Williams’s digs at feminist therapy wouldn’t have struck me as blunt, but rather as heat-seeking missiles bravely lobbed into uncharted territory.
This was a book that encouraged me to laugh at people whose wealth had previously seemed to put them more off-limits, and at a place which posited itself as aspirational. It ticked off Wimbledon, called it lazy and reactionary, scoffed at its sense of style. I loved Wodehouse, but he wrote fairytales, poking loving fun at an absurd aristocracy. I liked Waugh, what I clocked of it, but again: this was a class not often encountered. Now, suddenly, here was satire that spoke to me.
And it wasn’t just piss-take. It was celebration, too. The Wimbledon Poisoner crackles with ambivalence about the value of the suburbs; whether the decency of the project compensates for the parochialism that can rear up once its neat borders are challenged. But it also shows these borders to be anthropologically exotic as anywhere else on the planet. The front doorstep can be a place of wonder. And if you did spend a lot of time in Wimbledon’s fallout zone, this was a helpful thing to keep in mind.
The later two instalments of Williams’s Wimbledon trilogy didn’t hit home so forcefully for me. Alien invasion-themed They Came from SW19 was too wacky; the David Nobbs meets Michel Houellebecq vibe of fundamentalist fantasy East of Wimbledon went way over my head. Five years later, a BBC adaptation of Poisoner pretty much turned me off it for good.
Still, I hope the book changed me. I hope it made me more compassionate to the parents ferrying around some of my friends, gave me some insight into why people might have liked a civilisation defined by Thatcher, even as she lost power nine miles up the Thames. Plus, of course, it taught me an awful lot about poisoning.
