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Businessmen as Lovers, by Rosemary Tonks (1969)

Cover of "Businessmen as Lovers"

Businessmen as Lovers was Rosemary Tonks’ fourth novel and, to be honest, the first in which she seems to relax and not be relentlessly straining to be clever. It’s her only novel not set in London: the whole story takes place on a train through France and an island off Italy, and perhaps the setting meant that it wasn’t only Tonks’ characters who were taking a bit of a holiday.

As with all of Tonks’ novels, the story is all about the game of love in various guises, but in this case, she introduces a new variation hinted at in her title. Of all the match-ups Tonks choreographs in her book, the most earnest is that between a British venture capitalist and a mysterious and handsome Iranian tycoon. At first, it’s the Iranian who seems constantly to be crossing paths with the Englishman, much to the latter’s consternation. But when he learns the Iranian’s identity, suddenly the tables are turned and he sets off in desperate pursuit. An observer explains the contest to Mimi, the narrator:

“There’ll be a terrific struggle in which each tries to put the other in the wrong. Then they’ll rest. And start all over again.”

“Who will win?”

“Chamoun. He’s got the Rolls.”

“I’m not so sure. Caroline says Killi says you’ve got to whack them over the head with a penis.”

“A Rolls is a penis.”

Of historical note, this may be the first appearance of the concept of the penis car in English literature.

Tonks also provides perhaps the first portrait of the businessman as diva. Killi, the international wheeler-dealer married to Caroline, Mimi’s best friend, descends upon his vacationing family by helicopter and spends his first day pouting over the failure of everyone to react to his arrival with wild joy.

And to round off these moods at such times he fails to communicate his arrangements or his preferences but expects you to know his mind since he knows it so well himself. He sits there in silence and gives the impression of being buried in sand. Or he uses mysterious phrases which have Caroline bewildered, such as “I leave people to draw their own conclusions,” or “You made it perfectly plain” about the way she greeted someone on the beach, probably a deck-chair boy to whom apparently she was able to indicated in a split second a great chunk of information unfavourable to Killi.

Since reading Tonks’ first and largely unsuccessful novel, Emir, I’ve had the sense that what she was trying to do was to recreate Così fan tutte in a 1960s British setting, and Businessmen as Lovers is no different. Although there’s not much infidelity going on here, there are plenty of pairings beyond Killi and his Iranian businessman. There’s a fine comic villian in the person of Dr. Purzelbaum, who uses mineral baths and massages as if he were trying to extract secrets from captured spies. There’s the charmingly eccentric host, Sir Rupert Monkhouse, who’s absent-mindedly allowing himself to be seduced by one of Tonks’ ambiguously European characters, Mrs. Voss, known to one and all as “The Prostitutess.”

But though she may have aimed for Mozart, what she hit was something closer to Wodehouse. Aside from its Italy setting, the goings-on in Businessmen as Lovers could just as easily be taking place just down the road from Blandings Castle. It’s really just a bit of holiday silliness. And for once, Tonks’ alter ego and narrator is not the most confused and unhappy person in the cast. Instead, she is blissfully in love with Beetle, a quiet Englishman happy with her company in the bedroom and out. Perhaps Tonks was giving herself, as well as her characters, a break.


Businessmen as Lovers, by Rosemary Tonks
London: The Bodley Head, Ltd., 1969

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