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While the Simcox boys settle down, young Titmuss rises preposterously. The son of an accountant at the Simcox brewery, trained to replicate his father's footsteps, Leslie senses the postwar crumbling of old barricades and makes his moves. He joins the local Young Conservatives, never minding that most of his colleagues despise him. He courts and wins Charlotte Fanner, the awkward and unhappy daughter of the village's titled landowner. He grows rich through investments and gains political power, but he does not win the respect of those who know him best. As Dorothy Simcox preaches to her husband, "Perhaps God made people like Leslie Titmuss so we can find out who's nice."
Why then does Titmuss turn out to be the beneficiary of Simeon's estate? The answer proves every bit as intriguing as the preparations that lead up to it. For Mortimer has attempted nothing less than a long case history of his native land, post-1945. Behind the narrow focus on the imaginary Rapstone and its inhabitants, larger events are disclosed: sugar rationing after the war, ban- the-bomb marches during the edgy '50s, the rise of swinging London, the Profumo scandal, strikes, strife and the sinking of traditions in a new tide of commercialism. The fate of the Swan's Nest, an old inn in the vicinity of Rapstone, is symptomatic: "In the course of time it would be taken over by a motel chain, re-christened Ye Olde Swan's Nest and given piped music, colour TVs in every bedroom . . . an enlarged car park and the Old Father Thames Carvery."
That is not exactly what old Simcox had in mind when he dreamed of the future. Nor does Mortimer seem especially enamored of what his country threatens to become. But Paradise Postponed is a remarkably judicious presentation of pros and cons, and extremely funny besides. Near the end of his life, watching TV reports of the war for the Falkland Islands, Simeon complains to his wife: "What we're doing is going round in circles. I mean, is this where we came in?" To enter this novel is to join an eddy of wisdom and comic resignation.