Paradise Postponed by John Mortimer (Viking: $17.95; 374 pp.)

Adark bit from W. H. Auden serves as epigraph; frames our novel: In the houses/ The little pianos are closed, and a clock strikes./ And all sway forward on the dangerous flood/ Of history, that never sleeps or dies,/ And, held one moment, burns the hand. The houses are those of Rapstone Fanner, an unremarkable village two hours by Ford Prefect from London; pianos there are silent--the voice of the turtle unheard; a clock strikes: History closes the book on World War II. Simeon Simcox, rector of the parish (said to be a saint by some, a Don Quixote by others) looks to a New Jerusalem. After all, the forces of tyranny and injustice have now been defeated. Right? And, hallelujah! forthcoming shall be the Age of the Common Man. The left-leaning reverend puts push behind his perceptions, prays with his feet in peace marches, is visibly anti-missile on Greenham Common, tangles with his laggard church, vents his displeasure to The Times (London).

And all sway forward. The Promised Land recedes on the dangerous flood of history which brings forth a plague that, locally, takes on the name of Leslie Titmuss--later, the Rt. Hon. Leslie Titmuss, M.P. This breed of man, rising out of the muck, is essentially mindless, devoid of human feelings, driven only by avarice and a lust for power. The breed, wherever it appears and of whatever sex, threatens us all. The missiles are indifferent. We have been betrayed, our Edenic vision becomes Orwellian nightmare.

How does one speak to this grim circumstance? Through comedy? Why not? And as our novelist is the creator of “Rumpole of the Bailey,” she who must be obeyed is she, the muse of comedy. Comedy, according to John Mortimer, “is the only thing worth writing in this despairing age, provided the comedy is truly on the side of the lonely, the neglected, and the unsuccessful, and plays its part in the war against established rules.” So, down with the Rt. Hon. Leslie Titmuss, M.P.! Off with his head!

The novel opens with a mystery. The grand old rector dies (the funeral is a media event) and leaves his fortune to--to Titmuss! The church steeple at once topples; the heavens plunge out of orbit. Not quite, but it is a bit of a shocker. We find ourselves then in suspenseful pursuit of why to the novel’s end, encountering along the way a lively cast of English icons, eccentrics, Col. Blimps, and decent, normal people like Dr. Salter, who if he had been asked by Voltaire’s Candide, “To what end was the world formed?” would surely have answered as did Martin, “To infuriate us.” As a medical man, he has a special dislike for sick people, thinking they are a highly overprivileged class.

Simeon Simcox’s legacy to Titmuss creates a conflict between his sons, Henry, once an angry-young-man novelist, now 50ish, Blimpish, and sold-out-to-Hollywood; and Fred, a laid-back country doctor and jazz buff. Henry wants the courts to declare their father insane, thereby invalidating his will; Fred objects to any such pillorying. He believes that there must be a logical explanation . . . “Face it, old boy, the Rev had bats in his belfry--e.g., that totally insane optimism of his about the future of mankind!”

This is Mortimer’s first novel in 30 years if we leave aside one of the longer Rumpole stories, “Rumpole’s Return.” An English barrister who rose to the top of his profession (he defended black playwright Wole Soyinko on a criminal charge in Nigeria some years ago), the multitalented Mortimer is also a successful playwright, short-story writer, biographer, and film and TV writer, whose adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” recently held us fascinated before the tube.

His latest work has been joyously welcomed by some as being in the grand tradition of Dickens and Trollope; he is then, presumably, a modern Victorian with a novel that passes as both laudably entertaining and substantive. This is flattering, but in a way, also demeaning. The Van Wyck Brooksians remain wistful Arcadians:--

Ah! the outre autotelic nature of today’s celebrated novels! So impenetrable . . . so convoluted, hermetic. . . . Hermetic, that’s it. Pure solipsism!

While “Paradise Postponed” is, of course, not autotelic, nonreferential, or hermetic, neither is it a rehab of a yesterday’s edifice. It is accessible; it revels in characterizations; it is narrative, and it indefatigably gets from point A to point B. But it is sophisticated in form and cinematic in its episodic story development, quick cuts, flashbacks, incisiveness of scene, and reliance on dialogue. The flood of history has brought to the forefront concerns more monstrous than ever before dreamed. Thus wit is sharper, the humor drier . . . and all fittingly served up with perfectly malicious irony.

While Mortimer is not a Victorian, he is British, and despite the underlying tensions, the novel is innocent of noisy Sturm und Drang . . . of anything frightfully Wagnerian. Yet in its quite proper way, it is altogether smashing.