I don't think, as I say elsewhere, that Foley actually has designs on Selby--nothing we learn about him later develops that idea, in any way, so perhaps Selby was mistaken, or Foley was just playing mind games. But if Forest did intend something of the sort, how much subtler a portrait of a potential sexual predator he is than the one we get later in canon; terrifyingly likely and realistic (known to his potential victims, placed in a position of trust wrt them; a little odd, perhaps, but attractive and charismatic), where the later example in Ready-Made Family is lurid and conventional.
I never read Foley and Selby as being about grooming-for-sexual-abuse, for precisely this reason. You have a concept of sexual abusers as you describe; and as you say, RMF shows that AF's wasn't that sophisticated. Given that even now, knowing what we know about abuse, in many primary school all that is taught is "stranger danger" I cannot see that AF could have been this subtle about it in the 1940s/50s. Like you, I find Ankaret's fic about Ginty/ Foley utterly convincing, but that's within period understanding in a way that Foley-grooming-Selby in this way isn't, to my mind.
For what it is worth ... I read that Foley stopped to let the other man out and then picked up Selby incidentally (possibly, almost without thinking about the consequences). The conversation in the car may have had a bit of mind games in it. Selby's disquiet (and therefore Nicola's) is about that knowledge that an adult is behaving out of character, stepping outside the bounds of what they should be doing, but the child has no idea why or where this is leading; furthermore, because the child is beholden to the adult in some way, no kind of challenge or query is possible. That dynamic is a part of grooming-for-sexual-abuse which is why in 2014 that possibility is there for the reader. But AF was writing about traitors and other boundaries altogether. Foley may well have been sizing Selby up re his attitude to Navy and rules etc. Grooming, certainly, but not for sexual activities. Wouldn't a different Selby make an excellent "sleeper"? Additionally, Foley's conversation with Selby serves to distract him from wondering about the other man ... just as it distracts Nicola and the reader?
no subject
I never read Foley and Selby as being about grooming-for-sexual-abuse, for precisely this reason. You have a concept of sexual abusers as you describe; and as you say, RMF shows that AF's wasn't that sophisticated. Given that even now, knowing what we know about abuse, in many primary school all that is taught is "stranger danger" I cannot see that AF could have been this subtle about it in the 1940s/50s. Like you, I find Ankaret's fic about Ginty/ Foley utterly convincing, but that's within period understanding in a way that Foley-grooming-Selby in this way isn't, to my mind.
For what it is worth ... I read that Foley stopped to let the other man out and then picked up Selby incidentally (possibly, almost without thinking about the consequences). The conversation in the car may have had a bit of mind games in it. Selby's disquiet (and therefore Nicola's) is about that knowledge that an adult is behaving out of character, stepping outside the bounds of what they should be doing, but the child has no idea why or where this is leading; furthermore, because the child is beholden to the adult in some way, no kind of challenge or query is possible. That dynamic is a part of grooming-for-sexual-abuse which is why in 2014 that possibility is there for the reader. But AF was writing about traitors and other boundaries altogether. Foley may well have been sizing Selby up re his attitude to Navy and rules etc. Grooming, certainly, but not for sexual activities. Wouldn't a different Selby make an excellent "sleeper"? Additionally, Foley's conversation with Selby serves to distract him from wondering about the other man ... just as it distracts Nicola and the reader?