Readthrough: The Marlows and The Traitor Chapters 1 & 2

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

The Marlows and the Traitor takes place over four and a half days, and the chapters are arranged accordingly, so I thought the schedule might go something like this:

20th June: Chapters 1 & 2 (Wednesday)
27th June: Chapters 3-76 (Thursday) [addendum: the volume of commentary got a bit unmanageable, so I did four chapters instead of five]
4th July: Chapters 7-10 (Thursday Night (2), Friday and Saturday Morning)
11th July: Chapters 11-13 (Saturday Afternoon and Sunday Morning*)

(*wh. sounds like a little-known novel by a Mildly Miffed Young Man)

Author's Note: I took this to refer to the problem of Dartmouth changing its minimum entrance age from 13 to 16, then 18, which means that a 14-year-old Peter could not be a cadet at the time of publication in 1953. But on re-reading it, I was struck by Forest's comment "the happenings described must have taken place between September 1946 and May 1949". Well, the novel is very clearly set at the Easter holidays after Autumn Term, and in the next book, Falconer's Lure, we learn that it is summer 1948. So I haven't a notion what she's on about here. Anyone care to enlighten?



The opening paragraphs are wonderfully atmospheric, I think, and much of the success of Traitor relies on the creation of atmosphere above all.

Retrospective mortification is one of Forest's motifs, and 'the boat thing' is a splendid instance of it. She withholds the details from us--all we know at this stage is that there's been some incident at Dartmouth involving a boat, and he was thoroughly told off for it ('blistering ticking-off on the hard' is a great phrase). We don't even know by whom Peter was reprimanded yet. I think that works really well to suggest Peter's mental skirting around the issue: he keeps going over it, and yet it is also in a sense too painful even to be fully articulated to us, the readers, in his internal monologue.

"As a family, the Marlows were rather good at minding their own business." I'm not sure, objectively, how true this is, but they are certainly an unsentimental bunch. It is rather wonderfully echoed in the more deeply dysfunctional independence of the Foleys. I am at the same time, ineffably touched by Nicola's friendship with Robert Anquetil, and her general gift for friendships with adults (see also her détente with the rebarbative Edwin). But that is for another day.

Family liking: a fascinating subject in the series, I think. Forest is either nodding or being very subtle here: in Autumn Term Nicola says Rowan is "the nicest" after Giles, here we're told Nick "liked Peter the best" after Giles. There's perhaps a difference between "the nicest" (which Rowan, for all her many virtues, surely is not) and "liking someone best", or perhaps Forest just didn't check. Giles is Peter's favourite too, which strikes me as unlikely, and not just because of my well-documented feelings about Marlow, G.A.: I'd imagine that Peter feels rather as if he's got to live up to Giles, which isn't, in my (admittedly not first-hand) experience of sibling relationships, a recipe for cordiality.

Pam Marlow's tendency to slightly impulsive financial blow-outs is surely a reaction to the years of struggling on a lieutenant's pay with a growing brood of children, and I think it's a lovely character detail. In a discussion elsewhere I was reminded of the hostility of certain 1970s theorists of children's literature to the upper-middle-class values and milieu of the Marlows, and especially to the representation of a family that educates its children privately, and later, owns horses and so forth, as 'hard-up'. One does get the sense that Forest, like many authors of the mid-20th century, felt that there was a certain romance in being posh-but-broke, even perhaps a kind of make-do-and-mend moral superiority in it. But although the Marlows don't seem to know the grinding anxieties of actual poverty, their financial situation is sometimes represented as difficult enough to cause more than inconvenience. Any thoughts or feelings?

Related: the Thorpes are clearly Lower Middle Class and Nouveau Riche, as demonstrated by the tight, bright nether garments of the female members of the family. The Marlow children's recoil from Johnnie is unsentimentally and accurately done, I think but also reveals considerable snobbery.

Nicola's seasickness is a delightful detail, and I love the reference to Hornblower and Nelson suffering from the same ailment. To it, and to some interesting points about Marlow interactions which reflect rather poorly on the senior and naval members of the family, we will recur.

The Fancy Dress Dance is rather marvellously postwar austerity amusement. My grandfather (b.1919) retained a taste for this sort of fun well into old age, much to the exasperation of his juniors, so I associate it with the War Generation. But Peter and Ginty are notably unkeen (it's a beautiful detail that Peter even manages to relate this to his possible failure to be a good naval officer, joining in 'festivities in foreign ports') while Lawrie, of course, delights in the opportunity to act and show off. Cant you just see her doing this to her siblings' total mortification?

Peter's poor taste in friends likewise delights me--and is of course related to his rave for Foley. What do people make of Foley's offer of a lift to Selby? [ETA content warning in re: the comments: discussion of possible grooming for sexual abuse]

Peter's fear and Nicola's nonchalance as the storm begins to get up in neatly done, I think: Peter's fears and his overcoming of them (not always successfully) is another motif. This brings us to a continuity error, which I was not competent to diagnose, but which was pointed out to me by legionseagle. Foley simply doesn't, it seems, have time to moor Talisman and be sauntering along the prom by the time he is depicted as doing so. And where exactly has he left Talisman, given that he takes her out again that afternoon? Nor does he seem to have been made very damp by the storm he's just been at sea in. They must be super oilskins he's got. In some ways that's a shame, because had Forest noted it, Peter might well have explained away Foley's behaviour as a matter of pride--not wanting to acknowledge a pupil when he's in a state of considerable dishevelment, when, of course, the real reason is both exactly that and rather more sinister. There's also the question of where exactly St Anne's-Byfleet is, to which we shall also recur. There is something uncanny about Foley, though, as if Peter's account of 'the boat thing' has summoned him from the sea: and perhaps the unsettling effect of that is worth a small sacrifice of realism.

That Foley's failure to acknowledge Peter is related by Nicola to The 39 Steps always puts a smile on my face.





Mrs Marlow's worries are very realistically sketched, I think: she's normally unflappable, but the tensions of managing the eight of them do sometimes explode into the anger of fright.

I also greatly enjoy Ginty's adolescent discomfort at the thought of drawing attention to herself, despite her somewhat oddly-described good looks: greeny-blue eyes tilted like a squirrel's sound spooky, and her teasing her mother by calling her Momma (presumably American, and thus vulgar?)

The family's horror at Peter's outright rudeness to Johnnie Thorpe seems a little hypocritical, given that he is only saying directly what they have all more or less made clear to Johnnie they think. But it's a great piece of social observation nonetheless.

Lawrie's borrowing Nicola's knife as a good-luck charm is a nice little point (it must work on a principle of magical inversion, since that knife has not conspicuously brought luck in the past) and there's surely a little submerged verbal joke on the name of Foley's cutter there. Talismans might after all, be evil.

Nicola and Peter's discussion of Foley possibly having a twin creates further resonance between the Foley family and the Marlows, but also with The Prince and the Pauper.

I enjoy the little episode with the pony, and Nicola's reflection on Peter's prep school master's comment on his diving. I do sometimes feel that in re: bravery, Forest is extraordinarily tough on her characters. If you funk, you feel the full weight of authorial disapproval, but if you attempt--as Peter sometimes does to the point of foolhardiness--to confront fear (and Peter's of heights is close to phobia rather than just normal trepidation in the face of danger) you also earn a sideswipe.

The Mariners passage is a favourite of mine: I love the atmospherics of discovery, the differences between Nicola and Peter's reactions to the crows' nest (I sympathise with both!) Nicola's eerie intuition when she sees Talisman.

I'm struck again by the glimpse of Pam Marlow's character: having been furious at Peter and Nicola's irresponsibility earlier, she now thinks nothing of waltzing off and leaving them under Ginty's supervision for days. Obviously this is mainly for Plot Purposes, but it chimes interestingly with the story of Geoff and Pam's engagement and marriage in the face of opposition from her mother (which Forest invents rather later on). It implies a marriage that's still rather impulsively passionate (perhaps long separations help here) after twenty-odd years. I'm rather touched. Still, it doesn't show very good judgement--there are plenty of 15-year-olds who could be trusted to look after their younger siblings, especially in the controlled environment of a hotel, but Ginty might well not be one of them.

Finally, Lawrie's sending up of Nicola's wanting to see the ships at Farrant is deliciously barbed and squirmy, playing beautifully on that separation of home and professional/school life that is such a nice feature of the books. And of course Lawrie's sending-up 'voice' is yet another nod to her talent for acting.



Well, that's it from me. Looking forward to your comments--have at it.

Comments

[nnozomi.livejournal.com]

Fascinating analysis (and subsequent discussion). Not sure at which point to jump into the comments, so will just enter my own.

I hadn't seen the Marlows' distaste for the Thorpes as classist, although I can see you could read it that way--Johnnie, though, seems just as believable to me as an essentially upper-middle-class harmless twit (though I may be missing subtler class clues). He's another in the pattern of (to quote a later book) "there just are people like that and you can't like them..." which is one of Forest's minor themes, perhaps.

Another thing I'd absolutely never thought of, and read here with enormous interest, is the idea of Foley having sexual designs on Selby. I agree with most of the discussion above, thinking that Foley--being indeed "odd, unstable, opportunistic"--is likely to have offered the lift on the spur of the moment, seeing a cadet whom he knows and perhaps likes (Selby as Anquetil to Peter's Foley?) in White Rabbit mode. I don't think Foley as cool-headed planner would in fact have made a pass at Selby, since it would be too likely to draw unwelcome attention in some form; nor do I think he would have been likely to do so on impulse, belonging most likely to the "tastes too complex to be satisfied by fresh-faced boys" type.* With nothing provable, however, he probably would have been happy for Selby to feel some unease along those lines, offering vague chances for later leverage.

Regarding Peter and bravery--you could definitely say Forest is hard on him, but I wonder if she isn't being hard on his inability to work out the differing nature of his fears and therefore the need for differing approaches. Trying to be more coherent--Peter is afraid of a number of things, and feels that he shouldn't be, and tries to pretend he isn't, and sometimes overdoes it; this is bad because he can't distinguish, as the prep school master points out, what it's reasonable to be afraid of. He doesn't have a good sense of "I'm afraid of this because I'm a coward" versus "I'm afraid of this because it's bloody dangerous." And, of course, God forbid he should both realize that it isn't reasonable to be afraid of something and allow himself to back away from it anyway--180 degrees from Lawrie's "it bangs at me" approach.
(Sorry--I don't remember if quoting books not officially discussed yet is acceptable, but it's so hard to resist.)


*This line popped into my head and gave me an annoying five minutes until I managed to identify it as a quotation from Peter Dickinson's Hindsight, a seriously creepy and mesmerizing book by probably the best living mystery novelist.

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

Yes - so true about Peter's fear and so well put. He doesn't have the age or experience to calculate risk and realise that while some activities have an inherent small risk which you accept if you do that activity - e.g. riding, sailing; other activities are very dangerous and no sensible person would do them knowing the risk - walking close to very high seas in a storm. And that having the common sense to avoid danger is not the same as being a coward.

[biskybat.livejournal.com]

Thinking about taking risks generally: I can quite see the attraction of trying to gain entry to an empty neglected house and can identify with that but I could not have done what Nicola did and jumped into what might have been a coal hole without being able to see into it. Surely this is simply foolhardy? And Nicola doesn't like the dark - or is that only outdoor dark? Anyway, Peter shows proper caution in not wanting to jump into the unknown.

I've always liked Peter and his very realistic fears, anxieties and tempers and the way he is surrounded on all sides by his competent and often fearless siblings.

I agree with jackmerlin that the children show extraordinary cheek in thinking they can help themselves to the pony and also neither of them care much for riding. I can sort of see Peter wanting to make some kind of bravery statement but Nicola is not confident around horses until she meets Buster later on so I can't see her taking a risk with an untried unsaddled pony.

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

I suppose at this stage they are still 'townies' and might not realise that horses don't just stand around in fields waiting to be ridden by passing strangers. Nicola maybe said it without thinking, and then Peter saw it as a dare. I still think they were being cheeky; but I can see that the pony needed to be featured strongly at this point to make it believable that Nicola had a pocket full of sugar the next day.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I think the tight, bright trousers of the Thorpe women are an expression of class-based distaste, as well as the Marlows' imitation of Johnnie's slightly self-conscious Americanisms ('you betcha!'). Mr Thorpe's essentially a civil servant, though a pretty senior one, and while senior civil servants might well equal or outrank naval officers in class terms, there's an implication I think (quiet bald man with brash noisy wife) that he's rather clerkish, and hence a bit inky, grammar school oikish sort of thing. See also: Peter's surprise at Mr Thorpe's considerable sailing experience, the implied vulgarity of Fair Wind's many gadgets.

I read Traitor for the first time only a few months ago, so I have no experience of it as a child reader, but I have to say the only explanation which really accounted for Peter and Nicola's strained conversation about Selby and Foley was that Selby had felt a sense of sexual threat (whether justified or not) from Foley which he'd tried to tell Peter about (perhaps very inarticulately) and Peter was oblivious or didn't want to believe it. Nicola (typically perceptive) understands what Selby's unease was on a gut level, but can't articulate that through lack of vocabulary or sheer embarrassment to her more clueless older brother. 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 simply love the idea of Peter and Selby mirroring Foley and Anquetil respectively, by the way.

As you can see, I'm quite incapable of discussing the books without spoiling them myself! So I've left it mostly up to participants' own discretion. They're not particularly twisty books: I think there are only a few instances in which spoilers would really spoil. It's almost impossible to have a full discussion of Lawrie's character without mentioning 'it bangs at me!', I think.

[sprog-63.livejournal.com]

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?

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that Uncle Gerry is probably heavily influenced by the Moors Murderers, whose arrest and trial likely happened around the same time as Forest was writing RMF: its a stereotype which has since become lurid and conventional, but was probably simply topical in the late 60s given the immensely high profile and widespread horror generated by the case. So I didn't have my historical googles on there, for which, apologies.

I don't think it matters a great deal in the long run what Foley's motivation is (or whether he has one--he's explicitly stated not to have much of a motivation for spying in the first place) as long as the right atmosphere of inchoate wrongness is created, which it is, very effectively. But for me personally, Nicola's reaching for the analogy of bullies in boys' school stories is a very 1940s way of trying to articulate the abuse of power dynamic that she sees in the story Peter tells. And sexual abuse is nearly always a strand in those stories--I think it's probably the rare boys' school story that doesn't raise the idea of 'beastliness', if only to dismiss it: the 'Bully may be a beast but he's not beastly' trope, if you like.

(Fic about a different Selby, or a what if it had been Peter that Foley gave the lift to, given the Peter--Foley Selby--Anquetil parallel that's sketched here, would be tremendous, by the way.)

[sprog-63.livejournal.com]

I'm with you about atmosphere: I think she creates it so well here, the nebulous sense of unease that they can't quite define (echoed perhaps the next day by the fog?).

I hadn't thought of Nicola's linking it to boys school stories and hence the sexual undertones. And that era boys school stories is not really within my repertoire (too many books, too little time). Would there have been a perceived difference between teachers being "beastly" and pupils? (The few examples I can think of only are about older boy/younger boy). Either way it points to a wide acknowledgement of sexual abuse / power abuse within hierarchical relationships being common knowledge, even if the mechanics of grooming not understood in the same language as we would now use.

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

On the subject of spoilers, isn't it the case that Forest has spoiled the book, to a certain extent, with the title? Autumn Term gives away that it's a school story, but not that Forest's intention is to subvert some of the tropes, what with Karen being ineffectual, Rowan not necessarily agreeing with the authority figures, staff disliking prefects and so on, all being revealed early on in the book in the train incident. So The Marlows and the Traitor not only tells us that it's an adventure book, but the type of adventure to be encountered. I think that The Marlows by the Sea or at Sea, for example, would predispose the reader to expect a different book.

I'm also one of those who came to this book as an adult (the GGBP reprint) so on reading these opening chapters, I remember looking for the traitor early on. We get three possibilities: Nicola's fishing friends in St Anne's Oldport, who we don't meet in these two chapters; the Thorpes; and Foley, who we get to see in person and by report. Foley gets the most attention so it's not a surprise that he turns out to be the one, not least with all the talk about Peter's appalling taste in friends (and also crushes - I remember thinking that Peter's reaction to Foley seemed like a crush, somewhat) but I also remember wondering if perhaps the Thorpes would turn out to be bad eggs as well, what with their trips abroad in their boat, and their bad taste in trousers. Other writers might well have gone for this turn of events; treachery being a rather vulgar matter, perhaps? :)

And in terms of children's adventure stories and subverting the same, I note that the Marlows are reduced to four children for the purposes of this book, but not the standard two boys and two girls, and furthermore, the eldest girl is not the traditional competent homemaker (see eldest girls called Susan, Ann(e) or Jane, as they so frequently are) and also the children aren't off by themselves (initially) on a camping, cycling, riding, boating etc holiday, but safely, supposedly, tucked into a hotel, travelling by bus rather than bicycle or pony, and we're closer to the realm of Agatha Christie mystery/thriller with that. So Ginty and Lawrie are caught up in a holiday table tennis tournament and bickering over fancy dress.

I also wonder, with Lawrie's tease of Nicola seeing over the fleet, which struck me as being a really painful tease for Nicola, if Tim's ability to get at Nicola where it hurts most was something that Tim learns from Lawrie?