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

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

I've been looking forward to the start of this discussion!

I do love the atmosphere in the opening scenes of the book; as a writer myself I'm always prone to using weather to help set the mood, and Forest does a superb job here of letting the thundery weather begin to introduce the mood of ominousness underlaid with excitement. The yellow sea and the copper sky... just wonderful.

And then there's the introduction of Peter. I must say I find him a bit unsympathetic from the start, when we hear that there's a pool of water on the floor from the rain and, instead of getting up to close the window, he picks up his biscuits and starts getting crumbs in the bed. Add to that having turned down invitations for the summer holiday in order to be able to stay in "luxury and idleness," and he doesn't seem all that appealing a character. You could argue that his choice is really *all* about the "boat thing," as he admits even to himself that it's a factor. And I do feel for him over that. I agree that Forest puts across his mental skirting around the issue really well.

Nicola's fannishness about Hornblower is wonderful and makes her even more obviously the authorial/reader identification character.

During this book I find myself continually comparing the Marlows with the Walkers from Swallows and Amazons - with a naval family and a seaside adventure, this novel in particular is not far from being a Ransome book. I'm probably going to stir controversy here but the Marlows don't necessarily come off all that well in comparison: none of them hate the sea, they wouldn't be lured by a luxury hotel (though maybe if it were by the sea), they wouldn't break into a house which is obviously isn't entirely abandoned, and they certainly wouldn't go out on the Undercliff after a clear warning about how dangerous it is in a storm. Commander Marlow sounds very "better drowned than duffers" but Peter doesn't quite seem to have picked up on the message. Am I being unfair to the Marlows? You could say in their favour that they're more psychologically complex than the Walkers, who are perhaps unrealistically good and competent and sensible.

Foley's attempted blackmail of Sel is very interesting. The first time I read this chapter I just passed it over without speculating but this time I found myself thinking about "he might think he could make him do things." Nicola's imagination obviously failed her with her suggestion of buying beer for the prefects, but anyone who reads boys' school stories will know that prefects sometimes make younger boys do other things too. (Am I being too suspicious? Was Foley trying to convert an aid to treason? But what could he want with the help of a young Navy cadet anyway?) (And I've just noticed that you actually asked about this in the original post - I was being independently suspicious here.)

How wonderfully selfish of Peter: "If Nicola had been drowned it would probably have been his fault... and he was thoroughly tired of things that might have been his fault."

So far I've really only covered chapter one, but I think I'll pause here and come in again later...

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Applying 'coughing-bear' logic to this one is interesting, isn't it: had Peter not mucked up the boat exercise, he probably would have gone to Selby's for the holidays...and he and Nick probably wouldn't have walked along the Undercliff, and maybe not gone to Mariners, and . PESKY KIDS.

I like the detail of Peter leaving the window and making the bed all crumby: very much a certain sort of 14-year-old boy, perhaps one enjoying the the break from naval discipline. (Giles, one senses, is Bristol-fashion by nature.) I enjoy the Marlows' propensity to dufferdom, actually, being a bit of a duffer myself.

Traitor is pretty pitiless and dark, actually (Fabian's 'mistake' about the depth of the water, the rough lineaments of which are replicated by his descendant; Whittier's 'little corpusses'; 'the children are expendable'; Anquetil's caution in not attempting a solo rescue, &c. &c.). I'm pretty sure that Forest meant her older readers at least to intuit that Selby felt a sense of sexual threat from Foley, whether justified or not. Nicola's words are "I don't mean Foley wanted beer bought. I mean----' I think the long dash isn't her imagination failing her so much as her not having the vocabulary to say to her brother, 'I think the officer who you've got a bit of a rave for might have been trying to sexually abuse your best friend.' It's surely significant that it's explicitly placed in the context of Peter's poor judgement of character.

Peter's selfishness is surely also a child's inability quite to understand mortality: something he's going to have less of a problem with by the end of the book.

[coughingbear]

I agree that Selby may have felt a sense of sexual threat from Foley, and the text certainly supports that reading, but I have also wondered if Foley was simply messing with Selby's head because he could. Because he enjoys making people uneasy and at odds with an environment where he appears all that is authoritative and official but knows that he is not.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Yes, absolutely: I think Foley's actual motivation is probably randomly subversive and inchoate: nothing he does during the action of the novel suggests sexual abuse. But I think Selby's perception is almost certainly of a possible sexual approach, and Peter either is oblivious to Selby trying to say that, or doesn't want to believe it--Nicola understands what Selby's unease was about, but realises halfway through her sentence the implications of saying it aloud to her brother, even if she could articulate it.

[coughingbear]

Yes, I see what you mean and I agree. Also of course Foley would exploit the unease he's created randomly if it occurred to him later it would be useful or amusing -it's how he operates.

I don't think Nicola can quite articulate it even to herself either, but I do think it's what she's getting at.

[occasionalhope.livejournal.com]

I'm not convinced Nicola quite understands that, although it's certainly the obvious reading for a modern reader. Peter seems remarkably clueless.

But possibly, Foley just doesn't want anyone to know about the person he's been meeting - who I assume is one of his spy contacts given his being so pleased about "something".

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I wonder about the identity of the other man in the car myself--and where does he go? he gets out of the car and disappears: where were he and Foley headed? If he's another agent it seems absolutely barmy of Foley to stop (not out of character, I suppose given how self-destructive and reckless of others' safety he can be) so that Selby can get a good look at his companion for identification purposes!

[(Anonymous)]

Not sure I can agree that Nicola would have much understanding of Selby feeling a sense of sexual threat from Foley. This is Nicola only three months on from Autumn Term and still very much a child however intelligent, perceptive and well read she is for thirteen or so. (And thirteen year olds in the 40s would, on the whole, lack this kind of experience to make this kind of judgement.)

I think Selby's unease stems more from Foley being rather over pleased with himself than sensing anything particularly sexual - probably Selby hasn't seen this side before and finds it disconcerting. As for Foley and 'what Selby can do for him', I agree with occasionalhope that Foley might not want anyone to know about the other man and is hinting that Selby should keep quiet about it.

[biskybat.livejournal.com]

The above from me - forgot to sign in.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

But if Foley doesn't want anyone to know about the other man, the best thing he can do, surely, is drive on and ignore Selby? Stopping actually gives Selby a good look at his fellow conspirator: quite enough for ID parade purposes, one imagines! I agree that Foley's motivation probably isn't in fact sexual, it's actually harder to explain than that. He has a weird self-destructive impulse (which endangers others too) to show off, almost, about his spying; to flirt with discovery and capture just because he can. And the idiocy of stopping to give Sel a lift, and Foley's smug self-satisfaction is really coming out of that. But Selby doesn't know about the spying, obviously, he just perceives uncomfortable chumminess and a sense of things being 'wrong', and the explanation he reaches for is one that's unfortunately quite familiar for a lot of young people.

I think 13- and 14-year-olds in the late 1940s might well have lacked a vocabulary to talk about this, but I don't think they'd be ignorant of the fact of it. Nicola's analogy of prefects abusing their power over younger schoolboys is in one sense inadequate, but it's also spot on: she's expressing the sense of sexualised aggression that you intuit from Hughes's Flashman, for example. There are texts (written for what would now be called an YA audience) of much earlier date than Traitor in which prefects' sexual exploitation of younger boys is unequivocally if decorously discussed: I happen just to have read it, so it's the example that comes straight to mind, but it's an important theme in E.F. Benson's David Blaize (1916).

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, the second man is a mystery. Why did Foley stop for Selby at all but then why not? Most people would have. Selby wasn't to know there was anything fishy about the other man.

I still think Foley was simply covering himself so that he could say to Selby if necessary and in a roundabout way not to mention the other man. Disquieting enough on its own and not what you'd expect from a teacher especially from that kind of rigid environment.

Children who'd had experience of being sexually threatened would recognise it in fiction; I still don't think a 13 year old who hadn't would think of it and I can't see why they would unless it's made explicit. Perhaps I was a particularly niaive child but I clearly missed out on references that were obvious on returning to the same book as an adult.

[biskybat.livejournal.com]

Sorry, missed the sign in again. Comes of doing things in a hurry.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I think he does it because he loves taking risks--I imagine the conspirator isn't too chuffed about it (unless he is as reckless as Foley), but once Foley's pulled up, there's nothing he can do.

Well, we can agree to differ on that one. I think it's a marvellous contribution to the oblique sense of foreboding in the early part of the book, however you read it: and (as I discovered when I tried to explain it to someone who hadn't read the book) quite sophisticated in narrative terms: Selby's perceptions of Foley's behaviour filtered through Peter's account and then through Nicola's point of view.

[this-other-life.livejournal.com]

Colour me perpetually naive if you wish but I saw nothing sexually in that passage either as a child or as an adult. I'm still in shock from people here seeing it as so obvious :)
I more subscribe to your theory of Foley being reckless; pushing the boundaries of what he can get away with for his own amusement.
Quite honestly, his stopping for Selby is unusual enough to stick in Selby's mind, let alone whatever Foley might say to him on the journey.

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Coming late to this, but really enjoying reading these discussions, so many brilliant insights into the books.

Re Foley and the "grooming" issue - I don't think anyone's referred yet to Peter's Room, where Nicola talks about Foley to Peter and compares him to Giles. Peter responds angrily but I think this is because he hates the idea of treachery (annoyingly I can't find my copy to check) - after all, Peter's Room is also a book about treachery. He says something like a traitor like Foley can't possibly have a sympathetic side. Nicola decides not to mention Foley again - she hadn't previously realised it was like ice cream to tooth-ache for Peter, or similar reference.

Now I know some of us (including me) and not crazy about Giles, but I don't think Nicola would be comparing Foley to the adored Giles if she suspected Foley was a paedophile or similar.

I don't think AF would, either. In fact, isn't the point of MAndTT (just like Patrick/Rupert's betrayals in Peter's Room) that quite attractive characters can be tempted into treachery?

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

No, I don't think that particular unease of Nicola's survives actually meeting Foley, just that it's where her mind goes (somewhat inchoately and without being able fully to articulate what she means) when Peter tells his story about Selby, and that's what she's reaching for with her analogy with bullying prefects in boys' school stories.

In some ways it's ironic: what Nicola's trying to suggest is a reasonably common experience, unfortunately--not necessarily of sexual abuse itself, but of a child encountering an adult about whom things seem creepy and wrong. Whereas Foley actually is something more uncommon and more sinister: he's prepared, after all, to see the children murdered in his own pursuit of self-annihilation. (To this we shall come in Chapter 7).

I don't think Foley's an attractive character tempted into treachery, though. I think he's a type of psychopathic personality: superficial charm, poor impulse control, amorality, inability to empathise, lack of remorse or conscience. Patrick, for all he can be startlingly unattractive, isn't that.

[hooloovoo_42]

If the twins are third form, they'd be 11 or 12. Do we ever know when their birthday is?

[intrepid--fox.livejournal.com]

Early summer holidays, not that it's ever mentioned, but Nicola is 13 in FL and still 13 in RMF, and it's not mentioned as an event in Cricket term, which suggests it's after the end of term. Also, the fact that she's carrying around Giles's present of a wallet in FL suggests that it's a recent gift, I think.

[occasionalhope.livejournal.com]

Also, one Birthday Treat is the Chichester Festival, which was a summer thing.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think the twins' birthday must be in July, so they're still 12 in Traitor. Nicola reminds Giles she's 14 and a half in Run Away Home, as well. It makes them among the youngest in their class group at school, presumably, which is interesting (though Kingscote may, like a lot of private schools, not be rigidly governed by age groupings in making up its classes).

[hooloovoo_42]

I agree that many private schools aren't rigid in their year groups. A friend of mine's birthday was 1 September, but as she went to the High School from Kindergarten upwards, she was allowed to move up into the higher year.

My birthday is July, so I was always one of the youngest. At our state comprehensive, I managed to skip a year by doing an accelerated O level course and going straight from 4th year to 6th form, so was only 6 weeks older than some kids doing O level when I took my A levels. The disadvantage of doing that rather than moving up earlier was that we missed a whole year of the Hard Sums and practicals that were the bedrock of A level Maths & Fizzicks.

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

I like the detail of Peter leaving the window and making the bed all crumby: very much a certain sort of 14-year-old boy, perhaps one enjoying the the break from naval discipline. (Giles, one senses, is Bristol-fashion by nature.) I enjoy the Marlows' propensity to dufferdom, actually, being a bit of a duffer myself.

It's certainly convincing! Forest has an art for the unflatteringly realistic even though she writes within a compass that can hardly be called "gritty." I don't know that I'm any less a duffer than the Marlows but perhaps I like to imagine that I would be.

I think the long dash isn't her imagination failing her so much as her not having the vocabulary to say to her brother, 'I think the officer who you've got a bit of a rave for might have been trying to sexually abuse your best friend.' It's surely significant that it's explicitly placed in the context of Peter's poor judgement of character.

The point about Peter's poor judgment of character is a very good one; it does add extra weight to this interpretation. It's hard for me to read how far Nicola's imagination actually goes: she obviously knows that her suggestion is insufficiently adult to make sense in this context but does she actually manage to confront in her mind what adult misdeeds might possibly involve? The counterargument of course is that adult misdeeds and prefectly misdeeds are often the same thing (as Frank Maddox or Ralph Lanyon could tell you), but I wonder whether Kingscote would have given her knowledge of that sort of abuse of power.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm not sure quite what level of inarticulability Nicola's experiencing either: can Selby actually articulate why he feels uneasy, even?

I wonder whether Kingscote would have given her knowledge of that sort of abuse of power.

Not on canonical showings, no, though her reading of boys' school stories combined with the informal information that children tend to share about adults they find creepy might have. (In re the former, there's certainly a sense of sexualised aggression in Hughes' portrayal of Flashman in Tom Brown's Schooldays, for example, which I think someone as intelligent as Nick might intuit without being able fully to articulate. I can't decide whether I want Nicola to have read David Blaize or meet Frank when she goes up to Girton, btw). I wonder if she might have been about to suggest a sort of 'don't take sweets or lifts from strange men' line of explanation before she realises that Foley obviously isn't a stranger, even though he might be a bit strange. She does reflect in Cricket Term about the hackneyed, too-obvious quality of such advice, and is brought up short by the memory of Rose's experience in Ready Made Family. So oddly, she might reject that explanation as being childish, in a funny sort of way: she feels that being warned about 'strange men' is a thing for very much smaller children than herself, Peter and Selby.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I'm aware, by the way, that I'm attributing coherence to Nicola's thoughts on the matter that Forest didn't intend when she wrote Traitor, and--given that she didn't always re-read her own work--perhaps the resonance with Ready Made Family is accidental. But it all adds up quite nicely for headcanon purposes.